Institutional inertia and practice variation

PurposeInstitutional theory had been developed for the purpose of explaining widespread diffusion, mimetic adoption and institutionalization of organizational practices. However, further extensions of institutional theory are needed to explain a range of different institutional trajectories and organizational responses since institutionalized standards constitute a minority of all diffusing practices. The study presents a theoretical framework which offers guidelines for explaining and predicting various adoption, variation and post-adoption scenarios.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is primarily conceptual in nature, and the arguments are developed based on previous institutional theory and organizational change literature.FindingsThe notion of institutional inertia is proposed in order to provide a more detailed explanation of when and why organizations ignore, adopt, modify, maintain and abandon practices and the way intra-organizational institutional pressures shape, direct and constrain these processes. It is specified whether institutional inertia will be temporarily eclipsed or whether it will actively manifest itself during adoption, adaptation and maintaining attempts. The study distinguishes between four institutional profiles of organizational practices – institutionalized, institutionally friendly, neutral and contested practices – which can vary along three dimensions: accuracy, extensiveness and meaning. The variation and post-adoption outcomes for each of them can be completely characterized and predicted by only three parameters: the rate of institutional inertia, institutional profile of these practices and whether they are interpretatively flexible. In turn, an extent of intraorganizational institutional resistance to new practices is determined by their institutional profile and flexibility.Practical implicationsIt is expected that proposed theoretical explanations in this paper can offer insights into these empirical puzzles and supply a broader view of organizational and management changes. The study’s theoretical propositions help to understand what happens to organizational practices after they are handled by organizations, thus moving beyond the adoption/rejection dichotomy.Originality/valueThe paper explores and clarifies the nature of institutional inertia and offers an explanation of its manifestation in organizations over time and how it shapes organizational practices in the short and long run. It challenges a popular assumption in organizational literature that fast and revolutionary transition is a prerequisite for successful change. More broadly, the typology offered in this paper helps to explain whether and how organizations can successfully handle and complete their change and how far they can depart from institutional norms.

Mapping the impact of papers on various status groups in excellencemapping.net: a new release of the excellence mapping tool based on citation and reader scores

In over five years, Bornmann, Stefaner, de Moya Anegon, and Mutz (2014b) and Bornmann, Stefaner, de Moya Anegón, and Mutz (2014c, 2015) have published several releases of the www.excellencemapping.net tool revealing (clusters of) excellent institutions worldwide based on citation data. With the new release, a completely revised tool has been published. It is not only based on citation data (bibliometrics), but also Mendeley data (altmetrics). Thus, the institutional impact measurement of the tool has been expanded by focusing on additional status groups besides researchers such as students and librarians. Furthermore, the visualization of the data has been completely updated by improving the operability for the user and including new features such as institutional profile pages. In this paper, we describe the datasets for the current excellencemapping.net tool and the indicators applied. Furthermore, the underlying statistics for the tool and the use of the web application are explained.

The Joint Effect of Institutional Profile and National Innovation System on the types of Entrepreneurship

While prior research has uncovered the impact of some national institutions on the general level of entrepreneurship in a country, there is still limited knowledge about the role of the institutional arrangements of a country on specific types of entrepreneurial activities, namely necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship. To address this gap, we conduct a multilevel analysis using a sample of 10776 individuals from 55 diverse countries to examine how institutional factors (i.e., countries’ institutional profile and national innovation system) impact entrepreneur’s choice of pursuing a specific type of entrepreneurship. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling, the findings indicate that neither institutional profile nor national innovation system (NIS) elements solely determine the choice between opportunity motivated entrepreneurship (OME) and necessity motivated entrepreneurship (NME); however, OME tends to be higher in instances when supportive institutional arrangements (regulatory, normative, and cognitive) toward entrepreneurship get coupled with national innovation system factors. The study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of embedded agency within the institutional logics perspective. It bridges the literature on individual and institutional antecedents of entrepreneurship. Further implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The influence of institutional context on entrepreneurial intention: evidence from the Saudi young community

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how a country’s institutional environment is impacting the young community’s entrepreneurial intention through perceived desirability and feasibility as mediators. Design/methodology/approach This research applies and validates a measure of a country’s institutional profile for entrepreneurship to Saudi university students. This research develops a structural model to investigate the young community’s perceptions about their institutional context, desirability and feasibility and their influence on entrepreneurial intentions. Data was collected from 287 Saudi young communities (university students) from several public universities located in Riyadh. Structural equation modeling analysis was applied to examine the structural model of entrepreneurial intentions. Findings Research findings revealed positive and significant relationships between institutional context dimensions and young community students’ perceived desirability and feasibility and between students’ perceived desirability and feasibility and their entrepreneurial intentions. Their perceived desirability and feasibility were shown to have positive full mediation effects on the relationships between institutional environment dimensions and entrepreneurial intention. Research limitations/implications Research Implications are advanced to help researchers and practitioners in considering the institutional environment for promoting entrepreneurship. Limitations and future research directions are discussed for better generalization of findings and renewed streams of research in the field. Originality/value To the best knowledge of the author, this research is one of the first studies to apply the scale on the institutional country profile to Saudi Arabia with a young community. Studies linking institutional profile to entrepreneurial intentions were also limited in developing countries having a young population. This might catch the attention of researchers, educators and policy-makers.

Local Institutional Profile and the Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Intention

We investigate the effects of the local institutional profile on the antecedents of entrepreneurial intention. First, we advance a conceptual model based on the theory of planned behavior and on institutional theory. In our model, local government policies, regional shared social knowledge and local value systems affect cognition of individuals with regard to entrepreneurial intention. We then test our model using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on a survey of 2150 respondents in Brazil. The country is particularly interesting for the analysis since it presents a continental dimension, being formed by five regions with different geographic, economic, and social characteristics. Our regression models corroborate our hypotheses. Perceived behavior control is a function of both the local cognitive dimension and the local regulatory dimension. The personal attitude is determined by all the local institutional dimensions (cognitive, regulatory, and normative dimensions). Subjective norms, in turn, are a function of the local normative dimension. This effect is interesting because it points to regional variability in the way individuals appreciate entrepreneurial activity and how this translates into a statistically significant difference in entrepreneurial intention among the country’s regions.

OECD iLibrary

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an international organization that measures and documents trends, economics and socio-political issues arising within its member countries. Its primary publication, the OECD iLibrary, facilitates, collates, and makes easily navigable collaborative research from across various international sectors, regional boundaries and interests. It is also possible to search this database by national affiliations as well. Researchers may access contents via theme, content type or format, or by country. Content is made available in several common formats: PDF, ePub, WEB, READ, CHART, DATA, XLS, CSV, and others. Over 60 million e-books, articles, statistical analyses and projections are on offer from over 80 countries through this database. The search and discovery experience is enhanced by the content’s interface design and value-add services such as temporary storage My Favorites. Authentication across a variety of options is available, and purchase and contract provisions are negotiable by institutional profile. For the Librarian manager, MARC records in two formats are provided for all content to facilitate ready integration with other institutional holdings.

Género y perfil en las autorías y colaboraciones de Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación (2010-2019)

A descriptive and retrospective study is presented, from a gender perspective, focusing mainly on the profile of authorship but also on that of collaborators of the Mediterranean Journal of Communication (RMC) during its 10 years of existence. The objective is to make visible the relevance, role and contribution of women to knowledge in the field of Communication. The sample: 414 authors of 238 articles and 30 coordinators of 17 monographs are analyzed. Dimensions and variables: sociodemographic profile (name, surname and gender), institutional profile (institution and geographical origin), researcher (title, language/s, abstract and PhD degree), Google Scholar profile (citations, H index and H-10 index) and presence in Orcid. Results: the woman acquires protagonism, both as author of articles (production role) and coordinator of monographs (organization role) but men are more cited than women (leadership role).