Institutional Entrepreneurs between A Rock and A Hard Place

The present study contributes to the literature on institutional entrepreneurship by exploring the phenomenon of failure – particularly, how it is construed as such and de-emphasized through face-saving efforts by institutional entrepreneurs. We draw on extant research on institutional entrepreneurship in established fields and insights from social movement literature and political theories of organizations to illustrate how a French business school tried and failed to promote a new MBA program format for students with no prior work experience. The longitudinal case study reveals several mechanisms which played a central role in increasing the project’s ambiguity and ultimately forced a strategic reorientation: (1) the institutional entrepreneurs’ inability to mobilize collectivities and persuade them of the credibility and appropriateness of the innovation, despite their central position in the French business education field; (2) the subsequent centralization of the audience’s social structure and their counter-mobilization around an alternative institutional project; (3) the expansion of organizational membership bringing in new actors who challenged the institutional innovation thereby feeding political struggles inside the organization. We also elaborate on organizational recovery from failure by showing (1) how the conjunction of intra-organizational and field-level factors led the institutional entrepreneurs to construe their innovation as unsuccessful and compelled them to acknowledge failure; and (2) how they sought to minimize the damage of a strategic U-turn and save face in the eyes of key audiences.