Institutional Entrepreneurship Literature Research Articles

The Effect of Institutional Level on Embedded Agency Among Institutional Entrepreneurs

The paradox of embedded agency has received considerable attention since the rise of institutional entrepreneurship literature brough attention to the work of individuals to change the institutional environments within which they operate. However, we argue that the structural forces that determine the embeddedness of an actor vary considerably across Williamson’s four-level institutional hierarchy, which implies that the relationship between structure and agency is not paradoxical. We interviewed a sample of institutional entrepreneurs in the blockchain industry in Kenya and Nigeria and found that embeddedness varied depending on the institutional level at which changes were being made.

How Do Institutional Carriers Alleviate Normative and Cognitive Barriers to Regulatory Change?

How do we reconcile misalignments between a system’s existing normative and cognitive elements and novel regulatory change? Prior work either largely focuses only on regulatory change or analyzes normative and cognitive barriers in parallel to rather than in interaction with regulatory change. Moreover, the institutional entrepreneurship literature that focuses on reconciling such misalignments is predominantly centered on the tactics of entrepreneurs rather than the support provided by institutional carriers. We, therefore, use the case of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Knowledge Innovation Program (KIP) to better understand these neglected facets of institutional change. Through a mixed methods approach, we posit and find support for two key mechanisms that support regulatory change. First, institutional carriers (e.g., CAS institutes) clarify the market relevance of technical knowledge, linking cognitive support to regulatory change. Second, institutional carriers (e.g., science parks) create shared standards that could not occur otherwise, linking normative support to regulatory change. Finally, these changes to institutions seem particularly associated with more nascent clusters. Our study contributes to studies at the nexus between institutional change and entrepreneurship by highlighting the role of linking cognitive and normative support to regulatory changes aimed at increasing entrepreneurship.

The study of institutional entrepreneurship and its implications for transition studies

Innovations accompanying transitions often prompt institutional change if they do not match with existing institutions. Transition studies started to incorporate institutional dynamics into their research, but efforts hitherto remain underdeveloped. In this paper, we systematically review the institutional entrepreneurship literature. Based on a reading of 153 empirical cases, we identify trends and biases in the literature and we distil a number of insights for transition studies to engage with.

Individual agency and socio‐spatial change in regional development: Conceptualizing governance entrepreneurship

AbstractAlthough scholars and practitioners increasingly highlight the role of individuals in initiating socio‐spatial change processes in regional development, there is still little conceptual and empirical knowledge concerning this phenomenon. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of entrepreneurial individuals in local and regional governance and to provide a more comprehensive framework for investigating individual agency and socio‐spatial change. In concepts of local and regional governance, the role of individuals has been overshadowed by the focus on institutional and organizational structures. Policy and institutional entrepreneurship literature stresses the importance of individual capabilities for identifying windows of opportunity and promoting policy and institutional change. However, it reveals some shortcomings concerning the influence of entrepreneurial individuals in governance itself. By combining both strands of literature, the concept of governance entrepreneurship is introduced here. It accentuates the role of entrepreneurial individuals in initiating change in local and regional governance by establishing or transforming actor constellations, interaction modes, or decision‐making territories. Finally, the interrelatedness of the concepts of institutional, policy, and governance entrepreneurship is discussed in order to gain a deeper understanding of these different types of transformative agency.

Escaping from the Embedded Agency Paradox: The Role of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy

The central question in the institutional entrepreneurship literature is how actors can influence the institutional environment in which they are embedded. Surprisingly, somewhat lost in the develo...

From Creative Destruction to Convoluted Construction: Socio-technical change in the music industry

In this paper, we draw on the institutional entrepreneurship literature to develop an understanding of technological transitions in digital fields – specifically the transition from products to pla...

The multiple institutional constraints facing new Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs in Australia

Drawing on insights from the institutional entrepreneurship literature about changes that occur under institutional constraints, in‐depth interviews with 36 new Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs (NCIEs) were conducted in Australia. The findings suggest that NCIEs are not only constrained but also enabled to make changes by the regulatory, normative, and cultural‐cognitive forces across Australia and China, thus leading to different practices and a particular distributional pattern in business activities. This feature distinguishes NCIEs from other segments of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs. This study provides an explanation for the changing landscape of business activities among NCIEs and also identifies an alternative avenue for changes under institutional constraints. Immigrant entrepreneurs are suggested to not only draw competitive advantages from their cultural origins and ethnic resources but also engage in both the mainstream and international markets. An inclusive and supportive regulatory framework is suggested as a way to facilitate the business growth of immigrant entrepreneurs and revitalize local economies.

Promoting sustainable energy: Does institutional entrepreneurship help?

Institutional entrepreneurship research has described and conceptualized dramatic cases of successful institutional change. We know less about whether it can help people trying to change institutions, for example, struggling to change the energy system. Do concepts from the institutional entrepreneurship literature offer sustainable energy practitioners insights on the political aspects of their work? And vice-versa: do practitioners have useful insights on the potential and limits of agency in institutional change? The present study contributes to these questions through collaborative inquiry together with government-affiliated organizations with a mission to promote sustainable energy. The results suggest that concepts from the institutional entrepreneurship literature do serve to make practitioners’ implicit competencies explicit and hence a legitimate subject for organizational development and joint learning about the political aspects of energy systems change. We conclude that institutional entrepreneurship appears to require a form of organizing that combines environmental scanning, grand strategy and everyday tactical moves on the ground.

Shaping selection environments for industrial catch-up and sustainability transitions: A systemic perspective on endogenizing windows of opportunity

Transitioning economic sectors towards more sustainable futures is a major global challenge, in particular for non-OECD countries. Policymakers in these countries are confronted with a double challenge: how to implement cleaner technologies and infrastructures while at the same time promoting rapid industrial development. In catch-up studies, this trade-off has been increasingly interpreted as providing windows of opportunity for gaining strong leadership in new generations of cleantech industries. In this paper, we maintain that in order to specify how these windows of opportunity can be endogenized, a deeper understanding is needed about whether, how and by whom the directionality of innovation systems can be influenced. For this purpose, we propose an analytical approach that draws on the technological innovation system framework extending the current understanding of directionality in two ways: first, we complement the prevalent top-down perspective with a bottom-up view exemplified by the institutional entrepreneurship literature. Second, we posit that the focus has to be shifted from the manufacturing of single technologies to the transformation of entire socio-technical systems. The presented framework is validated by a case study on recent shifts in the dominant technology in China’s urban water management sector. Major changes in the country’s sectoral selection environment led membrane bioreactor technology to become the dominant design in urban water management – a development that is unmatched in any other country in the world. Owing to these transformations, China’s technology firms outcompete multinational players and therefore they show strong potentials for industrial leapfrogging. However, although the promise to solve environmental problems played a decisive role in the shaping of the selection environment, it remains unclear whether the observed transformation leads the way to a more sustainable sector structure in the longer run. The case, however, still enables us to specify how windows of opportunity can be endogenized through the interplay of different actors trying to shape different layers of the selection environment in a specific sector.

Local Government as Institutional Entrepreneur: Public–Private Collaborative Partnerships in Fostering Regional Entrepreneurship

AbstractDue to the intertwined nature of private and public interests, local governments tend to use collaborative partnerships involving entrepreneurs to promote regional entrepreneurship. However, there is still a gap in the theory with regard to the mechanisms underpinning these collaborative partnerships. Drawing on the institutional entrepreneurship literature, we identify the enabling conditions and articulate the role played by local government as an institutional entrepreneur in fostering regional entrepreneurship through entrepreneurial public–private collaborative partnerships. This paper explicates two distinct mechanisms – the establishment of new institutional arrangements by the institutional entrepreneur and the advocation of diffusion by other actors – that underpin entrepreneurial public–private collaborative partnerships. Importantly, we underscore the crucial role played by returnee entrepreneurs who interact collaboratively with the institutional entrepreneur in affecting institutional change and fostering regional entrepreneurship. We conduct in‐depth qualitative interviews with local government officials, entrepreneurs and high‐tech park managers, in conjunction with performing content analysis of policy documents in a peripheral region of China – areas that have largely been neglected in scholarly research. This paper concludes with some theoretical and policy implications for public management and entrepreneurship.

Scaffolds and Intermediaries: How Changing Institutional Infrastructure Can Alleviate Knowledge Barriers to Entrepreneurship

How do we reconcile misalignments between a system’s existing normative and cognitive elements and novel regulatory change? Prior work largely focuses either only on regulatory change or analyzes normative and cognitive barriers in parallel to, rather than in interaction with regulatory change. Moreover, the institutional entrepreneurship literature that focuses on reconciling such misalignments is predominantly centered on the tactics of entrepreneurs rather than the support provided by institutional carriers. We therefore use the case of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)’ Knowledge Innovation Program (KIP) to better understand these neglected facets to institutional change. Through a mixed methods approach, we posit and find support for two key mechanisms which support regulatory change. First, institutional carriers (e.g., CAS institutes) clarify the market relevance of technical knowledge, linking cognitive support to regulatory change. Second, institutional carriers (e.g., science parks) create shared standards that could not occur otherwise, linking normative support to regulatory change. Finally, these changes to institutions seem particularly associated with more nascent clusters. Our study contributes to studies at the nexus between institutional change and entrepreneurship by highlighting the role of linking cognitive and normative support to regulatory changes aimed at increasing entrepreneurship.

Building A Resource-Based Model of Social Entrepreneurship

Leveraging insights from the institutional entrepreneurship literature, this study broadens the focus of extant research on resources in the social entrepreneurship domain beyond material and financial resources. We discuss four types of resources derived from a systematic review of the institutional entrepreneurship literature–symbolic, material, relational, and human capital resources. Findings from eight case studies of non-profit ventures show how social entrepreneurs mobilize a wide array of resources and simultaneously combine different types to strengthen their change strategies. The study develops an integrative framework that marshals a wide variety of resources deployed in different phases of the social entrepreneurial process.

Role of institutional entrepreneurship in the creation of regional solar PV energy markets: Contrasting developments in Gujarat and West Bengal

With political initiatives, such as the National Solar Mission by Government of India, rapid development of grid connected solar PV energy in India has occurred in the recent times. However, an interesting puzzle is with respect to significant regional differences in Indian states despite similar levels of solar radiation, government support and regional level policy and regulatory initiatives in the states. The paper discusses the implementation of grid-connected solar PV energy in two Indian states – Gujarat and West Bengal – under the national-level program Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission by the government of India. The paper offers empirical insights into implementation barriers involved in regional sustainable energy initiatives by using insights from the institutional entrepreneurship literature. The study concludes by describing the reasons for successful implementation in Gujarat and less successful implementation in West Bengal by discussing regional similarities and differences of institutional entrepreneurship of three key actors: government officials within regional government, regional regulatory agencies and regional industry associations.

Rethinking Collective Action: The Co-Evolution of the State and Institutional Entrepreneurs in Emerging Economies

Why do groups form to influence policy outcomes? Classic notions of collective action tell us that a small number of homogeneous individuals are more likely to organize and thus achieve their preferred policy outcomes. Yet, this is not always reflected in the empirical record as external factors, such as the state, influence the costs of organizing. Instead, the traditional collective action literature largely assumes a purely rational or passive state. While the institutional entrepreneurship literature highlights the key role these actors can play in shaping institutions and, at times, organizational fields, it does not seek to explain why change agents appear in some instances and not others. This article seeks to fill this theoretical gap by drawing on the co-evolution literature, which helps explain the variation in group formation by underscoring how the state and institutional entrepreneurs shape one another. Utilizing rich qualitative data from the microfinance industry in Brazil and Mexico, this research asserts that the formation of microfinance associations is a function of actors’ ability to access the state, which results in distinct processes: co-evolution by isolation or co-optation. This process has subsequent implications for institutional change, policy outcomes, and, ultimately, the distribution of power and prospects of development within emerging economies.

The substance of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurship of substances

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to clarify the distinctions and complementary of William Baumol and Israel Kirzner’s classifications of and insights into entrepreneurship, and thus providing a more complete taxonomy of the substance of entrepreneurial activity. This paper also attempts to clarify distinctions between unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approach– This paper illustrates a more complete taxonomy of the substance of entrepreneurial activity by examining entrepreneurial innovation in drug markets both legal and illegal, identifying cases of productive, unproductive, superfluous, erroneous, destructive, and protective entrepreneurship.Findings– This paper finds that the classifications of entrepreneurship (productive, superfluous, unproductive, erroneous, protective and destructive) put forth by Baumol, Kirzner, and the institutional entrepreneurship literature are complementary. While Baumol seeks to explain the disequilibrating tendencies of entrepreneurship, Kirzner seeks to explain the equilibrating tendencies of entrepreneurship within the institutional context.Originality/value– This paper utilizes case studies from legal and illegal drug markets to uniquely and better explain the six cases of entrepreneurship. This paper also contributes to the literature by clearly articulating the complementarity of Baumolian and Kirznerian entrepreneurship.

Institutional entrepreneurship in transforming energy systems towards sustainability: Wind energy in Finland and India

A growing body of literature has examined the dynamics of wind energy development across different mature and emerging institutional contexts. However, so far only few have paused to reflect on the differences between developed and emerging economies. Building upon the literature on institutional entrepreneurship, this paper compares institutional strategies in wind energy development in Finland and India by using the typology of political, technical and cultural work. We highlight the role of institutional approaches in studying sustainable energy transitions in mature and emerging institutional contexts, while being sensitive to the role of heterogeneous actors in shaping institutional arrangements. Our findings offer implications for debates in the institutional entrepreneurship literature by exploring how actors shape their institutional environment in different contexts, and the extent to which emerging institutional contexts provide more opportunities for institutional entrepreneurship. Finally, this paper underscores the need for developing insights into enabling conditions for successful collective institutional entrepreneurship and for developing typologies of institutional strategies which are generalizable across both mature and emerging institutional contexts.

Spiritual institutional entrepreneurs: an introduction and examination

The business environment has undergone dramatic changes over the past decades that have brought about new expectations within the work environment. Entrepreneurship is one of many areas that has been affected by this shift. In fact, the definition of entrepreneur has evolved beyond the traditional external focus to include an internal organizational perspective known as institutional entrepreneur (IE). IEs initiate structural change within their organizations that transforms the way business is conducted. Current research has demonstrated the importance of workplace spirituality as an element in developing an inclusive organizational culture. In this paper, we draw from the institutional entrepreneurship literature to examine the rise of IEs who champion the development of spiritual workplaces. We call these individuals spiritual institutional entrepreneurs (SIEs). We also present a conceptual model for analyzing the role of SIEs and offer notable executive exemplars who reimagined their organizations through the lens of workplace spirituality.

Rethinking Collective Action: The Co-Evolution of the State & Institutional Entrepreneurs in Emerging Economies

Why do groups form to influence policy outcomes? Classic notions of collective action tell us that a small number of homogeneous individuals are more likely to form a group and thus achieve preferred policy outcomes. Yet, this is not always reflected in the empirical record as external factors, such as the state, influence the costs of organizing. While the institutional entrepreneurship literature highlights the key role these actors can play in shaping institutions and, at times, organizational fields, it does not seek to explain why change agents appear in some instances and not others. Moreover, traditional perspectives in the collective action literature either assume rationality or a passive state. This article seeks to fill this theoretical gap by drawing on the literature on coevolution, which helps explain the variation in group formation by underscoring how the state and new industries shape one another. Drawing from the case of microfinance in Brazil and Mexico, this research asserts that the formation of microfinance associations is a function of actors’ ability to access the state, which results in distinct processes: co-evolution by isolation or co-optation. This process has subsequent implications for institutional change, policy outcomes and, ultimately, the distribution of power and prospects of development within emerging economies.

Microfoundations of institutional change: Contrasting institutional sabotage to entrepreneurship

AbstractThis paper addresses little understood microfoundations of institutionally driven organizational change and utilizes an institutional‐conflict‐based approach to examine innovation in organizational forms. Using a two‐case comparative analysis, we longitudinally examine the antecedents, mechanisms, and success/failure of attempts at change by institutional entrepreneurs. We analyze and develop theoretical insights on the interplay between internal political processes and external competitive actions in the creation of innovation in organizational forms and the subsequent legitimacy struggles through which an organizational field evolves in a sports (cricket) business context. We draw implications for institutional actors by observing patterns in organizational and institutional evolution in such contexts. We contribute to institutional entrepreneurship literature by developing a nuanced process model of success and failure in institutional entrepreneurship. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Liminality of Trajectory Shifts in Institutional Entrepreneurship

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.