Legitimizing the apprenticeship practice in a distant environment: Institutional entrepreneurship through inter-organizational networks

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• 作者：Johann Fortwengel ; ^{johann.fortwengel@fu-berlin.de" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Gregory Jackson ^{gregory.jackson@fu-berlin.de" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Institutional entrepreneurship ; MNEs ; Agency ; Practice transfer ; Institutional distance ; Apprenticeships ; Inter-organizational networks ; Networked institutional entrepreneurship ; Comparative capitalisms ; Qualitative case study
• 刊名：Journal of World Business
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：November 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：51
• 期：6
• 页码：895-909
• 全文大小：601 K

文摘

This paper asks how Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) engage in institutional entrepreneurship to successfully transfer the organizational practice of apprenticeship-based training from Continental Europe to the distant host environment of the United States. In our case study, we highlight the important role of inter-organizational networks to coordinate engagement with the cognitive, normative, and regulative pillars of host country institutions. This networked form of institutional entrepreneurship involves the formation of inter-organizational networks for the purpose of bringing about institutional change collaboratively. In the process of transferring apprenticeship, a particular vision of workforce training was created, support gathered, and institutional change was sustained locally around the issue of training. We argue further that networked institutional entrepreneurship is a useful strategic tool to overcome the particular kind of institutional distance between the institutional settings of more coordinated market economies (CMEs) and more liberal market-oriented economies (LMEs). We contribute to existing knowledge by showing how practice transfer is shaped by particular kinds of institutional distance, and highlighting the role of inter-organizational networks as a way of governing collective agency associated with institutional entrepreneurship and the emergence of new local proto-institutions.