New Economic Institutions Research Articles

How nation-level background governance conditions shape the economic payoffs of corporate environmental performance

PurposeCompanies develop and implement environmental initiatives in particular national governance and institutional contexts. The purpose of this paper is to study how the background governance conditions of legal systems, economic policies and national culture enable or impede the relationship between corporate environmental performance (CEP) and lagged corporate financial performance (CFP).Design/methodology/approachThis is an empirical study of 427 MNCs headquartered in 22 different countries. The authors merged data from the SiRi database (generally known as SustainAnalytics now), which contains ratings of stakeholder relations for 427 large corporations with publicly available data from Datastream.FindingsDrawing on the new institutionalism in economics and sociology, the authors show that common-law systems and high economic freedom in a company’s home country tend to strengthen the CEP-CFP link. In addition, the home-country cultural variables of uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and (to a lesser extent) masculinity may impede the deployment of CEP for maximum financial gain at the organizational level. The macrolevel analysis starts to move the field toward an understanding of the particular national governance configurations that provide the most supportive conditions for any CEP-CFP links.Originality/valueOne of the central questions in the field of organizations and the natural environment is about the background conditions that may incentivize and reward firms to be more environmentally responsive. The paper addresses this issue through a nation-level investigation of the background governance conditions that may help or hinder the relationship between CEP and CFP.

Новый институциональный подход в экономической теории и экономической социологии: основные сходства и различия

Новый институциональный подход в экономической теории и экономической социологии: основные сходства и различия

The Deinstitutionalization of Marriage Revisited: A New Institutional Approach to Marriage

Across the social sciences, there is a consensus that the institution of marriage is undergoing dramatic changes. In this paper, we reconsider conceptually the discussion surrounding Cherlin's (2004) work on the deinstitutionalization of marriage. We apply ideas from the new institutionalism in sociology and economics to the special case of marriage and consider its implications for the conceptualization and operationalization of a deinstitutionalization of marriage. We also provide new institutional explanations for why the institution of marriage persists now and is likely to persist into the future.

Why the EU Does Not Have an Independent Competition Agency: French Interests and Transaction Costs in Early European Integration

A major achievement of new institutionalism in economics and political science is the formalisation of the idea that certain policies are more efficient when administered by a politically independent organisation. Based on this insight, several policy actors and scholars criticise the European Community for relying too much on a multi-task, collegial, and politicised organisation, the European Commission. This raises important questions, some (who should be able to change the corresponding procedural rules?) and some political-economic (is Europe truly committed to free and competitive markets?). Though acknowledging the relevance of legal and normative arguments, this paper contributes to the debate with a positive political-scientific perspective. Based on the view that institutional equilibria raise the question of equilibrium institutions, it shows that collegiality was (a) an equilibrium institution during the Paris negotiations of 1950-51; and (b) an institutional equilibrium for the following 50 years. The conclusion points to some recent changes in the way that European competition policy is implemented, and discusses how these affect the constitutional principle of collegial European governance.

Institutional Environments, Employer Practices, and States in Liberal Market Economies

This article draws on the new institutionalism in economics, sociology, and political studies in order to establish a foundation for analyzing how states shape employer human resource management and union relations. It then reviews and extends the available literature on this topic, establishing how, in addition to legal regulation, states help to shape the cognitive and normative rules that undergird employer decision processes, the social and economic environment within which employers act, and ultimately, the relations of authority constituting the employment relation itself and hence employer policy orientations. The article concludes with a discussion of the prospects for state policy initiatives in view of established employer paradigms, institutional logics, and state traditions, and identifies possibilities for further work in this area.A neoclassical world would be a jungle, and no society would be viable. Douglas North (1981:11)

The social regulation of inter-firm relations in Britain and Germany: market rules, legal norms and technical standards

An analysis of institutionalised rule systems, particularly of technical standards, traces their effects on various aspects of supplier relations in Britain and Germany and attempts some evaluation of performance outcomes. Drawing on the insights of New Institutionalism in economics and sociology, it is shown that the higher degree of stability and consistency in systems of social regulation in Germany, as compared with Britain, leads to more predictable and consensual relations between firms. The resulting development of greater mutual trust encourages more long-term and closer technological collaboration. The paper utilises data from a recent comparative study of supplier relations in two traditional industries and supplements them with information from more general studies of the technical regulation of inter-firm relations.

Institutional Theories of Organization

Institutional theories of organizations provide a rich, complex view of organizations. In these theories, organizations are influenced by normative pressures, sometimes arising from external sources such as the state, other times arising from within the organization itself. Under some conditions, these pressures lead the organization to be guided by legitimated elements, from standard operating procedures to professional certification and state requirement, which often have the effect of directing attention away from task performance. Adoption of these legitimated elements, leading to isomorphism with the institutional environment, increases the probability of survival. Institutional theories of organization have spread rapidly, a testimony to the power of the imaginative ideas developed in theoretical and empirical work. As rigor increases, with better specification of indicators and models, it is likely to attract the attention of an even larger number of organizational researchers. Institutional theory is inherently difficult to explicate, because it taps taken-for-granted assumptions at the core of social action. The main goal of this review, then, is to make institutional theory more accessible. The review begins with a brief summary of the two current theoretical approaches to institutionalization in organizations, moves to identification of indicators of central concepts, and then progresses to a review of empirical research. It concludes with two short sections, one on points of intersection with other theories of organization, the other on the new institutionalism in economics and political science.