Complex Institutional Environment Research Articles

Complex Systems and Sustainable Leadership: Enhancing Resilience and Sustainability of Community-Based Social Enterprises in Soweto, South Africa

In urban South Africa, community-based social enterprises (CBSEs) face challenges at the intersection of financial and environmental sustainability and social purpose. These enterprises address social exclusion and community development within complex institutional environments. Despite increasing governmental support, CBSEs struggle with historical inequalities, resource limitations, high poverty levels, inadequate infrastructure, and complex social dynamics. These challenges contribute to a high failure rate among SMMEs, including CBSEs, which represent approximately 71% of community-level businesses. This study examines how complex system dynamics in marginalized South African suburbs impact the sustainable leadership and resilience of CBSEs. Utilizing a qualitative approach, the study conducted 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with CBSE leaders. The findings revealed that effective leadership in CBSEs requires extraordinary abilities to traverse complexity, adapt to changes, and engage in dynamic organizational change. The key themes identified included adaptive and flexible leadership, interdependencies and network collaboration, community engagement and co-creation, continuous learning and feedback loops, policy influence and response, and resource utilization and constraints. By applying complex systems leadership theory (CSLT) and sustainable leadership principles, the research offers insights into the mechanisms enabling CBSEs to thrive in challenging environments. These findings contribute to Social Enterprise Management and Leadership Studies, providing practical implications for policymakers and practitioners to support CBSE development and sustainability in marginalized urban communities.

Narrating the Client: How stories of parental influence impact teacher professionalism

Abstract This article examines how teachers engage in symbolic institutional work to address client influence, and how this impacts teacher professionalism. The study delves into an intriguing empirical field, using the Swedish school system as an illustrative case for studying the development of professionalism within a highly marketized context. The research employed interviews, observations, and shadowing, enabling a deeper understanding of the symbolic institutional work in a complex institutional environment where market and professional logic collide. The findings demonstrate how teachers utilize a narrative of a threatening and demanding client, which helps them distance themselves from market logic and resist adapting to it in their professionalism. However, there are also indications of a different narrative, where some teachers embrace and integrate client influence as a natural part of their professionalism. Additionally, there is also a form of ambivalence, where teachers are moving between different narratives. By investigating how professionals engage in these narratives, the article provides insights into understudied dimensions within the concept of professionalism. While the existence of different narratives highlights the complexity and fragility of institutional work, the inclination towards distancing from clients illustrates a preservation of traditional professionalism rather than a shift towards the ‘new professionalism’ described in previous literature.

Social capital in transactions: The role of economic and social trust in the specialty beef production system in Brazil

Abstract This study aims to understand the social capital inherent in agents and the role of social and economic trust in transactions between beef cattle producers and slaughtering cooperatives in the specialty beef production system in Paraná state, Brazil. This qualitative research involved 31 semi-structured interviews with beef cattle producers, cooperatives, and key agents. Results revealed that social capital, comprising networks and informal norms, favors the condition of trust, enabling the construction of a hybrid governance structure under a complex institutional environment. Social and economic trust between agents facilitates transactions, reduces behavioral and market uncertainties, enables ex-post adaptations, and consequently, reduces monitoring costs and transaction costs. Trust based on social aspects, i.e., social trust, was more relevant for the construction of arrangements, while trust based on economic aspects, i.e., economic trust, had a greater impact on the continuity of arrangements. This reveals that looking at only one of them is not enough to understand contractual arrangements. Thus, this study highlights that unfolding the concept of trust and investigating whether it comes from an economic or social basis is important to understand the complexity of such arrangements, which may influence specialty beef production system design and coordination efficiency.

Reconceptualizing Franchisee Performance: A Configurational Approach in a Base‐of‐the‐Pyramid Context

AbstractThis paper proposes and tests a new conceptual framing for franchisee performance that draws on institutional complexity to explore the interaction of corporate, market, and relational logics of performance. Extant research draws on corporate and market logics to explain performance; however, this does not explain individual franchisee performance in complex institutional environments such as Base‐of‐the‐Pyramid (BoP) markets where relational logics may be more important, thereby limiting explanations of how franchisee outlets perform. Drawing on data from a network of 58 franchise outlets in the context of Kenya, we conduct a configurational analysis related to sales outcomes. We leverage fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to map out the conditions under which franchisees exhibit higher sales performance. Results show that three distinct configurations can lead to increased sales performance. Our results paint a nuanced picture of combinations of factors that result in franchisee success with relevance to the BoP context and beyond.

Sustainable strategy as a lever for corporate legitimacy and long-term competitive advantage: an examination of an emerging market multinational

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the process of integrating sustainability into the corporate strategy of an emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNE) to achieve and maintain corporate legitimacy over time. The research explores how deploying a corporate sustainability strategy enhances the company’s long-term competitive relevance by creating and maintaining corporate legitimacy and transferring practices based on sustainable development goals within the organization.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a qualitative single-case design, focusing on a corporate energy services company (Interconexión Eléctrica S.A.) operating in volatile, uncertain and turbulent environments.FindingsThe findings indicate that integrating sustainability into the corporate strategy enables subsidiaries to effectively meet global requirements, considering internal and external pressures. This integration also fosters the development of unique capabilities and the internalization of standards, addressing liabilities in foreign markets, thus providing a competitive advantage and safeguarding corporate legitimacy among stakeholders.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the international business literature by providing insights into strategy development and implementation in EMNEs. Specifically, it demonstrates how a Latin American emerging multinational enterprise (multilatina) adopts new sustainability strategies to enhance its business competitiveness. The study also offers guidance for emerging market companies on developing sustainability strategies and transferring them to subsidiaries operating in complex institutional environments. Furthermore, the research provides a rationale for governments and civil society organizations on why firms are committed to sustainability, highlighting its positive impact on firm’s competitiveness and survival in international markets.

Toward a Deeper Understanding of Optimism Bias and Transport Project Cost Overrun

There is a growing face-value acceptance of optimism bias as the primary cause of transport cost overruns. This article provides a timely review of literature on optimism bias and transport infrastructure project cost overruns. The article identifies significant gaps and unanswered questions about the relationship between optimism bias in project cost appraisal and cases of transport infrastructure cost overruns. The presence and nature of optimism bias in the complex institutional environment of project cost appraisal are largely understudied and not well understood. Consequently, this has significant implications for the development of effective mitigation strategies for improving transport project cost performance.

INSTITUTIONAL EFFICIENCY AS AN IMPERATIVE OF THE POST-WAR INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF TERRITORIAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS IN UKRAINE

Topicality. Despite numerous measures to stimulate scientific, technical and innovative development, declared by programs, legislative and departmental normative documents of Ukraine, the actual effectiveness of their implementation remains low, and priority focus on the innovative path of development did not become an integral part of it. Formal institutions should provide better legal, economic, and political institutional conditions, such as establishing strict and fair laws to protect stakeholders, reducing investment restrictions and increasing freedom for business, finance, and capital controls, as well as addressing corruption, bureaucracy, and autocracy. Such a policy is a prerequisite for creating a better investment environment and increasing the efficiency of resource allocation for the innovative development of territorial and economic systems in the context of post-war recovery of Ukraine.Aim and tasks. The aim of the article is to examine the theoretical-methodological and legal basis of the entrepreneurial environment in the aspect of institutional support for the development of innovative activity within territorial&economic systems. The tusk of the study is to propose measures for its improvement in the post-war period in order to recover the Ukraine’s economy on innovative bases.Materials and Methods. The research is based on results of comparative, semantic analysis and theoretical generalization of the previous studies, contemporary scientific views and empirical observations regarding the impact of institutional efficiency on investment, economic growth rates and total factor productivity (TFP) from a macroeconomic perspective. The contextual analysis results were applied to was applied to identify contradictions in the existing organizational and legal basis of the existing institutional framework for the development of territorial communities and business entities in the aspect of their innovative activity of territorial&economic systems and the overall economy of Ukraine in the post-war recovery context.Research results. The conducted research have led to a set of results, including: (1) improvement of categorical apparatus of the theory of regional management by defining the category of the "territorial&economic system", (2) determination of the main formal institutions and institutions that regulate the development of innovative activities in an entrepreneurial sector of the country and the development of territorial communities, (3) the contextual analysis of the existing institutional support conducted within the study allows for drawing conclusions that , overall, the country has developed a complex institutional environment, which is shaped by the existence of various institutions and regulations governing innovative activities.Conclusion. The Institutional support for innovative development in Ukraine has significant deficiencies, manifested in contradictions, insufficient identification of subjects and objects of the innovation process, and inadequate resource allocation. The problem significantly inhibits the innovative development of territorial economic systems, and at some point makes it impossible. Strategies and management of the national innovation system remain fragmented, relatively ineffective and insufficiently coordinated. There is no clear division of roles and responsibilities, including financial ones, among different government bodies. More than half of the adopted innovative programs did not receive funding due to the lack of corresponding allocations in the state budget. Priority is given to the Annual Budget Law compared to the previous financial commitments defined in program documents.

Changing conceptualization of innovation in the European Union and its impact on universities: Critical junctures and evolving institutional demands

Abstract This article explores underlying mechanisms triggering a change in conceptualization of innovation in the European Union (EU), the impact of this change on institutional demands upon European universities and implications for evaluation procedures. We mobilize the theoretical concept of critical junctures to explore significant periods that have affected understanding of innovation in the EU as well as institutional expectations from universities. Through an analysis of European policy corpus relating to innovation, we identify three distinct periods, 1983–6, 1995–2000, and 2008–12, entailing fairly fundamental shifts that have considerably broadened the understanding of innovation and then demonstrate the way this broadening conceptualization has affected institutional demands upon universities. Following this, we discuss the implications of the critical junctures on evaluation approaches. We conclude by arguing that different approaches towards innovation have created complex institutional environment for universities to navigate and suggest that implementing more nuanced and customized evaluation schemes aligned to the institutional demands of each critical juncture could help addressing this complexity.

Cooperation vs. affiliation: an exploratory qualitative study of alcoholics anonymous’ position within the recovery ecosystem

Background Addressing substance use disorder (SUD) requires intricate solutions, usually involving several organizations within a complex institutional environment. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) shares the recovery ecosystem with other organizations, is ubiquitous across communities, and is notably inexpensive as an intervention; yet the exact nature of the connections between AA and other organizations in the recovery ecosystem is underexplored. Objective Explore relationships AA has with other recovery ecosystem organizations and guide future research. Methods Data were gathered via ethnographic participant observations, which were triangulated and contextualized via semi-structured interviews with key informants and archival documents. Results Though AA does not formally link itself with other organizations, findings point toward strong relationships at the individual level and of an informal nature. Individual members who also have affiliation with other organizations (e.g., legal institutions, treatment services) create bridges, enabling efficient solving of complex issues. Conclusions Services wishing to leverage AA (or other mutual-aid) attendance will likely benefit from fostering informal relationships with individual AA members, including lowering barriers to disclosure of recovery status, and contacting local AA service elements capable of making these connections. Similarly, research to advance community-level SUD services and the knowledge-base would benefit from incorporating and partnering with people in recovery.

Rationales behind Marks & Spencer’s failure in the Chinese market, an important lesson to foreign firms

China has a complex institutional environment, with its rapidly expanding economy and a rising number of middle class, businesses like Marks & Spencer (M&S) opted to enter this foreign market in 2010 with the expectation of increasing their revenue and brand recognition. The 4Ps marketing model is used in this essay to explain why M&S has failed in their market entry and operations in China. Dissecting and describing the problems associated with their promotion, product, choice of shop location, and pricing. Based on the problems identified, this article also proposes potential solutions on what M&S could do in the pre-entry phase, and the post-entry phase to prevent such failure from occurring.

Wayfinding Information Syntheses: A Study of Wayfinding Efficiency and Behavior in Complex Outdoor Institutional Environment.

This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of wayfinding information (destination reference images) in real-time complex environmental settings through the syntheses of mobile and static information sources. This investigation will help in improving the wayfinding information design for complex institutional environments which will enhance the environmental legibility. Complex environments are challenging for wayfinding efficiency. Identification of the location and orientation are considered to be important for wayfinding efficiency. This study investigated the user behavior in synthesizing the wayfinding information for identifying the users' location and orientation in a complex environment. Twenty-five university students have participated in the desktop-based virtual reality experiment. Five experimental conditions were developed for the assessment of wayfinding efficiency and users' preferred information sources. Reference images of destinations with user-matched angles were found more effective than the building's facade images. Participants synthesized the mobile wayfinding information with real environmental information to identify their location and orientation. Real environment information (road intersections and shape of the road) and mobile information (reference images of building facades) were found influential in the identification of the user's location and orientation. The study suggested a need for thorough investigation regarding the users' wayfinding behavior with different types of environmental information. Future studies have been recommended to investigate other complex institutional environments with larger sample groups for enhancing environmental legibility and institutional efficiency.

“My definition of community is community, and their definition is more around fan engagement”: balancing business and social logics of professional sport teams’ community activities

ABSTRACT Professional sport teams operate within an increasingly complex institutional environment and are required to often confront incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics, such as performance and commercial goals (i.e., business logics) relative to community development and altruistic goals (i.e., social logics). The aim of this research is to investigate the influence of institutional complexity on managers perceptions of community-oriented practices across 12 professional teams within a single Australian sport league. Using Raynard’s (2016) configurations of institutional complexity, we identify two types of hybrid responses that professional teams utilise to address multiple logics: aligned and segregated. When community managers perceived social logics to be aligned with business logics, community activities were more aligned with commercial organisational outcomes such as brand, fan and sponsorship benefits. Alternatively, when managers perceived social logics to be segregated from business logics, community activities were more autonomous from commercial drivers, allowing a greater focus on community development outcomes including education, health and increased trust. Theoretically, our research adds to institutional logic scholarship by showing that multiple logics can be compatible with each other, central logics influence peripheral logics and organisational responses to institutional complexity can vary within a professional sport league.

Universities’ contribution to culture and creativity-led regional development: Conflicting institutional demands and hybrid organizational responses

Universities are increasingly recognized for playing a proactive role in supporting culture and creativity-led regional development. Meanwhile, they are also expected to distinguish themselves in their core activities via mission differentiation. Often these two demands are pitched against each other while little attention has been paid to the way universities can manage them. Drawing on a case study involving 29 semi-structured interviews carried out with key actors, this article examines the way a public university located in a peripheral region in the Netherlands navigated such a complex institutional environment. The findings suggest that the university formulated a hybrid response strategy, engaging in both institutional demands simultaneously while prioritizing collaboration with cultural and creative industries and talent attraction over other sub-demands. More importantly, the authors demonstrate that organizational identity, which itself is influenced by peripheral characteristics as well as other institutional factors, plays a significant role in the formulation of a hybrid response strategy. They therefore argue that universities’ contribution to culture and creativity-led regional development is not only dependent on their resource capacity – as is often suggested in the literature – but also on how they envision their organizational identity; that is, the type of institutional profiling they want to pursue.

Networked Urban Governance: A Socio-Structural Analysis of Transport Strategies in London and New York

This paper investigates urban governance empirically by applying social network analysis methods to data gathered through structured interviews in London and New York. We explore how decisions are made in complex institutional environments inhabited by various types of actors. Owing to the time-consuming data collection and treatment processes, the research zooms in on transport. The comparative approach enabled the detection of different structural features in the governance networks shaping transport strategies in both cities. The perceived relative power, influence, dependence and/or affinity between the actors involved is discussed based on network attributes. The evidence suggests that transport governance in London is more centralised (and, arguably, more technocratic and integrated), in the sense that a few prestigious entities are clearly more prominent. In New York the institutional environment is typified by many checks and balances (and, arguably, more democratic and fragmented), where central actors are less obvious.

Government policy, filial piety, and foreign direct investment

AbstractResearch SummaryThis study investigates formal institutional pressure from government policy, informal institutional pressure from filial piety, and their interaction effect on firms' internationalization strategy. We argue that, while influenced by independent policy and cultural effects, firms also exercise agency when responding to these competing institutional pressures. We find empirical support for the influence of policy and cultural effects on firms' foreign direct investment (FDI). We also find that, in making decisions about FDIs, state‐owned enterprises are more sensitive to government policy, whereas family businesses are more sensitive to filial piety.Managerial SummaryThis study reveals that firms' strategies in complex institutional environments are influenced by their needs for formal and informal institutional legitimacy. Managers can exercise agency by weighing the importance of formal and informal legitimacy differently and therefore vary in their responses to institutional pressures. However, managerial agency is bound by firm ownership type. Managers of state‐owned firms prioritize formal institutional legitimacy, while their family business counterparts attend more to informal institutional legitimacy. Policymakers should be aware of this important difference between types of firms, which allows them to address noncompliance in a culturally sensitive and ultimately more effective way.

Social Entrepreneurs’ Agency in Complex Institutional Environments of Emerging Economies

Entrepreneurial agency in complex institutional environments and the extent to which varying perceptions of institutional catalysts and impediments affect social entrepreneurs’ navigation approaches in emerging economies remain untold. Based on an abductive analysis of 33 interviews with social entrepreneurs and hub representatives in sub-Saharan Africa, our findings point to distinct approaches that social entrepreneurs apply. We illustrate these approaches and corresponding techniques by drawing on selected cases with a specific emphasis on informal institutional catalysts and impediments. Through a contextualized micro lens on institutional theory, our findings enrich the social entrepreneurship literature in relation to institutional voids and entrepreneurial agency.

Collaboration in Complex Institutions: Contradictions of Patient-Centered Interprofessional Care

Previous studies of complex institutional environments have tended to focus on contestations rather than collaborations. This paper contributes to the institutional theory literature on institutional complexity by unpacking how different health care professionals collaborate in environments with contradictory institutional logics. Specifically, I study how health care professionals respond to the contradictions brought about by the meta-institutional logic of patient-centered care. In response to contradictory institutional logics, health care professionals enact lubricative collaborative practices to allow the concomitance of multiple institutional logics. This paper presents a stark contrast to prior depictions of institutional logics in the literature in which scholars described institutional actors as participants in institutional contestations as opposed to institutional collaborations. The former assumed the presence of incommensurable institutional logics as a bug whereas the latter assumed the presence of incommensurable institutional logics as a necessary feature of a complex society. In fact, low capacity and low capability for incommensurable institutional logics are indicators of a highly homogenous institution that will struggle with complex institutional environments because of its limited relevance and scope of influence.

Executive Leadership and the Coupling Nature of the Relationship between Educational Organizations and Member Schools in England

ABSTRACT This paper draws on coupling and systems frameworks to investigate the relationships between two English Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) and their member schools in how decisions are made around budgeting, recruitment processes, and curriculum and assessment. Findings demonstrate when and under what conditions executive leaders and specifically CEOs, as primary agents of coupling, created greater consistency across schools either through centralization or deliberate alignment of school improvement planning, while operating within their complex institutional environments. Implications for practice, policy, and research on system-wide reform are discussed.

Beyond the dikes: an institutional perspective on governing flood resilience at the Port of Rotterdam

Seaports, infrastructural nodes in global supply chains and production processes, are vulnerable to flood risks: they are crisis-prone critical infrastructure (CI) systems. However, the governance of their flood resilience involves many different private and public actors in a complex institutional environment and there is no scholarly consensus about how resilience can be successfully governed. We investigate the governance of flood resilience at the Port of Rotterdam (PoR) from an institutional perspective, by studying institutional arrangements for flood resilience within and across vertical, horizontal and territorial dimensions to elucidate the strengths and ongoing challenges of shaping the port’s flood resilience. We conducted semi-structured expert interviews (n = 17) and an analysis of policy documents and legislation (n = 33) relating to flood risk management and CI protection. We find that the institutional design for flood resilience in the Netherlands consists of a complex matrix of responsibilities, capacities and plans. While coordination is visible in the shared visions and strategies for flood resilience developed at different policy levels and domains, we find fragmentation and persisting institutional challenges, including siloed governance approaches, knowledge gaps and blurred distribution of responsibilities; these are significant barriers to enhancing flood resilience for CIs and port–city relationships.

The syntheses of static and mobile wayfinding information: an empirical study of wayfinding preferences and behaviour in complex environments

PurposeThe efficient delivery of environmental information to wayfinders in complex environments is a challenge for information designers. Wayfinding tasks can be quite strenuous and frustrating in the visual absence of dedicated wayfinding information. This study aims to explore the behaviour regarding the use of wayfinding information by navigators in complex environments.Design/methodology/approachAn experiment has been conducted in which participants have performed wayfinding tasks in a spatially complex university campus. The participants were instructed to use the think-aloud protocol during the experiment. The behaviour has been recorded using the head-mounted video recorder (GoPro), mobile phone screen (audio\\video) recorder and interview. Twelve university students have been selected based on the equal level of spatial ability using the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction scale. Each participant performed three wayfinding tasks to locate the unknown locations inside the campus using a mobile wayfinding application and other information sources.FindingsThe results of this study demonstrated significant behavioural preferences in acquiring wayfinding information. Most of the participants synthesised the static and mobile wayfinding information sources, while some preferred only the static ones. Gender differences have also been found for planning and route finding. This study recommends the syntheses of static and mobile wayfinding information for designing an efficient institutional wayfinding system.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample size has been kept small because of the qualitative exploration of the wayfinding behaviour regarding the wayfinding information syntheses behaviour. The experiment findings can be further explored with larger data set and controlled behavioural metrics. This study can help understand the user requirements in facilities management for spatially complex institutional environments.Practical implicationsThe current findings can be further used to develop a framework for wayfinding information designers to assist them in understanding the current practices and incorporate them for improving institutional wayfinding systems. The management of the offered facilities within an institution can be further improved to make the space more efficient by saving users’ time and efforts.Originality/valueInformation syntheses or symbiosis of environmental information with the beacon-based digital wayfinding system is a new concept. This study explores the potential of such information syntheses for enhancing the legibility of complex institutional environments.