Institutional Change, Entrepreneuring and Place: Building a Smart State

Abstract

We shed new light on the processes through which institutions are created and changed by investigating the question how does institutional entrepreneuring unfold in an already organized world. We conducted a longitudinal case study of the field of scientific research production in Australia, which changed over three decades through entrepreneuring processes associated with the creation of a new ‘Smart State’ place in the city of Brisbane in Queensland. A new place is a form of organizing human activity that has materiality and meaning at a specific geographic location. Our findings showed how field change was interwoven with place creation through four processes of entrepreneuring: structural emancipation, dissociating and reimagining place meanings, bricolaging of place forms, and co-evolving place identities. These entrepreneuring processes constituted the field as a flow of ‘becoming’ that spilled over into temporary and provisional settlements in local places. Our findings make important contributions through: (1) deepening understanding of how organizational fields change through multilevel, distributed, cascading and often unreflexive processes of entrepreneuring processes in an already organized world, (2) bringing attention to a relationship between institutions and place, in which place is both the medium and outcome of institutional entrepreneuring, and (3) providing new insight into embedded agency by illustrating how institutions in ‘becoming’ continually (re)produce the resources and possibilities for agency within gradual institutional change over time.

Turning rebellion into money? Social entrepreneurship as the strategic performance of systems change

“…The role of the social entrepreneur, then, is to culturally reassemble systems and collective action frameworks in ways that are amenable to both parties. Such a perspective links to the work of Staggs et al (2022). A sympathetic reading of the systems change potential for social entrepreneurship would be that the social entrepreneur operates within a temporary assemblage that facilitates institutional entrepreneuring.…”

“…Institutionalist perspectives have diverted attention from a focus on individual social entrepreneurs and highlighted the importance of collective action (de Bruin, Shaw, & Lewis, 2017; Mitzinneck & Besharov, 2019; Montgomery et al, 2012). Running parallel with theoretical developments in the entrepreneuring as social change literature (see Rindova, Barry, & Ketchen, 2009; Staggs, Wright, & Jarvis, 2022; Steyaert, 2007), social entrepreneurship scholars began to incorporate notions of resistance to change and breaking free from institutional constraints to understand how social entrepreneurship could overcome the paradox of embedded agency (Holm, 1995). Zahra et al (2009) note that social entrepreneurs need to attract popular support for their actions and will inevitably face resistance from incumbent actors seeking to undermine their ability to bring about change.…”

Organizing for the Smart African City: Leveraging the urban commons for exerting the right to the city

“…While the project is in principle completely community-implemented and -driven, it is inclusive of academic, public and private sector motivations and actors (Swilling, 2016). This enables a high degree of adaptivity and innovation (Staggs, Wright, & Jarvis, 2022) that responds closely to the needs and preferences of end-users (Annecke & Hattingh, 2016; Conway et al, 2019). Knowledge is generated by leveraging broad cross-sector engagement but is informed by grassroots priorities and implemented by the community itself.…”

The Mine or the Mire? Mobilising Place in Natural Resource Struggles

“…People form identities based on places (Howard-Grenville et al, 2013 ) and interact with material forms to shape, stabilise, and institutionalise their meanings of a place (Jones et al, 2019 ), or resist managerial policies through appropriation and reconstruction (Courpasson et al, 2017 ). Furthermore, places can shape and are shaped by organisational fields through meaning and materiality (Staggs et al, 2022 ). Following Beyes & Steyart’s ( 2012 ) suggestion that a processual and performative approach to place and spatiality should be adopted in organisation studies, place-based meanings and identities are conceptualised in this paper as fluid and multiple.…”