Social Identification and Emotional Mechanisms in Institutional Entrepreneurship: A Qualitative Research of Township Cluster in China

Abstract

Institutional entrepreneurship （IE） is an emerging and relevant topic in the institutional theory. Existing literature has overemphasized the macro phenomenal descriptions but neglected the micro-process of the IE initiation. Individuals were thus reduced to un-reflexive entities that experience institutions as a totalizing set of instrumental prescriptions. Based on the social identity theory and emotion studies in institutional literature, we conduct a qualitative research of the local norm of a township cluster to unpack the micro-process of IE. We find that: （1） efficiency-driven calculation is the basic motivational process that individuals experience before they initiate new institutions; （2） individuals also experience social categorization, threat-focus and closeness-focus social identification processes, which is a new path and necessary precondition for endogenous change-oriented agency; （3） emotional competence performance and emotional sense-making serve as two mechanisms by which agency emerges from the social identification process. This study not only responds to recent calls to study micro-foundations and individual-level affective elements in the institutional theory, but also provides practical implications for managing institutional change processes in the Chinese transition economy.