A Dynamic Typology of Informal Institutions: Learning from the Case of Guanxi

Sven Horak and Katja Restel

Management and Organization Review, 2016, vol. 12, issue 3, 525-546

Abstract: Currently, the mechanism in which informal institutions, recently discovered as an influential, new paradigm in business and management studies interact with and shape formal institutions remains unclear. Helmke and Levitsky (2004) proposed an outcome-based typology for the interaction of informal institutions with formal ones. By using a structured approach for literature aggregation, we test the proposed typology of Helmke and Levitsky by applying this method to 74 empirical studies to investigate the influence of guanxi on formal institutions. We conclude that guanxi fits into none of the proposed categories perfectly. As a result, we propose the relationship between guanxi and formal institutions as auxiliary as well as competing concurrently, leading to convergent and divergent outcomes, respectively. Moreover, we propose a third category to add to the existing typology, namely ‘formal institutions in transition’. We furthermore incorporate a dynamic aspect to the model by adding two further categories, concerned with the direction of the development. We believe the resulting extension to the original typology of Helmke and Levitsky accurately accounts for the dynamic nature of informal institutions as well as their important role in shaping effective formal institutions.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:maorev:v:12:y:2016:i:03:p:525-546_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management and Organization Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().