Global organic agriculture policy-making through standards as an organizational field: when institutional dynamics meet entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT

Scholars of public policy point to standards as a new form of food and agriculture policy-making. The contribution complements this literature applying analytical concepts from International Relations research and organizational theory. Taking into account the increasingly complex and fluid nature of global food politics, the study undertakes a critical re-evaluation of the organizational field approach. Considering the interconnectedness of structure and agency it adds the concepts of entrepreneurship and calibration to the analysis of global organizational fields. The empirical analysis conducts a qualitative historical examination of the construction of the organizational field of organic agriculture policy-making through standards. It traces three phases of institutional development, identifies areas of contestation and distinct paths of institutional change influenced by the interplay of entrepreneurship and the institutional dynamics of structuration, homogenization and calibration.

KEYWORDS:

• Calibration
• entrepreneurship
• homogenization
• organic agriculture
• organizational field
• policy-making through standards

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the guest editors, the reviewers and Farhood Badri for insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Sandra Schwindenhammer is assistant professor of International Relations at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany.

Notes

1. I do not conduct an overall historical assessment of organizational field development. The presented data reflect the specific focus of the dependent variable on policy-making through standards.

2. The discovery of the conversion of nitrogen and hydrogen to ammonia in 1909 and its commercialization by the chemical company BASF gave impetus to the chemicalization of agriculture (Paull 2009).

3. The 96-year observation period did not allow for further in-depth assessment of national standard-setting. For further analysis see e.g., Schmid (2007).

4. The IFOAM EC Delegation first transformed into the IFOAM EU Working Group (1990) followed by the IFOAM EU Group (2000).

5. (EEC)2092/91 was supplemented by regulation (EC)1804/1999 which regulated the raising, labelling and inspection of the most relevant animal species.

6. The regional organic standard of the GOMA ASIA-Working Group served as the basis for the setting of the public organic standard by the ASEAN member-states (2014).