No end in sight:How regimes form barriers to addressing the wicked problem of displacement

Wicked problems are complex and dispersed challenges that go beyond the capacity of individual organizations and require a response by multiple actors, often in the form of transnational regimes. While research on regimes has provided insights into such collective responses, less is known about how such regimes may form barriers that hinder and block appropriate responses to addressing wicked problems. Exploring the problematic role of regime-level responses is timely given that many of today’s wicked problems are far from being alleviated and in many instances appear instead to be intensifying. We draw from complementary insights of regime theory and research on institutional barriers to explore our research question: How do regimes form barriers to addressing wicked problems, and which mechanisms sustain such barriers? We explore this question with a longitudinal case study of the transnational regime for refugee protection and its response to displacement in Rwanda. From our findings, we develop a model of dissociation that explains how actors move further away from addressing a wicked problem. We identify four dissociative mechanisms (discounting, delimiting, separating, and displaying) that each create a distinct regime-level barrier. These barriers are distributed and mutually reinforcing, which makes it increasingly hard for actors to find alternative ways of responding to an escalating problem. Our study provides insights for research on regimes and wicked problems as well as studies on institutional barriers. We conclude with policy implications for overcoming those barriers, in line with the wider concerns and motivations of this special issue

Field or fields? Building the scaffolding for cumulation of research on institutional fields

© Academy of Management, all rights reserved. The concept of an institutional field is one of the cornerstones of institutional theory, and yet the concept has been stretched both theoretically and empirically, making consolidation of findings across multiple studies more difficult. In this article, we review the literature and analyze empirical studies of institutional fields to build scaffolding for the cumulation of research on institutional fields. Our review revealed two types of fields: exchange and issue fields, with three subtypes of each. We describe their characteristics, and subsequently, review field conditions in the extant literature and develop a typology based on two dimensions: the extent of elaboration of institutional infrastructure and the extent to which there is an agreed-upon prioritization of logics. We discuss the implications of field types and conditions for isomorphism, agency, and field change, based on a review of the literature that revealed six pathways of field change and the factors affecting them. We outline a research agenda based on our review highlighting the need for consolidation of field studies and identify several outstanding issues that are in need of further research

La décentralisation en France : le point de vue d'un étranger

Hinings Bob. La décentralisation en France : le point de vue d'un étranger. In: Annuaire des collectivités locales. Tome 2, 1982. pp. 32-39

CAOS CRIADOR OU EVOLUIR DENTRO DA CONTINUIDADE - TRANSFORMAR A ORGANIZAÇÃO - POR QUE, COMO E EM QUE DIREÇÃO AS ORGANIZAÇÓES SE TRANSFORMAM

No campo da mudança organizacional, existem contradições fundamentais entre os trabalhos destinados aos práticos e os estudos teóricos e empíricos feitos por pesquisadores acadêmicos. Nosso estudo visa a determinar as divergências fundamentais entre esses dois appraaches, examinar as fontes e avaliar como podemos utilizar os trabalhos de natureza empírica para tirar deles recomendações mais sensatas e mais realis¬tas sobre a maneira como as organizações poderiam negociar a mudança

An organizational model for understanding internationalization processes

We propose an organizational model for understanding internationalization processes. We argue that these processes differ with the type of organization. We compare the internationalization processes of three organization types: the mass production organization; the disaggregated production organization; and the project-based organization. Each organization type responds differently to critical elements of the internationalization process, namely, the focus of entry, the degree of presence and physical presence requirements in the foreign market, which in turn influence what modal forms are adopted as the process progresses. Consequently, we observe different approaches to resource commitment in the foreign market over time.