Abstract
In this paper, we develop a process model of trajectory shifts in institutional entrepreneurship. We focus on the liminal periods experienced by institutional entrepreneurs when they, unlike the rest of the organization, recognize limits in the present and seek to shift a familiar past into an unfamiliar and uncertain future. Such periods involve a situation where the new possible future, not yet fully formed, exists side-by-side with established innovation trajectories. Trajectory shifts are moments of truth for institutional entrepreneurs, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms of how entrepreneurs reflectively deal with liminality to conceive and bring forth new innovation trajectories. Our in-depth case study research at CarCorp traces three such mechanisms (reflective dissension, imaginative projection, and eliminatory exploration) and builds the basis for understanding the liminality of trajectory shifts. The paper offers theoretical implications for the institutional entrepreneurship literature.
Highlights
History is filled with stories of organizations failing to leverage new ideas that could spawn innovation
Bringing Forth a New Innovation Trajectory Seeing institutional entrepreneurship as trajectory shifts, we argue for the need of a new language that allows us to think about the ambiguity faced by institutional entrepreneurs when their new possible innovation trajectory is not yet fully formed
By investigating trajectory shifts in institutional entrepreneurship, we uncover the fragility and multiplicity of such discovery, and we examine how entrepreneurial action may ferment an innovation trajectory that eventually may result in field-level change
Summary
History is filled with stories of organizations failing to leverage new ideas that could spawn innovation. Some organizations do create successful innovation trajectories stimulated by ideas quite alien to their existing capabilities. In such cases, they embark on innovation trajectories that diverge from institutionalized practices (Garud and Karnøe 2001, Munir and Phillips 2005). Portrayed as institutional entrepreneurs, such actors establish new trajectories as they develop a vision, mobilize people, and motivate others to achieve and sustain the vision (Battilana et al 2009) They take initiatives that typically break with trajectories institutionalized in skills, technology, management systems, and values (cf Leonard-Barton 1992), struggling to realize their visions. Institutional entrepreneurs, here understood as individual agents, are vital for igniting organizational changes that may eventually lead to fieldlevel change
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