Process Of Institutional Change Research Articles

Institutional Change in Value Chains: Evidence from Tea in Nepal

Local conditions in developing countries have long played a part in determining whether their small-scale firms can benefit from deepening their participation in global value chains (GVCs). Institutional theory allows us to characterize these local conditions not simply as particularistic oddities but rather as elements of an institutional matrix that affects the livelihoods of chain participants. However, the institutional dimension of GVC analysis has been traditionally neglected in the literature, to the detriment of our understanding of the impacts of upgrading in GVCs. This study aims to remedy this failure by illustrating how institutional context mediates between value chain upgrading and the livelihoods of chain participants. It particular, it seeks to elucidate how value chain upgrading spurs a process of change in the institutions that govern the livelihoods of suppliers in developing countries. This examination sheds light on the more general question of how value chain upgrading sometimes helps, but sometimes hurts, the welfare of chain participants. This theoretical contribution to the value chain literature is based upon an institutional analysis of primary qualitative data from more than 80 small-scale tea farmers in Nepal, some of whom had upgraded from conventional to organically certified production. Our study finds that value chain upgrading launches a process of institutional change that can be summarized in a general typology. The typology highlights how rules, strategies, organizations, and informal norms affect whether a given upgrading intervention yields livelihood benefits in a particular place. Upgrading can yield positive impacts in chain-linked livelihood dimensions, such as price, and yet induce negative changes in other livelihood dimensions, such as risk, and thereby yield overall adverse livelihood implications, in a process we dub “immiserizing upgrading”. These findings contribute to advancing the conceptual literature on global value chains (GVCs) by suggesting a general typology for cycles of institutional change that influence livelihood outcomes. The typology provides a framework to analyze such processes that is also of use to development practitioners seeking to understand the conditions under which upgrading worsens or improves the welfare of value chain participants. The research findings provide an interesting window into how certification schemes interact with the daily lives of the rural poor.

Investigating the Dynamics of Stakeholder Salience: What Happens When the Institutional Change Process Unfolds?

Using data collected through semi-structured open-ended interviews and archival material, we examined the transience of stakeholders’ salience in the organisational field going through institutional change process. We found strong support for the dominant institutional logic-stakeholder salience relationship. More importantly, the results of our study reveal that changes in stakeholders’ salience are directly related to changes in stakeholders’ attributes. Moreover, we uncover mutual associations among various types of salience attributes and show that the degree of mutual association of various types of attributes depends upon the stage the organisation has reached during the process of institutional change.

Futures of privacy protection: A framework for creating scenarios of institutional change

The future of privacy is a topical issue in the context of debates on mass surveillance and the increasing prevalence of social media sites in everyday life. Previous scenario studies on privacy have focused on macro trends and on forecasting technological developments, and claims about causal influences have remained implicit. This article presents an alternative approach for constructing scenarios of privacy protection. The article focuses on privacy protection as a social institution and builds on the theory of gradual institutional change. The article presents a scenario framework which includes three stages: (1) outlining the dynamics of privacy protection, (2) tracing historical processes and constructing a causal narrative, and (3) creating event-based scenarios. The resulting scenarios are narratives of plausible chains of events which are based on the results of the previous stages. The key difference to typical scenario approaches is the focus on specific actors and types of event sequences in privacy protection. The argument is that by lowering the level of abstraction in this way, researchers and decision-makers can gain a more profound understanding of possible future challenges in privacy protection and of key leverage points in the institutional change process.

A Participatory Planning Process as an Arena for Facilitating Institutional Bricolage: Example from the Rwenzori Region, Uganda

One solution considered by researchers and policymakers to address environmental degradation is to explore change within environmental institutions. Three main approaches exist looking at how institutions change in response to social–environmental issues: institutional design, institutional fit, and institutional bricolage. While all three approaches are relevant, they face challenges when it comes to actually supporting the institutional change process. This article advances the idea that rather than trying to craft blueprint institutions through interventions, such interventions could act as “institutional corridors” to create favorable conditions for “institutional bricolage” to occur. A participatory planning process in the Rwenzori region in Uganda is used as an example. There, five strategies were used for the process to act as an institutional corridor. They were facilitated by four procedural elements and constrained by two external factors. The article concludes by providing concrete ideas about how practitioners can experiment with intervention designs to facilitate institutional bricolage.

Being Brave

In this article, I explore how individuals access agency within a large institution. Relying on Dorothy Smith's work with institutional ethnography, I integrate interview data with my experience as part of the institutional change process. What is revealed in the data is that agency is constantly being negotiated with disengagement. In the article, I set up a series of vignettes to establish an interwoven dialogue that enables me to tell the collective story of faculty experiences at a university and their stories of working on institutional change. Through these dialogues, I explore the complex and contradictory ways in which faculty make sense of their roles on campus and within the institutional change process. Ultimately, what I trace in my conversations with faculty is a negotiation of agency and disengagement as they seek out strategies to be brave and work to make lasting and meaningful change at the university.

The three institutionalisms and institutional dynamics: understanding endogenous and exogenous change

AbstractAlthough new institutionalism has long been criticised for presenting overly static accounts of social reality, that critique is becoming increasingly unwarranted. In recent years, historical, ideational and rational choice institutionalists have produced a rich body of literature on mechanisms and processes of institutional change. This article reviews this emerging literature and concludes that the most promising avenue for future research is to further explore the potential for combining insights from the three subtypes of institutionalism. In the hopes of encouraging future studies of institutional change to engage more explicitly in theoretical integration, this article proposes a sequential approach to combining insights from different traditions and providing comprehensive accounts of exogenous and endogenous processes of institutional change.

Marketization: Theoretical Reflections Building on the Perspectives of Polanyi and Habermas

The concept of marketization denotes the expansion of market coordination into non-market coordinated social domains as well as its intensification in already market-dominated settings. This article sets out to reconstruct an institutionalist theory of marketization. As a point of departure, it critically examines the related contributions of Karl Polanyi and Jürgen Habermas. The analytical strength of Polanyi's theory of marketization lies in the discussion of the contested embeddedness of markets and the view of marketization as a politically shaped process of institutional change. This concern with the societal expansion of markets is further developed in the Habermasian thesis of the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’. However, both Polanyi and Habermas lack a specification of the social substance of markets and thus tend to underestimate the complexity of marketization. To address this issue, the present article utilizes the concept of collective goods to introduce new arguments about the institutional dynamics of marketization in the diverse fields of society.

Institutional transition: Internal migration, the propiska, and post-socialist urban change in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, there has been remarkable enthusiasm for theorising how transitional processes have unfolded in post-socialist cities. In seeking to extend literature that uses the post-socialist condition as a tool for theory building, we draw attention to the ongoing processes of institutional change in post-socialist cities. In doing so, we reject a ‘top-down’ perspective and examine how these institutional transitions are shaped through processes of ‘domestication’, negotiation and contestation between different interest groups in the city. We develop our argument, by drawing attention to the local political debates surrounding the propiska in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The propiska developed throughout the Soviet Union to control internal migration and is still used today in a less restrictive form. By discussing our case study, we hope to foster attention towards the ongoing contested processes of institutional transition in post-socialist cities.

Developing a Construct of Women’s Sexual Freedom in the Mexican Context

Protecting women’s sexual freedom has evolved as a modern value through a long process of social, economic, and institutional changes brought about by the ascend of human rights principles and societal engagements such as the feminist movement. We suggest that the concept of sexual freedom accommodates a more encompassing expression of the simultaneous demand for all aspects of personal, socioeconomic, and political resources related to the pursuit of women’s well-being. The purpose of this study is to develop a construct of women’s sexual freedom in the Mexican context. The data are from the National Survey on the Dynamics of Households Relationships, 2011. We use exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to model women’s sexual freedom and test for invariance between working and non-working women. Results indicate that women’s sexual freedom consists of four factors: reproductive rights, physical intimate partner violence, sexual intimate partner violence, and violence inflicted by others.

Governing the smart city: a review of the literature on smart urban governance

Academic attention to smart cities and their governance is growing rapidly, but the fragmentation in approaches makes for a confusing debate. This article brings some structure to the debate by analyzing a corpus of 51 publications and mapping their variation. The analysis shows that publications differ in their emphasis on (1) smart technology, smart people or smart collaboration as the defining features of smart cities, (2) a transformative or incremental perspective on changes in urban governance, (3) better outcomes or a more open process as the legitimacy claim for smart city governance. We argue for a comprehensive perspective: smart city governance is about crafting new forms of human collaboration through the use of ICTs to obtain better outcomes and more open governance processes. Research into smart city governance could benefit from previous studies into success and failure factors for e-government and build upon sophisticated theories of socio-technical change. This article highlights that smart city governance is not a technological issue: we should study smart city governance as a complex process of institutional change and acknowledge the political nature of appealing visions of socio-technical governance. Points for practitioners The study provides practitioners with an in-depth understanding of current debates about smart city governance. The article highlights that governing a smart city is about crafting new forms of human collaboration through the use of information and communication technologies. City managers should realize that technology by itself will not make a city smarter: building a smart city requires a political understanding of technology, a process approach to manage the emerging smart city and a focus on both economic gains and other public values.

Embedded Macroeconomic Institutions: Italy's Fiscal U‐Turn in the 1990s and Beyond

AbstractShort‐term theories on the determinants of fiscal consolidation underestimate that fiscal regimes are as entrenched as any other institution of a political economy. The case of Italy's fiscal adjustment in the run‐up to EMU is used to show that external constraints and well‐functioning institutions may well be just auxiliary. The success factor in the country's macroeconomic stabilization was that competing socio‐economic interests, while all in favour of disinflation, could eventually agree on the size and composition of the adjustment thanks to side‐payments in the form of a devalued currency. These are unavailable under EMU, which explains why the fiscal reform momentum slowed down, notwithstanding EU fiscal rules. Domestic preference formation goes back a long way: it is associated with an incremental process of institutional change that started in 1981 with the enhanced independence of the Bank of Italy and continued with labour market and budget reform in the late 1980s.

A tragedy of errors? Institutional dynamics and land tenure in Finnmark, Norway

Reindeer herding in Finnmark has been widely perceived during the last few decades as a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. The present article claims that this discourse relies on flawed assumption regarding land tenure. Our historical analysis of the term 'common' in relation to resources in Finnmark shows the term to reflect a misunderstanding of local categories, practices, and concerns related to pastures, territories, and natural resources more generally. In this sense, it exposes a case of 'mistaken identity' between the formal legal conception of 'commons' and the customary rules and thinking of reindeer herders. We turn to different strands of critical institutionalism to analyse the processes of institutional change that have allowed these errors and misunderstandings to be formalised and naturalised in the current governance system. We show that a process of institutional bargaining between the Norwegian Parliament, the Sami Parliament, and the International Labour Organisation has recently re-enforced an alien conception of a 'commons' to which ambiguous groups of people have equivocal rights. In parallel, a process of institutional layering of new regulatory actors and rules on top of existing ones has taken place. This regulatory ratcheting has resulted in the blurring of the authorities and jurisdictions intrinsic in the customary tenure system. Moreover, the new layers of regulations have actively overemphasized the Sami customary obligation of sharing resources to legitimize

A tragedy of errors? Institutional dynamics and land tenure in Finnmark, Norway

Reindeer herding in Finnmark has been widely perceived during the last few decades as a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. The present article claims that this discourse relies on flawed assumption regarding land tenure. Our historical analysis of the term ‘common’ in relation to resources in Finnmark shows the term to reflect a misunderstanding of local categories, practices, and concerns related to pastures, territories, and natural resources more generally. In this sense, it exposes a case of ‘mistaken identity’ between the formal legal conception of ‘commons’ and the customary rules and thinking of reindeer herders. We turn to different strands of critical institutionalism to analyse the processes of institutional change that have allowed these errors and misunderstandings to be formalised and naturalised in the current governance system. We show that a process of institutional bargaining between the Norwegian Parliament, the Sámi Parliament, and the International Labour Organisation has recently re-enforced an alien conception of a ‘commons’ to which ambiguous groups of people have equivocal rights. In parallel, a process of institutional layering of new regulatory actors and rules on top of existing ones has taken place. This regulatory ratcheting has resulted in the blurring of the authorities and jurisdictions intrinsic in the customary tenure system. Moreover, the new layers of regulations have actively overemphasized the Sámi customary obligation of sharing resources to legitimize the new, ambiguous, conception of commons. This process is explained as one of institutional bricolage based on naturalisation by analogy and authority processes that allow certain powerful actors to influence the production of institutional arrangements favourable to them. All three processes underline the negotiated, dynamic nature of institutional change. We propose this integrative analysis of institutional and general social dynamics is beneficial in studying commons as everyday practices affecting natural resource governance.

Institutional Layers, Connectedness and Change: Implications for Economic Evolution in Regions

The overall objective of this paper is to better understand regional change from institutional and economic perspectives. The paper introduces the concept of institutional layers in order to analyse the interdependencies between institutions of different types and spatial scales, and to investigate institutional change processes in a regional context. It suggests that the diversity and connectedness of institutional layers are key dimensions for explaining economic evolution in regions. Based on these two dimensions, the paper introduces a typology of regions and relates this typology to economic evolution and growth as well as the likelihood of fragmentation, lock-ins and disruptive changes.

Original and New Institutional Economics: Brethren Rather Than Foes? Lessons from the Sociocognitive Turn in “Late” Douglass North

:A sociocognitive foundation for transformative agency requires much deeper exploration to adequately understand the causal origins of human interests, preferences, and choices as they shape both the emergence of institutions and the process of institutional change. In the collegial spirit of rapprochement, reminiscent of earlier efforts at “bridge-building,” our central contention is that the new institutional economics of “late” Douglass C. North (2005) provides such a sociocognitive approach, as well as an important ontological frame for dealing with embedded agency. This agency may afford original institutional economics a complementary meta-theoretical account of how institutions are formed and changed over time.

Nonmarket Strategies and the Process of Institutional Change: How and Why Some Firms Take the Lead

This paper aims at gaining a better understanding of why some firms become pioneers in fostering institutional changes through interacting with the government, and how they influence the government...

Rule of Law Reforms and Institutional Change Processes in Eastern DR Congo: Neo-institutional Economics vs Multijuralism

AbstractIn development approaches, the link between rule of law institutional reforms and economic development is theorized by neo-institutional economics (NIE). From an economic analysis of law, NIE interprets the institutional variable through its ability to reduce uncertainty. The analysis of the relationship between institutions and development then leads to the study of institutional and normative changes. In this context, authors are referring to path dependence theory in order to explain the recurrent failure of rule of law reforms. However, I will argue that while NIE, by referring to path dependence theory, acknowledges that reforms take place within a complex set of particularities, I suggest that the notion of multijuralism, elaborated by the French legal anthropologist Étienne Le Roy, is more appropriated to describe this set of particularities in an African context. Using empirical data collected during an anthropological study regarding women’s rights in Democratic Republic of Congo, we will see that normative changes usually occur on the margins of State institutions. In addition, the embedded norms considered by NIE immobile through time are actually much more fluid than it seems.

The need for reflexive evaluation approaches in development cooperation

Within development cooperation, development issues are increasingly recognized as complex problems requiring new paths towards solving them. In addition to the commonly used two dimensions of complex problems (uncertainty and disagreement), we introduce a third dimension: systemic stability; that is, stability provided by rules, relations and complementary technology. This article reflects on how development evaluation methodologies and especially those introducing a complexity perspective address these three dimensions. Inferring that this third dimension deserves more attention, we explore the characteristics of reflexive evaluation approaches that challenge systemic stability and support processes of learning and institutional change. We conclude that reflexive evaluation approaches may well complement current system approaches in development evaluation practice.

"Administrative, Cognitive, and Social Work in the Brazilian Correspondent Banking System"

Technology implementations offer valuable contexts for examining the recursive relationships among institutional forces, organizational structures, and individual practices. Institutional theory provides a useful lens for examining these relationships, but critics note how its most popular concepts underplay the role of agency and portray actors as passive recipients of institutional scripts. Research on institutional entrepreneurship shows the most promise in addressing these criticisms, but focuses too narrowly on the actions of powerful leaders who have vested interests in changing institutions. In this paper, we argue that other actors also perform work that is critical to institutional change processes, but perhaps lack explicit intentions to change institutions. We provide evidence from the implementation of the Brazilian correspondent banking system, a government-led, information technology-based financial inclusion project. We demonstrates how actors at various levels of the organization ushered...

PROSPEK PROGRAM STUDI AGAMA DAN UMUM DI STA IN PONTIANAK, KALIMANTA N BARAT , DAN STA IN CURUP BENGKULU

The tendency of an Islamic university to open general subject faculties or program can be seen from the process of transformation and institutional change of the university. STAINs that are mandated to develop Islamic study are experiencing dilemma between following the trend of people need and being consistent with developing Islamic teaching. This study discusses about STAIN Pontianak that develops religious study programs and STAIN Curup that develops general study programs. This study uses qualitative descriptive method and shows that religious study programs in STAIN Pontianak can be developed due to its ability while general courses in STAIN Curup is popular as marked by the increasing number of graduates of general courses and high absorption in the formal sector. Challenge in the development of flagship study programs in STAIN is the parallel between Islamic values and general competence as the requirement of the region. The government is required to provide certainty in the development of study program in STAINs to actualize the development of excellent and competitive study program.