Institutional Context Supplement 5 Flashcards
institutional capabilities
refers to the ability of organizations to understand, recognize, and shape institutions
Institutional Capabilities from least resistant to most resistant
Compliance Compromise Avoidance Defiance Influence Entrepreneurship
imprinting effects
institutional capabilities of organizations are in part influenced by their past institutional context.
How does the imprinting effect develop?
When an organization develops organizational characteristics that reflect prominent features of the environment. These organizational characteristics subsequently persist, even when significant environmental changes occur in later periods.
When are organization prone to be imprinted?
During brief sensitive periods of susceptibility to external influences.
Examples for periods in which firms are susceptible to external influence
Birth, extraordinary event (financial crisis)
Four institutional capabilities the influence how organizations del with the institutional context by Christine Oliver
- compliance
- compromise
- avoidance
- defiance
Compliance
conscious or unconscious adherence to the rules of the game.
What might compliance help with?
To be viewed as legitimate
When do organizations most likely choose compliance?
When all stakeholders in an organizational fields are aligned and conformity is in the best interest of the organization
When is compliance a purposeful decision?
- conscious willingness of firm to comply with rules
- firm understands the institutional context
- disobeying creates too much legitimacy risk.
Compromise
situation with contradictory institutional demands
a) stakeholders conflicting expectations
b) expectations in the institutional context diverge from the internal organizational objectives
Institutional diversity
refers to the extent to which organizational fields are characterized by a multitude of stakeholders with varying interests and expectations for the organization
What does successfully attaining a compromise depend on?
ability to balance expectations of stakeholders and negotiate with stakeholders
Balancing
Appeasing stakeholders with conflicting interest as much as possible
Pacifying
partial compliance by removing sensitive parts
Bargaining
active dialogue
What to do to accomplish a compromise that best fits the organization?
Conduct stakeholder analysis
stakeholder analysis
to understand the network of relations among stakeholders, and to determine stakeholder value
stakeholder value
benefits and costs of each stakeholder group for a firm
internal organizational fields
understanding the diverse objectives and interest of different functional departments, business units, domestic and foreign subsidiaries.
What does stakeholder analysis entail?
a) how central stakeholders are in this web
b) how their relations are with other stakeholders
c) whether they could form alliances with these other stakeholders
Avoidance
form of rejecting elements of the institutional context.
Forms of avoidance
leaving the context altogether or often:
a) disguise nonconformity
b) buffer activities
buffering activities
partially detaching or decoupling activities that would reveal noncompliance from external view:
placing sensitive, illegitimate, non-conforming activities behind neutral/positive front.
One example of decoupling activities
decoupling poor work conditions