MEANS VERSUS ENDS IN OPAQUE INSTITUTIONAL FIELDS: TRADING OFF COMPLIANCE AND ACHIEVEMENT IN SUSTAINABILITY STANDARD ADOPTION

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wijen, Frank
• 署名单位: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0363-7425
• DOI: 10.5465/amr.2012.0218
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 302-323
• 关键词: TEMPORAL DYNAMICS; EMERGING FIELDS; diffusion; MARKET; entrepreneurship; implementation; certification; governance; ORGANIZATION; management

摘要

The long-standing discussion on decoupling has recently moved from adopters not implementing the agreed-upon policies to compliant adopters not achieving the goals intended by institutional entrepreneurs. This means-ends decoupling prevails especially in highly opaque fields, where practices, causality, and performance are hard to understand and chart. I conceptualize the conditions under which the adoption of institutions in relatively opaque fields leads to the achievement of the envisaged goals. Voluntary sustainability standards governing socioenvironmental issues illustrate these arguments. I argue that the lack of field transparency drives institutional entrepreneurs to create and maintain concrete and uniform rules, apply strong incentives, and disseminate best practices to ensure substantive adopter compliance. However, such rigid institutions are ill-equipped to deal with the causal complexity and practice multiplicity underlying opacity while they smother adopter agency. The ensuing tension between substantive compliance and goal achievement leads to an inherent trade-off: institutional entrepreneurs who remedy the policy-practice decoupling may enhance the disparity between means and ends, and vice versa. While sustainability standards and other institutions in highly opaque fields can, therefore, not fully achieve the envisaged goals, the trade-off can be reduced through systemically designed institutions that promote goal internalization and contain niche institutions.