Institutional Collective Action Research Articles

Sources of Organizational Resilience for Sustainable Communities: An Institutional Collective Action Perspective

Scholars in the field of sustainability have often argued that the purpose of establishing and maintaining interorganizational collaboration is to overcome internal limitations of organizations and to strengthen organizational capacity. To examine structural effects of inter-organizational collaboration regarding the ability of networked organizations to effectively manage disasters, this study uses an institutional collective action framework to design a critical lens to objectively analyze collective action issues in inter-organizational collaboration networks. Results, based on the Heckman selection model with two stages, provide evidence that networked organizations holding a central position between two other actors perceive a higher level of disaster resilience. The finding implies that local organizations with a bridging strategy can enhance their capacity to recover from a catastrophic event by securing access to critical resources and information through comprehensive emergency preparedness such as joint response and recovery planning.

Political incentives and transaction costs of collaboration among US cities for economic development

ABSTRACTThis study extends research on Institutional Collective Action by testing a transaction cost explanation for self-organising economic development agreements between US cities. We offer a unique contribution to this literature by identifying how these agreements between cities with similar political institutions mitigate the transaction costs of collaboration, and how characteristics of these agreements combine with political institutions to shape collective action. The results of an empirical analysis of data collected through a survey of local officials suggest the alignment of high-powered political incentives between cities mitigates the coordination and division problems of forming a joint venture. Agreements that enable elected officials to distribute the benefits of an agreement are also found to moderate this effect.

Invisible to the state. Institutional sexual stigma and collective action of LGB individuals in five East European countries

As demonstrated in past research, institutional sexual stigma negativly affects the well-being of nonheteronormative individuals. In this contribution we investigate the effects that heterosexist legal regulations exert on collective action of LGB (lesbian, gay, and bisexual) people. Building on different theoretical traditions, we propose a model linking institutional sexual stigma (a macrolevel phenomenon) to individual behaviour (a microlevel phenomenon). To verify our assumptions we use data from a cross-cultural study ( N = 1,365) conducted in five East European countries (i.e., Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland) differing in the extent to which they grant full civil rights to sexual minorities. In line with our hypotheses we find that, by promoting internalized homophobia and subsequently undermining in-group identification, institutional sexual stigma suppresses collective action of LGB individuals. As weak LGB activism impedes social change towards more progressive legislation, a vicious circle is set in motion.

Forest recreation as a governance problem: four case studies from Switzerland

Recreational activities have undergone a change from mainly passive forms (e.g. rest, relaxation, reinvigoration, solitude and escape) to more active forms (e.g. mountain biking, climbing and running). Correspondingly, the demand for forest recreation infrastructure to support the more active forms has increased. However, very little is known about what features characterise the planning and management of forest recreation infrastructure. This study takes four in-depth mountain-bike trail cases in Switzerland to characterise the planning and management of forest recreation infrastructure. The analysis is performed using the institutional analysis and development framework (Ostrom in Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1990) and qualitative data based on cases and interviews. We argue that by considering the identified external features (formal and informal rules, location) and process features (partnerships, public participation, conflicts, profitability perspectives, time frame of process, funding of process and approval), we can better plan and manage active forms of forest recreation. Conflict situations and response strategies associated with mountain-bike-trail planning and management are also identified. The findings are relevant for other regions facing the growing use of forests for recreational and leisure activities.

Re-Imagining Collective Action Institutions: Pastoralism in Mongolia

Strengthening collective action institutions involves recognizing local community or user group land rights particularly through formal property mechanisms. However, policy initiatives based on collective action theories can be highly prescriptive and difficult to apply in developing contexts. Employing a qualitative case study methodology, I explore the ways in which donor organizations in Mongolia attempt to strengthen common property or collective action institutions by engineering socioeconomic units and formalizing property rights to pastureland. These initiatives face difficulties in defining group social and resource use boundaries and the herders’ vision of pastureland management. Using an access approach, this study reveals various legal and extra-legal mechanisms that have historically persisted to enable the state and local community to manage state territories, pastoral production, and resources. Overestimating the capacity of formalized property rights obscures the importance of other mechanisms in strengthening state and local community co-management and collective action institutions.

Conflict on the Red River: Applying the institutional collective action framework to regional flood policy

In reaction to major flooding, local governments in Minnesota and North Dakota formed a cooperative network to construct a $1.2 billion flood diversion along the Red River of the North. Threatened by this diversion, a second set of governments formed their own network in opposition to flood policy. This study uses propositions derived from the Institutional Collective Action framework to examine formal contracts at the core of these cooperative networks, as well as the circumstances under which the contracts were negotiated. It considers the ability of the framework to understand interlocal cooperation where regional consensus is nonexistent. The study finds that the two sets of governments faced very different transaction costs, resulting in contrasting approaches to governance.

Isolated and Broken Bridges from Interorganizational Emergency Management Networks: An Institutional Collective Action Perspective

We examine how interorganizational networks evolved after a disaster with an integrated approach that combines both social network perspectives and emergency management perspectives. This research describes changes in organizations that play a bridging role in interorganizational collaboration and examines endogenous and exogenous factors that lead organizations to be isolated during a disaster. Building from the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework, we argue that organizations that play the bridging role between two other organizations may fail to sustain their ties after a disaster. Because the bridging strategy involves risks, organizations are more likely to forge direct ties to other organizations that have resources they need rather than rely on bridges that they created before the disaster. We apply a stochastic actor-oriented model to show the dynamics of emergency management networks during the 2013 Seoul floods. This study contributes to understanding how the bridging strategy can be emasculated by endogenous and exogenous factors.

Political tournament and regional cooperation in China: a game theory approach

This paper aims to study the political incentives of government officials to cooperate with one another to achieve a common goal through game theory. Game theory is often used to analyze and explain regional cooperation by regarding it as a type of institutional collective action in which the actions of its participants (local governments or nations) greatly depend on those of the other participants. However, considering China’s political structure, the political relationship among local government key officials may also influence regional cooperation. This study used the Pan-Pearl River Delta (Pan-PRD) Cooperation, the largest regional cooperation bloc in China formed in 2004. The Pan-PRD covered nine provinces in Mainland China and two special administrative regions as a case study for this research; three models were constructed using game theory to analyze the political incentives of the provincial officials in cooperating with one another under the assumption of relative gains. Results showed that the cooperation incentives are sensitive to the variations of political rankings among the leading provincial officials. Driven by promotion incentives, cooperation is more feasible between jurisdictions with different political rankings and less feasible between jurisdictions with the same political rankings.

Incorporating institutions and collective action into a sociohydrological model of flood resilience

AbstractStylized sociohydrological models have mainly used social memory aspects such as community awareness or sensitivity to connect hydrologic change and social response. However, social memory alone does not satisfactorily capture the details of how human behavior is translated into collective action for water resources governance. Nor is it the only social mechanism by which the two‐way feedbacks of sociohydrology can be operationalized. This study contributes toward bridging of this gap by developing a sociohydrological model of a flood resilience that includes two additional components: (1) institutions for collective action, and (2) connections to an external economic system. Motivated by the case of community‐managed flood protection systems (polders) in coastal Bangladesh, we use the model to understand critical general features that affect long‐term resilience of human‐flood systems. Our findings suggest that occasional adversity can enhance long‐term resilience. Allowing some hydrological variability to enter into the polder can increase its adaptive capacity for resilience through the preservation of social norm for collective action. Further, there are potential trade‐offs associated with optimization of flood resistance through structural measures. By reducing sensitivity to floods, the system may become more fragile under the double impact of floods and economic change.

Ruling the Commons. Introducing a new methodology for the analysis of historical commons

Despite significant progress in recent years, the evolution of commons over the long run remains an under-explored area within commons studies. During the last years an international team of historians have worked under the umbrella of the Common Rules Project in order to design and test a new methodology aimed at advancing our knowledge on the dynamics of institutions for collective action – in particular commons. This project aims to contribute to the current debate on commons on three different fronts. Theoretically, it explicitly draws our attention to issues of change and adaptation in the commons – contrasting with more static analyses. Empirically, it highlights the value of historical records as a rich source of information for longitudinal analysis of the functioning of commons. Methodologically, it develops a systematic way of analyzing and comparing commons’ regulations across regions and time, setting a number of variables that have been defined on the basis of the “most common denominators” in commons regulation across countries and time periods. In this paper we introduce the project, describe our sources and methodology, and present the preliminary results of our analysis.

Economic Experiments for Collective Action in the Kyrgyz Republic: Lessons for Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)

Payments for ecosystem service (PES) schemes have become increasingly popular in attempting to promote ecological stewardship and conservation behaviour through provisioning of economic incentives often as market-inspired transactions. The scholarship and empirical application of PES schemes has tended to focus on contract design and conditionality of payments rather than more fundamentally examining whether incentives do indeed influence behaviour in desired ways. In this paper, a set of incentive framed treatments are introduced to existing collective action institutions promoting common pool resource management in order to explore the effects of incentive provision on the propensity to participate in the maintenance of collectively owned irrigation canals. The experiments take place in the Kyrgyz Republic, characterized by the historic transition of nomadic collective traditions, subsequent Soviet rule, to advances towards democracy, market integration, and the first PES pilot in the country. In the incentive treatments provided, we reveal the close interplay between the framing of incentives, the influence of village leaders mobilizing collective activity and social norms of reciprocity, trust and enforcement in mobilizing collective work. Each framed case study exhibits a unique configuration of individual motivations, group norms and other regarding rationalities, providing critical insight into this new frontier of PES implementation.

Role and significance of political incentives: understanding institutional collective action in local inter-governmental arrangements in China

Forms, opportunities and challenges of institutional collective action (ICA) have become important issues in local government and governance. Studies have focused on the self-organising mechanisms of an ICA framework by seeking to make sense of inter-local collaborative behaviour through the lens of transaction costs. Such studies need to be complemented by country and comparative perspectives which, in particular, test the applicability of the framework to various contexts embodying differing incentive structures for local governments. Accordingly, the present study considers the role and significance of political incentives in addressing ICA issues as manifest in cases of local inter-governmental arrangements in the Pearl River Delta in China. It shows that the type of political incentive (rank-ordered or non-rank-ordered) attached to a specific policy area strongly affects the collaborative behaviour of local governments when coping with ICA dilemmas. This suggests that political incentives play a significant role in influencing the collaborative behaviour of local governments.

Analysis of the enablers of capacities to produce primary health care-based reforms in Latin America: a multiple case study.

BackgroundPrimary health care (PHC)-based reforms have had different results in Latin America. Little attention has been paid to the enablers of collective action capacities required to produce a comprehensive PHC approach.ObjectiveTo analyse the enablers of collective action capacities to transform health systems towards a comprehensive PHC approach in Latin American PHC-based reforms.MethodsWe conducted a longitudinal, retrospective case study of three municipal PHC-based reforms in Bolivia and Argentina. We used multiple data sources and methodologies: document review; interviews with policymakers, managers and practitioners; and household and services surveys. We used temporal bracketing to analyse how the dynamic of interaction between the institutional reform process and the collective action characteristics enabled or hindered the enablers of collective action capacities required to produce the envisioned changes.ResultsThe institutional structuring dynamics and collective action capacities were different in each case. In Cochabamba, there was an ‘interrupted’ structuring process that achieved the establishment of a primary level with a selective PHC approach. In Vicente López, there was a ‘path-dependency’ structuring process that permitted the consolidation of a ‘primary care’ approach, but with limited influence in hospitals. In Rosario, there was a ‘dialectic’ structuring process that favoured the development of the capacities needed to consolidate a comprehensive PHC approach that permeates the entire system.ConclusionThe institutional change processes achieved the development of a primary health care level with different degrees of consolidation and system-wide influence given how the characteristics of each collective action enabled or hindered the ‘structuring’ processes.

Regional Partnerships and Metropolitan Economic Development

ABSTRACT:Regional partnerships have grown popular as mechanisms to address public goods that transcend local boundaries, but we know little about their effectiveness. For example, what impact do regional economic development partnerships (REDPs), cooperative organizations of local governments, nonprofits and business organizations have on the economies of metropolitan areas? This article employs survival analysis and multilevel growth curve models to examine how the emergence of regional partnership arrangements influences patterns of economic development in U.S. metropolitan areas. The results suggest that, whereas these organizations do not make a great difference in some metro areas, in densely populated and politically fragmented metropolitan areas personal incomes, business firms, and employment grew significantly with the emergence of REDPs. Furthermore, state level factors, such as intergovernmental grant funding, are found to have positive influences. In conclusion, we discuss regional partnerships as solutions to institutional collective action problems in economic development and other policy arenas.

Indigenous institutions for collective action in fostering peace for sustainable land management among pastoral and crop farmers in Ogun State, Nigeria

Indigenous institutions have been alleged as the nested structure crafted to regulate access of natural resources among different rural users. The leadership institutions in pastoral communities were found to be involved in the process of making authoritative decisions in respect of land access and sustainable use of natural resources in pastoral communities. This form of collective action becomes important as it fosters a good relationship between the pastoral groups and their hosts. Sustainable land management for cattle and crop production in pastoral communities is dependent on the prevalence of strong local institutions. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 200 respondents. Data were collected using Semi- structured Interview Guide. The result shows that Fulani pastoralists and crop farmers had a mean age of 54 and 65years respectively. Fulani respondents maintained that some of the challenges facing them were loose collaboration between statutory and indigenous institutions (44.5%), intrusion of migratory pastoralists (77.5%), illegal entry of new herders (87.5%), and others constitute collective action problems and challenges. Chi-square analysis showed that gender (χ 2 =28.05), Marital status (χ 2 =37.13), education (χ 2 =68.15) and religion (χ 2 =66.11) are significantly related with causes of conflict. The study concludes that intervention and self-regulation are important aspects of collective action processes in promoting peace as well as ensuring sustainable use of biophysical environment. Therefore it is recommended that the leadership institutions should be strengthened and indigenous rules be formalized among different users to enhance their effectiveness in fostering co-operation and reducing biophysical deterioration.

Towards a More Complete Taxonomy of Design Solutions for Managerial Collective Action Problems

This paper makes the case that collective action problems in inter- and intra- organizational contexts share important similarities with institutional collective action problems. We establish the c...

From Competition to Collaboration: Intergovernmental Economic Development Policy Networks

This study investigates the strategic collaboration among local jurisdictions in the competitive environment: how fragmented jurisdictions in a metropolitan area perceive each other as cooperative partners and what factors influence the establishment of collaborative relationships between them. To answer the research questions, we applied the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework, which assumes that institutional actors behave in ways such that their economic benefits are maximised and risks and costs of collaboration are minimised, and employed the exponential random graph (ERG) model, one of the statistical social network analyses. The results indicate that the physical, political and geographical similarities among municipalities positively influence collaboration among local jurisdictions. In addition, municipalities are more likely to prefer to establish the closed network relationship such as triad–triplet. This study allows to understand the mechanism to establish collaborative behaviour among local jurisdictions for their regional economic development in a metropolitan area.

Livestock and Private Tree Holdings in Rural Ethiopia: The Effects of Collective Action Institutions, Tenure Security and Market Access

This article uses househld panel data spanning the period 2000–2007 to test hypotheses from the literature that secure land tenure, market access and collective action promote accumulation of private capital assets in rural highland Ethiopia. The three natural capital assets analysed in the article, livestock, eucalyptus trees and non-eucalyptus trees on households’ farm plots, make up virtually 100 per cent of privately held disposable assets. Incomes and capital stocks are extremely low and constant and tree assets are at least as important as livestock. We find that collective action and secure land tenure have strong positive effects on accumulation of livestock and other trees, but not eucalyptus. We also find evidence that market access promotes eucalyptus holdings and that other types of wealth tend to be positively associated with private natural capital stocks.

Sources of organisational resiliency during the Thailand floods of 2011: a test of the bonding and bridging hypotheses.

Based on the Institutional Collective Action framework, this research tests the impact of two competing hypotheses--bonding and bridging--on enhancing organisational resiliency. The bonding hypothesis posits that organisational resiliency can be achieved if an organisation works closely with others, whereas the bridging hypothesis argues that such a structure places considerable stress on an organisation and advocates for an organisation to position itself as a central actor to gain access to novel resources from a diverse set of entities to achieve resiliency. The paper analyses data gathered from semi-structured interviews with 44 public, private, and non-profit organisations serving communities affected by the Great Floods of 2011 in the Thai capital, Bangkok (urban), and in Pathum Thani (suburban) and Ayutthaya (rural) provinces. The findings suggest that: organisational resiliency was associated with the bridging effect; organisations in the rural province were more resilient than those in the suburban and urban centres; and private and non-governmental organisations generally were more resilient than public sector organisations. The findings highlight the importance of fostering multi-sector partnerships to enhance organisational resiliency for disaster response.

Drivers of institutional innovation in networks: unleashing the innovation potential of domesticated markets

Purpose– This paper aims to apply innovation networks (INs) theory to the context of domesticated markets, where innovation triggers deinstitutionalization. In such contexts, the success of INs depends on their capacity to transform the business field in which they are embedded, so that it accommodates innovative business models. Such “institutional INs” beget a meso-level finality, and this poses different requirement on their effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to confront extant models of collaborative innovation in networks with this specific context to offer exploratory insights into how innovation can be achieved in domesticated contexts and what the differential implications are for network configurations and strategic “reinstitutionalization” practices.Design/methodology/approach– Based on an illustrative embedded case study in the Dutch steel industry, a framework offering indications on the effectiveness of discrete configurational dimensions and their fit with reinstitutionalization practices for institutional INs is suggested. The case builds on 26 semi-structured interviews and 4 focus groups with top managers in the industry. As the aim is to extend theoretical models of INs to this under-researched context, an abductive approach to theorizing, consistent with the extended case method, is adopted.Findings– Findings suggest that collaborating to redesign an institutionalized business field collectively implies a more explicit attention to interdependencies within the business field.Practical implications– Besides suggesting modifications to extant frames regarding heterogeneity in and the configuration of networks, this paper has some practical implications. The framework proposed offers managers some support in the largely ignored issue of developing a collective action network. With these findings, we aspire to stimulate further research into this relevant, yet underdeveloped, topic.Originality/value– The study extends IN theory toward innovation realization in domesticated contexts. In such contexts, IN’s success depends on their capacity to transform the business field in which they are embedded, so that it enables innovative ways of creating end-customer value. Besides suggesting a new area for theorizing about innovation networks, institutional innovation networks are also a useful template for institutional innovation and collective action research. The paper offers a framework to support managers in the largely ignored challenge of developing a collective action network. In an increasingly transparent, connected and consolidated business environment, such a challenge becomes ever more essential.