2 How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship

Abstract

As well as review the literature on the notion of institutional entrepreneurship introduced by Paul DiMaggio in 1988, we propose a model of the process of institutional entrepreneurship. We first present theoretical and definitional issues associated with the concept and propose a conceptual account of institutional entrepreneurship that helps to accommodate them. We then present the different phases of the process of institutional entrepreneurship from the emergence of institutional entrepreneurs to their implementation of change. Finally, we highlight future directions for research on institutional entrepreneurship, and conclude with a discussion of its role in strengthening institutional theory as well as, more broadly, the field of organization studies.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jim Walsh and Arthur Brief as well as Thomas D'Aunno, Robin Ely, Ranjay Gulati, Linda Hill, Rakesh Khurana, David Levy, Johanna Mair, Joshua Margolis, Michael Lounsbury, Christopher Marquis, Melissa Ouellet, Leslie Perlow, David Thomas, Michael Tushman, and Marc Ventresca for their comments on previous versions of this paper. Conversations with Marie‐ Laure Djelic, Tom Lawrence and Michel Anteby have also been extremely useful in improving this paper. All mistakes are ours.

Notes

1. We examined research on institutional entrepreneurship from 1988, the year DiMaggio's book chapter brought the notion into organizational analysis, onward. We searched the EBSCHOT Business Source Premier and JSTOR databases for entries in peer‐reviewed journals that contained in the title, abstract, keywords, or full text at least one of the following keyword phrases: institutional entrepreneur or institutional entrepreneurship. This procedure generated more than 100 articles. Excluding editorials, calls for papers, and articles that made reference to the terms only in passing or referred to other meanings or theories (e.g., economic approaches such as transaction cost analysis) left us with more than 60 articles published in refereed publications. We then used the reference lists of the selected articles to identify recurrent references published in journals not included in the database as well as book chapters.