Thursday, April 29 and Friday, April 30, 2010, Radisson University Hotel, Minneapolis, MN

Social Movements for a Green Economy:Panel on Institutional Theory and Innovation

Andy Van de Ven & Joel MalenCarlson School of Management

University of Minnesota

Institutional Diffusion Collective ActionZoom Out onMultipleActors atInter-OrgField

Focus

ZoomIn on SingleActor

Institutional Adaptation Institutional Design

Mode of ChangeReproduction Construction

Models of Institutional ChangeSource: Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2004

•Purposeful social construction & strategies by an actor to create/change an institution to solve a problem or correct an injustice•Bounded agency: Affordance and partisan mutual adjustment•Old institutional literature

•Political action among distributed, partisan & embedded actors to solve a problem or issue by changing institutional arrangements•Framing processes, mobilizing structures & political opportunities•Social movements & industry emergence literature

•Reproduction, diffusion or decline of an institutional arrangement in a population or organizational field•Evolutionary processes of variation, selection, and retention (isomorphism)•Organizational institutional ecology literature

•Organizational efforts to achieve legitimacy by adapting to institutional environmental pressures & regulations•Coercive, normative & mimetic processes•New organizational institutional literature

Collective Action Model: Social Movement Theory

Political Opportunities StructureInstitutional Arrangements-How/where institutional infrastructure facilitates & constrains change

Mobilizing StructuresInstitutional Actors & Resources-groups, organizations, networks-entrepreneurs, activists, insurgents

Framing Processes-social construction of ideas, issues, concerns, ideology

Collective Action-emergent action & form-partisan mutual adjustment-political tactics & campaigns

Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements:Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Cultural Framings, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996

Collective Action: Social Movement on Electricity Feed-in Tariffs

Political Opportunity Structures•Dominant utilities prevent change through market•RE advocates pursue political change

Mobilization Structures•Environmental Groups:

• Friends of the Earth Germany, Greenpeace•Professional Organizations:

•Institute of Ecology; German Assn for Promotion of Solar Power Eurosolar, Solar Energy Industries Association

Framing Processes•RE alternative to fossil fuels (fight climate change)•RE alternative to dangerous nuclear energy•RE minimizes negative social externalities

Collective Action/Political Behavior

• Issue Awareness•Mobilization/demonstrations against nuclear/climate change•Electoral support for pro-renewable candidates/parties•Promote new ideas to facilitate/support RE diffusion

Collective Action: Dialectics of Electricity Feed-in Law (1990)

adapted from Hargrave and Van de Ven (2006)

Thesis (RE Opposition)• Government support for coal and nuclear electricity generation• No support to immature energy technologies

Anti-Thesis (RE Support)•Government support for renewable energy generation•Feed-in law to provide grid access and favorable rates to producers

Conflict• German federal legislature debates proposed Feed-in Law

Synthesis•Electricity Feed-in Law adopted (1990)

•Utilities must provide grid access to RE producers

• Utilities must purchase electricity from RE producers

•Rates based on percentage of retail price

Power (RE Opposition)•Utilities focused on newly integrated East Germany •Do not view small scale of legislative proposals as significant threat•Despite overall power within German POS, fail wield their power in conflict

Power (RE Support)•RE supporters have substantial power in legislature it conflict•Political support for Feed-in Law from parties across political spectrum

04/18/23

Participants are Distributed, Partisan & Embedded

Distributed: Different actors play key roles No single actor controls any developmental path

Partisan: Actors participate from own frames Interests of producers, regulators, investors, etc.

are not the same Solutions through partisan mutual adjustment

Embedded: Actors become dependent on paths they create. Many learning opportunities occur as process

unfolds Process of partial cumulative syntheses

04/18/23

Conclusions

If social movement, pay attention to:o Political structure, mobilizing actors & framing processeso Collective action: conflict, power & political tacticso Dialectics of thesis, antithesis & synthesis

Politically-savvy innovators will outperform technically-savvy innovators.o Technical savvy is necessary but not sufficient;

also need political savvy

Innovators who “run in packs” will be more successful than those that go it alone.o the liability of unconnectedness (Baum & Oliver, 1992)

04/18/23

Technical & Institutional Changes Resemble Social-Political Movements