In 2005 and 2006, almost sixty Dutch National Sport Federations (NSFs) participated in a special program for creating a marketing strategy for the next four years. This program was initiated and organized by NOC*NSF (the Dutch Olympic Umbrella Sports Organization). The NSFs had to joint the project to receive funds. For most of them it was the first time they seriously analyzed the market with the aim of developing new programs. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent Dutch NSFs are capable to change their structures to become more market oriented and more market responsive in order to write strategic plans. The changed structures are investigated using the "institutional theory" (Tolbert & Zucker, 1996) and are explained by exogenous (market context and institutional context) and endogenous (interests, values, power dependencies, and capacity for action) dynamics from the neo-institutionalist framework (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996). In 2005 NSFs were expected to be in a pre-institutionalized stage, i.e. they were supposed to develop new organizational structures in response to specific problems (Kikulis, 2000). Now, approximately 1½ years after finishing their strategies, the question arises whether they have reached the semi-institutional stage, i.e. whether the new structures or actions are diffused across organizations, yet still subject to change and whether old structures are yet eroding (Kikulis, 2000). Methods Studying the intended structural change of NSFs requires an in-depth study of their social reality and the reactions and interpretations of involved actors, including their applied meanings to certain situations. Greenwood & Hinings (1996) plead for detailed comparative case-studies when studying institutional changes. Therefore three NSFs has been selected: The Royal Dutch Korfball Federation (KorfFed); The Royal Dutch Billiards Federation (BillFed); and the Dutch Jeu de Boules Federation (JeuFed). These three federations differ on size, amount of housed sports, number of associated clubs, sorts of intermediary decision making bodies, employed FTE's, and more. Therefore it is expected that the tempo of institutionalization of the new, market oriented, structures, will differ among them. Sugden & Tomlinson (2002) developed a multi-method style of qualitative research for making sense of the deep, inside information below the surface of everyday life. They call it the "Brighton method. Applying the Brighton method for this research implies that the three cases will be studied with respect to their history, their present marketing actions, their results and the changes in their organization. In-depth interviews, document analysis (policy plans, marketing plans and more), and where possible observations and participations are used to create a critical and investigative view of the organizations in change. Results The KorfFed used the marketing program to further develop existing programs. Although the outcomes of these programs were not new, the program has opened the eyes of the president, director and staff members. They are now conscious of the urgency of a market orientation, and a marketing orientation (a marketing position has already been introduced), and they see opportunities in attracting non-competition playing korfball players. They have, however, not yet reached the phase of semi-institutionalization of the market oriented structures. This can be concluded from the following: - The organization still has an ad-hoc character; - Some board members still make decisions based on their own insights rather than on information from the professional part of the organization; - Decisions to start programs are still grounded on subsidy possibilities rather than on market possibilities. Interest dissatisfaction and power dependencies are the main dynamics that form barriers in the planned organizational change. The BillFed is a federation that covers four disciplines, i.e. pool, snooker, carom, and billiard 3 cushions. The federation used to act upon these four disciplines. The marketing program has made clear that the BillFed should act upon target groups instead of on these disciplines. Therefore, the federation created a vision to reach youth, young adults, as also elderly people. Carrying out this new vision requires a market orientated structure (focus on target groups) instead of an internal orientated structure (focus on discipline groups). This new vision is created on an upper level (general board together with professional staff) in the organization. This federation also introduced a professional marketing position. Unfortunately, the underlying layers remain slightly passive and are not willing to work along the new structures, which mean that the new structures have not been diffused across the whole organization. Interest dissatisfaction, value commitments and power dependencies are the problematic dynamics. The JeuFed used to have a strong competition and tournament (internal) orientation, while many jeu-de-boules players play the game just for fun. The marketing program has created the insight that the just-for-fun players are also an important target group. Hence, 3 projects are developed to make club membership more attractive for all jeu-de-boules players. Since the federation never worked with projects before, they just found out that implementing projects such as these requires new structures. The JeuFed has just arrived in the pre-institutionalized phase, still far away from the semi-institutionalized chapter. Power dependencies and a lack of capacity for change are influencing dynamics in this case. Discussion Although it is already 1½ years ago that Dutch NSFs finished their marketing program, in none of the described cases the new structures have reached the semi-institutional stage. These new structures or actions are not yet diffused across the organizations, and the old structures are not eroding. In all three cases another combination of endogenous dynamics are influencing the process of organizational change. Continuing research is needed to find out whether these federations will ever reach the next stage of institutionalization and which dynamics will play an important role.
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This paper analyzes the institutional context of maintenance purchasing in higher education. It aims to provide insights into the institutional complexities of smart maintenance purchasing in higher education institutes. In a case study, six external institutional fields and two internal institutional logics are identified. They create two types of institutional complexities that impede innovation if not treated correctly. Three ways are discussed to deal with those institutional complexities, 1) negotiating institutional field boundaries, 2) creating new institutional logics and practices, and 3) implementing institutional changes.
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The role of universities in regional economic development has been highlighted in many study but the way in which a university can drive regional sustainable development in developing countries has been largely neglected so far. Based on an in-depth case study, we show how pollution and poverty in the local context, can drive a university to develop a vision on sustainability and how this vision can act as the driver of institutional entrepreneurship. In our particular case, this institutional entrepreneurship was enacted through four types of academic entrepreneurship related to both education and outreach. We demonstrate how activities that involved students engaging hands-on with the local community ensued the most significant effects in the short run while activities that entailed interactions between faculty members and local stakeholders were more ambitious but also require protracted efforts and are yet to prove their impact. Drawing from the insights generated from our field research, we formulate a series of propositions and combine these into a process framework that portrays the distinct, but interrelated, activities deployed by the university in its endeavors to change the current institutions.
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Research suggests that construction clients, as building owner-occupier, are struggling to implement smart maintenance. This thesis assumes that this is due to a failure to fully understand the institutional complexities of smart maintenance. Hence, the aim of this thesis was to improve our understanding of these complexities and to develop theoretical and practical knowledge on the professionalization of construction clients in commissioning smart maintenance through stewardship. Stewardship theory portrays managers and employees as collectivists, pro-organizational and trustworthy, and can be used for designing collaborations based on intrinsic motivation and trust. A first insight from this thesis relates to how institutional complexity in smart maintenance management (SMM) can be understood (study 1). Institutional complexity is defined as the combined effect of 15 interorganizational and intraorganizational tensions that are active simultaneously. A second insight from this thesis relates to the capabilities that construction clients need to address the institutional complexities of SMM and connect various institutional fields (study 2). Using data collected from four cases involving two construction clients, a framework with eight maturity dimensions, involving 23 sub-dimensions, has been developed and validated. The third insight from this thesis relates to the role of the purchasing function in commissioning smart maintenance and emerged from considering the service triad concept (study 3). The findings indicate that the service triad concept fails to provide sufficient detail to adequately describe the construction client’s role in SMM. Hence, the service triad is extended to a service hexad. Our fourth insight relates to intrapreneurial stewardship (study 4). A process model for change implementation through stewardship interventions has been developed and then evaluated in a case study. The process model combines constructs from stewardship theory with intrapreneurship concepts and describes how employees can be coached by leaders during periods of organizational change. Together, the insights from the four studies are synthesized in a framework for client-led innovation in SMM and describe how construction clients can increase SMM maturity in institutionally complex environments through stewardship.
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The transition towards a sustainable and healthy food system is one of the major sustainability challenges of today, next to the energy transition and the transition from a linear to circular economy. This paper provides a timely and evidence-based contribution to better understand the complex processes of institutional change and transformative social-ecological innovation that takes place in the food transition, through a case study of an open innovation and food transition network in The Netherlands, the South-Holland Food Family (Zuid-Hollandse Voedselfamilie). This network is supported by the provincial government and many partners, with the ambition to realize more sustainable agricultural and food chains, offering healthy, sustainable and affordable food for everyone in the Province of South-Holland in five to ten years from now. This ambition cannot be achieved through optimising the current food system. A transition is needed – a fundamental change of the food system’s structure, culture and practice. The Province has adopted a transition approach in its 2016 Innovation Agenda for Sustainable Agriculture. This paper provides an institutional analysis of how the transition approach has been established and developed in practice. Our main research question is what interventions and actions have shaped the transition approach and how does the dynamic interplay between actors and institutional structures influence institutional change, by analysing a series of closely related action situations and their context, looking at 'structure' and 'agency', and at the output-outcomes-impact of these action situations. For this purpose, we use the Transformative Social-Ecological Innovation (TSEI)-framework to study the dynamic interplay between actors and institutional structures influencing institutional change. The example of TSEI-framework application in this paper shows when and how local agents change the institutional context itself, which provides relevant insights on institutional work and the mutually constitutive nature of structure and agency. Above institutional analysis also shows the pivotal role of a number of actors, such as network facilitators and provincial minister, and their capability and skills to combine formal and informal institutional environments and logics and mobilize resources, thereby legitimizing and supporting the change effort. The results are indicative of the importance of institutional structures as both facilitating (i.e., the province’s policies) and limiting (e.g. land ownership) transition dynamics.
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The literature on how organizations respond to institutional pressure has shown that the individual decision-makers’ interpretation of institutional pressure played an important role in developing organizational responses. However, it has paid less attention to how this interpretation ultimately contributes to their range of organizational decisions when responding to the same institutional pressure. We address this gap by interviewing board members of U.S. and Dutch hospitals involved in adopting best practices regarding board evaluation. We found four qualitatively different cognitive frames that board members relied on to interpret institutional pressure, and which shaped their organizational response. We contribute to the literature on organizational response to institutional pressure by empirically investigating how decision-makers interpret institutional pressure, by suggesting prior experience and role definition as moderating factors of multidimensional cognitive frames, and by showing how these cognitive frames influence board members’ response to the same institutional pressure.
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This paper conducted a preliminary study of reviewing and exploring bias strategies using a framework of a different discipline: change management. The hypothesis here is: If the major problem of implicit bias strategies is that they do not translate into actual changes in behaviors, then it could be helpful to learn from studies that have contributed to successful change interventions such as reward management, social neuroscience, health behavioral change, and cognitive behavioral therapy. The result of this integrated approach is: (1) current bias strategies can be improved and new ones can be developed with insight from adjunct study fields in change management; (2) it could be more sustainable to invest in a holistic and proactive bias strategy approach that targets the social environment, eliminating the very condition under which biases arise; and (3) while implicit biases are automatic, future studies should invest more on strategies that empower people as “change agents” who can act proactively to regulate the very environment that gives rise to their biased thoughts and behaviors.
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The current assignment of vocational programs in higher education is to educate future evidence-based professionals. Often is presumed that a substantial connection between research and teaching is needed to be able to provide the right context and content to achieve this aim with students (Healey & Jenkins, 2015). As an effect in the Dutch institutes for higher professional education there is an increased attention for the connection between research and teaching as a carrier to develop these knowledge related competences. But what does it mean for an institute of higher vocational education to actively strategize towards integrating research and teaching in all bachelor and master programs for 45.000 students, while still standing in the tradition of being teaching-only? This paper presents the three phases of a large scale institutional change in Amsterdam UAS, including a systematic analysis of ‘research’ in the profiles of all 70 vocational bachelor programs.
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This chapter proposes an integrated perspective on institutional work as ingenious actions of entrepreneurs for the purpose of opportunity development. Ingenuity refers to actions undertaken by entrepreneurs who work within ‘the institutional setting and uses this embeddedness by co-opting, coordinating, and whenever possible, drawing on organizational slack to effect change’ (Lampel et al., 2011: 715). Ingenuity involves bringing together thinking and acting, individually and collectively, to take advantage of opportunities or to overcome problems. As such, ingenuity denotes the space between a challenge and a solution (Homer-Dixon, 2000). We present day-to-day actions of an ingenious entrepreneur who combines opportunity development and institutional work. The concept of opportunity development is central in the study of entrepreneurship (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). Recognizing opportunities, entrepreneurs develop initial ideas of new combinations of products, processes, markets and organizing to be offered to the market. Opportunity development requires the dynamic and interactive process to prepare a resource base and create an organizational structure for opportunity exploitation, and interactions with a diverse set of stakeholders in the institutional environment and understand their conflicting needs and motivations and to perceive possibilities resulting from these (Slotte-Kock and Coviello, 2010).
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This report presents research on success factors of learning communities with a case study of the Innovation Lab Hanze International Business Office (further – Innovation Lab HIBO) at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen, the Netherlands. The research project is a part of the broader research programme on innovation of education and the success factors of learning communities carried on by a number of researchers at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen (further – Hanze University AS).In answering the main research question on success factors of learning communities and, specifically, the Innovation Lab HIBO, two sub-questions were formulated: the first deals with school level expectations about the Innovation Lab HIBO, whereas the second explores what are the institutional expectations and guidelines regarding living labs at Hanze University AS. The research focus is on formalised expectations about the goals and outcomes of living labs, as attaining the established goals and outcomes would testimony a successful activity of a living lab. The factors that facilitate or determine whether the goalsand outcomes of living labs are achieved are therefore the success factors.The analysis of both school level expectations about the Innovation Lab HIBO and the institutional expectations and guidelines regarding living labs reveals a number of success factors, conditions, and preconditions. As these do not coincide, it is argued that finding the right balance between local, school level, expectations and the institutional goals is crucial for the successful performance of living labs. Another important factor for successful performance of the living lab and, specifically the Innovation Lab HIBO, is development of a learning community. This process would require strengthening of an open organisationalculture and facilitation of exchange of ideas and learning process.The research project was carried on in the period from February 1, 2020, till August 30, 2020. From September 2020 the follow up research is planned into operationalization of success factors, definition of performance criteria, performance evaluation, development of suggestions for improvement of performance, and development of a blueprint for the establishment of innovation labs.
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