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Development of shared production facilities of the High Tech Factory: The process of the institutional entrepreneurship in a collaborative group

Rossen, P.B. (2009) Development of shared production facilities of the High Tech Factory: The process of the institutional entrepreneurship in a collaborative group.

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Abstract:In order to address complex problems, to serve clients more effectively or to gain legitimacy companies join or form groups in which they cooperate with other companies. In such collaborative groups companies want to reach their own goals as well as a collective goal. In the formation of collaborative groups challenges related to trusting others and the goal of the collaboration are expected to appear. A typical solution to such challenges is the installation of a governance mechanism. The presence of a governance mechanism structures and directs the collaborative group. The creation and installation of this governance mechanism is, however, subject to the same challenges affecting the collaborative group in general. In order to overcome these internal challenges the involvement of an external actor has been highlighted. The external actor will drive the process in which institutions are created. This external actor can be called an institutional entrepreneur. Institutional entrepreneurship refers to the process of creating institutions by the institutional entrepreneur. This process is based on enabling conditions that characterize the starting position of the institutional entrepreneur. These conditions are the position and characteristics of the institutional entrepreneur, and the context in which the institutions are created. Previously, three steps have been identified in the process of institutional entrepreneurship. These steps are the use of discursive strategies, the mobilization of resources and the design and implementation of institutions. The process of institutional entrepreneurship is a dynamic system in which institutions are created and used in order to go further. In this process institutional entrepreneurs can come across challenges that might change or divert the process itself, or the process may be influenced by other actors. While knowledge about the evolution of the process of institutional entrepreneurship is highly valued, it has not been investigated yet. This study was designed to fill this gap in the existing body of literature. The following central question has been formulated to guide this research: How does the process of institutional entrepreneurship evolve through the development of a governance mechanism in a collaborative group? It was not the focus of this study to investigate cooperative aspects of collaborative groups or the organizational aspects of a shared institution, but rather the evolutionary perspective of the process that creates the institutions and facilitates the collaborative group. In order to explore this subject a single case was studied using a case study approach, where an external actor leads the creation of institutions for a group of companies. The data was gathered and analyzed through a process of four steps. First documents were studied and unstructured interviews were conducted to create an overview of the case and prepare further steps. Thereafter semi-structured interviews were conducted and based on these interviews a working document was used to create patterns. These patterns were created by grouping statements and ideas from the data sources. The third step was composed of semi-structured Pim Rossen, 2009 context interviews and the creation of case study reports. The final step was employing the methods used to come to the conclusions of this study, inference loops were used to capture patterns and to abstract strong claims from the available data. The findings of this study are presented by a model for the process of institutional entrepreneurship and its application to the studied case. I present a new, and more elaborate, model for the process of institutional, where multiple consecutive cycles of the process institutional entrepreneurship are recognized. Every cycle is composed of the steps that have been introduced previously, the use of discursive strategies, resource mobilization and the design and implementation of new institutions. After each cycle the effects of discursive strategies, activated resources and new institutions have changed the collaborative group. These changes are identified through the aspects that characterize the collaborative group, namely the levels of trust, commitment and goal consensus. The cyclic model implies that without the changes in the aspects of collaborative groups the activities of the next cycle could not have been performed, which prevented the realization through a single cycle of institutional entrepreneurship. In the studied case three cycles were observed. Using the cyclic model changes in the goals and activities of the institutional entrepreneur were identified and analyzed. The goals and activities are based on the development of the collaborative group and changed after each completed cycle. The new goals build on the institutions that have been created in the previous cycle(s), and are advancing towards the envisioned situation. In the first cycle favorable short term incentives were used to commit companies to the long term perspective. In the second and third cycle the activities of institutional entrepreneurship are increasingly addressing companies as a resource as well as partners in the development of the collaborative group. The envisioned institutions are directed towards establishment and commercialization, and the activities are actions to gain and maintain internal and external legitimacy, rather than cooperation. A very important point in the process of institutional entrepreneurship proved to be the creation of mutual dependency between the envisioned institutions and the companies in the collaborative group. Through the creation of mutual dependency the challenges related to collaboration are avoided, as the companies will be cooperating primarily with the collaborative group rather than with the other companies. With the dependency of the collaborative group on its participating companies the conditions are provided for higher levels of trust, goal consensus and commitment. In turn the created mutual dependency provides the collaborative group with internal legitimacy and a basis for external legitimacy, as well as the resources for further development. The creation and application of the multi cycle model for the process of institutional entrepreneurship directly contributes to this field of research in three ways. Primarily, the existing model, which has only been coined recently (Leca et al., 2008), is further developed in this study. When the creation of new institutions is studied, one will find that multiple cycles of institutional entrepreneurship will MSc Thesis Business Administration follow after each other, rather than that the institutions are created in one single run of the three steps. The created model gives other researchers a tool to structure their studies. Secondly, earlier studies have observed changes in the role of the institutional entrepreneur and have given explanations for their particular changes. Based on the presented model the focus of the institutional entrepreneur can be predicted on basis of the process, particularly based on the institutions that are created in the preceding cycle. Thirdly, the emergence of mutual dependency gives a deeper understanding of the use of discursive strategies, the mobilization of resources and the implementation of institutions. By contributing to these steps in the process is shown that mutual dependency is of high importance in the understanding of the entire process of institutional entrepreneurship.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
High Tech Factory
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/59909
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