Dominant Coalition Research Articles

International actors and national policies: the introduction of the national care system in Uruguay

This paper aims to understand coalition building between national and international actors in the context of an emerging subsystem. In applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework to the case of Uruguay, where a new field of social policy – the National Care System – was introduced in 2015 after a process involving different national actors from academia, civil society, politics, and administration, but also United Nations agencies, the paper explores the role of these international organizations in coalition building, and examines how a dominant coalition of national and international actors shaped the development of the new system. Using interview data and documents, the findings suggest that the involvement of international organizations in the coalition was based on shared beliefs and personal and institutional relationships. While powerful opposing coalitions were absent due to the nascent nature of the subsystem, the dominant coalition was able to influence the policy’s introduction based on their beliefs regarding gender equality and rights.

Ideational robustness of economic ideas in action: the case of European Union economic governance through a decade of crisis

Abstract Is it possible to develop a robust crisis management response in a system where governance is characterized by coercive power and adversarial bargaining rather than the diversity, inclusion, and openness highlighted by extant scholarship as conducive factors for robustness? Using two instances of crisis in the European Union—the Eurozone crisis (2010‒2015) and COVID-19 pandemic (2020‒2022)—the paper argues that how actors reinterpret existing rules and institutions offers an important source of robustness in crisis management. Based on the employment of a disaggregation of robustness into degrees of robustness, as well as the concepts of ideational and institutional power, we show how actors can counter the coercive power of dominant coalitions and open up for rule adaptation through reinterpretations of existing rules that, at least in the short term, can solidify the functioning of existing institutions faced by turbulence. In the context of the Eurozone crisis, ideational and institutional power thus enabled a moderately robust response without treaty reform. In the case of the pandemic, it was possible to convince (particularly German) policymakers of the need to employ new ideas about common debt. This meant less need to employ ideational and institutional power by other actors, leading to significantly more effective crisis management than in the Eurozone crisis, what the paper terms maximal robustness.

The impact of directors' attributes on IFRS fair value disclosure: an institutional perspective

PurposeThe current study investigates the impact of directors' attributes on the extent of compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) fair value disclosure requirements. The attributes investigated include directors' human capital (accounting qualification) and social capital (political association), directors' share ownership and the power distance between the chief executive officer (CEO) and the rest of the board members.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses disclosure analysis to measure the extent of compliance with the fair value disclosure requirements of IFRS. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is used to test the relationship between the disclosure score and directors' attributes. Data were collected from the annual reports and websites of the sample companies.FindingsContrary to conventional belief, this study's findings suggest that directors' social capital and the power distance between the CEO and the rest of the board act as more powerful factors than directors' human capital in explaining corporate mandatory disclosure. Specifically, the results indicate that powerful actors form a dominant coalition and co-opt influential constituents from the institutional domain to neutralize the effect of legal coercion and the accounting expertise of board members and Big Four audit firms on the extent of compliance with institutional (fair value) rules.Research limitations/implicationsThis study utilizes Oliver's (1991) framework of strategic response to institutional processes in the Bangladeshi context. Although the study provides new insights into corporate disclosure practices, findings are not generalizable due to different institutional settings in different countries. Therefore, future studies could replicate the approach in different institutional settings.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study will be of interest to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as it focuses on a developing country that has adopted IFRS 13 and other fair value-related standards relatively recently.Originality/valueThe disclosure analysis contained in this study represents the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of compliance with the fair value disclosure requirements of IFRS. Furthermore, this study considers the impact of directors' social capital and finds that it is a more powerful determinant of the extent of compliance with IFRS as compared to human capital.

Governing the green economy in the Arctic

In Sweden’s Norrbotten County, a “green transition” driven by market demand and new normative structures is underway, creating a regional mega-project designed to put Sweden at the forefront of emerging green industries. These industries, such as carbon-neutral steel fabrication, battery production, and data center hosting, all require large amounts of energy, land, and minerals. This paper applies the regional environmental governance framework to Arctic data to examine which stakeholders have the capacity to impose their agenda on the Arctic environment and the points of conflict and collaboration during this period of accelerated growth. The paper tests the assumption that regional governance accommodates a plurality of interests. A case study examining Norrbotten County’s industrial mega-project centered around Luleå, Sweden, identifies a dominant coalition uniting government and industry that supports norms seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this region. However, the existing regional governance model does a poor job of integrating the local Indigenous Sámi preferences for land use. At the core of the difference between actors advancing the green economy and the local Sámi reindeer herders are divergent conceptions of nature and sustainability.

Policy Changes in China's Family Planning: Perspectives of Advocacy Coalitions.

Studies on policy change focus on governmental decision-making from a technical rationality perspective, ignoring the fact that policy change is a complicated social construction process involving multiple actors. This study used the modified advocacy coalition framework to explain changes in China's family planning policy and discourse network analysis to show the debate on the birth control policy among multiple actors (central government, local governments, experts, media, and the public). It found that the dominant coalition and the minority coalition can learn and adjust deep core beliefs from each other; the sharing and flow of actors' policy beliefs drive change in the network structure; and actors' obvious preferential attachment when the promulgation of the central document, are all helpful in policy change. This study can explain macro-policy changes from a micro-perspective to reveal the process and mechanism of policy changes in China's authoritarian regime.

Occupy the semantic space! Opening up the language of better regulation

ABSTRACT Policy agendas are often cast in semantic constructions that portray them as universally desirable outcomes. These semantic constructions protect and reinforce the power of dominant coalitions and make it hard to pursue alternatives. The semantic space is entirely occupied by the dominant concepts. At the same time, within the dominant coalition, ideational conflict is muted by decontesting concepts. Drawing on political theory, I show the presence of this double act of reducing the semantic space and decontesting concepts with the case of ‘better regulation’. Then I briefly extend the argument to other terms such as policy coherence, agile governance, smart cities and social value judgements. The critical discussion of the implications of dominant language brings in transparency, allows other coalitions to articulate their vision in a discursive level-playing-field, and offers citizens the possibility to discuss what is really ‘better’ and ‘for whom’.

Growth models and central banking: dominant coalitions, organizational sense-making, and conservative policy innovations at the Bundesbank and Fed

This article revives the comparative political economy of central banking. Drawing on growth models theory, I argue that export-led and debt-led growth models imply fundamentally different versions of central banking and rely on different combinations of monetary, financial, and exchange-rate policies. Historical institutionalists plausibly argue that central banks have learned to pursue these policies because dominant coalitions have shaped central banks’ institutional roles. But since the 1970s, policy activism has become more important. To explain why the Bundesbank and Federal Reserve have come to support the German and US growth models during Post-Fordism, I look at how sense-making processes informed policy innovations. In the German case, the Buba carved out a powerful disciplining role for itself in corporatist coordination, which aligned with the demand-restraining features of Germany’s export-led model; corporate profit expectations signaled economic health. A dilemma arose with deteriorating price competitiveness that the Buba resolved by imposing an export version of secular stagnation. In the US case, Paul Volcker’s aggressive interest rate hikes to eliminate ‘inflation scares’ ushered in an area in which monetary policy became focused on bond market credibility. Greenspan consolidated central banking for financialization by hardening the Fed’s bail-out promise and its focus on ‘wealth effects’.

The Impacts of Multi-blockholder Contestability and Coalition on the Risk of Korean Companies

We examine the relationship between multi-blockholder contestability and coalition and firm risk using an unbalanced panel of 646 Korean non-financial firms with 7,582 firm-years from 2010 to 2017 (8 years). For multi-blockholder contestability, we use the second-to-first blockholder contestability index and the second-and third-to-first blockholder contestability index. The Herfindahl-Harshman Index Concentration and Herfindahl-Harshman Index Difference are used for a multi-blockholder coalition. Using different measures of contestability, we show that contestability among multiple blockholders is negatively related to beta. It is also shown that the probability (variance) of forming a dominant coalition among multiple blockholders is negatively related to beta. This suggests that contestability and the probability of forming a dominant coalition among multiple blockholders reduce corporate risk. This study expands on the existing literature on the relationship between corporate risk and ownership. This study shows that the multi-blockholder contestability and coalition may be one factor determining the risk of a company. Our findings will contribute to policymakers and investors who are interested in the relationship between corporate risk and blockholder contestability and dispersion in the Korean stock market.

An exploration of the institutionalisation of public relations at executive level in the top 100 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)

This article discusses the institutionalisation of public relations at executive level in large organisations, based on research applied to a purposive sample of the top 100 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa. Based on an examination of recent literature on public relations as a strategic management function, the study aimed to determine the extent to which senior public relations practitioners in the selected companies are involved in strategy formulation and decision-making at executive level. Current and recent literature provided a conceptual framework based on the premise that organisations have much to gain by involving senior practitioners in top-level decision-making and strategy formulation. The following theories informed the primary research, which took the form of qualitative semi-structured interviews with the participating practitioners: excellence theory, the dominant coalition, the relational approach, the reflective paradigm and roles theory, with the main focus on the strategic role of public relations. Apart from indicating the extent to which public relations is practiced as a top-level management function in the selected companies, the study also sought to identify barriers that prevent the participating practitioners from providing strategic input at an executive level, and to offer recommendations to overcome these barriers.

Fixação do sentido objetivo: processos cognitivos organizacionais na incerteza e conflito

Abstract This essay concerns the fixation of objective meaning in high-discretion decisions and actions under uncertainty and conflict. It collects and develops arguments in the literature, to show how this fixation happens. The approach to concept development was a pragmatic and integrative literature review on strategic decision-making. There are two kinds of objective meanings. The general objective meaning of strategic action consists of the mission and systemic objectives set by the organization’s dominant coalition. Under conflict and uncertainty, guided by the general objective meaning, organizational cognitive processes identify and analyze uncertainties, manage conflict, and set the specific objective meaning. Such processes are immanent in the development of and choice among alternatives. These concepts - organizational cognitive processes, necessary social relationships to organization, and specific objective meaning - and their causal articulation are the main contribution of this piece. Organizational pragmatism prevails as well as an interpretation that fixates objective meanings.

Succession Planning in Ghana’s Nascent Technical Universities: The Case of Cape Coast Technical University

This paper investigated on succession planning in Ghana’s Technical Universities with the Cape Coast Technical University as a case. In this study, the researchers interviewed nine purposively sampled senior managerial and administrative personnel. The interview transcripts were content-analysed using the Taguette computer-aided qualitative data analysis software. The study uncovered that the CCTU has neither a succession policy nor a formal arrangement for training and mentoring personnel to fill leadership roles. Personnel interviewed demonstrated a positive perception of succession planning even though it was based on basic knowledge of the concept. Further, interviewees expressed a desire to see succession planning given a try at the CCTU. However, they wanted such a program to be transparent, inclusive, and coherent. They also would like to see any such policy have adequate top-level backing. The challenges to a potential succession planning policy included the risk of it being abused as a tool for cronyism, the risk of people selected and sponsored under the policy leaving the organization and the risk of it only existing on paper without full implementation The authors recommend that the dominant coalition at CCTU should study feasibility of formal succession planning and formulate a unique solution that is based in local context. They also recommend that researchers expand on this study across HEIs in Ghana. Finally, the researchers recommend that it would be insightful to examine the prevalence and nature of succession planning in various Ghanaian organizations. Such research may uncover practices and leadership development philosophies that are rooted in Ghanaian culture and which may be further developed.

Hacking Through the Theoretical Thicket of R&D Research

Firm R&D spending has long played a prominent role in management research. However, concurrently with the profusion of scholarly work on firm R&D spending, researchers across a variety of streams have employed R&D spending to tap into markedly different constructs. This has resulted in a theoretical thicket. In this paper, we hack through this thicket by reviewing and comparing the predictive power of the research traditions on R&D spending as a variable of interest. We find R&D spending to be the most reflective of problemistic and slack search initiated and conducted by a dominant coalition of inside directors based on internal knowledge and information.

Coalition Support and Priority of Multiple Goals

Organizational goals are interdependent and follow a priority order to enable decision makers to fulfill the top priority goals before they proceed to pursue the succeeding ones. Previous research has shown that profitability is the top priority goal of firms. However, what determines the pursuit of lower priority goals after the profitability goal is met has remained unexplored. We leverage dominant coalition theory in the behavioral theory of the firm to theorize that whether a lower priority goal is subsequently pursued depends on the power of its supporting coalition on the board of directors. In particular, we identify resource allocations to the shareholders and to the society as two goals secondary to profitability goal and examine whether firms’ pursuit of these goals depends on the power of coalitions supporting or opposing them. By examining 2,071 Chinese listed firms, we find that the fulfillment of the profitability goal encourages the pursuit of two secondary goals. We also find that the membership of different board coalitions, namely, shareholder-value coalition and state-endorsement coalition, affects firms’ engagement in rewarding the shareholders and rewarding the society differently. These findings support our theory that coalitions shape the prioritization of multiple secondary goals in organizational decision making.

The belief system of the Italian Democratic Party: before, during, and after Renzi

ABSTRACT This article aims to explore why the ‘demolition’ of values promoted by Matteo Renzi had profoundly different effects on the factions within the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD). While several studies have examined the PD’s political culture, few have investigated the changing attitudes of its factions. We help fill this gap in the literature by analysing the PD’s intraparty divisions on the main dimensions of party competition in the new millennium. We draw inspiration from the theory of party change, arguing that changes in a party’s dominant coalition craft a new party image. Based on a unique dataset from PD delegates to national assemblies, this article offers new empirical evidence on intraparty cohesion. Our multivariate analysis offers fresh evidence that under Renzi intraparty divisions on economic issues widened, while cohesion on ethical issues increased. Our work indicates that opening the black box of party politics sheds light on new party images.

Energy transition and dialectics: tracing discursive resistance to coal through discourse coalition in India

ABSTRACT The hegemonic narrative linking coal to national sovereignty and energy security promoted by state and private actors, translates into policies promoting coal expansionism. The study is based on the proposition that the counter-discourse offered by non-state actors, mainly environmental civil society organization, represents a potential challenge against such narrative. The dialectical discursive dynamics around energy transition are explored within India’s print media by employing the method of Discourse Network Analysis to trace the dominant storylines and discourse coalitions. The findings reveal two opposed storylines, one pro-coal the other anti-coal, underpinning the two ideologically cohesive discourse coalitions dominated by state and non-state actors, respectively. It uncovers the ideological fault lines between the two sets of actors, with the possibilities for synthesis and policy co-learning. The paper concludes by deriving implications regarding post pandemic challenges and possibilities emerging for both the sets of actors.

Emergence of universal antiretroviral therapy coverage in South Africa: applying the advocacy coalition framework to refine the narratives and inform epidemic responses

South Africa possesses the largest anti-retroviral therapy (ART) program in the world, but the path to this record was dramatic. There is scarce literature employing a comprehensive framework to explain this achievement and inform epidemic responses. This paper applies the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to analyse the interactions among diverse actors, institutions and networks that were associated with the AIDS policy change in South Africa. Post-apartheid, HIV/AIDS and AIDS-related mortality were serious public health problems. At the time, the discernible coalitions in the HIV/AIDS policy subsystem were the pro-science coalition and AIDS dissidents. In view of the availability of compelling scientific evidence on the pathogenesis of HIV/AIDS, the clinical usefulness of ART, the availability of funding for national ART roll-out, strong global advocacy to reduce the cost of ART, all of these in an era when access to adequate HIV treatment/care was increasingly considered a human right, the environment to establish an appropriate HIV/AIDS policy for the country was conducive. However, AIDS dissidents dominated the policy agenda via their control over key institutions, the use of various dimensions of power, biasing evidence to inform policy, and promoting the activities of strong interest groups that were not in support of ART. National ART roll-out finally emerged as a political priority because of external shocks (on the AIDS policy subsystem) which disfavoured the dominant coalition. As in this important experience in the history of HIV treatment, stakeholders involved in epidemic response tend to engage in intense ideological conflicts. An adequate appraisal of the outcomes of these conflicts in terms of population health gains and adopted public health and social measures to control epidemics would require the supplementation of complex system thinking with relevant public policy concepts, notably power dimensions, governance, emergence of global health networks and evidence use in policy.

Power and Dominant Coalitions in Family Business

Power and Dominant Coalitions in Family Business

What drives a tough call: Determining the importance of contingency factors and individual characteristics in communication executives’ stance decision-making through a conjoint analysis

To further the understanding of how communication executives make tough calls in times of organizational-public conflict, we use a conjoint analysis to identify key drivers for organizational stance decision-making. This is the first-ever conjoint analysis applied to advancing the contingency theory of strategic conflict management by examining the relative importance of key contingency factors as determined by practitioners with varied individual characteristics. This study investigates: 1) the relevant importance of and dynamics between three key contingency factors (i.e., external threats, organizational characteristics, and dominant coalition characteristics); 2) the influence of individual characteristics (e.g., gender, experience, and personal ethics) in stance decision-making process; and 3) how different types of organizational stances (i.e., general stance, action-based accommodation, and qualified-rhetoric-mixed accommodation) are determined by these contingency factors and individual characteristics in different conflict situations. Results generated among our communication executive participants include: individual characteristics (i.e., gender, ethics and social responsibility, whistleblowing tendencies, and over 20 years in the communications field) are influential for their strategic conflict management decision-making. Implications for refining the contingency theory and unearthing complex public relations decision-making processes via novel statistical techniques are discussed.

Independent directors in Sweden and their influence on earnings through accrual and real activities management

The dominating perspective grounded in agency theory predicts that independent boards are more effective in monitoring and thereby reducing earnings management, yet the extant empirical evidence is inconclusive. We nuance the relationship between board independence and earnings management by introducing two additional theories that explain independent directors’ role on the board: the theory of personal dependence and praxis theory. According to personal dependence theory, the influence of independent directors on earnings management is a function of their competitiveness in the labor market, whereas the praxis theory attributes directors’ influence to the influence of the dominant coalition. We focus on two dimensions of earnings management  accrual and real activities management, and account for both direction and magnitude of directors’ influence. Through an empirical test on 148 Swedish corporations from 2017, our findings indicate that the presence of independent directors may not necessarily reduce earnings management. Instead, independent directors may be subject to multiple and sometimes conflicting task demands which differently influence both magnitude and direction of earnings management. Implications for our understanding of the role of independent directors and their influence on corporations are presented

From family commitment to entrepreneurial orientation: exploring the role of cultural mechanisms in mature family firms

At a stage of life cycle maturity, the unique advantages of family influence are often outweighed by organizational conditions of conflict, risk-aversion, and inertia which makes it difficult to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. Guided by the proposition that a positive culture enables the entrepreneurial spirit to be preserved over time, this study focuses on examining the cultural dynamics between family and business social systems to advance our understanding of the heterogeneity of mature family firms in terms of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Specifically, it bridges the link between family commitment and firm-level EO by considering long-term orientation and stewardship climate to operate as organizational culture mechanisms. From a quantitative study of 208 family firms, the findings provide evidence for EO to be supported by the proposed serial mediation process. A family’s strong commitment toward the business thus seems to stimulate EO only when passing through long-term-oriented priorities among the firm’s dominant coalition and an organizational environment characterized by collective stewardship.