Development of shared production facilities of the High Tech Factory: The process of the institutional entrepreneurship in a collaborative group
2009
In order to address complex problems, to serve clients more effectively or to gain legitimacy
companies join or form groups in which they cooperate with other companies. In such collaborative
groups companies want to reach their own goals as well as a collective goal. In the formation of
collaborative groups challenges related to trusting others and the goal of the collaboration are expected
to appear. A typical solution to such challenges is the installation of a governance mechanism. The
presence of a governance mechanism structures and directs the collaborative group. The creation and
installation of this governance mechanism is, however, subject to the same challenges affecting the
collaborative group in general. In order to overcome these internal challenges the involvement of an
external actor has been highlighted. The external actor will drive the process in which institutions are
created. This external actor can be called an institutional entrepreneur.
Institutional entrepreneurship refers to the process of creating institutions by the institutional
entrepreneur. This process is based on enabling conditions that characterize the starting position of the
institutional entrepreneur. These conditions are the position and characteristics of the institutional
entrepreneur, and the context in which the institutions are created. Previously, three steps have been
identified in the process of institutional entrepreneurship. These steps are the use of discursive
strategies, the mobilization of resources and the design and implementation of institutions. The process
of institutional entrepreneurship is a dynamic system in which institutions are created and used in
order to go further. In this process institutional entrepreneurs can come across challenges that might
change or divert the process itself, or the process may be influenced by other actors. While knowledge
about the evolution of the process of institutional entrepreneurship is highly valued, it has not been
investigated yet. This study was designed to fill this gap in the existing body of literature. The
following central question has been formulated to guide this research:
How does the process of institutional entrepreneurship evolve through the development of a
governance mechanism in a collaborative group?
It was not the focus of this study to investigate cooperative aspects of collaborative groups or the
organizational aspects of a shared institution, but rather the evolutionary perspective of the process
that creates the institutions and facilitates the collaborative group. In order to explore this subject a
single case was studied using a case study approach, where an external actor leads the creation of
institutions for a group of companies. The data was gathered and analyzed through a process of four
steps. First documents were studied and unstructured interviews were conducted to create an overview
of the case and prepare further steps. Thereafter semi-structured interviews were conducted and based
on these interviews a working document was used to create patterns. These patterns were created by
grouping statements and ideas from the data sources. The third step was composed of semi-structured
Pim Rossen, 2009
context interviews and the creation of case study reports. The final step was employing the methods
used to come to the conclusions of this study, inference loops were used to capture patterns and to
abstract strong claims from the available data. The findings of this study are presented by a model for
the process of institutional entrepreneurship and its application to the studied case.
I present a new, and more elaborate, model for the process of institutional, where multiple consecutive
cycles of the process institutional entrepreneurship are recognized. Every cycle is composed of the
steps that have been introduced previously, the use of discursive strategies, resource mobilization and
the design and implementation of new institutions. After each cycle the effects of discursive strategies,
activated resources and new institutions have changed the collaborative group. These changes are
identified through the aspects that characterize the collaborative group, namely the levels of trust,
commitment and goal consensus. The cyclic model implies that without the changes in the aspects of
collaborative groups the activities of the next cycle could not have been performed, which prevented
the realization through a single cycle of institutional entrepreneurship.
In the studied case three cycles were observed. Using the cyclic model changes in the goals and
activities of the institutional entrepreneur were identified and analyzed. The goals and activities are
based on the development of the collaborative group and changed after each completed cycle. The new
goals build on the institutions that have been created in the previous cycle(s), and are advancing
towards the envisioned situation. In the first cycle favorable short term incentives were used to commit
companies to the long term perspective. In the second and third cycle the activities of institutional
entrepreneurship are increasingly addressing companies as a resource as well as partners in the
development of the collaborative group. The envisioned institutions are directed towards establishment
and commercialization, and the activities are actions to gain and maintain internal and external
legitimacy, rather than cooperation. A very important point in the process of institutional
entrepreneurship proved to be the creation of mutual dependency between the envisioned institutions
and the companies in the collaborative group. Through the creation of mutual dependency the
challenges related to collaboration are avoided, as the companies will be cooperating primarily with
the collaborative group rather than with the other companies. With the dependency of the collaborative
group on its participating companies the conditions are provided for higher levels of trust, goal
consensus and commitment. In turn the created mutual dependency provides the collaborative group
with internal legitimacy and a basis for external legitimacy, as well as the resources for further
development.
The creation and application of the multi cycle model for the process of institutional entrepreneurship
directly contributes to this field of research in three ways. Primarily, the existing model, which has
only been coined recently (Leca et al., 2008), is further developed in this study. When the creation of
new institutions is studied, one will find that multiple cycles of institutional entrepreneurship will
MSc Thesis Business Administration
follow after each other, rather than that the institutions are created in one single run of the three steps.
The created model gives other researchers a tool to structure their studies. Secondly, earlier studies
have observed changes in the role of the institutional entrepreneur and have given explanations for
their particular changes. Based on the presented model the focus of the institutional entrepreneur can
be predicted on basis of the process, particularly based on the institutions that are created in the
preceding cycle. Thirdly, the emergence of mutual dependency gives a deeper understanding of the
use of discursive strategies, the mobilization of resources and the implementation of institutions. By
contributing to these steps in the process is shown that mutual dependency is of high importance in the
understanding of the entire process of institutional entrepreneurship.
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