The role of institutional pressures and top management support in the intention to adopt cloud computing solutions

Purpose – While many studies have predominantly looked at the benefits and risks of cloud computing, little is known whether and to what extent institutional forces play a role in cloud computing adoption. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of institutional factors in top management team’s (TMT’s) decision to adopt cloud computing services. Design/methodology/approach – A model is developed and tested with data from an Australian survey using the partial least squares modeling technique. Findings – The results suggest that mimetic and coercive pressures influence TMT’s beliefs in the benefits of cloud computing. The results also show that TMT’s beliefs drive TMT’s participation, which in turn affects the intention to increase the adoption of cloud computing solutions. Research limitations/implications – Future studies could incorporate the influences of local actors who might also press for innovation. Practical implications – Given the influence of institutional forces and the plethora of cloud-based solutions on the market, it is recommended that TMTs exercise a high degree of caution when deciding for the types of applications to be outsourced as organizational requirements in terms of performance and security will differ. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the growing empirical literature on cloud computing adoption and offers the institutional framework as an alternative lens with which to interpret cloud-based information technology outsourcing.

Pushing the boundaries' versus identifying the boundaries: An institutional perspective of NPM Principles

This paper considers the boundaries of new public management (NPM) principles in the context of the mandate for a commercial approach within in a New Zealand state-owned enterprise (SOE). Investigating a commercial approach to NPM through an institutional theory lens, the case study highlights complexities and potential conflict between structured NPM principles and the more complex reality. Analysis reveals blurred lines and boundaries have implications for public sector organisations such as SOEs, government and other stakeholders, where managers push the boundaries beyond the point where stakeholders are comfortable. Thus, a key challenge involves developing clearer institutional boundaries to balance freedoms with stakeholder acceptability.

Institutional constraints on altruism in the formation of a venture idea

This thesis is about the social orientation of new venture ideas and how the degree of social orientation is influenced by the entrepreneur's level of altruism, by industry norms, and by nonprofit work experience. Potential entrepreneurs were asked to generate new venture ideas based on 3D-printing and their ideas were rated for degree of social orientation. It was found that while greater altruism leads to more socially-oriented venture ideas, the influence of altruism on the venture idea is constrained by the profit-maximization norm that is prevalent in most industries.

An Institutional Approach to Donor Control: From Dyadic Ties to a Field‐Level Analysis

Literature on the nonprofit sector focuses on charities and their interactions with clients or governmental agencies; donors are studied less often. Studies on philanthropy do examine donors but tend to focus on microlevel factors to explain their behavior. This study, in contrast, draws on institutional theory to show that macrolevel factors affect donor behavior. It also extends the institutional framework by examining the field‐level configurations in which donors and fundraisers are embedded. Employing the case of workplace charity, this new model highlights how the composition of the organizational field structures fundraisers and donors alike, shaping fundraisers’ strategies of solicitation and, therefore, the extent of donor control.

Do Foreign Greenfields Outperform Foreign Acquisitions or Vice Versa? An Institutional Perspective.

Prior studies of the comparative performance of greenfields and acquisitions have advanced competing arguments, with some arguing that greenfields should outperform acquisitions because acquisitions are costlier to integrate, and others that acquisitions should outperform greenfields because greenfields suffer from a liability of newness. Moreover, while the costs of integration and the liability of newness are at their greatest during a subsidiary's first years, prior studies have tested their competing arguments on samples containing older subsidiaries. We extend these prior studies by (1) developing an institutional theory-based framework that simultaneously considers the costs of integration and the liability of newness, (2) recognizing that both types of costs vary with the level of subsidiary integration, and (3) focusing on the stage of their life during which subsidiaries predominantly incur these costs. To measure subsidiary performance, we ask managers of Dutch multinationals how their ex ante performance expectations compare to the subsidiary's ex post performance during its first two years. Analysing a sample of 191 foreign subsidiaries and controlling for entry mode self-selection and other factors, we find that acquisitions outperform greenfields at low and intermediate levels of subsidiary integration, but that greenfields outperform acquisitions at higher integration levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutional environment and its influence on political options to Protect Winnipeg’s Female garments Workers against the impact of globalization

The principal objective of this paper is to identify the relationship between the re­sults of the Canadian policies implemented to protect female workers against the impact of globalization on the garment industry and the institutional setting in which this labour market is immersed in Winnipeg. This research paper begins with a brief summary of the institutional theory appro­ach that sheds light on the analysis of the effects of institutions on the policy options to protect female workers of the Winnipeg garment industry. Next, this paper identi­fies the set of beliefs, formal procedures, routines, norms and conventions that cha­racterize the institutional environment of the female workers of Winnipeg’s garment industry. Subsequently, this paper descri­bes the impact of free trade policies on the garment industry of Winnipeg. Afterward, this paper presents an analysis of the ba­rriers that the institutional features of the garment sector in Winnipeg can set to the successful achievement of policy options addressed to protect the female workforce of this sector. Three policy options are considered: ethical purchasing; training/retraining programs and social engage­ment support for garment workers; and protection of migrated workers through promoting and facilitating bonds between Canada’s trade unions and trade unions of the labour sending countries. Finally, this paper concludes that the formation of isolated cultural groups inside of factories; the belief that there is gender and race discrimination on the part of the garment industry management against workers; the powerless social conditions of immi­grant women; the economic rationality of garment factories’ managers; and the lack of political will on the part of Canada and the labour sending countries to set effective bilateral agreements to protect migrate wor­kers, are the principal barriers that divide the actors involved in the garment industry in Winnipeg. This division among the prin­cipal actors of Winnipeg’s garment industry impedes the change toward more efficient institutions and, hence, the successful achievement of policy options addressed to protect women workers. 

Institutional pressures on financial services firms: the role of information systems in regulatory compliance

The financial crisis of 2008 led to new international regulatory controls for the governance, risk and compliance of financial services firms. Information systems play a critical role here as political, functional and social pressures may lead to the deinstitutionalization of existing structures, processes and practices. This research examines how an investment management system is introduced by a leading IT vendor across eight client sites in the post-crisis era. Using institutional theory, it examines changes in working practices occurring at the environmental and organizational levels and the ways in which technological interventions are used to apply disciplinary effects in order to prevent inappropriate behaviors. The results extend the constructs of deinstitutionalization and identify empirical predictors for the deinstitutionalization of compliance and trading practices within financial organizations.

The future of stakeholder management theory: a temporal perspective

We propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory, and assess the implications thereof for firm-level competitive advantage. We argue that a firm’s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related, transformational adaptation over time. Our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource-based view (RBV) in strategic management and institutional theory. Stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time, a phenomenon well understood in the literature, and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation. However, the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change, namely, from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity, and vice versa. When dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry, the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation. Stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage. Without these resources, which foster heterogeneity (in line with RBV thinking), the firm would not exist. At a later stage, stakeholders also contribute to inter-firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures (in line with institutional theory thinking). Adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory’s practical relevance to senior level management in business.

Procedural justice in procurement management and inclusive interorganizational relations: an institutional perspective

This paper applies the concept of procedural justice to one of the most important focal points of interorganizational relations: the purchaser–supplier relationship. The few extant studies of the concept in the purchaser–supplier domain have overlooked an important aspect of this key relationship: that is, inclusiveness in procurement. This is despite the fact that interest in the specific empirical context of supply chain links between large purchasing organizations (LPOs) and ethnic minority suppliers (EMSs) from disadvantaged communities proceeds apace on both sides of the Atlantic. Institutional theory is used to examine the form that procedural justice takes in eight case studies of LPOs from the private and public sectors, which actively engage with inclusive procurement management initiatives in England. The guiding question is twofold: ‘What may LPO approaches to installing procedural justice in procurement management entail?’ and ‘How are these approaches shaped?’ This paper identifies specific approaches to installing procedural justice for inclusive procurement and submits theoretical propositions about how these are shaped. The study contributes to a macro-level assessment of procedural justice, i.e. interorganizational procedural justice, as a significant aspect of inclusive interorganizational relationships, which is a domain in need of theoretical development.

Securing institutional legitimacy or organizational effectiveness?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of a major initiative (the National Competition Policy) and pieces of legislation (the Local Government Act and the Local Government Finance Standards) on the internal practices of a large Australian local authority.

Design/methodology/approach: A theoretical framework is developed using new public management (NPM) and neo-institutional theory literatures to explain the findings. A case study approach was applied to collect the data for the research.

Findings: The findings reveal that the National Competition Policy 1993, the Local Government Act 1993 and the Local Government Finance Standards 1994 mainly have brought about significant changes to the organisation's internal management control processes, such as financial reporting, budgeting and performance appraisal. The changes brought in appeared to be coincidentally similar to NPM ideals. Furthermore, senior managers (such as the chief executive and divisional heads) played a major role in implementing new accounting technologies (activity-based costing and the balanced scorecard type performance measurement system).

Research limitations/implications: Future research on public sector financial management from the outset of organisational contexts could considerably further the stock of knowledge in this area, especially given the rapid changes occurring within the public sector throughout the world. Future research may wish to extend this study by assessing how external legitimating functions become internal reality, the perceptions of reality of the organisational members, and how these perceptions change over time.

Practical implications: The findings reported provide evidence to further our understanding of how the introduction of private sector styles of organisational practices into large areas of the public sector brought about significant changes in the demand for “new” financial management practices.

Originality/value: The findings reported on in this paper will open a new path of research that may increase our understanding about the factors that play a role in the design of management and accounting systems in a public sector context. Further, they will help policy makers and public sector managers in their day-to-day decision-making.

The development of internal auditing in Ethiopia: the role of institutional norms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which institutional norms determine attributes of internal audit practices and how institutional changes explain the development of these practices.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors employed a qualitative research approach based on archival analysis and interview evidence.

Findings – Findings indicate that regulation-based institutional norms explain the adoption of internal audit and the function's characteristics in Ethiopian organizations. Furthermore, innovative introduction of internal audit practices originate within individual organizations and eventually get institutionalized through diffusion. Such innovations are associated with organizational size, top management characteristics, internal audit advancement in technology, and exogenous input from the external environment. Widely accepted internal audit practices, as institutional norms, are not always taken-for-granted at the level of individual organizations. The institutional change perspective enables explaining how new internal audit approaches are introduced to supplant old ones.

Originality/value – This study theorizes the development of internal audit practices from an institutional change perspective. Being the first study to do so, it contributes to the understanding of key drivers of institutional change that initiate new institutional norms that foster the development of internal audit through introduction and diffusion of new audit practices as old ones are deinstitutionalized.

Competitive and cooperative behavior in embedded markets: developing an institutional perspective on bazaars

In an ethnographic study of a retail setting, we examine relationships among competitors. We find that competitors often emphasize various forms of cooperation, and we describe socio-economic behaviors that illustrate how cooperation transcends or mediates competition among retailers. Retailers selectively cooperate and compete for customers in ways that alter our understandings of concepts such as loyalty and market stability, and practices such as marketing communications and pricing. We highlight the significance of these institutional practices and the role they play in forming and maintaining community in a bazaar.

Institutional Processes and Discursive Strategies: Rhetoric and Vocabulary Analysis of CSR and Sustainability

The candidate tackled an important issue in contemporary management: the role of CSR and Sustainability. The research proposal focused on a longitudinal and inductive research, directed to specify the evolution of CSR and contribute to the new institutional theory, in particular institutional work framework, and to the relation between institutions and discourse analysis. The documental analysis covers all the evolution of CSR, focusing also on a number of important networks and associations. Some of the methodologies employed in the thesis have been employed as a consequence of data analysis, in a truly inductive research process. The thesis is composed by two section. The first section mainly describes the research process and the analyses results. The candidates employed several research methods: a longitudinal content analysis of documents, a vocabulary research with statistical metrics as cluster analysis and factor analysis, a rhetorical analysis of justifications. The second section puts in relation the analysis results with theoretical frameworks and contributions. The candidate confronted with several frameworks: Actor-Network-Theory, Institutional work and Boundary Work, Institutional Logic. Chapters are focused on different issues: a historical reconstruction of CSR; a reflection about symbolic adoption of recurrent labels; two case studies of Italian networks, in order to confront institutional and boundary works; a theoretical model of institutional change based on contradiction and institutional complexity; the application of the model to CSR and Sustainability, proposing Sustainability as a possible institutional logic.

Institutional Complexity and Technology Transfer: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

This Doctoral Thesis unfolds into a collection of three distinct papers that share an interest in institutional theory and technology transfer. Taking into account that organizations are increasingly exposed to a multiplicity of demands and pressures, we aim to analyze what renders this situation of institutional complexity more or less difficult to manage for organizations, and what makes organizations more or less successful in responding to it. The three studies offer a novel contribution both theoretically and empirically. In particular, the first paper “The dimensions of organizational fields for understanding institutional complexity: A theoretical framework” is a theoretical contribution that tries to better understand the relationship between institutional complexity and fields by providing a framework. The second article “Beyond institutional complexity: The case of different organizational successes in confronting multiple institutional logics” is an empirical study which aims to explore the strategies that allow organizations facing multiple logics to respond more successfully to them. The third work “ How external support may mitigate the barriers to university-industry collaboration” is oriented towards practitioners and presents a case study about technology transfer in Italy.