Women have reason to be cautious in their dealings with the UN. In the course of the Decade for Women, which began in 1975, governments have been turning the clock back not…
Abstract
Women have reason to be cautious in their dealings with the UN. In the course of the Decade for Women, which began in 1975, governments have been turning the clock back not forward and the UN can only be as effective as its individual member states want it to be. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the UN is also an agent of discrimination against women.
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This paper aims to extend some of the theoretical propositions of Michael Power’s (1997) audit society thesis by exploring the capacity of organisations to push back against…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to extend some of the theoretical propositions of Michael Power’s (1997) audit society thesis by exploring the capacity of organisations to push back against external accountability pressures. The paper positions the literature on non-governmental organisation (NGO) accounting and accountability as a “case study” against which the notion of the audit society is put to the test.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative meta-synthesis of the accounting literature is used to analyse how NGOs have responded to audit society pressures – most notably funder pressures to adopt formalised accountability mechanisms. The different responses of NGOs to funder accountability demands are analysed using Christine Oliver’s (1991) typology of strategic responses to institutional processes.
Findings
This review of the accounting literature unveils that NGOs can adopt a range of strategic responses to funder accountability pressures that vary from passive conformity to proactive manipulation. The findings confirm that NGOs often perceive acquiescence to funder accountability demands as necessary to ensure organisational survival. Yet, the author also found that NGO resistance to funder accountability pressures is more common than previously assumed. Five dominant forms of “accountability resistances” emerged from the analysis: evading accountability, disguising accountability, shielding accountability, negotiating accountability and shaping accountability.
Originality/value
By conducting a qualitative meta-synthesis of the accounting literature, the author was able to integrate the findings of prior research on NGO resistance to funder accountability demands, guide future research and extend Michael Power’s (1997) work by developing a more nuanced understanding of how organisations respond to external accountability pressures.
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Vivianna Fang He and Gregor Krähenmann
The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about…
Abstract
The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about their ventures and themselves. On the other hand, entrepreneurial failure is associated with substantial financial, psychological, and social costs. When entrepreneurs fail to learn from failure, the potential value of this experience is not fully utilized and these costs will have been incurred in vain. In this chapter, the authors investigate how the stigma of failure exacerbates the various costs of failure, thereby making learning from failure much more difficult. The authors combine an analysis of interviews of 20 entrepreneurs (who had, at the time of interview, experienced failure) with an examination of archival data reflecting the legal and cultural environment around their ventures. The authors find that stigma worsens the entrepreneurs’ experience of failure, hinders their transformation of failure experience, and eventually prevents them from utilizing the lessons learnt from failure in their future entrepreneurial activities. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the entrepreneurship research and economic policies.
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The purpose of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural consequence of ever-increasing entropy seems to directly contradict the major institutional thesis, namely, that over time isomorphic forces increase and, as a result, possibilities for deinstitutionalization decrease culminating in the impossibility of abandoning in highly institutionalized fields.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is conceptual in nature. Oliver’s 1992 paper on deinstitutionalization is taken as a key text on the subject and as a starting point for building an alternative theory of deinstitutionalization. More broadly, institutional theory and organizational literature on diffusion/adoption are reviewed and synthesized.
Findings
The authors argue that possibilities for deinstitutionalization have been overestimated in institutional literature and offer a revisited account of deinstitutionalization vs institutional isomorphism and institutionalized vs highly diffusing-but-not-institutionalized practices. A freedom for choice between alternative practices exists during the pre-institutional stage but not when the field is already institutionalized. In contrast, institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices are immutable to any sort of functional and political pressures and they use to persist even when no technical value remains, thus deinstitutionalization on the basis of a functional dissatisfaction seems to be a paradox.
Research limitations/implications
By revisiting the nature and patterns of deinstitutionalization, the paper offers a better conceptual classification and understanding of how organizations adopt, maintain and abandon organizational ideas and practices. An important task of this paper is to reduce the scope of application of deinstitutionalization theory to make it more focused and self-consistent. There is, however, still not enough volume of studies on institutional factors of practices’ abandonment in institutional literature. The authors, therefore, acknowledge that more studies are needed to further improve both the former deinstitutionalization theory and the framework.
Originality/value
The authors offer a solution to this theoretical inconsistency by distinguishing between truly institutionalized practices and currently popular practices (highly diffused but non-institutionalized). It is only the latter that are subject to the norms of progress that allow abandoning and replacing existing organizational activities. Deinstitutionalization theory is, thus can be applied to popular practices that are subject to reevaluation, abandonment and replacement with new optimal practices while institutions are immutable to these norms of progress. Institutions are immutable to deinstitutionalization and the deinstitutionalization of optimal practices is subject to the logic of isomorphic convergence in organizational fields. Finally, the authors revisit a traditional two-stage institutional diffusion model to explain the possibility and likelihood of abandonment during different stages of institutionalization.
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Christine Oliver and Graham Brittain
Explores the detail of methodologies employed in the management classroom and in change processes with organisational groups. Through this exploration, some of the dualisms which…
Abstract
Explores the detail of methodologies employed in the management classroom and in change processes with organisational groups. Through this exploration, some of the dualisms which typify modernist theoretical stances were highlighted, examined and transcended. The claim made for the practices proposed here is that they can enhance management learning through informing reflexive decision making, creative use of authority and aesthetic definitions of account‐ability, thereby complementing and enriching a modernist position which, we suggest, is inadequate in isolation.
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Hokyu Hwang and Jeannette Colyvas
The growing interest in the microfoundations of institutions is a significant, yet surprising development given that the theoretical tradition’s original insight was to account…
Abstract
The growing interest in the microfoundations of institutions is a significant, yet surprising development given that the theoretical tradition’s original insight was to account for macro, institutional influences on lower-level units. The call for microfoundations has gone on without really clarifying what institutionalists mean by microfoundations. Some reflections on the usefulness or purpose of establishing the microfoundations of institutional theory are in order. The authors advocate for treating the micro as part of pluralistic and multi-level accounts of institutional processes. Central is the conceptualization of actors as more or less institutionalized identities and roles.
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Lise Degn, Miriam Madsen and Katja Brøgger
The purpose of this paper is to explore how Danish higher education institutions (HEIs) navigate the demands and expectations of accreditation procedures, and how the limited…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how Danish higher education institutions (HEIs) navigate the demands and expectations of accreditation procedures, and how the limited freedom posed by accreditation schemes is used by HEIs by way of translation.
Design/methodology/approach
Through document studies of policy documents and the institutional self-assessment reports, the paper follows the concept of quality from the international level to the Danish national level, and onwards into the individual HEIs, where the authors examine how notions of quality are constructed through the translation of national regulation, guidelines and procedures of accreditation into the self-narratives of the self-assessment reports.
Findings
The authors find that the national guidelines for accreditation represents a complex translation of supranational guidelines by minimizing certain aspects and enhancing others. This national translation is then analyzed as the frame for the institutional translations where the analysis reveals how HEIs exercise a great deal of agency, within a quite narrow frame constituted by regulations and guidelines.
Originality/value
By using the Olivers (1991) typology of organizational responses, the authors discuss how the HEIs not only imitate and abide to institutionalized norms and concepts of quality but also reformulate, edit, omit and enhance certain elements of quality. The authors demonstrate that when accreditation meets the HEIs, it is clearly the national agendas that are most pervasive and offer the most relevant vocabulary for the HEIs.
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Jamie D. Collins, Dan Li and Purva Kansal
This study focuses on home country institutions as sources of variation in the level of foreign investment into India. Our findings support the idea that institutional voids found…
Abstract
This study focuses on home country institutions as sources of variation in the level of foreign investment into India. Our findings support the idea that institutional voids found in India are less of a deterrent to investments from home countries with high levels of institutional development than from home countries with similar institutional voids. Overall, foreign investments in India are found to be significantly related to the strength of institutions within home countries. The levels of both approved and realized foreign direct investment (FDI) are strongly influenced by economic factors and home country regulative institutions, and weakly influenced by home country cognitive institutions. When considered separately, the cognitive institutions and regulative institutions within a given home country each significantly influence the level of approved/realized FDI into India. However, when considered jointly, only the strength of regulative institutions is predictive of FDI inflows.
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Herman Aksom, Svitlana Firsova, Tetiana Bilorus and Lesya Olikh
Institutional theory is focused on the prevalence of social value over economic imperatives in organizational life, but what happens when taken-for-granted practices offer neither…
Abstract
Purpose
Institutional theory is focused on the prevalence of social value over economic imperatives in organizational life, but what happens when taken-for-granted practices offer neither technical nor institutional value at all? In this paper, the authors theorize an important but omitted in the organizational literature scenario and a class of institutionalized practices. The authors conceptualize them as institutionary eclipsed practices. The paper offers a theory of institutional shadow and institutional eclipsed practices that explains the remarkable persistence of institutions despite the obvious absence of value.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors offer a theoretical framework for studying institutional practices that have neither economic nor social value. The authors illustrate institutionally eclipsed practices with an example of educational organizations and practices, but the theory of institutional shadow developed in this paper goes beyond this case.
Findings
Organizations adopt global institutional standards for local organizational fields where different institutional norms prevail and different meanings and values are attached to these global institutions. In some cases, such institutions may lose their technical value and have no social (legitimizing) value in a new institutional context. Such practice is taken for granted, enacted, reproduced and maintained as necessary because it is encoded into the very institutional image of a profession (and social role). An institutionally eclipsed practice becomes a taken-for-granted, integral part of organizational members’ daily routines. Still, neither efficiency nor social benefits and value are offered by such a practice for organizational members. At the same time, as institutionalized practices are resistant and usually immune to technical, economic and social changes, they tend to endure and persist in organizations. Both a disintegrated practice and organizational members who enact it get into the limbo of the institutional shadow.
Originality/value
The authors distinguish and theorize three main conditions that allow institutionally eclipsed practices to emerge, proliferate and persist in organizations and across organizational fields. These factors include the presence of institutional meaning, the taken-for-granted quality (which means the immunity to technical, social and material changes) and the absence of contradictions. Together these three virtues allow institutionally eclipsed practices to be easily embedded into organizational contexts, being enacted by organizational members and avoiding abandonment and deinstitutionalization despite uselessness.