Multinationals’ political activity for institutional change: Evidence from Spain during the international crisis of 2008

International crises generate uncoupling between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the institutional environment. In these settings, industry associations of MNEs have an incentive to engage in institutional change by taking a role as institutional entrepreneurs in order to generate change within the existing, unsuitable institutions. However, MNEs can also try to avoid such institutions or try to adapt to them. Because the antecedents and outcomes of these three forms of engagement in institutional change (institutional avoidance, adaptation, and entrepreneurship) have been scarcely studied in Europe, this reflection examines the case of Spain during the international crisis and analyses the coordinated action of MNEs through their associations in seven industries. The discussion of 30 pieces of evidence regarding the engagement in institutional change in Spain suggests a model that proposes relevant antecedents of different forms of engagement and the expected outcomes resulting from the chosen forms, among them: co-evolution and co-involution.     

Why Do Established Practices Deinstitutionalize? An Actor‐Centred Approach

Drawing on 63 in‐depth interviews from three American multinationals, we investigate how individual actors negotiate the interplay of insider and outsider pressures on the deinstitutionalization of four employment practices in an institutionally complex setting. Existing institutional theory highlights different degrees of deinstitutionalization, from complete abandonment of practices to partial erosion, with an underlying presumption of organizations and actors striving for stability and stasis. However, the present study finds that actor reconciliation of interacting insider and outsider pressures can result in three distinct phases of deinstitutionalization (complete, partial and negotiated deinstitutionalization), which crucially coexist, suggesting perpetual instability and change. The authors conceptualize the individual‐level enabling conditions for each of these different phases of deinstitutionalization, highlighting a range of actor responses as well as differences in how actors exercise agency across each phase. Examining actor negotiation of the interplay of insider and outsider pressures improves our understanding of how individuals engage in differential institutional work when responding to practice deinstitutionalization.     

“We open doors others do not!”: Position and power of foreign institutional networks

Foreign institutional actors (INAs) can act as a liaison between firms and authorities and other power players to navigate bureaucratic structures, both as resource and legitimacy providers in the host market. Building on institutional theory, this study draws from broader organizational sociological literature, to explore the structural position of INAs in a host country context, and engages with fundamental questions of legitimacy, status, and power. It responds to repeated calls that more studies in international business research are needed on the impact of institutional differences, how to obtain legitimacy, and enhance the home country support networks. To understand INAs' position, specifically within the social structure of a bureaucratic host environment, our study uses in-depth interviews with elite actors from the support networks. Japan is chosen for this study as a host market, because it is the European Union's second largest trading partner in Asia, has a strong central bureaucracy, and historically and currently remains a challenging market for Westerners due to complex market entry barriers. The findings provide a new theoretically derived empirical model demonstrating the positional leverage of these INAs, to “open-doors” into a complex environment and offer a nuanced understanding of their formal and informal structural positions of power. The findings also demonstrate a significant overlap between organizational legitimacy and the exemplary status of these INAs in the bureaucratic environment, which enhances and empowers their leverage to reach authorities, press, and other important actors in the market.     

Countervailing institutional forces: corporate governance in Turkish family business groups

This longitudinal study investigates the impact of national and international pressures to improve corporate governance in an emerging economy from an institutional theory perspective. Recently, family business groups (FBGs), the dominant form of organizing in emerging economies, have been criticized by policy makers for their poor governance structures. A common recommendation to FBGs has been increasing the number of independent, outsider directors on their boards. Thus, change in the board compositions of the quoted subsidiaries of the six biggest FBGs is analyzed over 2002–2006. One-way-ANOVA and t-tests were used as statistical tools. Findings reveal that there has not been a statistically significant change in board compositions over the research period. FBGs were found to resist institutional pressures through ‘avoidance’, ‘defiance’ and “manipulation” strategies due to the absence of coercive pressures and multiple forms of ‘institutional work’ for change.     

Subnational Location Capital: The Role of Subnational Institutional Actors and Socio‐spatial Factors on Firm Location

Firms do not simply locate, but rather seek to accrue location‐based advantages such as knowledge, market insidership and resource utilization. Adopting the lens of social capital, this paper explores how subnational institutional actors facilitate location capital for firms. Using qualitative case study analysis of six multinational companies (MNCs), we highlight the important role of subnational institutional actors in fostering three dimensions of subnational location capital – structural, relational and cognitive. We show that subnational location capital, defined as the economic and social assets accessible through relationships within a subnational location, enable firms to derive advantages via subnational engagement. These findings contribute to the growing literature on the dynamic interaction of firms with subnational location, particularly the nuanced role of subnational institutional actors with MNCs.     

Direction,not destination: Institutional work practices in the face of field-level uncertainty

Though field-level uncertainty represents a common challenge, research seldom addresses how institutional work that aims to influence institutional change occurs in the face of uncertainty. We study institutional work practices in a field beset with high uncertainty. Focusing on a field-configuring event in the semiconductor industry, we show how institutional work is possible through practices of dealing with uncertainty that do not eliminate the basic uncertainty but nevertheless configure the field and institutionalize a common direction without specifying a final destination. We find evidence of the open-endedness and collectiveness of institutional work and we contribute to the microfoundations of institutional theory conceptualizing a set of four practices of dealing with field-level uncertainty purposively but not purposefully, i.e., bootstrapping, roadmapping, leader-picking, and issue-bracketing. We highlight the reciprocal relationship between practices and uncertainty, focus on the coordination of institutionalization, and distinguish between events in fields marked by high versus low uncertainty.     

Unintended agency: Impression management support as a trigger of institutional change in corporate governance

In this paper we describe an emergent process of institutional change in which institutional entrepreneurs are unintentional contributors to the change process. Our theory suggests how change in the predominant institutional logic of corporate governance at public U.S. companies resulted not from deliberate attempts by corporate leaders to change the criteria by which governance is evaluated, but from the cumulative efforts of top executives to provide “impression management support” (IM support) for individual leaders of other firms. We first discuss how IM support has spread among corporate leaders through generalized social exchange. Then we suggest how individual leaders, in seeking to persuade journalists about the quality of corporate leadership at particular other firms, tend to invoke evaluative criteria that deviate from the prevailing institutional logic of governance. We further suggest how the rhetoric of IM support instigated a cascading social influence process that has contributed to changing perceptions about corporate governance among a broad range of other corporate stakeholders. We discuss the implications of our model for sociological perspectives on corporate governance and the corporate elite. Finally, we consider how the occasional negative commentary by corporate leaders about their peers, in combination with IM support, helps to sustain the credibility of the social system in which leaders, journalists, and other information intermediaries operate.     

The role of subsidiaries in Global Value Chains (GVCs): An institutional voids perspective on LVC upgrading and integration

We explore the process through which MNE subsidiaries engage and retain a critical mass of small suppliers in Global Value Chains (GVCs) while addressing institutional voids in emerging markets. Using evidence from an interpretive inductive longitudinal case study in agribusiness, we draw on the GVC and institutional voids literatures to: (1) extend the GVC literature by offering a subsidiary-focused view of GVCs; and (2) demonstrate the dynamic process of void engagement through complementary institutional bridging activities. Our temporal sequencing of subsidiary institutional agency in response to different modalities of voids demonstrates a constellation of bridging activities that results from a dynamic interplay between voids and practices.     

Multinationals and Skills Policy Networks: HRM as a Player in Economic and Social Concerns

This paper uses an embeddedness framework to reconceptualize HRM agency over the external labour market, and in so doing bring into focus the societal implications of HRM. Drawing on qualitative data from 53 key informants in two English regions, we identify the ways in which the subsidiaries of foreign multinationals (MNCs) engage with labour market skills actors. Our findings reveal how power structures are mobilized by local economic actors to align labour market skills with MNCs’ demand priorities. We show that multinationals may seek to partially endogenize (i.e. take ownership of) the resources of local labour markets when their competitive value is redefined in social as well as economic terms, and demonstrate that the social structure of sub‐national institutional governance arrangements and firm strategic action on skills creates the conduit through which resource endogenization may occur. Theoretically, this paper identifies the social structure of networks as a casual mechanism to bridge divergent skill interests, which is mobilized when network actors have the capacity to frame fields within the social structure of the network around ideas on economic sustainability and moral interest.     

Engaging institutions in global careers: highly skilled self-initiated expatriates’ journeys through a Nordic welfare state

Recent years of research have highlighted the phenomenon of self-initiated expatriation and clarified the individual agency that underlies it, such as its motivational drivers, thereby depicting it as one form of boundaryless career. Yet as a consequence the role of wider institutional and structural contexts has been left under-theorized. This article provides a much needed examination of the interaction between institutional contexts and agency in self-initiated global careers. It advances the understanding of how self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) are influenced by and engage institutions in constructing their global mobility and careers. The research is a field-based study of SIEs’ encounters with the institutions of a Nordic welfare state and consists of interviews, observations, and document analyses. It makes a relevant addition to understanding how the self-directed expatriation of highly skilled professionals is institutionally moderated. It expands knowledge by showing how SIEs engage and potentially aim to influence public institutions and discourses to further their global mobility and work experiences and by providing a differentiated and distributed view of agency in self-initiated expatriation. While institutional environments condition global mobility and work experiences, they are potentially also influenced by the global talent that flows through them.     

Performativity as ongoing journeys: Implications for strategy,entrepreneurship, and innovation

For the most part, strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation have been researched and practiced from a representational position. In this paper, we make a case for taking a performative turn. Strategists, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs are embedded-embodied actors who engage in material-discursive practices in their attempts at constituting phenomena. Overflows, which are inevitable given dispersion of agency, give rise to matters of concern for multiple stakeholder groups. Settlements between stakeholders are temporary, as phenomena will be de-constituted when constitutive arrangements change. Consequently, the projects and initiatives that strategists, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs undertake are best seen as ongoing journeys.     

Engaging Stakeholders Through Corporate Political Activity: Insights From MNE Nonmarket Strategy in an Emerging African Market

As interest increases in the political engagement between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and emerging economy host governments, less is known about wider MNE stakeholder engagement and the development of nonmarket capabilities in institutionally fragile environments. This study investigates how MNEs engage stakeholders through corporate political activity (CPA) during the pro-market reform of Uganda's electricity generation sector. Data is collected through semi-structured interviews, archival materials and fieldwork notes, and is analyzed using an NVivo-supported grounded analytic method. We find both proactive and reactive leveraging of CPA to manage diverse stakeholders. We argue that the host government remains the most important political stakeholder in the early phases of reform, but changes in institutional and political environments necessitate strategic adaptations as the reform process progresses. These adaptations include the need for local engagement and the accommodation of multi-level stakeholder pressures. Our findings contribute to an understanding of corporate political capabilities in Africa's emerging markets, and illustrate how these capabilities can be strategically leveraged to effectively manage diverse stakeholders.     

Cultural values and innovation: The mediating role of entrepreneurial learning capacity

Although both cultural values and innovation are widely acknowledged as collective embodiments of individual values and assets, little is known about the mechanisms through which cultural values influence the likelihood of innovation by some entrepreneurs rather than others. We argue that institutional pressures arising from cultural values affect entrepreneurial learning capacity which in turn impacts innovation activities. Our multi-level analysis of entrepreneurs from 19 countries between 2006 and 2011 suggests that entrepreneurial learning capacity serves as a mediator through which entrepreneurs maximize the innovation-related benefits of cultural values to their businesses.     

Following unique logics despite institutional complexity: An inductive study of academic inventors and institutional logics

This paper examines how institutional complexity, due to the availability of multiple logics, influences the behavior of academic inventors during an innovation process. Based on four case studies of medical technology innovations, this paper identifies three logics influencing academic inventors’ behavior: academic, market, and care logics. We identify several patterns that characterize the practices of academic inventors in a context with multiple institutional logics. Despite the availability of multiple logics, we observe a strong pattern of academic inventors predominantly following the market or the care logic. As for the influence of multiple logics, we find very limited interaction between logics (i.e., reinforcing, complementary and conflicting interaction), with the prevalent pattern being “no interaction” between institutional logics. Thus, instead of following several logics, academic inventors’ specific practices are mostly guided by a “unique” logic. This influence of logics leads to a clear pattern of “dominant” influence on behavior, reflected in individual strategies of “entrenching,” that is, a strategy based on building one’s behavior on a “unique” logic. However, the same available logics can also generate "aligned" influence, entailing behavior guided by several logics. But this occurs only if the academic inventor faces uncertainty regarding the exploitation of the intellectual property. With these findings, we add to the ongoing discussion concerning institutional complexity and individual behavior by elucidating in detail how institutional complexity can entail behavior guided by “unique” logics.     

制度环境、公司治理对企业竞争优势的影响研究——基于中国上市公司的经验证据

如何通过外部制度和内部制度的安排延续企业的竞争优势,是制度变迁背景下中国企业面临的核心问题.本文以2002年-2005年的中国上市公司为样本,基于国内地区差距,实证分析了制度环境和公司治理时企业竞争优势的影响.回归结果发现,政府支持市场化程度、经济法律环境水平、股权集中度、股权竞争度、董事会独立性、专业委员会设置程度以及股东参与决策程度与企业竞争优势显著正相关.研究结果表明,好的制度环境与有效的公司治理能提高企业的竞争优势;企业持续竞争优势的源泉应包含以政府为主体的宏观层次的制度竞争和以企业为主体的微观层次的公司治理竞争.     

Age Work in Organizations: Maintaining and Disrupting Institutionalized Understandings of Higher Age

Age diversity research calls for new approaches in explaining the persistence of age inequalities, which integrate different levels of analysis and display greater context sensitivity. Concurrently, neoinstitutionalist research interested in social inequalities calls for merging institutional theory with critical perspectives and to account for issues of power. In this study, we address the calls of both research streams through developing the concept of ‘age work’: the institutional work actors undertake on age as a social institution. Applying our novel concept to a multi‐actor study of four German organizations known for their age management, we come across a counterintuitive insight regarding actors’ age work: maintaining stereotypical age images can serve to counter age inequalities, whereas deconstructing age images can reinforce age inequalities. The multi‐actor perspective of our study allows us to categorize different forms of power‐laden and interest‐driven age work and to portray the reproduction of age inequalities as a result of actors’ age work, embedded in different contexts and complex power relations. Comparing employees’ forms of age work across sectors and organizations, we detail how notions of masculinity as well as income and job security shaped the categorized forms of age work.     

Code Breaking: How Entrepreneurs Exploit Cultural Logics to Generate Institutional Change

If institutions are durable, how do they change from within and from without? We build on the emerging synthesis of social movement theory and institutional theory and articulate how institutional entrepreneurs from within and without deploy pre-existing cultural logics to push forward their institutional projects. We develop propositions, which show how the success of these framing activities is contingent on political opportunity, and illustrate them with a wide range of extreme cases.     

Use of Redundant Industrial Buildings as Injections into the Cultural Sector in Norway

Prime aim is to examine the way the culture sector reuses industrial buildings to instigate cultural activities in the municipalities. The discussion of various actors’ motivation for engagement is based on results from a case study, supplemented with findings from a coarse-meshed telephone survey. At national level overarching political guidelines can be traced back to white papers concerning cultural policy, urban transformation and cultural heritage, and the municipalities’ cultural policies mirror these guidelines. What tends to decide if such initiatives are considered successful are local abilities to cross sectorial divisions and instigate cooperation between municipal planners, private entrepreneurs and NGOs.     

Institutional transitions,global mindset,and EMNE internationalization

Recently revised theoretical explanations of the internationalization process have been offered to specifically account for the propensity of Emerging Market Multinationals (EMNEs) to engage in accelerated internationalization. However, this literature stream has yet to consider how the fundamental institutional transitions occurring in emerging markets promote the individual and organizational level global mindset that helps account for this accelerated, proactive international expansion. Our dynamic multi-level conceptual framework examines the influences of both the home country institutions and intra-organizational mindsets on the development of EMNE outward FDI decision making. This framework contributes to extant literature by integrating conceptualizations of national culture with the informal and formal institutions offered by institutional theory, while examining how fundamental shifts in these influence the intra-organizational context. Furthermore, our conceptual framework adopts a multi-level perspective of global mindset as an antecedent of firm decision making and adds to the global mindset literature by arguing that institutional transition is a macro level antecedent of global mindset.