Organizational settlements: theorizing how organizations respond to institutional complexity

Research on hybrid organizations and institutional complexity commonly depicts the presence of multiple logics within organizations as an exceptional situation. In this essay, we argue that all organizations routinely adhere to multiple institutional logics. Institutional complexity only arises episodically, when organizations embrace a newly salient logic. We propose two concepts to develop this insight. First, we suggest the notion of organizational settlement to refer to the way in which organizations durably incorporate multiple logics. Second, we define organizational hybridization as a change process whereby organizations abandon their existing organizational settlement and transition to a new one, incorporating a newly salient logic. Overall, we propose a shift in attention from the exceptionality of hybrid configurations of multiple logics towards exploring the dynamics of transitions from one state of complexity to another

The Two Faces of Collaboration: Impacts of University-Industry Relations on Public Research

We analyze the impact of university-industry relationships on public research. Our inductive study of university-industry collaboration in engineering suggests that basic projects are more likely to yield academically valuable knowledge than applied projects. However, applied projects show higher degrees of partner interdependence and therefore enable exploratory learning by academics, leading to new ideas and projects. This result holds especially for research-oriented academics working in the ‘sciences of the artificial’ and engaging in multiple relationships with industry. Our learning-centred interpretation qualifies the notion of entrepreneurial science as a driver of applied university-industry collaboration. We conclude with implications for science and technology policy.University industry relations; Collaborative research; Contract research; Academic consulting; Science technology links; Engineering

The Emergence and Governance of Euroregions : The Case of the Euregio on the Dutch-German Border

Amb una història que data de la dècada de 1950, la EUREGIO és un de les més antigues euroregions a Europa. Es pot considerar com un cas exitós d'una regió transfronterera (CBR) en el sentit que s'ha establert fermament com una agència de fronteres dins del seu tram de la frontera holandesa-alemanya. L'EUREGIO també ha estat una de les protagonistes principals darrere de l'Associació de Regions Frontereres Europees (ARFE), que en les últimes dècades va actuar per difondre el model d'euroregió a tot el territori europeu. Aquest capítol té diversos objectius. En primer lloc, es presenta el cas de la EUREGIO i presenta evidència sobre la seva història, estructura orgànica i polítiques. En segon lloc, s'analitzen les condicions del context en què la EUREGIO ha sorgit i les estructures de govern que es van crear com a resultat. Es fa especial èmfasi en la posició i el paper de l'Euroregió en el context més ampli del marc de governança europea multinivell generat per la política de cohesió de la UE. El capítol conclou amb un intent d'avaluar l'èxit i l'impacte de la EUREGIO i una discussió dels reptes relacionats amb la doble funció de l'EUREGIO com a representant dels interessos de les autoritats locals i les agències de cohesió de la UE posada en pràctica de les polítiques.With a history dating back to the 1950s, the EUREGIO is among the oldest Euroregions in Europe. It can be considered as a successful case of a cross-border region (CBR) in the sense that it has firmly established itself as a border agency within its stretch of the Dutch-German border area. The EUREGIO has also been one of the main protagonists behind the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) that over the last decades acted to spread the Euroregion model across the European territory. This chapter has several objectives. Firstly, it introduces the case of the EUREGIO and presents evidence on its history, organisational set-up and policies.1 Secondly, it analyses the context conditions under which the EUREGIO emerged and the governance structures that were created as a result. Particular emphasis is put on the position and role of the EUREGIO within the wider context of the European multi-level governance framework generated by EU cohesion policy. The chapter concludes with an attempt to evaluate the success and impact of the EUREGIO and a discussion of the challenges related to the EUREGIO's dual role as representative of local authority interests and EU cohesion policy implementation agency

The construction of new scales: a framework and case study of the EUREGIO cross-border region

The article proposes a framework for analysing re-scaling processes and applies it to a case study of the Dutch-German EUREGIO cross-border region. While much of the scale debate focuses on the causes and consequences of re-scaling, the article addresses the conditions and circumstances in which new territorial scales emerge and suggests a framework of necessary components of re-scaling processes. Informed by neo-Gramscian thinking, the scales debate as well recent analyses of regionalisation, these are formulated as: political mobilisation, governance building and strategic unification. The case study locates the EUREGIO case with respect to these dimensions. The article concludes that this framework can be used for studying and comparing other re -scaling cases and presents an initial typology for classifying cross-border regions

Cross-border regions in Europe - Significance and drivers of regional cross-border co-operation

Accepted versio

Cross-border co-operation as policy entrepreneurship: explaining the variable success of European cross-border regions

The article addresses the recent proliferation of Cross-Border Regions, or Euroregions, across the EU. It aims to explain why they have been more successfully institutionalised in some areas while they have had less success in others. It conceptualises Euroregions as the outcome of policy entrepreneurship strategies through which support is mobilised on the local level and the Euroregions are institutionalised into durable organisations. Based on a systematic comparison of three cases, the EUREGIO, Viadrina and Tyrol, it is shown how different administrative and institutional environments throughout the EU affect the ability of Euroregions to engage in policy entrepreneurship. At the same time, it is shown that is it premature to perceive Euroregions as new types of regional territorial entities; rather, they constitute an institutional form through which existing authorities engage in collective action across nation-state borders within the context of EU multi-level governance

Healing the scars of history: projects, skills and field strategies in institutional entrepreneurship

The article explores three dimensions of institutional entrepreneurship: the types of activity pursued by institutional entrepreneurs, their skills and their field strategies. Evidence is presented on the emergence of the 'Euroregion', an organizing template used by local authorities situated close to European borders for co-ordinating policies across borders. We trace the emergence and diffusion of the Euroregion template between 1950 and 2005 as the outcome of a process of institutional entrepreneurship. Based on the notion of projective agency, we identify three distinct types of projects institutional entrepreneurs are engaged in: interactional, technical and cultural projects. We also find that they deploy three types of skills relating to these project dimensions, i.e. political, analytical and cultural skills. Our evidence suggestions a time pattern governing the process of institutional entrepreneurship, involving an initial focus on interactional projects, a subsequent focus on technical projects and a predominance of cultural projects in the latter (diffusion) stage. Furthermore, we find that institutional entrepreneurs are able to identify and pursue opportunities by switching their institution-building projects between different fields. Our analysis thus offers new insights into the multi-dimensional and time-bound nature of institutional entrepreneurship

What are Business Models: Towards a Theory of Performative Representations

Despite a rich extant literature, it is unclear what business models are. We assess three dominant conceptions of business models in the academic literature: as transactional structures, value extracting devices, and mechanisms for structuring the organization. To overcome the shortcomings of these approaches, we draw on theories of performativity, social typecasting, and managerial cognition. We propose an alternative conception of business models as performative representations that work in three ways: as narratives that convince, typifications that legitimate, and recipes that guide social action. Rather than actual features of firms, business models are representations that allow managers to articulate and instantiate the value of new technologies

Policy entrepreneurship and multi-level governance: a comparative study of European cross-border regions

This article addresses the recent proliferation of Cross-Border Regions, or Euroregions, in Europe. It argues that EU multi-level governance patterns generate opportunities for entrepreneurial policy organisations to attract policy tasks and resources. This is conceptualised as policy entrepreneurship and applied to a comparative case study analysis of three Euroregions: EUREGIO (Germany – Netherlands), Viadrina (Poland – Germany) and Tyrol (Austria – Italy). The analysis focuses on the ability of these initiatives to establish themselves as autonomous organisations. It finds considerable variation across the cases in this respect. Following on from this, the paper shows how different administrative and institutional environments in different EU member states affect the ability of Euroregions to engage in policy entrepreneurship. It concludes that is it premature to perceive Euroregions as new types of regional territorial entities; rather, they are part of the policy innovation scenario enabled by EU multi-level governance

Protecting scientists from Gordon Gekko: how organizations use hybrid spaces to engage with multiple institutional logics

Previous work on institutional complexity has discussed two solutions that organizations deploy internally when engaging externally with multiple institutional logics: blended hybrids where logics are combined throughout the organization, and structural hybrids where different logics dominate in different compartments within the organization. While blended hybrids have been extensively investigated, few studies have examined how structural hybrids are constructed and maintained. We address this imbalance by studying university-industry research centers as instances of distinct organizational spaces used to engage with a minority logic. We found that these spaces require three kinds of work: (a) leveraging, where dominant logic practices are drawn on to achieve minority logic objectives; (b) hybridizing, where the practices inside the space are modified to allow engagement with the minority logic; and (c) bolstering, where the space is shielded against excessive minority logic influence and anchored back into the organization. Furthermore, contrary to the existing literature we found that the spaces were hybrid, rather than being dominated by a single logic. Our finding is likely generalizable across many instances of structural hybrids given the integration problems that organizations with pure single logic spaces would face, combined with the usefulness of hybrid spaces. Our study is novel in revealing the work needed to sustain hybrid spaces and questioning the previously held conceptualization of structural hybrids as made up of single-logic compartments