Neo-institutional Perspective Research Articles

Power, institutions and the cross-national transfer of employment practices in multinationals

This article argues for the systematic incorporation of power and interests into analysis of the cross-border transfer of practices within multinational companies (MNCs). Using a broadly Lukesian perspective on power it is argued that the transfer of practices involves different kinds of power capabilities through which MNC actors influence their institutional environment both at the ‘macro-level’ of host institutions and the ‘micro-level’ of the MNC itself. The incorporation of an explicit account of the way power interacts with institutions at different levels, it is suggested, underpins a more convincing account of transfer than is provided by the dominant neoinstitutionalist perspective in international business, and leads to a heuristic model capable of generating proposed patterns of transfer outcomes that may be tested empirically in future research.

The emergence of the university: A case study of the founding of the University of Paris from a neo-institutionalist perspective

This case study of the founding of the University of Paris shows how a shift in the logics of medieval education promoted the institutionalisation process that led Paris to become the model university for all subsequent European universities. As a theoretical basis for the analysis of the case, I use an institutionalist framework and complement it with Bourdieu's notions of capital and field. More specifically, I take a closer look at how old and new institutional logics interact, how ‘change agents’ are structurally embedded, and how it is possible for an institutional logic to emerge without a corresponding institution.

Political participation of immigrants through new urban policies in Brussels : constraints and small opportunities

The political participation of immigrants is an important gauge of their integration into the receiving society more generally, as well as an indicator of the degree of openness of political elites towards ethnic minorities. With the restructuring of State intervention and the diffusion of civic culture, the role that immigrant associations play in shaping urban social policies has become another important form of political participation. As the Belgian city with the highest percentage of migrants and naturalized foreigners and benchmarked as multicultural by the regional government, Brussels presents a test case. Since the beginning of the nineties, new public policies including participative tools have been introduced in Brussels. However, immigrant associations are not adequately involved in these processes. Why is such little space given to migrant associations in the participative procedures of these new urban policies? The neo-institutionalist perspective will be helpful in identifying the major factors that explain the relatively low participation of immigrant associations.

Substance Over Form? An Exploratory Study of the Role of Audit Committees in an Emerging Economy

The existing body of literature on audit committees focuses on the effectiveness of audit committees in the outsider model of corporate governance. This research investigation examines audit committees in a setting representing the insider model of corporate governance in a transition economy, specifically raising questions about the resources and processes of audit committees. This study provides empirical support for the neo-institutional perspective on corporate governance, where audit committees are primarily formed to provide symbolic legitimacy, not vigilant monitoring. In the insider model of corporate governance the audit committee, as a monitoring device, assumes a less important role, as the large owners can directly oversee the financial aspects of the company. The audit committees have limited resources to perform their responsibilities, so the oversight processes are taking on a less formal format. The audit committee, in this setting, seems to play a more ceremonial role and focuses more on form than substance.This study offers insights to policy makers interested in enhancing the regulation in the insider model of corporate governance. Additionally, the study provides insights into the practices of audit committees in a transition economy.

Territorialités politiques, politiques publiques : une approche institutionnelle des produits alimentaires typiques. Le cas de la Suisse

This contribution aims to examine the influence of political institutions on typical food products. It provides a meta-analysis of the data collected in the Inventory of Swiss Culinary Heritage. We show that two of those institutions, political territoriality and sectoral public policies, are likely to decisively shape such products. Thus, we propose a new extension, from a neo-institutionalist perspective, for a constructive analysis of typical food products.

The manor estate economy ofthe Republic of Two Nations (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) in the 16th-18th centuries from the Marxist and neo-institutionalist perspectives

This article continues an analysis of the socioeconomic history of the Republic of Two Nations (RTN) in the 16th-18th centuries, viewed through two competing historiographical views: the traditional Marxist conception emphasizing internal considerations and the neo-Marxist capitalist world system theory (CWS) emphasizing external motivations. The questions addressed in this text arose from the conclusion of an earlier study (Lietuvos istorijos studijos, 2006, volume 18) that the agrarian structure of Eastern Europe in the 16th-18th centuries, according to the CWS conception, is similar in many respects to what Marxists call "feudalism" in Western Europe in the 11th-15th centuries (with the agrarian structure rather than political "superstructure" in mind). The point of this article is to define in more detail the structural similarities and differences between the Western European manor in the 11th-15th centuries and the Eastern European manor (especially in the RTN) in terms of Marxism and neo-institutionalism. In reconstructing the economic structure of the Western European manor from the Marxist perspective in the first section of the article, the author employs a research performed by the school of E. A. Kosminsky, a renowned medieval expert in the Soviet Union. American economists of the new institutionalist economic history work by its best-known representatives D. C. North and R. P. Thomas inform the neo-institutionalist perspective in the first section. In the second section, the model of feudal economic function by one of the most renowned Polish economic historians, W. Kula, is used for reconstructing the manor economy of Eastern Europe (and especially the RTN) in the 16th-18th centuries from the Marxist perspective. The third section features the above-mentioned studies as well as additional literature (J. Topolski, A. Wyczanski, P. Gorecki, K. Glamann, E. J. Hobsbawm, S. Pamerneckis and others), to illustrate in detail for the first time in historiography and expand upon, the structural similarities and differences between the Western European manor in the 11th-15th centuries and the Eastern European manor in the 16th-18th centuries according to both of the aforementioned perspectives. Arguments are put forward for the thesis that the manor economy of the 16th-18th centuries in the RTN, affected by Western Europe's developing capitalist relationships, can be qualified neither as a typical feudal economy (which the Western European manor of the Middle Ages should properly be considered) nor as a typical capitalist enterprise. The RTN manor of the 16th-18th centuries was an economy based on the total domination by the lord of the peasants oriented to the production of mercantile goods, as one of the forms used by the lord for accumulating capital.

Conflict in the world polity - neo-institutional perspectives

This article assesses the potential contribution of neo-institutional world polity theory to the study of global conflict dynamics. Prevalent conflict theories explain the emergence and resolution of conflicts by resorting to actors’ mutually incompatible preferences and differential access to economic, social or symbolic sources of power. World polity theory challenges fundamental assumptions of such theories by conceptualizing action as highly scripted and actors as culturally constituted. By focusing on the cultural rules of modern actorhood, world polity theory accounts for the emergence of new motives of conflict no less than for the diffusion of ‘rational’ methods of conflict resolution. It concludes by arguing that theoretical explication and empirical analysis of the hitherto neglected conflictive dimensions of the world polity approach is a fruitful agenda for conflict research and neoinstitutional scholars alike.

AN EMERGING CIVIL SOCIETY: THE IMPACT OF THE 2008 SICHUAN EARTHQUAKE ON GRASS-ROOTS ASSOCIATIONS IN CHINA

The western China, especially near the Wenchuan region witnessed a terrible earthquake in the year 2008, which led to some severe damage in the country. Several interviews and studies are conducted to explain the impact of this Sichuan earthquake on the development of the various grass-root associations present in the country.

Where Is the Accountability in International Accountability Standards?: A Decoupling Perspective

ABSTRACT:A common complaint by academics and practitioners is that the application of international accountability standards (IAS) does not lead to significant improvements in an organization’s social responsibility. When organizations espouse their commitment to IAS but do not put forth the effort necessary to operationally enact that commitment, a “credibility cover” is created that perpetuates business as usual. In other words, the legitimacy that organizations gain by formally adopting the standards may shield the organization from closer scrutiny, thus enabling rather than constraining the types of activities the standards were designed to discourage.There is a lack of research on why certain types of IAS are more prone than others to being decoupled from organizational practices. Applying a neo-institutional perspective to IAS, we theorize that the structural dimensions of the types of standards themselves can increase the likelihood of organizations adopting IAS standards in form but not in function.

University corporatisation: Driving redefinition

Drawing on international research into changing university environments, profiles, and structures, this study applies a neo-institutional perspective to the analysis and critique of underlying developed country trends in public sector university corporatisation and commercialisation. Identifying primary environmental and historical influences, the paper focuses upon key environmental factors that have promoted the importation of new public management and private sector philosophies into universities of which a significant proportion have been traditionally identified as operating within the public sector. The findings reveal an underlying neoliberal political and economic agenda, that has laid the foundations for the profound transformation that has reconfigured universities’ governance, missions, core values and the roles of their academics. These changes emerge as mimicking private sector corporate philosophies and governance structures, as well as returning to scientific management approaches of a century ago. Accounting and accountability are revealed as conduits supporting these significant shifts in university identity and role. Their realignment with shifting societal economic preoccupations and priorities is revealed as permeating their intellectual core, commercialising knowledge production and transforming the identity and role of the academic community.

Legitimacy, trustee incentives, and board processes: the case of public and private non‐profit nursing homes

Using a unique data set, this study explores how type of ownership (government/private) is related to processes of governance. The findings suggest that the neo-institutional perspective and the self-interest rationale of the agency perspective are helpful in explaining processes of governance in both government- and privately owned non-profit organizations. Due to adverse incentives and the quest for legitimacy, supervising governance bodies within local government-owned non-profit institutions pay relatively less attention to the development of high quality supervising bodies and delegate little to management. Our findings also indicate that governance processes in private institutions are more aligned with the business model and that this alignment is likely driven by a concern to improve decision making. By contrast, our data also suggest that in local government-owned institutions re-election concerns of politicians-trustees are an important force in the governance processes of these institutions. In view of these adverse incentives - in contrast to the case of private organizations - a governance code is unlikely to entail much improvement in government-owned organizations.

Participação de empresas estrangeiras e consórcios em leilões de blocos exploratórios de petróleo e gás no Brasil

As empresas petrolíferas têm longo histórico de formação de arranjos cooperativos. A formação de consórcios para a participação em projetos de exploração e produção é prática usual, tendo sido observada a sua ocorrência no Brasil a partir de 1999, quando se iniciaram os leilões para concessão de blocos. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar a participação de empresas estrangeiras e de consórcios formados por empresas nos leilões de blocos exploratórios ofertados pela Agência Nacional de Petróleo, Gás natural e Biocombustíveis [ANP]. A metodologia utilizada é de caráter qualitativo, complementada com análise quantitativa, empregada para verificar a existência de correlação entre as participações de consórcios e de empresas estrangeiras e duas variáveis específicas: risco Brasil e preço do petróleo no mercado internacional. As conclusões, sob uma perspectiva neoinstitucional, apontam a conformação do modelo brasileiro aos padrões internacionais para este segmento econômico, a participação de grande número de empresas no processo de abertura, o papel de destaque da Petrobras nos leilões e a formação de parceria predominante entre a Petrobras e a Petrogal.

Change and isomorphism—A case study of translation processes in a Norwegian sport club

This article builds upon former research into sport organizations, which has revealed how institutional fields become uniformed through isomorphic processes, and at the same time how organizations undergo change. In this article change in a Norwegian football club is studied first by considering the organization as a mixture of rational, natural and open systems, and second, by applying a neo-institutional perspective of translation. Through document analysis, observation and interviews, it was found that change in the sport club's policy is based on the interplay between internal discussions and external influence. When the focal football club should develop a model for development of players, aiming at taking into account both elite orientation and mass participation, the solution was found by mimicking ideas from other organizations in the institutional field. Hence, the article shows how decision-making processes within one sport club's board are related to translations ( Campbell, 2004) of ideas in the regional field of similar clubs, more particularly those conceived as successful.

Competitiveness and health: The work of sport clubs as seen by sport clubs representatives - a Norwegian case study

This article is study of sport club representatives’ considerations about the work of sport clubs. Sport clubs are first and foremost providers of sport activity. However, when it came to the work of sport clubs, it is discovered that the focus is on competitiveness, but sport clubs were also seen as a vehicle for promotion of ‘social goods’ such as health. Based on documentary analysis, observations and interviews with board members of sport clubs, and with a neo-institutional perspective of translation, this article discusses how local agents combine different institutional elements such as competitiveness and health and assemble them into a wholeness of sport activity. Without claiming to have found the final solution to this complex phenomenon, the article discusses whether health is utilized — or exploited — for legislation purposes only, or whether it can be combined with competitiveness.

Particularistic and System Trust Among Small and Medium Enterprises: A Comparative Study in China's Transition Economy

Guanxi, a type of particular trust observed in Confucian societies has mostly been viewed as a static phenomenon. It is not clear how the role of guanxi changes over time during institutional transitions. This field studyof twenty one small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in two large cities in Western China examines the changes in SME behaviors since the beginning of economic reforms in 1979. Based on neo-institutionalist trust perspectives, the article argues that the role of guanxi also arose from the paucity of market system trust created by the absence of well-established market institutions during China's transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. Guanxi became relatively less important when market system trust based on well-established institutions was firmly established. Regardless of past practices, the dynamics of institutional transitions leading to the establishment of system trust inevitably reshapes managerial as well as business behaviors, with adaptation occurring to the new rules of the market economy.

Port Governance Reforms in Diversified Institutional Frameworks: Generic Solutions, Implementation Asymmetries

Bringing in neo-institutional perspectives, this paper investigates the recent corporatisation process of three seaports in Asia and Europe. We focus on whether the newly established seaport governance structures follow a path largely affected by the local/national institutional frameworks and the political traditions in place. Findings confirm that path-dependent decisions largely preserve the institutional characteristics of local/national systems, resulting in implementation asymmetries when different countries seek generic governance solutions.

Organisational Change and the Institutionalisation of University Patenting Activity in Italy

In this paper, using a neo-institutional perspective, we model inter-temporal organisational responses applied to the diffusion and evolution of regulations and practices in university patenting activities. Our study is located in Italy, and it is based on the complete list of patent regulations issued by the population of Italian universities, between 1993 and 2009. We show that in environments characterised by high levels of centralization (i.e. Italy), once each university was allowed to define modes and rules for its own activities, they searched locally, adopting mimetic behaviours, replicating the practices of the most prestigious and visible academic institutions. We also show that, once legislatively re-constrained, the organisational solutions identified by universities were legitimated by the emergence of a community of practice that, developing a set of norms and routines, formed the basis for the occurrence of normative isomorphism. This sequence of different isomorphic behaviours generated severe constraints to the effectiveness of new regulatory policies. Cohercive isomorphism induced by state legislation, therefore, not only became unable to reach the targeted goals, but also indirectly reinforced the dynamics generated by normative isomorphism. Implications for theory and policy are discussed.

Racial Identity Production Dynamics and Persisting Wealth Differentials: Integrating Neo-Institutionalist Perspectives into Stratification Economics

This study advances the analysis of factors contributing to the persistence of the black-white racial wealth gap using insights from Institutional Economics and Stratification Economics. The analysis challenges discourses trumpeting the emergence of a post-racial society in which previous barriers to attaining equal economic outcomes have been eliminated. It is argued that the post-racial rhetoric conveys inaccurate information to agents regarding the expected returns from investments in both capital assets and racial identity. Sub-optimal decisions by Black agents result, in part, from failure to take advantage of cultural knowledge about more advantageous investment strategies tied to indigenous cultural traditions.

Da redução da incerteza estratégica à perpetuação da exclusão: a relevância dos fatores ideacionais na análise de política externa

O objetivo do artigo é discutir a relevância dos fatores ideacionais nos debates da subárea de análise de política externa. O argumento central aponta que os fatores ideacionais assumem relevância crescente nos debates de política externa, porque um número cada vez maior de especialistas da subárea de análise de política externa - predominantemente autores neoinstitucionalistas, construtivistas "moderados" e pós-estruturalistas envolvidos nessas discussões - concebeu que as ideias podem ter impacto sobre o conteúdo e os rumos de políticas externas ao oferecer mapas que ampliam a clareza dos atores sobre objetivos ou a relação entre meios e fins em condições de incerteza, afetar resultados de situações estratégicas em que não há um único equilíbrio e generalizar padrões de comportamento quando incorporadas em instituições (enfoque neoinstitucionalista). Podem também regular o comportamento político dos Estados e construir suas identidades e interesses de política externa, de forma que tais fatores ideacionais podem ser vistos como endógenos à interação. Os ambientes em que os atores estão envolvidos podem ser concebidos como ideacionais em vez de apenas materiais e constituir as propriedades básicas desses atores. O significado de forças materiais também pode depender de ideias compartilhadas (enfoque construtivista. As ideias podem ainda ser entendidas como construções de práticas discursivas relacionadas à formulação e à execução da política externa e, assim, legitimar o poder e a soberania e perpetuar a marginalização e a exclusão da diferença (enfoque pós-estruturalista).

Towards an eclectic theory of the internet commons

Recent developments in communications technologies and, in particular, the advent of the Internet and its widespread applications in all spheres of human activity, have posed a serious challenge to the mainstream neo-institutional theory of the commons (common goods) and, especially, common pool resources theory (CPR). Although the term ‘new commons’ has been coined to describe a new area of study, previous attempts to analyze Internet goods within the framework of CPR theory have not been successful, as they have not been able to capture the important new characteristics of the Internet commons. Based upon an empirical analysis of over 20 Internet goods, the current author proves that, basically, Internet goods do not fall within the common pool category of goods. In addition to the key characteristics used so far within mainstream theory - excludability and substractability, other attributes such as sharing potential, joint use in production rather than in consumption only, and non-hierarchical governance of production definitely are relevant, and should be included in any analysis of Internet commons. This analysis has proven that the neoinstitutional approach retains its explanatory power with respect to the Internet commons, especially by emphasizing the path-dependent evolution of the Internet and the role of informal and formal rules shaping its operating environment. At the same time, it does not capture the direct impact of major breakthroughs in information and telecommunication technologies (ICT) on the Internet commons. The proposed eclectic framework, one which addresses the specific features of Internet goods, allows to grasp the full complexity of the Internet commons. It integrates new concepts developed in various disciplines of social sciences (economics, sociology, history, anthropology) with the mainstream theory of the commons, developed from the neo-institutional perspective. Among those new concepts and theories, the most important are general purpose technologies (GPT), network externalities, positive free riding, the concept of shareable goods, the architecture of participation, peer production, and the gift economy.