Government at (Institutional) Work: The State and Market Dynamics

Abstract

The state remains an undertheorized actor in studies of market change. Further, when the state's market-shaping activities are considered, they are generally characterized by notions of control over, or conflict with, market actors. In this project, we draw on theories of institutional change and management to develop and deploy an alternative perspective on state involvement in markets—one premised on collaboration. Using this conceptual framework, we examine how the state works to shape markets disrupted by ostensibly innovative entrants. Specifically, we examine the state's response to the market entry of transportation businesses Uber and Lyft, whose strategies of disregarding existing regulatory arrangements attempt to deliberately exclude the state from markets. Leveraging an institutional work perspective, we find the state engaging in four novel practices as it works to understand and shape market arrangements in conjunction with an array of interested market actors. We discuss the implications of this collaborative state behavior for studies of market change.

Boundary Interweaving: The Boundary-Making Strategy for Multicultural Coexistence in Marketing Systems

“…Although some macromarketing studies attempt to conceptualise "boundary," the theoretical foundation is different from the ethnic boundary concept, as advanced by Zolberg and Long (1999) and Wimmer (2008Wimmer ( , 2013. For example, market boundary from an institutional perspective (Wiebe and Mitchell 2023), entrepreneurship as a boundary object (Fajardo, Shultz, and Joya 2019) and family boundary definitions (Westberg, Beverland, and Thomas 2017). Given that the acculturation model focuses mainly on the individual level and because the assimilation strategy has limitations in fostering social cohesion, this study seeks to extend the concept of boundary-making strategies from ethnic studies literature into macromarketing literature.…”