This paper explores how organizations respond to simultaneous institutional influences from two distinct sources: the industry in which they operate and the local geographic community in which they ...are headquartered. We theorize that the existence of
institutional equivalents
—other organizations at the same intersection of different fields, such as the same industry and the same community—provides a clear and well defined reference category for firms and thus shapes which subset of peers the focal organization imitates most closely. We develop hypotheses about how the presence or absence of institutional equivalents affects organizations’ responses to behavioral cues from different peer groups, how these effects vary when peers in different fields exhibit inconsistent behaviors, and how organizational characteristics, such as size and performance, strengthen or weaken the influence of institutional equivalents. We test our propositions through a longitudinal analysis of philanthropic contributions by Fortune 1000 firms from 1980 to 2006. Our framework illuminates how simultaneous presence in multiple fields affects organizations and introduces to institutional theory the concept of institutional equivalence, which we argue is a critical factor in determining how organizations respond to multiple institutional cues.
Traditionally, CPA scholarship has either assumed away policy intermediaries completely, or depicted them as corporate mouthpieces. Meanwhile, research on policy intermediaries has portrayed actors ...such as think tanks, PR firms and lobbying firms as far more active and self-interested. Our study investigates this puzzle by attending to the question: ‘Whose political agenda is expressed by intermediaries during their lobbying on behalf of corporate clients?’ By importing insights from studies of policy intermediaries, and approaching the world of lobbying qualitatively – delving deep into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of corporate lobbying using ethnographic field data and interviews with corporate lobbyists – we provide a different, more fine-grained picture of the lobbyist–client relationship, in which policy intermediaries shape, adapt and even invent their clients’ agendas. Our study contributes CPA scholarship by (1) providing an analytical distinction between the political agendas of corporate clients and those of their lobbyists, (2) bringing further detail and modification to Barley’s theory of an institutional field of political influence and (3) identifying agency problems between client and lobbyist as a novel explanation for why the financial profitability of CPA investment has been difficult to verify. Moreover, the study brings further sophistication to a burgeoning literature on policy intermediaries by suggesting that lobbyists’ own professional characteristics – such as length of political experience and strength of political convictions – influence how independently of their clients they dare to act.
Although organizational theorists have given much attention to how environments shape organizations, they have given much less attention to how organizations mold their environments. This paper ...demonstrates what organizational scholars could contribute if they were to study how organizations shape environments. Specifically, the paper synthesizes work by historians, political scientists and students of corporate political action to document how corporations systematically built an institutional field during the 1970s and 1980s to exert greater influence on the US Federal government. The resulting network, composed of nine distinct populations of organizations and the relationships that bind them into a system, channels and amplifies corporate political influence, while simultaneously shielding corporations from appearing to directly influence Congress and the administration.
This paper introduces a Special Issue on the theme of Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change. Drawing upon the accumulated literature and three original contributions it aims to explore the ...conditions and the processes through which entrepreneurship may influence institutional change. The paper argues that entrepreneurs are not only influenced by the prevailing institution(s) but they can also influence (both intentionally and unintentionally) institutional change. This challenges prevailing views about the ability and effectiveness of the state to drive change. The paper also outlines an agenda for future research into how entrepreneurship shapes emerging institutional arrangements.
The last decade has seen the rise of a self-described worldwide "movement" of fact-checking groups which specialize in debunking false political claims and other forms of misinformation. This very ...heterogeneous movement now spans nearly 300 fact-checking outlets in more than eighty countries, led by their own professional organization. This study charts the emergence and development of this transnational institutional sphere with qualitative and quantitative analysis of the annual summit of fact-checking organizations, Global Fact, as a field-configuring event (Lampel & Meyer, 2008). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork by two authors as well as comprehensive data on the first six Global Fact meetings, we use shifts in the structure and content of the event to explore processes of structuration; we highlight a shift from a field-building ethic valuing inclusiveness and celebrating diversity to one valuing common practices and standards, marked by new governance mechanisms and increasing interest from powerful outside stakeholders. Ultimately, our data show the fact-checking field negotiating a necessary tension between managing internal diversity and consolidating as an increasingly recognized institutional actor in the domain of public communication.
In this paper I uncover the routine, ongoing practices that sustain institutional multiplicity. Drawing on a comparative study of the two high-tech conferences held in Israel in 2002, I examine how ...diverse institutions are discursively handled in field-configuring events. Institutional multiplicity was expressed at this site through two identity discourses, one that situated the industry within a national context and another that oriented it toward the global markets. In addition, the conferences were constructed around different best-practice discourses that focused on guidelines for either investment or management. These four discourses reflected and further affected power relations between the field's actors, and they were differentially distributed across separate social spaces between the conferences and within them. The contribution of this study to our understanding of institutional multiplicity lies in demonstrating how it is maintained in practice, politically negotiated between actors, and refracted across separate social spaces.
The cyber-insurance (CI) market is at a nascent stage. This paper investigates how the contexts provided by formal and informal institutions affect the development of the CI industry. It highlights ...the nature, origin, and implications of CI-related institutions and provides insights into the mechanisms and forces that can lead to institutional changes. It offers an explanation as to how different institutional pillars related to CI progressively evolve and reinforce one another. Such a mechanism is likely to influence a range of demand and supply side factors and create a system that can accelerate the growth of the CI industry and market. The paper also investigates how contradictions generated by CI, the formation of dense networks and changing power dynamics can trigger regulative normative and cognitive changes. Since the current analysis of the causes and consequences of institutions and institutional change is mainly concerned with more established economic sectors, this paper is expected to provide insights into institutions surrounding to this new and rapidly evolving industry.
•The cyber-insurance industry is at a nascent stage but is rapidly growing.•Institutional pillars related to cyber-insurance are progressively evolving and reinforcing one another.•Various contradictions associated with cyber-insurance are bringing institutional changes.•Process and technological innovations are likely to change institutions related to cyber-insurance.
•Significant influence of trade and economic alliances on IFRS convergence decisions within nation states.•Influences exerted through transnational policy networks between institutional ...fields.•Impact of influences determined by power balance between actors embedded in different institutional fields.•Indirect effect of US delays in IFRS convergence on India.
This study contributes to the literature on global governance by highlighting the importance of not losing sight of the nation state as an important player in the transnational governance arena. Specifically, literature on global (accounting) regulation devotes a great deal of attention to the roles of organisations and agencies with transnational remit (such as global standard setters, donor agencies) while often downplaying the significant impacts of the more traditional cross- country links forged through economic relationships and resource dependencies between national and transnational institutional fields. This was specially noted in the case of the indirect influences of the US’s decision to delay IFRS convergence. While being interpreted as an indirect source of influence, such a decision played a very significant role on the convergence negotiations in India. The study shows how the US influence was channelled through Japan with which India has significant trade and economic relations and, most importantly, holds a joint forum specifically to discuss convergence issues. The consequences of India’s links with countries such as US and Japan in the decision-making process provide a vivid indication of the important roles of cross-governmental relationships in the global governance arena, and also question the position of transnational organisations as pervasive powers in such governance. The study’s findings clearly demonstrate that the pursuit of full IFRS convergence strongly favoured by the transnational forces was invariably challenged in the Indian context by the influences of powerful nation states advocating a more cautious approach.
Given the adverse societal and ecological impacts of oil and gas operations, health, safety and environmental issues are increasingly considered at all stages of petroleum production, especially in ...the early design stage. These developments stem from calls for greater attention to be paid to the integration of sustainability in organisations. Indeed, the legitimacy of organisations in the oil and gas industry is intrinsically tied to changing global societal expectations of corporate responsibility. As such, this paper is focused on exploring the progression of the sustainability logic through the societal and organisational fields, and the resultant change in an engineering design firm servicing the oil and gas sector. A framework was developed to draw attention to the role of institutional mechanisms in the institutionalisation of sustainability, and to examine discourse and control technique change. Concepts from neo-institutionalism provided the basis for the theoretical framework used in this study to analyse institutionalisation from macro as well as micro perspectives. The case study method was employed and analysis was conducted on multiple sources of data. Institutionalisation was found to be a recursive process involving the interplay of ideals, discourses and techniques across institutional realms. The study showed that while a modification of the sustainability ideal has caused loose coupling in the oil and gas organisational field, institutional work by reflexive agents in different realms is slowly bringing about tighter coupling through discourses and techniques. Techniques in the form of formal and informal management controls are seen to both affect and be affected by sustainability institutionalisation. Accordingly, the present study captures the complexity of the sustainability institutionalisation process through multiple levels of analysis, both within and between the societal, organisational field and organisational levels.
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