Export is an important strategy for firms to grow, yet researchers tend to ignore how firms can exploit and develop their resource-based capabilities to improve export performance. Building on the Organizational Capability (OC) perspective, this study develops a novel approach on ways to improve export performance. Cross-sectional empirical data regarding Swedish firms were collected and analyzed in a number of ways, including application of multi-variate techniques. The study identifies associations between mode of entering a foreign market and the firm’s level of market orientation (MO) capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) capabilities. Entry modes include wholly-owned subsidiaries and collaborations with other firms. Also, the study shows that the associations are contingent on the institutional distance between the home market and the host market. Problems due to endogeneity are avoided as an association is established between a mode that is aligned with the capabilities and performance. The study found that firms possessing extensive MO and EO capabilities select a wholly-owned subsidiary. The analysis also shows that the institutional distance between Sweden and the export market moderates this association; greater distance favors collaboration with local partners. Moreover, aligning the selection of entry mode with firm-level MO and EO capabilities and institutional distance yields higher post-entry performance.

For most of its history art has been mimetic in nature; not surprisingly, mimetic theories of art held sway for a long time. By the middle of the twentieth century art had departed so radically from the mimetic traditions that philosophers were forced to shift their focus away from functional theories (which typically drew on the formal features of artworks) to procedural ones (which are concerned with the imperceptible, relational properties external to the work of art). This breakthrough would eventually culminate in the Institutional Theory of Art, a perspective that provides the most exhaustive classificatory definition of art available, and which (despite the objections of its critics) remains the most persuasive theory of art on offer. The same logic that makes the Institutional Theory of Art a satisfying classificatory theory can be applied, in a similar manner, to questions about the source of the terms by which we evaluate works of art. In other words: the Institutional Theory is capable of serving not only as a powerful classificatory theory, but also as a highly effective evaluative theory of art. Moreover, if the Institutional Theory can be shown to provide a satisfying account of artistic value, it may also be equipped to deal with the related problems of subjectivism (i.e., that artistic judgments are a matter of personal taste) and cultural relativism (i.e., that artistic judgments are culturally specific). Presently, no theory of art can explain away these difficulties; accordingly, an institutional account of artistic value might offer – as does the Institutional Theory of Art itself – an explanatory framework capable of dealing with seemingly intractable problems of subjectivism and relativism in artistic judgment. / Graduate / 0422 / michaelabhainn@shaw.ca

Företags närvaro på Facebook har under de senaste åren ökat kraftigt. En uppfattning är attföretag, stora som små, har etablerat sig på Facebook för att vara “rätt i tiden”. Detta skapar funderingar kring vilka anledningar som ligger till grund för närvaron och om företagen upplever den gynnsam. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka vilka erfarenheter företag har fått av närvaron på Facebook. Studien syftar även till att se vilka samband som finns mellan företags bakgrund och deras erfarenheter. Denna studie grundar sig i ett nyinstitutionellt perspektiv som förklarar hur organisationer genom olika anpassningsstrategier likriktar sig till sin omgivning för att uppnå legitimitet. Ett kvantitativt tillvägagångssätt har använts där en webbenkät skickades ut till 350 företag närvarande på Facebook. Företagens bakgrund undersöktes genom frågor gällande deras storlek, antal år på Facebook samt främsta anledning till närvaron på Facebook. Företagen besvarade därefter frågor gällande erfarenheter inom fyra olika områden; kundkontakt, intern påverkan, marknadsföring och varumärkesbyggande samt upplevda resultat. Resultaten visar att den främsta anledningen till närvaron på Facebook var att stärka varumärket. De företag som gick med av denna anledning upplever goda erfarenheter av kundkontakt och goda resultat. De företag som däremot etablerat sig på grund av förväntan från omgivningen upplever sämre erfarenheter gällande kundkontakt samt även av marknadsföring och varumärkesbyggande. Det kan förklaras av att de etablerade sig för att anpassa sig efter omgivningen, utan mål och strategier för närvaron. Många företag etablerade sig på Facebook under samma tidsperiod, vilket kan ses som en anpassningsstrategi för att uppnå legitimitet. Resultaten visar också att ju större företagen är desto bättre erfarenheter avkundkontakt och resultat har de. Företagen påverkas även mer internt av närvaron påFacebook ju större de är. Företagens erfarenheter av intern påverkan visar tendenser på att löskoppling skett, och att företagen därmed till stor del bedriver sin kärnverksamhet åtskild från aktiviteterna som sker på Facebook. Majoriteten av företagen anser att det är gynnsamt att närvara på Facebook. / Corporate presence on Facebook has in recent years greatly increased. A view is that both large and small companies have established themselves on Facebook to seem modern andactive. This raises questions concerning the fundamental reasons to companies presence on Facebook, and if they perceive it favorably. This study aims to examine the experiences companies have received through their presence on Facebook. It also aims to see correlations between corporate background and their experiences. This study is based on new institutional theory which explains how organizations through various strategies adapt to their environment in order to achieve legitimacy. A quantitative approach has been used where an online questionnaire was sent to 350 companies present on Facebook. Corporate background was investigated by questions regarding company size, number of years present on Facebook and the foremost reason for their presence. The companies then answered questions regarding experience in four different areas; customer contact, internal influence, marketing and branding and perceived results. The results show that the main reason for the presence on Facebook was to strengthen the company brand. The companies that joined for this reason experience a good record of customer contact and good results. However, the companies which established themselves on Facebook in anticipation from the environment experience apoorer record of customer contact and marketing and branding. This can be explained throughthe possibility that these companies adapt to the environment without any objectives and strategies for their presence. Many companies established themselves on Facebook during the same time period, which can be interpreted as an adaptation strategy to achieve legitimacy.The results also show that the larger the company, the better experiences of customer contactand result. Larger companies are also affected more internally by the presence on Facebook. The companies’ experiences of internal influence show signs that decoupling occurred and that companies are running its core business separate from activities taking place on Facebook. The majority of companies believe that it is favorable to attend on Facebook.

The purpose of this study was to understand the governance of Olympic Games legacy. Legacy is broadly described as “all planned and unplanned, positive and negative, intangible and tangible structures created by and for a sport event that remain for a longer time than the event itself” (Preuss, 2007a, p. 86). The specific objectives of this study were: a) to map the historical evolution of legacy throughout the modern Olympic Movement (OM) (i.e., 1896-current day) in order to contextualize and conceptualize the major trends (e.g., changes in legacy, network actors/stakeholders, governance structures and processes) over time; b) to understand, explain, and compare/contrast the network governance of Olympic legacy, using Australian and Canadian case settings; and c) to critically analyze the overall structure and process of the governance of legacy within the OM focusing specifically on the aspects of performance, transparency, accountability, and participation to build a framework and provide policy recommendations for the governance of legacy in mega-events. In order to accomplish these objectives, a historical review of legacy within the OM and two descriptive case studies (Sydney 2000 and Vancouver 2010) were built using interviews and archival materials. Findings showed how the growth of the Games has culminated in the increased use and importance of legacy, leading to greater concept complexity. This resulted in the emergence of several trends including: new legacy themes, heightened interconnectedness, and formalization of governance mechanisms. Institutional theory was then applied to further explore the emergence of legacy and its habitualization, objectification, and sedimentation as an accepted norm in the Olympic Field. The examination of the legacy governance networks in the two cases showed four legacy network governance phases: legacy conceptualization, legacy planning and implementation, legacy transfer, and post-Games legacy governance, as well as a number of governance mechanisms (e.g., contracts, policies) that had an impact on the overall governance of the event’s legacy. Finally, a critical analysis of the governance of Olympic Games legacy was completed. The end result of the research project was a theoretical framework detailing the levels and fluidity of legacy governance in the OM.

For most of its history art has been mimetic in nature; not surprisingly, mimetic theories of art held sway for a long time. By the middle of the twentieth century art had departed so radically from the mimetic traditions that philosophers were forced to shift their focus away from functional theories (which typically drew on the formal features of artworks) to procedural ones (which are concerned with the imperceptible, relational properties external to the work of art). This breakthrough would eventually culminate in the Institutional Theory of Art, a perspective that provides the most exhaustive classificatory definition of art available, and which (despite the objections of its critics) remains the most persuasive theory of art on offer. The same logic that makes the Institutional Theory of Art a satisfying classificatory theory can be applied, in a similar manner, to questions about the source of the terms by which we evaluate works of art. In other words: the Institutional Theory is capable of serving not only as a powerful classificatory theory, but also as a highly effective evaluative theory of art. Moreover, if the Institutional Theory can be shown to provide a satisfying account of artistic value, it may also be equipped to deal with the related problems of subjectivism (i.e., that artistic judgments are a matter of personal taste) and cultural relativism (i.e., that artistic judgments are culturally specific). Presently, no theory of art can explain away these difficulties; accordingly, an institutional account of artistic value might offer – as does the Institutional Theory of Art itself – an explanatory framework capable of dealing with seemingly intractable problems of subjectivism and relativism in artistic judgment. / Graduate / 0422 / michaelabhainn@shaw.ca

This research responds to calls for the establishment of an overriding rationale, or raison d'être, for public relations practice. Several scholars are suggesting that the construct of legitimacy provides an overarching rationale that would link public relations practice across organisations, industries and countries (Boyd, 2000; Massey, 2001; Metzler, 1995, 2001; van Ruler & Vercic, 2005; Vercic, van Ruler, Butschi, & Flodin, 2001). However, existing public relations studies using legitimacy have focused on the communicative aspects, with little emphasis on long term and societal level effects for organisations. In seeking to accommodate these challenges, the central research question of this thesis is: Does legitimacy provide a rationale for public relations practice, and if so, in what ways? This study draws on institutional theory, with its central imperative of legitimacy, to address this question. Institutional theory considers the relationship between organisations and environments from a social constructionist perspective. Institutions created through the social construction of reality are based on shared, rational myths of legitimacy which drive organisational and social action, and with which organisations need to demonstrate compliance through their organisational ceremonies or practices. These two central contributors to legitimacy -- rational myths and ceremonies -- provide the framework guiding the study. The study was conducted around issues about the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of the four major Australian banks. In order to consider relationships between public relations practice and legitimacy as an institutional concept, Giddens' theory of structuration is used as a theoretical apparatus to straddle the rational myths of legitimacy at the level of institution, with public relations practice related to ceremonies at the level of action. 'Structuring moments' identified in media coverage provide sites of microanalysis of the intense social construction of rational myths of legitimacy that include organisations and publics. Through these theoretical devices, a number of guiding research questions shape the study: RQ i): What is learned about the social construction of rational myths about legitimacy by studying media coverage about CSR in Australian banking? RQ ii): What is learned about legitimacy by studying public relations practices in relation to media coverage about CSR in Australia banking? A longitudinal, qualitative, case study approach was taken to explore the research questions in this study. As legitimacy was viewed as a process of ongoing social construction, a temporal bracketing strategy (Langley, 1999) was used to examine the relationships between the level of institution and of action over the six year period of the study. Media coverage, annual and social impact reports, and interviews were used as sources of data to examine the institutionalisation of corporate social responsibility in the Australian banking industry. The findings of the study show that there is a dynamic relationship between public relations and legitimacy at both theoretical and practical levels. Through the duality of structure lens, theoretically public relations can be conceived as agency and legitimacy as structure. The influence of these two dynamically interrelated levels of agency and structure is both constituted by human agency and is the medium of the institutions (Sewell, 1992). Public relations practices, therefore, can be seen as human agency that both shapes and is shaped by legitimacy. If legitimacy represents a dominant concept of organisational success, it is also a rationale for public relations practice as an act of human agency that seeks to create alignment between organisations and publics in their environment. As such, public relations practices are not just activities. Rather, public relations practices constitute a central resource that organisations can access to exert power to create and manage their legitimacy within the broader environment. Public relations practices, therefore, are resources because they are embedded within the deep structures of society that influence organisational practice, but also are actions that allow the organisation to shape those structural arrangements. This process takes place within webs of communication and relationships between organisations and publics that form institutionalised legitimacy. This study also found that public relations practice is a balance between the demands of time and space. The traditional focus of public relations studies has been on incidents of compressed time and space, such as crises and campaigns. This study suggests that expanded periods of time and space are also integral to how and why public relations make a contribution as, over time, there were shifts to the institutional arrangements that guide public relations practices. This suggests that there is a compression of time and space as organisations and publics communicate in their relationship and an expansion of time and space to shift frames of social structures and legitimacy. It is through this juxtaposition of time and space, and across dual levels of structure, that legitimacy provides a rationale for public relations practices. The conclusions of this research make a major contribution to public relations theory by building a model for considering how legitimacy provides a raison d'être for public relations practices. As such, the model developed in this research provides a theoretical framework of how public relations practices contribute to organisational legitimacy at a societal level. The study also provides deeper insights to the role of public relations practices in managing organisational legitimacy at the level of action. In doing so, it addresses theoretical and methodological issues of the conflation of publics and environment. A number of opportunities for further research are presented by this study in understanding drivers of public relations practices and the role of inspection forums in processes of legitimacy. For practice, there are implications of taking a longer term perspective to considering the role of public relations practices, its impact on organisational success and, therefore, how it is evaluated.

This study examines the role of three institutional factors (regulative; normative and cultural-cognitive pillars of institutions) in addressing agency problems of Australia. In the wake of the series of corporate collapses of current decade, director and executive remuneration was identified as one of the major causes behind these scandals. The Australian government and other related organisations made both regulative and non-regulative institutional reforms to manage this agency conflict. These reforms, encapsulated in Corporate Law Economic Reform Program (CLERP) Act 2004 demanded an increased level of disclosure of director and executive remuneration particularly, the disclosure of performance based salary. Subsequently, these amendments provided an opportunity through a non-binding vote to shareholders to participate in executive remuneration decisions. This study proposes a new synthesis of institutional and agency theories by examining how institutional interventions addresses agency conflicts in the Australian context. A conceptual model is developed to measure both the conjoined and distinctive institutional impact on the disclosure level of director and executive remuneration in Australia. To measure and quantify the aforementioned impact a mixed method research strategy was used. First, content analysis as an investigative tool was used to develop a disclosure index which determined the level of disclosure of director and executive remuneration from top 100 Australian listed entities. Second, a conceptual model, positing the relationships between independent and dependent variables was verified through an econometric analysis of collected data, performed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 15. The findings of this research reveal that there exists a significant difference between the levels of disclosure in the pre and post stages of the introduction of the CLERP Act 2004. This result highlights the significance of regulatory intervention in addressing agency conflicts. The study also indicates that regulative and normative pillars have a higher impact than the culture-cognitive pillar on disclosure practices of Australian firms. In light of these results, the new blend between agency and institutional theories highlight the role of different institutions, particularly the government, in stabilising the organisational practices for good governance and creating national competitive advantages.

Organizational forms can become institutionalized in the sense that their existence and application is taken-for-granted and perceived as legitimate by stakeholders. Over time, new organizational forms can emerge that challenge perceived legitimacy of the established form. From this perspective, this dissertation examined institutionalization in the context of online business degree programs (OBDP) in higher education. Specifically, this dissertation examined OBDP as an emerging institutionalized form in relation to its cognitive legitimacy (taken-for-grantedness) and sociopolitical legitimacy (appropriateness) from the perspectives of four key stakeholder groups (students, faculty, academic administrators, and business practitioners). Survey results suggest that OBDPs are perceived as cognitively legitimate across each of the groups studied and socio-politically legitimate in each the four groups studied except for faculty. Furthermore, a conjoint experiment was conducted to determine the influence that four program related characteristics (accreditation, reputation, placement after graduation, and physical linkage) have on the legitimacy perceptions of OBDPs. Conjoint results indicate that each of the factors studied were significant predictors of legitimacy with accreditation being the most significant across each of the four groups. These findings provide a novel test of institutional theory as well as contributing to practice by offering strategic guidance to business schools either currently offering ODBPs or those planning to develop an online version of an existing program.

We investigate a multinational corporation's (MNC) decision to appoint host-country national (HCN) managers to foreign subsidiaries based on the institutional context of and familiarity with the host country. HCN managers are commonly associated with specialized knowledge, superior responsiveness, and higher legitimacy. Yet, we argue that local familiarity of HCNs can also be perceived as risky or harmful by MNC parents. We analyze how formal and informal institutions affect the trade-off between positive effects and potential costs associated with HCN managers ("Local allies" vs. "Trojan horses"). We find that legal institutions protect foreign MNCs from potential costs, encourage the use of HCNs and reinforce their benefits. Corruption and corruption distance, however, increase perceived costs associated with HCN managers up to a point at which they outweigh their perceived benefits.

This research focuses on the influence of institutions on entrepreneurship among Kuwaiti youth. It aims to capture the role played by institutions on youth entrepreneurship at the backdrop of a dampening ‘spirit’ for it. This research is currently very important due to various economic and geo-political factors leading to an economic downturn, which has led to the need for entrepreneurial ventures. It reviews and consolidates concepts and factors purported to facilitate and increase entrepreneurship for the benefit of the society and economy of Kuwait. This research uses a social constructionist approach to make sense of how institutions influence Kuwaiti youth in their quest to become entrepreneurs. It exposes institutional endorsement and legitimacy from formal and informal institutions. It shows the use of regulative, normative and cognitive dimensions and influences on entrepreneurial intentions and actions. This research shows how institutions interact with Kuwaiti youth and what role they play in the formulation of intentions and actions concerning entrepreneurship. A number of key formal and informal institutions have come to the fore that influence one another (in)directly as living entities, and likewise influence the youth (in)directly. The research contribution also shows that young people have to approach some key institutions and in return their desire to become entrepreneurs is strengthened or weakened depending on how institutions respond and what role they are willing to play in their lives.