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

Johann Fortwengel and Gregory Jackson

Journal of World Business, 2016, vol. 51, issue 6, 895-909

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Institutional entrepreneurship; MNEs; Agency; Practice transfer; Institutional distance; Apprenticeships; Inter-organizational networks; Networked institutional entrepreneurship; Comparative capitalisms; Qualitative case study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2016.05.002

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