Constructing institutional change: emergence, contestation and convergence of business models in the field of Java application servers

How are innovative new business models established if organizations constantly compare themselves against existing criteria and expectations? The objective is to address this question from the perspective of innovators and their ability to redefine established expectations and evaluation criteria. The research questions ask whether there are discernible patterns of discursive action through which innovators theorize institutional change and what role such theorizations play for mobilizing support and realizing change projects. These questions are investigated through a case study on a critical area of enterprise computing software, Java application servers. In the present case, business practices and models were already well established among incumbents with critical market areas allocated to few dominant firms. Fringe players started experimenting with a new business approach of selling services around freely available opensource application servers. While most new players struggled, one new entrant succeeded in leading incumbents to adopt and compete on the new model. The case demonstrates that innovative and substantially new models and practices are established in organizational fields when innovators are able to refine expectations and evaluation criteria within an organisational field. The study addresses the theoretical paradox of embedded agency. Actors who are embedded in prevailing institutional logics and structures find it hard to perceive potentially disruptive opportunities that fall outside existing ways of doing things. Changing prevailing institutional logics and structures requires strategic and institutional work aimed at overcoming barriers to innovation. The study addresses this problem through the lens of (new) institutional theory. This discourse methodology traces the process through which innovators were able to establish a new social and business model in the field.

Institutional entrepreneurship:a literature review and analysis of the maturing consulting field

With few exceptions (e.g. Fincham & Clark, 2002; Lounsbury, 2002, 2007; Montgomery & Oliver, 2007), we know little about how emerging professions, such as management consulting, professionalize and establish their services as a taken-for-granted element of social life. This is surprising given that professionals have long been recognized as “institutional agents” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 2008) (see Chapter 17) and professionalization projects have been closely associated with institutionalization (DiMaggio, 1991). Therefore, in this chapter we take a closer look at a specific type of entrepreneurship in PSFs; drawing on the concept of “institutional entrepreneurship” (DiMaggio, 1988; Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007; Hardy & Maguire, 2008) we describe some generic strategies by which proto-professions can enhance their “institutional capital” (Oliver, 1997), that is, their capacity to extract institutionally contingent resources such as legitimacy, reputation, or client relationships from their environment.

Local economic development initiatives and the transition from training and enterprise councils to new institutional structures in England

Current British government economic development policy emphasises regional and sub-regional scale, multi-agent initiatives that form part of national frameworks to encourage a 'bottom up' approach to economic development. An emphasis on local multi-agent initiatives was also the mission of Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). Using new survey evidence this article tracks the progress of a number of initiatives established under the TECs, using the TEC Discretionary Fund as an example. It assesses the ability of successor bodies to be more effective in promoting local economic development. Survey evidence is used to confirm that many projects previously set up by the TECs continue to operate successfully under new partnership arrangements. However as new structures have developed, and policy has become more centralized, it is less likely that similar local initiatives will be developed in future. There is evidence to suggest that with the end of the TECs a gap has emerged in the institutional infrastructure for local economic development, particularly with regard to workforce development. Much will depend in future on how the Regional Development Agencies deploy their growing power and resources.