Development and illustrative outputs of the Community Integrated Assessment System (CIAS), a multi-institutional modular integrated assessment approach for modelling climate change.

This paper describes the development and first results of the “Community Integrated Assessment System” (CIAS), a unique multi-institutional modular and flexible integrated assessment system for modelling climate change. Key to this development is the supporting software infrastructure, SoftIAM. Through it, CIAS is distributed between the community of institutions which has each contributed modules to the CIAS system. At the heart of SoftIAM is the Bespoke Framework Generator (BFG) which enables flexibility in the assembly and composition of individual modules from a pool to form coupled models within CIAS, and flexibility in their deployment onto the available software and hardware resources. Such flexibility greatly enhances modellers’ ability to re-configure the CIAS coupled models to answer different questions, thus tracking evolving policy needs. It also allows rigorous testing of the robustness of IA modelling results to the use of different component modules representing the same processes (for example, the economy). Such processes are often modelled in very different ways, using different paradigms, at the participating institutions. An illustrative application to the study of the relationship between the economy and the earth’s climate system is provided.

A Historical-Institutional Study of the Welfare Systems in the United States and Sweden: Net Social Wage Approach

In this study I first look at the historical developments of the welfare systems in Sweden and the United States to understand why these countries have produced two distinct systems over the years. After understanding their historical context I turn to the question of the relationship between the welfare system and economic growth. Policy makers and the mainstream media commonly cite the critique that through government deficit and public debt, welfare systems are a drag on the economy. By calculating the net social wage, the difference in taxes paid and benefits received by workers, I test this hypothesis to see if welfare systems are self-financed by the workers. My findings demonstrate that the net social wage has been negative in the U.S. from 1962 to the early 2000s and in Sweden from 1965 to 2012. This shows that the welfare systems are entirely self-financed by the workers for the full period in Sweden and until the recent financial crisis in the U.S.

Whole of Government Approach for Institutional and Policy Coherence

The comprehensive structure of cooperation at domestic level reflects on bilateral, regional and global level.

Parties and politics : an institutional and behavioral approach /

Includes bibliographical references and index.

An approach to ontology for institutional facts in the semantic web

Refinement in software engineering allows a specification to be developed in stages, with design decisions taken at earlier stages constraining the design at later stages. Refinement in complex data models is difficult due to lack of a way of defining constraints, which can be progressively maintained over increasingly detailed refinements. Category theory provides a way of stating wide scale constraints. These constraints lead to a set of design guidelines, which maintain the wide scale constraints under increasing detail. Previous methods of refinement are essentially local, and the proposed method does not interfere very much with these local methods. The result is particularly applicable to semantic web applications, where ontologies provide systems of more or less abstract constraints on systems, which must be implemented and therefore refined by participating systems. With the approach of this paper, the concept of committing to an ontology carries much more force. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Doing which work? A practice approach to institutional pluralism

This chapter takes a social theory of practice approach to examining institutional work; that is, how institutions are created, maintained, and disrupted through the actions, interactions, and negotiations of multiple actors. We examine alternative approaches that organizations use to deal with institutional pluralism based on a longitudinal real-time case study of a utility company grappling with opposing market and regulatory logics over time. These two logics required the firm to both mitigate its significant market power and also maintain its commercially competitive focus and responsiveness to shareholders. Institutional theorists have long acknowledged that institutions have a central logic (Friedland & Alford, 1991) or rationality (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 1995/2001; Townley, 2002), comprising a set of material and symbolic practices and organizing principles that provide logics of action for organizations and individuals, who then reproduce the institutions through their actions (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2005; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Despite a monolithic feel to much institutional theory, in which a dominant institutional logic appears to prevail, institutional theorists also acknowledge the plurality of institutions (e.g. Friedland & Alford, 1991; Kraatz & Block, 2008; Lounsbury, 2007; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Whittington, 1992). While these pluralistic institutions may be interdependent, they are not considered to coexist in harmony; “There is no question but that many competing and inconsistent logics exist in modern society” (Scott, 1995: 130).

Does institutional quality affect firm performance? Insights from a semiparametric approach

Using a novel modeling approach, and cross-country firm level data for the textiles industry, we examine the impact of institutional quality on firm performance. Our methodology allows us to estimate the marginal impact of institutional quality on productivity of each firm. Our results bring into question conventional wisdom about the desirable characteristics of market institutions, which is based on empirical evidence about the impact of institutional quality on the average firm. We demonstrate, for example, that once both the direct impact of a change in institutional quality on total factor productivity and the indirect impact through changes in efficiency of use of factor inputs are taken into account, an increase in labor market rigidity may have a positive impact on firm output, at least for some firms. We also demonstrate that there are significant intra-country variations in the marginal impact of institutional quality, such that the characteristics of “winners” and “losers” will have to be taken into account before policy is introduced to change institutional quality in any direction.

Antecedents, mechanisms and processes of deinstitutionalization and institutional change:a case study approach to understanding enterprise under duress

Adopting a grounded theory methodology, the study describes how an event and pressure impact upon a process of deinstitutionalization and institutional change. Three case studies were theoretically sampled in relation to each other. They yielded mainly qualitative data from methods that included interviews, observations, participant observations, and document reviews. Each case consisted of a boundaried cluster of small enterprises that were not industry specific and were geographically dispersed. Overall findings describe how an event, i.e. a stimulus, causes disruption, which in turn may cause pressure. Pressure is then translated as a tension within the institutional environment, which is characterized by opposing forces that encourage institutional breakdown and institutional maintenance. Several contributions are made: Deinstitutionalization as a process is inextricable from the formation of institutions – both are needed to make sense of institutional change on a conceptual level but are also inseparable experientially in the field; stimuli are conceptually different to pressures; the historical basis of a stimulus may impact on whether pressure and institutional change occurs; pressure exists in a more dynamic capacity rather than only as a catalyst; institutional breakdown is a non-linear irregular process; ethical and survival pressures as new types were identified; institutional current, as an underpinning mechanism, influences how the tension between institutional breakdown and maintenance plays out.

The French fifth Republic as an opportunity structure:a neo-institutional and cultural approach to the study of leadership politics

The Gaullist settlement of 1958 reconfigured the political institutions of France, introducing into the republican mainstream a new form of leadership politics. Adapting the literature on political opportunity structure (POS) theory, and using the French left as a case study, can help us understand how political parties, ideology and leadership adapt to political institutions and norms. It also illuminates what the consequences are of such adaptation in the contemporary period, particularly as regards the institutionally bound roles of political 'character', protocol and discourse. The paper appraises the relevance and appropriateness of POS theory to leadership politics in France.

Varieties of Asian capitalism : toward an institutional theory of Asian enterprise

In this paper we respond to calls for an institution-based perspective on strategy. With its emphasis upon mimetic, coercive, and normative isomorphism, institutional theory has earned a deterministic reputation and seems an unlikely foundation on which to construct a theory of strategy. However, a second movement in institutional theory is emerging that gives greater emphasis to creativity and agency. We develop this approach by highlighting co-evolutionary processes that are shaping the varieties of capitalism (VoC) in Asia. To do so, we examine the extent to which the VoC model can be fruitfully applied in the Asian context. In the spirit of the second movement of institutional theory, we describe three processes in which firm strategy collectively and intentionally feeds back to shape institutions: (1) filling institutional voids, (2) retarding institutional innovation, and (3) deploying institutional escape. We outline the key contributions contained in the articles of this Special Issue and discuss a research agenda generated by the VoC perspective.

Towards a model of the institutional logics of climate change

The proliferation of innovative schemes to address climate change at international, national and local levels signals a fundamental shift in the priority and role of the natural environment to society, organizations and individuals. This shift in shared priorities invites academics and practitioners to consider the role of institutions in shaping and constraining responses to climate change at multiple levels of organisations and society. Institutional theory provides an approach to conceptualising and addressing climate change challenges by focusing on the central logics that guide society, organizations and individuals and their material and symbolic relationship to the environment. For example, framing a response to climate change in the form of an emission trading scheme evidences a practice informed by a capitalist market logic (Friedland and Alford 1991). However, not all responses need necessarily align with a market logic. Indeed, Thornton (2004) identifies six broad societal sectors each with its own logic (markets, corporations, professions, states, families, religions). Hence, understanding the logics that underpin successful –and unsuccessful– climate change initiatives contributes to revealing how institutions shape and constrain practices, and provides valuable insights for policy makers and organizations. This paper develops models and propositions to consider the construction of, and challenges to, climate change initiatives based on institutional logics (Thornton and Ocasio 2008). We propose that the challenge of understanding and explaining how climate change initiatives are successfully adopted be examined in terms of their institutional logics, and how these logics evolve over time. To achieve this, a multi-level framework of analysis that encompasses society, organizations and individuals is necessary (Friedland and Alford 1991). However, to date most extant studies of institutional logics have tended to emphasize one level over the others (Thornton and Ocasio 2008: 104). In addition, existing studies related to climate change initiatives have largely been descriptive (e.g. Braun 2008) or prescriptive (e.g. Boiral 2006) in terms of the suitability of particular practices. This paper contributes to the literature on logics by examining multiple levels: the proliferation of the climate change agenda provides a site in which to study how institutional logics are played out across multiple, yet embedded levels within society through institutional forums in which change takes place. Secondly, the paper specifically examines how institutional logics provide society with organising principles –material practices and symbolic constructions– which enable and constrain their actions and help define their motives and identity. Based on this model, we develop a series of propositions of the conditions required for the successful introduction of climate change initiatives. The paper proceeds as follows. We present a review of literature related to institutional logics and develop a generic model of the process of the operation of institutional logics. We then consider how this is applied to key initiatives related to climate change. Finally, we develop a series of propositions which might guide insights into the successful implementation of climate change practices.

Transition pedagogy : a third generation approach to FYE : a case study of policy and practice for the higher education sector

Current research and practice related to the first year experience (FYE) of commencing higher education students are still mainly piecemeal rather than institution-wide with institutions struggling to achieve cross-institutional integration, coordination and coherence of FYE policy and practice. Drawing on a decade of FYE-related research including an ALTC Senior Fellowship and evidence at a large Australian metropolitan university, this paper explores how one institution has addressed that issue by tracing the evolution and maturation of strategies that ultimately conceptualize FYE as “everybody's business.” It is argued that, when first generation co-curricular and second generation curricular approaches are integrated and implemented through an intentionally designed curriculum by seamless partnerships of academic and professional staff in a whole-of-institution transformation, we have a third generation approach labelled here as transition pedagogy. It is suggested that transition pedagogy provides the optimal vehicle for dealing with the increasingly diverse commencing student cohorts by facilitating a sense of engagement, support and belonging. What is presented here is an example of transition pedagogy in action.