Regulatory Institutional Entrepreneurship: The USDA and the Promotion of Regional Food Hubs

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand how regulators proactively shape fields by intervening in institutional change processes. We ask how and to what extent regulators act as institutional entrepreneurs when they theorize solutions during divergent institutional change processes and support their diffusion and legitimization. By examining a case in which a regulator uses position power during several stages of an institutional change process, we show how entrepreneurial regulatory behavior can provide leverage for the acceptance and diffusion of divergent institutional change. The case we study focuses on the contested issue of how to organize the production and distribution of locally sourced food. This is an issue where a variety of prototype organizational forms have been developed, but where no dominant solution has emerged organically. The United States Department of Agriculture has taken entrepreneurial action by theorizing a solution, which it calls the regional food hub, and using its position to formalize and diffuse this concept as a pragmatic solution to the problems of production and distribution of local food. This solution alters the field by validating some organizational forms while neglecting others.