breaking the wave the contested legitimation of an alien organizational form organizational forms imbued with values of modernity that is rationality efficiency and equity diffuse rapidly around the world nonetheless when sustained by beliefs norms and regulations contrasting with those prevalent in the receiving country their adoption may be delayed and within country legitimation may not proceed smoothly we study the diffusion of multiplex cinemas a form conceived in the us and attuned to the cinema as commerce logic across europe where the cinema as art logic prevails our findings reveal that the cultural meanings embodied by multiplexes shaped the founding rates of this organizational form in three ways first countries with larger normative and regulative distance from the us retarded the adoption of the first multiplex second camouflaged entries and at increasing density opposition from local interest groups were observed third the embodiment of global cultural scripts of progress and modernity allowed multiplexes to overcome local opposition the normative distance of the country from the us amplified the fluctuating dynamics of within country legitimacy a new specification of density dependent legitimation is presented to model the cultural cognitive legitimacy of rationalized but alien organizational forms

collective institutional entrepreneurship and contestations in wind energy in india with 21 136 mw of wind energy installed in 2014 india is considered a success story in terms of net installed capacity few existing studies on indian wind energy have highlighted the important role of institutions and how they stemmed from the work of advocacy groups studies also tend to focus on short time periods this paper uses the notion of collective institutional entrepreneurship to analyze indian wind energy across three time periods 1985 1995 1995 2003 and 2003 2013 the analysis shows that indian wind power development was driven by collective efforts of institutional entrepreneurs using two aggregated strategies that is supportive techno economic and socio political networks and an indigenous innovation infrastructure the paper highlights setbacks controversies and tensions between various entrepreneurship groups and argues that actions must be taken for including actors who have been marginalized

the impact of stakeholder power on corporate reputation a cross country corporate governance perspective corporate reputation has roots in national beliefs about the role of the business corporation in society these beliefs are constructed in accordance with the preferences of powerful stakeholders building on a stakeholder power approach to corporate governance we investigate whether differences in the legal rights and protections of shareholders creditors and workers across countries affect the general public s reputation assessments of business corporations using a sample of 593 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world from 32 countries during 2007 to 2011 we find that in societies where shareholders enjoy a high degree of legal rights the impact of stock market returns on corporate reputation becomes more positive likewise the negative relationship between earnings volatility and reputation becomes greater when creditor rights are stronger contrary to expectations we found no evidence of an interaction effect between labor rights and corporate social performance on corporate repu

managerial cognition and the mimetic adoption of market positions what you see is what you do managers planning to abandon a market position need to find a promising alternative and face a choice of inventing a new market position or entering an existing one the great uncertainty on the consequences of different actions leads them to rely on other organizations for information on how to compete making adoption of existing market positions likely their wish to avoid direct rivalry and maximize growth leads them to seek out information on new market positions with few incumbents as a result recently innovated market positions are mimetically adopted by organizations that can easily observe previous adoptions and see them as relevant to their market situations increasing the market differentiation this theory is tested and supported by analysis of the spread of new radio formats in the united states 1998 john wiley sons ltd

policy as myth and ceremony the global spread of stock exchanges 1980 2005 we examine the antecedents and consequences in developing countries of creating a national stock exchange a core technology of financial globalization we study local conditions and global institutional pressures in the rapid spread of exchanges since the 1980s and examine how conditions at the point of adoption affected exchanges subsequent vibrancy little prior research connects the process of diffusion with the operational performance of adopted policies we find that international coercion was associated with more ceremonial adoption but that contrary to expectations common in institutional research contagion processes via peer groups and normative emulation of prestigious actors enhanced vibrancy economic globalization provides a generative context in which to consider the policy implications of organizational theory and research globalization creates both opportunities and challenges for countries on the periphery of the world economy the central question for policy makers is what structures and institutions they should adopt to promote economic and social vibrancy notably waves of alternative theories and associated packages of reforms have swept over the globe in recent decades observing this process of global diffusion and often abandonment of policies and practices meyer boli thomas and raminrez 1997 extended analyses of myth and ceremony at the organization level to the nation state in their world society approach a core idea in this work is that coercion and mimicry of peers or competitors typically based in a substrate of network ties often

developing difference social organization and the rise of the auto industries of south korea taiwan spain and argentina theories of economic development as diverse as modernization dependency world system and market reform take a critical factor view proponents of each theory argue that countries fail to develop because of an obstacle to economic growth we argue instead that neither a critical factor nor a single path leads to economic development viable paths vary economic growth depends on linking a country s historically developed patterns of social organization to the opportunities of global markets we formulate a sociological theory of cross national comparative advantage including not only economic factor endowments but also institutionalized patterns of authority and organization such patterns legitimize certain actors and certain relationships among those actors which facilitate development success in some activities but not in others we illustrate this approach to understanding development outcomes with a comparative analysis of the difficult rise of the automobile assembly and components industries in south korea taiwan spain and argentina

organizational susceptibility to institutional complexity critical events driving the adoption and implementation of the ethics and compliance officer position the institutional environment is complex this complexity is characterized by forces that ebb and flow in wavelike patterns as societal expectations evolve with attention coalescing around specific events and then dissipating some of these critical events are broad and affect many firms whereas others are narrow and affect individual firms in either case when they occur these events elevate organizational susceptibility to societal demands but encourage different kinds of behavior in response this study seeks to model this complexity in an area of growing interest for organization scholars business ethics in particular i examine how firms respond to shifting societal pressures for greater ethical behavior by adopting and implementing the ethics and compliance officer position from 1990 to 2008 results demonstrate that although firms decide when to adopt in response to broad fieldwide critical events it is narrower firm specific critical events that determine resource commitments in implementation

internalizing sustainable practices a configurational approach on sustainable forest management of the dutch wood trade and timber industry a number of environmental labels and certificates have been developed to inform consumers of the environmental impacts this paper explored different configurations of institutional and organizational conditions for the internalization of sustainable practices for the institutional conditions the level of institutional pressures were considered for the organizational conditions the following elements were taken into account 1 the timing of adoption 2 the willingness to cannibalize existing capabilities and routines to incorporate institutional demands for sustainability 3 the degree of implementation of these demands 4 the internal representation of environmental concerns and 5 the type of organization the paper analyzed sustainable forestry practices in wood trade and timber factories in the netherlands using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis from the analysis three configurations were found 1 concerned internalization for early adopting wood trade companies 2 forced internalization for late adopting wood trade companies and 3 lagged internalization for late adopting timber factories the configurations revealed that important conditions for explaining internalization of sustainable practices are high levels of implementation and high levels of willingness to cannibalize the findings reaffirm the relevance of institutional and organizational conditions in explaining the internalization of environmental friendly practices they also showed that the interplay between a firm s internal and external environments influence the internalization of environmental practices the results imply that practice internalization is more subtle than previously understood in the literature

fiscal consolidation under fixed exchange rates abstract we present the fixed exchange rate version of the obstfeld and rogoff model and analyze the international transmission of fiscal policy shocks the welfare effects of an unanticipated contraction in government expenditure in the home country are shown to depend crucially on the way in which world money stock is set if home authorities alone are responsible for pegging the exchange rate a fiscal adjustment leads to a decrease in the real interest rate stimulates private consumption and limits the contraction in world output compared with a situation in which a cooperative scheme is implemented the model is then used to propose a new interpretation of recent events in the eu countries that have enacted restrictive fiscal policies while pegging their currencies to the dm

investor protection and corporate governance recent research has documented large differences among countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms in the breadth and depth of capital markets in dividend policies and in the access of firms to external finance a common element to the explanations of these differences is how well investors both shareholders and creditors are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms we describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries discuss the possible origins of these differences summarize their consequences and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform we argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank centered and market centered financial systems

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

weaving together the normative and regulative roles of government how the norwegian sovereign wealth fund s responsible conduct is shaping firms cross border investments based on institutional theory i extend research on the regulative role of national government in society and suggest that government exerts important influences on firms actions through the diffusion of norms i suggest that the norwegian government by instituting an ethical council that publicly censors and certifies the cross border investments of the norwegian sovereign wealth fund government pension fund global contributes to the professionalization of responsible investment principles and thus plays a normative role in shaping firms investments employing a quasi natural experiment i find that focal norwegian firms are more likely to make responsible cross border investments following the formation of the council on ethics in 2004 and its associated censorship announcements further i find that the normative pressure for responsible investments is mediated by firms imitation or overlap with the norwegian sovereign wealth fund s investments however the mediated effect of normative pressure on responsible investments becomes weaker for government owned firms these findings highlight the importance of normative mechanisms through which government can influence firms behavior especially in contexts where regulatory authority may not hold moreover these findings reveal the interplay among the normative mimetic and regulative pressures and the heterogeneity in the extent to which firms within the same country demonstrate institutional isomorphism

is there convergence across countries a spatial approach we analyze convergence across countries over the last half century as a result of globalizing forces drawing on theories of modernization dependency the world system political trade blocs and the world society we consider economic demographic knowledge financial and political dimensions of convergence using a new methodology we calculate the minimum volume ellipsoid encompassing different groupings of countries finding that during the 1960 2009 period countries have not evolved significantly closer or similar to one another although groups of countries based on their core periphery status or membership in trade blocs exhibit increasing internal convergence and divergence between one another

diffusion development and democracy 1800 1999 while a trend of growth in democratization over the past two centuries has been generally observed it is the remarkable growth in the democratization of the world over the past 30 years that has truly captured the imagination of social scientists policymakers and the general public alike two major sets of factors have dominated studies attempting to predict democratization one set characterizes endogenous or internal features of countries and may be referred to as socioeconomic development the other set less often tested characterizes exogenous variables that influence democratization via forces at work globally and within the region in which a country resides this set may be referred to as diffusion processes this study provides the first systematic comparison of these two sets of variables when assessed alone development indicators are robust predictors of democracy but their predictive power fades with the inclusion of diffusion variables in particular diffusion predictors of spatial pr

competing for capital the diffusion of bilateral investment treaties 1960 2000 over the past forty five years bilateral investment treaties bits have become the most important international legal mechanism for the encouragement and governance of foreign direct investment the proliferation of bits during the past two decades in particular has been phenomenal these intergovernmental treaties typically grant extensive rights to foreign investors including protection of contractual rights and the right to international arbitration in the event of an investment dispute how can we explain the widespread adoption of bits we argue that the spread of bits is driven by international competition among potential host countries typically developing countries for foreign direct investment we propose a set of hypotheses that derive from such an explanation and develop a set of empirical tests that rely on network measures of economic competition as well as more indirect evidence of competitive pressures on the host to sign bits the evidence suggests that potential hosts are more likely to sign bits when their competitors have done so we find some evidence that coercion and learning play a role but less support for cultural explanations based on emulation our main finding is that the diffusion of bits is associated with competitive economic pressures among developing countries to capture a share of foreign investment we are agnostic at this point about the benefits of this competition for development for useful comments on earlier drafts of this article we thank bill bernhard bear braumoeller frank dobbin robert franzese jeffry frieden geoffrey garrett tom ginsburg jude hays lisa martin bob pahre mark ramsayer steven ratner susan rose ackerman and john sides for research assistance we thank elizabeth burden raechel groom and alexander noonan

political bias in policy convergence privatization choices in latin america since the early 1980s privatization has spread in latin america under both right wing rulers and populist presidents this regional convergence toward privatization seemed to announce the end of partisan policy making however not all governments implement privatization in the same way even in the context of policy convergence technocrats propose similar policy options in countries where capital dearth creates pressures for convergence yet politicians build the electoral and government coalitions that make these policies possible and their preferences shape the institutions chosen at implementation the bias introduced by politicians depends on their prior beliefs and constituencies which shape their institutional preferences beliefs about economic nationalism and state intervention influence the selection of regulations at the time of privatization whereas coalition building with political constituencies shapes the definition of selling conditions in privatized companies this political bias which is contingent on the privatizing government explains that the regional policy convergence toward privatization did not extend to its implementation that is although politicians may be losing influence about whether to privatize they still have a say in the choice of how to privatize this article analyzes the impact of this political bias by focusing on the choice of regulatory institutions and selling conditions in five cases of privatization of electricity and telecommunications in latin america

globalization pressures and the state the worldwide spread of central bank independence the authors examine the impact of globalization on state structures in the specific instance of the central bank following the world system world society and neoinstitutional perspectives in sociology they assume that states are in cultural political and economic competition with each other thereby seeking to maintain their position and status frequently by adopting organizational forms or practices that make them isomorphic with their environment the authors predict that countries boost the independence of their central bank from the political power as their exposure to foreign trade investment and multilateral lending increases they also model the cross national dynamic process of diffusion of central bank independence by examining the impact of cohesive and role equivalent trade relationships between countries they find support for their hypotheses with information on 71 countries between 1990 and 2000

ideological purity vs hybridization trade off when do islamic banks hire managers from conventional banking organizations that compete in institutional environments in which oppositional logics compete for dominance face a risk return trade off between maintaining ideological purity versus pragmatism by borrowing template elements from the rival ideology deviating from ideological purity might improve a firm s competitive strength however at the same time it might also undermine its very identity and legitimacy although such decisions are of strategic importance research about why how and where these trade offs are made is still limited we develop the argument that organizations will be more likely to deviate from ideological purity when the potential return of borrowing from the oppositional template exceeds the perceived risk of doing so the more organizations aspire to be ideologically pure the more they are constrained by the moral codes that define the category and therefore the higher the risk associated with deviating from purity however given the potential benefits of pragmatism pure or

interdependence in comparative politics substance theory empirics substance interdependence is ubiquitous and often central across comparative politics indeed as the authors show first theoretically any situation involving externalities from one unit s actions on others implies interdependence positive or negative externalities induce negative or positive interdependence which spurs competitive races or free riding with corresponding early or late mover advantages and thus strategic rush to act or delay and inaction the authors show next how to model interdependent processes empirically how not doing so risks omitted variable biases favoring domestic and exogenous external accounts over interdependence but how doing so naively risks simultaneity biases with the opposite substantive implications they then discuss how to estimate properly specified interdependence models and finally how to interpret and present estimated spatio temporally dynamic effects response paths and long run steady states with associated standard errors they illustrate by replicating a not

opec s kinked demand curve abstract asymmetric effects of oil prices on the macroeconomy imply multiple equilibrium prices for opec i estimate world demand for crude oil non opec supply and the effects of changes in price on world gdp using quarterly data covering 1973 to 2010 if opec s marginal cost is 20 bbl in 2014 iii and its discount rate is zero estimated equilibrium prices are 44 88 bbl multiple equilibria incent opec to tolerate unstable prices which because of the asymmetry lower world gdp both policies that increase responsiveness to price and policies that lower net demand to opec narrow and lower the range of equilibrium prices but the former are more effective at doing so opec responds to changes in the discount rate in the opposite way from competitive producers so policies that secure oil related property rights in opec countries and other policies that lower opec s discount rate narrow and lower the range of equilibrium prices monetary policy is more effective at accelerating or slowing macroeconomic activity the larger is opec s market share

oppositional logics and the antecedents of hybridization a country level study of the diffusion of islamic banking windows 1975 2017 little is known about when and where hybrid organizations diffuse we argue that neo institutional perspectives which stress the constraining role of market categories and institutional logics ha

the international diffusion of public sector downsizing network emulation and theory driven learning we examine change in the size of the public sector between 1980 and 1997 across twenty six organization for economic cooperation and development oecd member nations with particular attention to diffusion dynamics general method of moments gmm analyses demonstrate imitation of shifts in government employment within the united states and mutual influence among nations that are geographically proximate and that trade extensively disaggregated analyses show that downsizing is contagious while upsizing is not proximate downsizers but not upsizers are imitated and states act on evidence that downsizing is economically beneficial while ignoring evidence that it is harmful we argue that these asymme tries in emulation and learning are a product of the dominance of neoliberal and managerialist discourses that legitimate and theorize shrinking the public sector the twentieth century as a whole and particularly the three decades after world war ii witnessed steady growth in government size and responsibility states devel oped extensive social safety nets actively managed aggregate demand and regu lated a widening swath of economic and social life this trajectory of expansion was linked to powerful forces of economic development and demographic change and anchored in a broad political consensus 1 the 1980s and 1990s saw a sea change in the rate of public sector growth brit ish prime minister margaret thatcher and u s president ronald reagan led the way with privatization outsourcing and load shedding of public responsibilities but the shift in direction was not limited to radicals on the right country reports

trade globalization since 1795 waves of integration in the world system the term globalization as used by social scientists and in popular discourse has many meanings we contend that it is important to distinguish between globalization as a contemporary political ideology and what we call structural globalization the increasing worldwide density of large scale interaction networks relative to the density of smaller networks we study one type of economic globalization over the past two centuries the trajectory of international trade as a proportion of global production is trade globalization a recent phenomenon a long term upward trend or a cyclical process using an improved measure of trade globalization we find that there have been three waves since 1795 we discuss the possible causes of these pulsations of global integration and their implications for the early decades of the twenty first century