Forces Institute Research Articles

"Driving the Ship" or Laying Buoys: Teachers' Use of Metaphor for Meaning-Making with Storylines.

Science curricula require new conceptualizations of how teachers relate to their materials. In this study of teacher learning, we analyze an experienced group of practicing Storylines teachers' use of metaphor to describe the roles and responsibilities of students and teachers in curriculum enactment. We found that every metaphor that teachers used to describe the uses of Storylines curriculum entailed a sort of wayfinding: a destination, a timeframe, a place, a journey, or the students' or teachers' respective position in that pursuit. These findings continue to indicate the usefulness of metaphor in foregrounding the central role that students play in NGSS-aligned instruction/materials, as well as the institutional forces that shape how curriculum materials get enacted inside the classroom. This study builds and contributes to current scholarship that aims to support teachers in reconceptualizing their role, relationship to students, and the institution of schooling, in the context of constructivist curricula.

Exploring Factors Contributing to the Erosion of Integrity Among Education Personnel in Malaysia: A Case Study in Perlis

This study examines the erosion of integrity among education personnel in Perlis, Malaysia, through institutional theory. It investigates the institutional pressures, norms, and practices influencing ethical behavior and offers suggestions to enhance integrity within the education system. Using qualitative methods such as document analysis, interviews, and focus group discussions, the study reveals the significant impact of institutional pressures, the need for a shared understanding of integrity, the role of leadership, and the importance of recognizing ethical conduct. It emphasizes the interplay between individual agency and institutional forces in shaping behavior, advocating for a comprehensive approach to promote integrity. The findings highlight the importance of policies, collaborative efforts, and evidence-based strategies in fostering a culture of integrity, contributing to a fair, transparent, and accountable education system in Malaysia.

Exploring Factors Contributing to the Erosion of Integrity Among Education Personnel in Malaysia: A Case Study in Perlis

This study examines the erosion of integrity among education personnel in Perlis, Malaysia, through institutional theory. It investigates the institutional pressures, norms, and practices influencing ethical behavior and offers suggestions to enhance integrity within the education system. Using qualitative methods such as document analysis, interviews, and focus group discussions, the study reveals the significant impact of institutional pressures, the need for a shared understanding of integrity, the role of leadership, and the importance of recognizing ethical conduct. It emphasizes the interplay between individual agency and institutional forces in shaping behavior, advocating for a comprehensive approach to promote integrity. The findings highlight the importance of policies, collaborative efforts, and evidence-based strategies in fostering a culture of integrity, contributing to a fair, transparent, and accountable education system in Malaysia.

Visions of an Industrial Lakefront Utopia in the Calumet Frontier: City Planning and Repatriation in an Ethnic Mexican Colonia , 1900–1934

ABSTRACT: Nestled at the southern tip of Lake Michigan, East Chicago, Indiana, became the site of massive-scale industrialization in the early twentieth century. This effort, in turn, fueled massive-scale migration into the region. During the 1919 Great Steel Strike, the steel industry began to recruit thousands of ethnic Mexicans to serve as steelworkers and laborers across the region. Institutional and community forces segregated the ethnic Mexican community into a portion of the city called Indiana Harbor. Within this neighborhood, individuals worked to forge a community complete with institutions such as Catholic churches, a Spanish-language newspaper, and businesses. However, city planners and potential residents came to believe that the community represented a problem for the city's growth. In the 1930s, members of East Chicago's American Legion Post 266 orchestrated a repatriation campaign to alleviate the financial burden of public relief. The campaign targeted the ethnic Mexican community, whose presence was labelled as undesirable and a potential source of job competition in the region's exhausted economy.

Directors' and officers' liability insurance: a systematic literature review

PurposeWe review and synthesize the existing research on directors' and officers’ (D&O) liability insurance. Our objectives are (1) to examine the institutional forces and regulatory requirements that have influenced the development of D&O liability insurance; (2) to identify the factors that influence firms to purchase D&O liability insurance and explore the consequences associated with its usage and (3) to identify gaps in the current literature and provide recommendations for future research on D&O liability insurance.Design/methodology/approachWe perform a systematic literature review (SLR) using the Preferred Reporting Items for a Systematic Review of Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines to examine archival studies that investigate the determinants and consequences of D&O liability insurance. Using a Boolean search strategy on the “Web of Science” (WoS) and PRISMA selection criteria, we review 64 published archival research articles and three working papers from 1987 to October 2023.FindingsOur review reveals that disclosing detailed information regarding D&O liability insurance, such as total insurance premiums and coverage limit, is predominantly voluntary, except in Taiwan. Our findings suggest that the decision to purchase D&O liability insurance is influenced by litigation risk, which is determined by factors such as firm size, complexity and corporate governance variables. We also find that D&O liability insurance has implications for financial reporting, audit outcomes, investment behavior and capital market performance.Practical implicationsIn the post-COVID era, where firms face pressure due to financial constraints, our research emphasizes the practical importance of carefully considering and understanding the impact of D&O liability insurance, particularly as it concerns the demand for such insurance.Originality/valueTo the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first systematic review of previous research on D&O liability insurance. Our review highlights some research gaps, particularly in relation to the implications for financial reporting practices, auditing outcomes, firm investment behavior and capital market consequences.

Aligning servitization and circularity: The role of institutional confluence in sustainable business models

This conceptual study explores the alignment between servitization—a shift from selling products to offering services—and circularity principles. The study introduces institutional confluence—a configuration of institutional pressures that enhance business model legitimacy to stakeholders and facilitate operational success— which can serve as a driver aligning servitization with circular principles. Institutional confluence has the capacity to trigger novel business models, shape resources and processes, enhance value capture, and inhibit unsustainable business models. The study develops the concept and underscores the role of institutional confluence in promoting this alignment and subsequent environmental sustainability. The article utilizes illustrative case examples from servitization and circular business models to develop the concept of institutional confluence serving sustainable servitization. The study offers strategic insights for managers and policymakers, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach that integrates servitization and circularity from the outset of business model design. It advocates for policies that leverage regulatory, normative, and mimetic pressures to foster sustainable business practices. The article contributes to the servitization literature by delineating the mechanisms through which institutional forces facilitate or hinder the integration of servitization and circularity, offering directions for future research to explore these dynamics across different contexts and industries.

How does institutional theory illuminate the influence of the digital economy on R&D networks?

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explore how an innovation organization's orientation toward the digital economy influences its position within R&D networks. By using institutional theory, the study aims to forecast market changes and understand how organizations can navigate the digital economy to secure essential resources and minimize dependencies.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a longitudinal panel dataset with 11,763 entries from 1995 to 2018, covering strategic emerging industries in China to analyze the impact of digital economy orientation on R&D networks. Utilizing advanced statistical models, it assesses the role of the legal environment as a moderator. This methodological approach facilitates a robust examination of the nexus between digital orientation and network dynamics within the context of institutional theory.FindingsThe study reveals that an organization's digital economy orientation enhances its centrality in R&D networks but reduces its control over structural holes. The legal environment negatively moderates the impact of digital economy orientation on network centrality, while positively influencing the relationship with network structural holes. These findings offer new insights into how institutional forces shape the strategic positioning of organizations in R&D collaborations.Originality/valueThis research offers a fresh perspective on the digital economy's impact on R&D networks, particularly in the Industry-University-Research (IUR) context. It extends the discourse by integrating institutional theory to elucidate the adaptation of R&D networks in the digital era. By identifying the legal environment as a moderator, the study provides a nuanced understanding of the strategic alignment within networks influenced by digital advancements. The unique focus on China's R&D networks presents a valuable contribution to the global discussion on digital integration and innovation ecosystems, highlighting the intersection of policy, academia, and industry in shaping research and development trajectories.

‘In the company of cheerful ladies’: whether female entrepreneurs are more productive?

AbstractAfter over two decades, the debate on the female underperformance hypothesis remains not concluded. This study sheds some new light on the hypothesis by (i) showing that surrounding institutional forces play an important role in determining how female businesses perform and (ii) arguing that to understand gender differences (or lack of those) in performance, we need to look at productivity alongside profitability, revenues, and growth. Specifically, we posit that, in certain developing countries, female entrepreneurs devise specific strategies to cope with challenging institutional contexts. In such contexts, female entrepreneurs have less opportunity to realize economic rents compared to males, but they respond to these constraints by becoming more efficient in resource use through relying on female employment. Investigating a large set of longitudinal data from Vietnam, we find that female businesses are more productive than male businesses, and that this effect is stronger when female owner-managers employ more female employees, or even female employees only. However, we also find that these positive effects are weakened with increased corruption. This provides important implications for female entrepreneurs and policymakers in developing countries.

Greening in the spotlight: How public inquisitiveness shapes European SMEs' actions in response to climate concerns

AbstractWe examine greening activities among European small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the product and process domains, and argue that greater public climate concern in an SME's home country environment primarily associates with greening in the inherently more visible product domain. Moreover, we introduce the concept of public inquisitiveness and propose that greater inquisitiveness prompts SMEs to also pay attention to less visible process greening activities as a response to public climate pressures. We test our ideas using multilevel regression models on a large representative sample of SMEs from 18 European Union (EU) countries. The study's main ideas are supported by the findings, which point to possible trade‐offs between product and process greening among resource‐constrained SMEs, and suggest the general public's inquisitiveness indeed plays a key role in preventing under engagement in less outwardly visible greening strategies. We discuss our study's implications for discourse on how and under which conditions normative institutional forces shape firm‐level sustainable behavior, as well as for SMEs' pro‐environmental stakeholders.

Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English headlines on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: a Hallidayan transitivity analysis

ABSTRACT Research in communication studies has suggested that Al-Jazeera produces different versions of news stories for different audiences. Yet, examining the linguistic means used to create these versions has remained under-researched. Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model (1992) and Halliday’s transitivity model (1985), this study aims at exploring how Al-Jazeera Arabic (AJA) and Al-Jazeera English (AJE) discursively represented the participants involved in the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict in headlines. The analysis of transitivity patterns in AJA and AJE headlines reveals both similar and different representations of the conflict. Although they avoided negative labeling of the Russian government, both channels ascribed conflict escalation to it, highlighting civilians suffering and protesting. Nevertheless, while AJE emphasized the Ukrainian government vulnerability, AJA presented the conflict as a confrontation between two symmetrical forces. Similarities are attributed to organizational and social institutional forces, while differences result from different editorial policies and audience preferences. As discursive and social practices, the headlines contribute to shaping audience perceptions of the conflict, with AJA challenging the prevailing western narrative of the conflict while AJE reinforcing it.

Uneven primary healthcare supply of rural doctors and medical equipment in remote China: community impact and the moderating effect of policy intervention

BackgroundUnequal access to primary healthcare (PHC) has become a critical issue in global health inequalities, requiring governments to implement policies tailored to communities’ needs and abilities. However, the place-based facility dimension of PHCs is oversimplified in current healthcare literature, and formulating the equity-oriented PHC spatial planning remains challenging without understanding the multiple impacts of community socio-spatial dynamics, particularly in remote areas. This study aims to push the boundary of PHC studies one step further by presenting a nuanced and dynamic understanding of the impact of community environments on the uneven primary healthcare supply.MethodsFocusing on Shuicheng, a remote rural area in southwestern China, multiple data are included in this village-based study, i.e., the facility-level healthcare statistics data (2016–2019), the statistical yearbooks, WorldPop, and Chinese GDP’s spatial distribution data. We evaluate villages’ PHC service capacity using the number of doctors and essential equipment per capita, which are the major components of China’s PHC delivery. The indicators describing community environments are selected based on extant literature and China’s planning paradigms, including town- and village-level factors. Gini coefficients and local spatial autocorrelation analysis are used to present the divergences of PHC capacity, and multilevel regression model and (heterogeneous) difference in difference model are used to examine the driving role of community environments and the dynamics under the policy intervention.ResultsDespite the general improvement, PHC inequalities remain significant in remote rural areas. The village’s location, aging, topography, ethnic autonomy, and economic conditions significantly influence village-level PHC capacity, while demographic characteristics and healthcare delivery at the town level are also important. Although it may improve the hardware setting in village clinics (coef. = 0.350), the recent equity-oriented policy attempts may accelerate the loss of rural doctors (coef. = − 0.517). Notably, the associations between PHC and community environments are affected inconsistently by this round of policy intervention. The town healthcare centers with higher inpatient service capacity (coef. = − 0.514) and more licensed doctors (coef. = − 0.587) and nurses (coef. = − 0.344) may indicate more detrimental policy effects that reduced the number of rural doctors, while the centers with more professional equipment (coef. = 0.504) and nurses (coef. = 0.184) are beneficial for the improvement of hardware setting in clinics.ConclusionsThe findings suggest that the PHC inequalities are increasingly a result of joint social, economic, and institutional forces in recent years, underlining the increased complexity of the PHC resource allocation mechanism. Therefore, we claim the necessity to incorporate a broader understanding of community orientation in PHC delivery, particularly the interdisciplinary knowledge of the spatial lens of community, to support its sustainable development. Our findings also provide timely policy insights for ongoing primary healthcare reform in China.

Transformative learning at the community-university-land interface: A political ecology of knowledge, education and health

As awareness grows of the catastrophic implications of global environmental change, multiple scholarly fields addressing health-environment relationships have advocated 'transformative' educational strategies. Holistic Indigenous health-environment models inspire and inform many such efforts, but related land-based learning initiatives involving universities are often impeded by the competitive processes of academia. In this article we report on a community-university partnership – Pedagogy for the Anthropocene (P4A) – aimed at developing transformative educational responses to pressing global crises, inspired by land-based approaches. We integrate political ecologies of health, education, and knowledge to understand the troubled production of pedagogical knowledge in P4A, participant experiences in the resulting educational programs and the role of health and bodies in both. We first trace the production of knowledge as shaped by macroscopic and localized institutional forces; organizational and occupational dynamics; interacting knowledges and individuals; and material factors. Next, we explore participant experiences in the resulting educational programming. In both steps, affect-laden bodies of academics, trainees and community members reveal entanglements with human communities and more-than-human elements, shaped in variable ways by institutional forces such as settler colonialism and university neoliberalization. One key finding involves the role of universities in relation to land dispossession at home and abroad; another includes the challenges of pursuing transformational community-university research within contemporary universities. Tracing such entanglements yields implications for future land-based learning efforts in university settings, and broader praxis for environmental justice in the shadow of higher education's complicity with settler colonialism and globally extractive neoliberal capitalism.

Acting(s) without consequence: The (lack of) public costs for vacancies and acting officials

AbstractWhile acting officials in federal agencies have become more common in recent years, presidents still utilize the traditional nomination process, which constrains presidents' choices, for most executive branch appointments. Recent work emphasizes presidents' incentives for using acting officials, but few scholars have considered what keeps presidents from using them even more often. We argue presidents' use of acting officials, like other forms of unilateral action, is constrained by public opinion; while actings may be expeditious policy tools for presidents, the public perceives them to undermine the executive branch's legitimacy and competence and punishes presidents accordingly. Through three survey experiments leveraging real‐world instances of President Joe Biden's usage of acting officials, we find little evidence the public reacts negatively to acting officials in agency leadership. While some institutional forces must encourage presidents to seek senatorial advice and consent for their nominees, our evidence does not indicate public opinion provides that constraint.

Sustainability in small and medium enterprises: A circular economy approach using cloud computing

AbstractSustainable production and consumption are the need of the hour. Adopting the Circular Economy (CE) approach fosters sustainable business practices. Cloud computing is a new way of storage and application deployment. Cloud computing enables sustainable business processes, which in turn contributes towards the effective implementation of the Circular Approach to Business Practices (CABP). The current study aims to understand the potential of cloud computing to foster circular economy practices in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We conducted a Systematic review of 186 scholarly articles published in Web of Science (WOS), selected using the PRISMA framework. We conducted scientometric analysis on sources, authors and country level and thematic analysis to pinpoint further research areas. This was followed by a detailed literature review of the articles selected to study the concept and current practices of circular economy and an evaluation of its implementation in emerging economies. The paper proposes an integrated framework grounded in two approaches, that is, the Technology, Organization and Environment (TOE) framework and institutional isomorphism as determinants of cloud adoption and CE implementation. The proposed model explores the impact of institutional forces on the various parameters of TOE, thereby culminating in the adoption of Cloud Computing in SMEs. The study would encourage leaders and managers of SMEs to adopt cloud computing for competitive advantage and achieve a circular economy approach together. The adoption of cloud‐based applications has a great potential to foster industrial and economic progress with minimum damage to the ecosystem, furthering sustainability and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

New institutional theory and AI: toward rethinking of artificial intelligence in organizations

Purpose This study, a theoretical article, aims to introduce new institutionalism as a framework through which business and management researchers can explore the significance of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations. Although the new institutional theory is a fully established research program, the neo-institutional literature on AI is almost non-existent. There is, therefore, a need to develop a deeper understanding of AI as both the product of institutional forces and as an institutional force in its own right. Design/methodology/approach The authors follow the top-down approach. Accordingly, the authors first briefly describe the new institutionalism, trace its historical development and introduce its fundamental concepts: institutional legitimacy, environment and isomorphism. Then, the authors use those as the basis for the queries to perform a scoping review on the institutional role of AI in organizations. Findings The findings reveal that a comprehensive theory on AI is largely absent from business and management literature. The new institutionalism is only one of many possible theoretical perspectives (both contextually novel and insightful) from which researchers can study AI in organizational settings. Originality/value The authors use the insights from new institutionalism to illustrate how a particular social theory can fit into the larger theoretical framework for AI in organizations. The authors also formulate four broad research questions to guide researchers interested in studying the institutional significance of AI. Finally, the authors include a section providing concrete examples of how to study AI-related institutional dynamics in business and management.

Missing Transformational Place Leadership-Why High-Tech Industries are not Developed in Hong Kong

This paper adopts a place leadership perspective to examine the failed efforts of developing high-tech industries in Hong Kong. It demonstrates that it is challenging to change from transactional to transformational leadership and argues that the failure of developing high-tech industries in Hong Kong is partially attributable to the lack of transformational political and business leaderships. The political leaders' ineffectiveness in developing hightech industries in Hong Kong is also attributable to the regional/national/international institutional structural forces that have created both opportunities and challenges. This study contributes to the discussion on the critical value of transformational place leadership for creating new local/regional economic growth path and the embeddedness of place leadership in local/regional/national political and economic institutions.

Enterprise risk management (ERM) adoption in developing and developed markets: a comparative study

Purpose This study aims to explore the adoption of enterprise risk management (ERM) in developing and developed countries. Is there a similarity or difference between the two contrasting institutional markets and the reasons behind them? Design/methodology/approach The adoption of ERM is analyzed on the basis of the institutional framework. The author draws empirical evidence by comparing the cases of a British and an Indian insurance company using evidence from multiple sources. This paper focuses on extra-organizational pressures exerted by economic, social and political situations across two countries that influenced the adoption decision of ERM. Findings The findings of this research revealed that early adopters of ERM in different institutional markets face coercive and normative pressure but not mimetic pressure. The adoption of ERM in India and the UK is dissimilar. Companies in the British insurance market encounter higher institutional forces than those in the Indian market because of higher coercive and normative pressure. The aspirations to adopt ERM in the Indian and UK markets included improved strategic decision-making to maintain stakeholder expectations and higher standards of corporate governance. In the UK, ERM was adopted to reduce surprises and fluctuations under flexible regulations but with stricter adoption and to improve credit ratings. Originality/value Previous literature has discussed ERM adoption in similar markets or within one market with similar institutional pressure. In contrast, this research is a comparative study that explains the analysis of institutional theory in two different institutional environments in the adoption of ERM.

Social imaginaries of digital technology in South Korea during the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractThis study examines common themes identified in discourses about digital technology–driven responses to COVID‐19 in South Korea. By examining how digital technology is represented and thematised in policy and news discourses, the study explores how particular modes of society and societal order are circulated and particular visions of the postpandemic society emerge. By employing the notion of social imaginary as a collective vision and practice of a desirable future, this research contributes to expanding the scope of policy studies that tend to be limited to rational decision‐making processes. It explores the role of the government that extends institutional forces to disseminate particular visions of the postpandemic society while addressing the media's response to the government‐circulated dominant social imaginary.

Normative institutional pressures and corporate green development: evidence from a quantile regression approach

ABSTRACT This study explores the often-overlooked role of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) as catalysts for sustainable practices; it unravels the impact of normative institutional pressures (NIPs) on corporate green investment (CGI). By employing the innovative panel quantile regression (PQR) methodology, this research goes beyond conventional approaches to shed light on the non-monotonic association between NIPs and corporate green investment (CGI) among Chinese listed companies (2009 − 2019). Research findings contribute to the literature on institutional forces and corporate environmental sustainability practices. Meanwhile, policymakers may consider developing frameworks that encourage partnerships, knowledge-sharing, and joint initiatives between the corporate sector and ENGOs.

Between Laws and Trends: Unraveling the Dynamics of Vertical Housing Units’ Development under Institutional Forces in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper is based on the recognition of a phenomenon occurring in the real estate market of Belém, Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. The phenomenon refers to the relative increase in the size of the balconies of residential apartments launched in the city between 2005 and 2017 by construction companies, with the aim of increasing the number of units built per tower. Given that balconies were originally areas of low frequency for the occupants of apartments in this region, the aim of this article was to identify and analyze the institutional factors that support this product development strategy, which is becoming increasingly consolidated among companies. To investigate this phenomenon, we collected data from official documents provided by the Municipal Urban Planning Department (Secretaria Municipal de Urbanismo—SEURB), specifically focusing on the launch of residential high-rise buildings during the specified period. Regression techniques with ordinary least squares methods were applied, as well as econometric models of spatial autocorrelation. The results of the hypothesis tests confirmed the relationship between the restrictive parameters imposed by the city’s Urban Master Plan and the relative increase in apartment balconies. The spatial autocorrelation models confirmed the spatial spillover effect, showing that apartment projects with this characteristic tend to be concentrated in certain areas of the city, influencing each other. In order to discuss this phenomenon, the institutional theory was the protagonist of the analysis, showing how an organizational strategy can adapt to the authority that regulates the occupation of urban land in the city, meeting the two market forces and the demand and supply of apartments.