Micro-strategies of Contextualization Cross-national Transfer of Socially Responsible Investment

This paper examines how individuals select and mobilize local institutions when they transfer business practices across societies that are construed as dissimilar to one another. We investigate empirically how the American business practice of socially responsible investment (SRI) was transferred to France and Quebec. Our analysis identifies five micro-strategies that were employed to contextualize SRI, namely filtering, rerouting, stowing, defusing, and coupling. This repertoire of micro-strategies extends previous research on contextualization, translation, and institutional transfers and links them to one another. They may also help explain why some transfers succeed while others fail.Contextualization; transfer; translation; institutional theory; socially responsible investment

I love my work but how do I make sense of it? The role of emotions in hybrid organizations

International audienceDespite the growing literature on hybrid organizations, little attention has been paid to the micro-processes that sustain their functionality, especially the role of emotions in individuals' efforts to cope with hybrid complexity. We empirically examine, through a case study in the renewable energy sector, how individuals relate emotionally to potentially divergent components of hybrid organizations. Drawing on the literature on psychological bonds and the findings from our case study, we develop a framework that specifies how individuals engage emotionally with the challenges of working in a hybrid organization. Based on this study, we argue that individuals are more likely to succeed in combining or integrating multiple demands when they establish psychological bonds of a medium level intensity to multiple components of a hybrid organization. In contrast, psychological bonds of low or high level intensity tend to undermine their capacity and/or motivation to cope emotionally with hybrid organizations. This framework sheds light on the affective engagement that, in combination with cognitive sensemaking, enables individuals to cope with, and navigate, the inherent paradoxes of working in a hybrid organization

The Emergence of a Proto-institution

This paper investigates the bringing into existence of a proto-institution, that is, a new practice, rule or technology that diffuses beyond the innovative setting, but which is not yet taken-for-granted in a field. A case study, conducted real-time, shows how a collaborative group of business actors deliberately develop a proto-institution. They transpose an institutional logic from another field and combine it with an institutional logic in the focal field to resolve a field-level problem. Enabling factors include a high level of institutional heterogeneity in the focal field, the use of inter-organizational networks, and actors embedded in multiple fields. The making of the proto-institution is intentional, yet the institutional building blocks and the apparent interests of actors are institutionally embedded. The results from this micro-dynamic analysis suggest revisions to current conceptualizations of institutional change processes. Keywords: Institutional change, proto-institution, cognition, institutional entrepreneurship, innovation, collaborative networks

Policy making as bricolage: the role of platforms in institutional innovation

International audienceThe making of environmental policies is a multi-stakeholders process where actors often hold antagonistic interests. The paper explores how institutional compromises are reached by the mechanism of collective bricolage. Recent studies are developing a view on institutional innovation as bricolage, but the conditions under which bricolage occurs and succeeds in relation to institutional innovation are still unknown. Drawing on the notion of platform developed in the context of economics performativity, we study their role in bricolage mechanisms. We hold an empirical case study of the GETS platform that was instrumental in developing the European carbon market as a corner-stone of European climate policy. Based on the GETS case study, we find three modalities in which platforms stimulate institutional bricolage: catalyzing combinations, managing learning, fostering compromise. These findings draw on, and extend, the notion of platforms developed in the context of economics performativity, contributing to a better understanding of processes of bricolage and, more widely, of institutional innovation. The managerial implication of this study is to identify the conditions under which compromises become manageable in processes of policy making.

EXPERIMENTATION AND BRICOLAGE ON INSTITUTIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE SELECTION OF NEW ARRANGEMENTS

International audienceThis paper examines how innovative institutional arrangements are generated during processes of institutional bricolage. The aim of the paper is to highlight how an arrangement is selected among the others when many alternative exist or are imaginable. To address this question, we present a qualitative study of institutional bricolage in the context of the making of the European carbon market. We suggest that, during episodes of experimental bricolage, alternative arrangements may be tested and evaluated inside experimental spaces named platforms. We identify three selection mechanisms of innovative arrangements at play inside such platforms: tacit compromise, natural selection and negotiation

How individuals cope with institutional complexity in organizations: a case study in the energy transition

International audienceThe present article examines how employees cope with an organizational setting that is institutionally complex. The empirical setting is a French energy corporation that simultaneously pursues a logic of science and a logic of market through multiple research partnerships with public and private actors engaged in the energy transition. We draw on the literature on institutional logics and hybrid organizations to examine how employees of this French energy corporation deal with this institutionally complex environment. Our findings point to three strategies that individuals use to cope with institutional complexity in their organizational setting: aggregating, selective coupling and compartmentalizing. Each individual uses only one strategy. The findings further suggest three psychological factors that seem to explain which of these strategies a given individual adopts for coping with institutional complexity: tolerance for ambiguity, preference for holism, and preference for reductionism. We integrate these findings into a two-dimensional model. These findings contribute to illuminating how individuals cope with institutional complexity in their organizational setting, an insight that can help shed light on why organizations respond somewhat differently to the same institutionally complex field

Standards and innovation in emerging fields: Pushing breakthrough innovation or enrolling actors? An analysis of eco-district standards in France and Denmark

International audienceStandards and norms are central objects for institutional studies. However, their role in innovation and the creation of novelty remain unclear, in particular in new / emerging fields. Accordingly, this paper investigates the relationship between standard setting and innovation, in the context of emerging organizational fields. We consider standardization in emerging fields as a socio-technical process, which must simultaneously promote a certain degree of innovation and enroll actors in order to succeed. We apply this perspective to compare standardization processes in the field of eco-districts, both in France and Denmark. Our analysis reveals different tensions, tradeoffs and priorities, among standards, between enrolment priorities, and the need to push forward technical innovation. We discuss how the two issues of constraints and enrollment can be articulated and combined

Cross-national Transfer of Socially Responsible Investment

This paper examines how individuals select and mobilize local institutions when they transfer business practices across societies that are construed as dissimilar to one another. We investigate empirically how the American business practice of socially responsible investment (SRI) was transferred to France and Quebec. Our analysis identifies five micro-strategies that were employed to contextualize SRI, namely filtering, rerouting, stowing, defusing, and coupling. This repertoire of micro-strategies extends previous research on contextualization, translation, and institutional transfers and links them to one another. They may also help explain why some transfers succeed while others fail

What Do We Know? Where Do We Go?

This paper analyzes the literature that has been published on institutional entrepreneurship since Paul DiMaggio introduced this notion in 1988. Based on a systematic selection and analysis of articles, the paper outlines an emerging consensus on the definition and process of institutional entrepreneurship. It also presents the enabling conditions that have been previously identified and reviews the research methods that have been applied to the study of institutional entrepreneurship. Finally, based on this analysis, this paper highlights future directions for research on this topic. Researchers may use this paper to build targeted and sophisticated research designs that add value to the emerging body of literature on institutional entrepreneurship. Keywords: Institutional Entrepreneur, Institutional Change, Paradox of Embedded Agenc

INNOVATION IN SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION: ECO-CITIES AND SOCIAL HOUSING IN FRANCE AND DENMARK

International audienceThe construction sector is often characterized as a reactive sector, as lagging behind other sectors of the economy, notably industry, when it comes to innovation; as mechanically responding to external (client) needs and implementing innovations that originate elsewhere (Winch 1998, Harty 2008). The sector is often presented as un-dynamic and un-innovative and as precluding novel design practices and tools, an orientation that seems to flow from its rigid routines, professional boundaries, division of labor, national legislation, established performance measures, and fixed ideas about best practices. Accordingly, building projects in the construction sector tend to reflect objectives and institutionalized practices other than those related to innovation and sustainability