Institutional Entrepreneurship in Building an Environmental Protection System for the People's Republic of China

Abstract

This paper examines institutional entrepreneurship in the development of China's environmental protection system (EPS) over a period of almost 30 years. China's EPS evolved in four main stages, the boundaries of which were marked by transition-critical events. Within each stage, institutional entrepreneurs conducted activities that supported trajectories of field development. These activities are analysed according to the way they contributed to the construction of regulative, normative and cognitive institutional system pillars. The formation of the EPS as an organizational field in China was characterized by a `made order' in which the regulative system came first and the state and its agencies dominated the process as the principal institutional entrepreneurs. In this respect it contrasts with the evolution of the same field in the USA.

Wary managers: Unfavorable environments, perceived vulnerability, and the development of trust in foreign enterprises in China

“…Without denying the possibility that managerial agency may enact (Boisot & Child, 1999;Henisz, 2003) or partially construct (Krug & Hendrischke, 2008;Kostova et al, 2008) the institutional environment in many other contexts, we notice that foreign managers in our cases are either not in a position to or do not seek to change the institutional environment. As Child, Lu, and Tsai (2007) highlight, institutional entrepreneurship in China tends to be driven by the state rather than by other actors. We therefore propose a less heroic managerial stance that is aimed at limiting the consequences of institutional conditions and focuses on exercising agency internally.…”

Co-evolution of Industry Strategies and Government Policies: The Case of the Brazilian Automotive Industry

“…Both approaches appreciate the value of environments, historical legacies, institutional contexts of countries in shaping organizations' trajectories, and their structural evolution over time (Djelic & Ainamo, 1999). Nevertheless, organizations may perform the role of institutional entrepreneurs and proactively change their environments (Child, Lu, & Tsai, 2007;Dieleman & Sachs, 2008). A similar point in these studies is the assumption that while firms respond to institutional environments, they also change these environments.…”

Can Collective Intelligence Produce Social Innovation?

“…Throughout the innovation process, but particularly at the institutionalisation phase, the success of the innovation is heavily dependent on the support and skills of agents, often called institutional entrepreneurs, who are skilled at finding these kinds of opportunities (Dorado, 2005;Levy and Scully, 2007;Child et al, 2007). Institutional entrepreneurs help innovations to secure resources to grow and are adept at finding opportunities to establish them in systems (Westley et al, 2013, Mumford, 2002.…”