Institutional Entrepreneurship

Motivations for Change

Motivations for changing institutional environments vary depending on whether a field is emerging, mature, or in crisis. In emerging fields, institutional entrepreneurs do not have to escape the so-called iron cages of existing institutions before building new ones. In these contexts—where actors are only beginning to recognize themselves as belonging to a common enterprise, relationships are fluid, meanings are heterogeneous, understandings are not widely shared, and multiple possible scripts for action exist—actors are motivated to stabilize relationships, meanings, and practices to reduce uncertainty for themselves and to facilitate development of the field in ways congruent with the realization of constructed interests that predate or are emerging with the field. Different actors will, however, prefer different relationships, meanings, and practices to become institutionalized.

In mature fields, motivations for change vary with actors' positions. Peripheral actors who are disadvantaged by existing institutional arrangements have a greater incentive to break with current practices, while more powerful central actors have less. With more to gain and less at stake, peripheral actors are more willing to experiment with alternative practices, as demonstrated in a 1991 study of U.S. radio broadcasting by Huseyin Leblebici, Gerald Salancik, Anne Copay, and Tom King. Historically, innovative departures from transaction conventions originated with peripheral players, and only once their merits were demonstrated were they adopted by central players and institutionalized as new conventions.

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