Same same but different: regional coherence between institutions and policies in family firm succession

The (mis)fit of policy programs to political institutions and its influence on programmatic action – How crisis has differently hit French and German health policy

“…Integrating the institutional dimension of policy program design, one can add the Program Congruence Hypothesis postulating that policy programs are more successful if they are congruent with the existing institutional arrangement of the policy sector and the political system. This wording is inspired by existing research, although there remains some terminological confusion when congruence and coherence are used synonymously (Lenz & Glückler, 2020; Rodrigo et al., 2009). Congruence means the extent to which an adopted policy fits the existing mode of governance.…”

Retheorizing industrial–institutional coevolution: a multidimensional perspective

“…Hence, for a precise understanding of what institutions are, distinguishing between formal institutions, informal institutions, and actual practices (Jones & Murphy, 2010) and clarifying their relationships is necessary. For the purposes of this paper, I adopt a working definition of institutions that reverts to North's 'rules of the game' (North, 1990, p. 3) that can be either formal/explicit or informal/tacit (Hodgson, 2006) but have to be accepted by agents as social guidelines for appropriate and legitimate behaviour (Bathelt & Glückler, 2014;Lenz & Glückler, 2021;Oliver, 1992;Scott, 2014;Streeck & Thelen, 2005) in the sense of being 'templates for action' (Lawrence et al, 2009, p. 7), even if they are not currently practiced. Following North's (1990, p. 4) characterization of organizations as 'players' and consistently with Bathelt and Glückler (2014), organizations are not covered by this working definition of institutions (see also Glückler & Lenz, 2016;Zukauskaite et al, 2017).…”

“…Patterns of institutional change are contingent on the context at hand (Bathelt & Glückler, 2003, 2014. For example, incremental institutional change plays a prominent role in a system that Glückler et al (2020) describe as the 'hourglass model' marked by strong intra-firm relations, weak inter-firm relations, and strong regionallevel networks, while a context marked by firm succession as in the Basque Country and Baden-Württemberg (Lenz & Glückler, 2021) could provide a peculiar opportunity for radical institutional change.…”

“…Oliver (1992) analyses processes of deinstitutionalization that lead either to an incremental erosion or to a more radical rejection of institutions (see also Jepperson, 1991;Scott, 2014). For example, leadership discontinuity in firm succession (Lenz & Glückler, 2021) can provide a context for deinstitutionalization (Oliver, 1992) that may often be radical but can also take an incremental form.…”

“…Radical institutional change is possible through a breakdown of existing institutions in deinstitutionalization processes (Jepperson, 1991;Oliver, 1992), for example, through the market entry of agents introducing new routines and disrupting existing institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) and thereby acting as institutional entrepreneurs. A context marked by entrepreneurship or firm succession (Lenz & Glückler, 2021) might facilitate such a scenario. The sudden introduction of new policies and laws or external shocks might lead to the radical creation of new institutions through institutional entrepreneurship.…”