Examining Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Passage of Youth Sport Concussion Legislation

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Landy Di Lu ◽  
Kathryn L. Heinze

New sport policies often prompt organizations in the field to alter their structures and processes. Little is known, however, about the tactics of those leading institutional change around sport policy. To address this gap, the authors draw on the concept of institutional entrepreneurship—the activities of actors who leverage resources to create institutional change. Using a qualitative case study approach, the authors examine how two coalitions that served as institutional entrepreneurs in Washington and Oregon created and passed the first youth sport concussion legislation in the United States. The analysis of this study reveals that these coalitions (including victims’ families, sport organizations, advocacy groups, and concussion specialists) engaged in political, technical, and cultural activities through the use of specific tactics that allowed them to harness expertise and resources and generate support for the legislation. Furthermore, the findings of this study suggest a sequencing to these activities, captured in a model of institutional entrepreneurship around sport policy.

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110205
Author(s):  
Giulia Mariani ◽  
Tània Verge

Building on historical and discursive institutionalism, this article examines the agent-based dynamics of gradual institutional change. Specifically, using marriage equality in the United States as a case study, we examine how actors’ ideational work enabled them to make use of the political and discursive opportunities afforded by multiple venues to legitimize the process of institutional change to take off sequentially through layering, displacement, and conversion. We also pay special attention to how the discursive strategies deployed by LGBT advocates, religious-conservative organizations and other private actors created new opportunities to influence policy debates and tip the scales to their preferred policy outcome. The sequential perspective adopted in this study allows problematizing traditional conceptualizations of which actors support or contest the status quo, as enduring oppositional dynamics lead them to perform both roles in subsequent phases of the institutional change process.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (27) ◽  
pp. 329-344
Author(s):  
Nadine Bonda

Beginning in 2009, and with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, school districts across the United States began to be held to higher standards and their progress publicly reported.  Student achievement began to be measured by standardized testing and great efforts were being made to reduce the achievement gap. This paper is based on a five-year study of teacher evaluation in two urban districts in Massachusetts where improving teacher practice was seen as an important factor in raising student achievement. This research studied efforts to address those teachers who were identified as underperforming and were supported through individual improvement plans.  This paper used a case study approach to show what the practices of a sampling of these teachers looked like, teachers’ reactions to being rated unsatisfactory, and teachers’ reactions to the improvement planning process.


Author(s):  
Michel J. G. van Eeten ◽  
Emery Roe

From the outset, the book’s chief policy question has resolved around the problem of how to manage. As this was addressed in the preceding chapters, a new question arises: what are the implications for policies governing the meeting of the twofold management goal of restoring ecosystems while maintaining service reliability? This chapter provides our answer to that question by means of a new case study. It sums up the book’s argument and recasts ecosystem management and policy for ecologists, engineers, and other stakeholders. The best way to draw out the policy-relevant ramifications of our framework and the preceding management insights is to apply them to a different ecosystem. The case-study approach has served us well in contextualizing management recommendations without, we believe, compromising their more general application to ecosystem management. Our analysis of the major land-use planning controversy in the Netherlands underscores the wider applicability of this book’s arguments for both management and policy. What follows is put more briefly because it builds on the analysis of and recommendations for the Columbia River Basin, San Francisco Bay-Delta, and the Everglades. Why the Netherlands? There are human-dominated ecosystems substantially different from those found in the United States, many of which are more densely populated. They have nothing remotely like “wilderness,” but instead long histories of constructing and managing “nature.” The Netherlands is one such landscape. Not only is the landscape different, it is also important to note that the context for ecosystem management is set by different political, social, and cultural values. Sustainability is a much more dominant value in the European context than currently in the United States. Case-by-case management, while also appropriate for zones of conflict outside the United States, now has to deal with the fact that there is a tension between its call for case-specific indicators and the use of more general sustainability indicators in Europe. In die Netherlands, for example, sustainable housing projects are designed and assessed not only in terms of specific indicators but also in light of the “factor 20 increase in environmental efficiency” needed to achieve sustainability.


Author(s):  
Kate Vieira

This chapter tells the story of the research. It first lays out the research question: How do transnational families’ experiences with migration-driven literacy learning shift across their lifespans in relation to changing political borders, economic circumstances, and technologies? It then describes the field sites in which the question was addressed: Latvia, Brazil, and the United States. Next, it outlines the reasoning behind the author’s methodological choices. Specifically, it elaborates on the author’s use of a comparative case study approach to develop the book’s central concept, “migration-driven literacy learning.” In doing so, the chapter describes how the project entailed both “reasearching across lives” and “researching across continents.” Finally, it offers a brief overview of the rest of the book.


2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gea D. M. Wijers

This paper explores the experiences of Cambodian French returnees who are contributing to transformative change in Cambodia as institutional entrepreneurs. In order to delve into how returnees and their work are perceived in both host and home country, this multi-sited research project was designed as a comparative case study. Data was primarily collected through conversations with individual informants from the Lyonnese and Parisian Cambodian community as well as selected key informants in Phnom Penh. Excerpts of case studies are presented and discussed to illustrate the history, context and situation of their return as these influence their institutional entrepreneurial activities and the ways in which they use their transnational social networks as resources. It is argued that the process of return and the initiation of institutional entrepreneurship are best explored through the threefold activities of returnees’ brokering, bargaining and building for transformative change as affected by (trans)national opportunity structures and institutions.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 1079-1100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Wijen ◽  
Shahzad Ansari

Studies on institutional change generally pertain to the agency-structure paradox or the ability of institutional entrepreneurs to spearhead change despite constraints. In many complex fields, however, change also needs cooperation from numerous dispersed actors with divergent interests. This presents the additional paradox of ensuring that these actors engage in collective action when individual interests favor lack of cooperation. We draw on complementary insights from institutional and regime theories to identify drivers of collective institutional entrepreneurship and develop an analytical framework. This is applied to the field of global climate policy to illustrate how collective inaction was overcome to realize a global regulatory institution, the Kyoto Protocol.


Author(s):  
Alex Traugutt ◽  
Jacob Augustin ◽  
Rammi Hazzaa

Research on athletic identity has been robust, however, there remains a gap in the literature regarding its perceived impact among collegiate club sport athletes. The subject of the present study was the niche sport of quidditch, a co-ed contact sport that is currently being played at over 200 colleges and universities across the United States. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate the perceptions of athletic identity among quidditch participants. In addition, it was also of interest to understand the degree to which spectators perceive the athletic identity of the participants and the game of quidditch in general. A two-phase, case study approach was utilized which featured both club quidditch team members and spectators at a regional club tournament as participants. Results from our thematic analysis yielded four primary themes; quidditch as a sport, participation for sport, participation for social interaction, and the Harry Potter effect. Concurrently, many spectators identified the quidditch participants as athletes although they were not as defiant in their identification of quidditch as a sport. These findings have notable implications for college students seeking to continue their athletic endeavors via an alternative sport experience and administrators who are seeking to expand their sport offerings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Annie Taccolini Pannagio ◽  
Odessa Gonzalez Benson

Policy related to refugee integration focuses on economic factors, while integration is not clearly operationalized nor is it being systematically measured and tracked in policy implementation. This study poses the question, how can local-level integration be conceptualized based on the perspectives of resettled refugees, to add nuance to policy. Using a case study approach with a nation-wide scale, data include 40 interviews and five focus groups with leaders of Bhutanese refugee-run organizations in 35 cities across the United States. Findings illustrate the importance of bonds, bridges and links in non-linear, relational integration. Findings also suggest that better access to services and resources is the responsibility of policy-makers and would lead to stronger bridges over time. This complicates existing policy and implies that resettlement programming should remain individualized and contextual from the ground level to the national level.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy M. Hageman ◽  
Donna Bobek Schmitt

ABSTRACT: Within the United States, the current sales and use tax (SUT) system is riddled with complexity, in part because of the lack of coordination between jurisdictions. One vehicle of cooperative state action is the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA). This study employs an in-depth qualitative analysis of three states to examine the institutional and political influences on a state's decision to adopt legislation conforming to the provisions of this interjurisdictional tax agreement, and the political strategies and tactics used by supporting and opposing interest groups. Relying on interest group theory and institutional theory, case study results indicate that governmental interest groups, rather than businesses, play an important role in the adoption of inter-jurisdictional tax policy changes. The presence of strong institutional entrepreneurs and normative pressures to adopt are also critical. These findings have significant implications for jurisdictions that seek to adopt a consolidated tax base across member states, including the SSUTA, as well as potential harmonization attempts by the European Union.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Anne Rogers Poliakoff ◽  
Keith M. Sturges

The United States Department of Education funds comprehensive centers to deliver technical assistance to state education agencies to strengthen their capacity to perform their responsibilities. One of these centers, the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center (ARCC), delivers technical assistance to agencies in four states. Annually, the ARCC conducts a comprehensive evaluation, into which a case study component was introduced in the third year. A multiple case study approach offered to enhance the evaluation's capacity to encompass and describe the complexity of the ARCC program. We identified one case initiative per agency, selecting those with the most potential to shed light on the practice of capacity building. Across the four cases, we eventually detected five issues: capacity building, staffing, communication, defining the work, and sustainability. Their identification enhanced our understanding of the ways that capacity building technical assistance (TA) operated in different contexts, enabling us to offer feedback to staff and leadership that could improve the design of TA.


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