The aim of the study was to investigate how a community motivates and ensures the implementation of its values and how this document affected personnel of meaning, vision and daily operations. The study was based on semi-structured interviews, in which nine respondents were interviewed in a city in southern Sweden. Interviews dealt with three different themes, all concerned organization or set of values. The analysis was based partly on how organizations and institutions build up and maintain their legitimacy. The analysis was also explained by the new institutional theory and its concepts isomorphism. In conclusion, the study shows that the concept of value system is very subjective and means different things depending on which profession you belong to. The study also showed that officials of the municipality indicate that the values discussed continuously in operation. This picture did not fit at all agree with the care assistants who considered values almost never discussed. The study also showed that the implementation was not as successful as desired, then no time for reflection was. The study showed that the reason that there was an opportunity to reflect due to the time and resources were too scarce. Throughout officials related concepts in the study more to an organizational plan, when care assistants instead relate everything to the actual meeting with the care recipient. Instead of using values as a benchmark they instead used of the "inner compass" that consists of subjective norms and values.

Primarily, this research provides insight on a management accounting change in a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) from institutional perspective. Comprising a qualitative field study, the research examines and explains how and why a management accounting change occurred in the SOE, which is the oldest and largest beer producer in China. The study focuses on the introduction and usage of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC), at both the headquarters and the factory level of the organization. The framework of institutionalization proposed by Burns and Scapens (2000) is utilized as the theoretical framework for this research. The major findings take the form of a comparison between the usage of the BSCs at the headquarters and at the factories. It is found that higher resistance to change occurred in the factories than at headquarters and resulted in the rules required by these management accounting practices to be only loosely coupled with routines embedded in everyday working activities, as the factories carried on brewing their beer. In contrast, behaviors at headquarters were more tightly coupled with the rules of the revised accounting practices. This diversity in the effect of the change process may be explained by the new management accounting practices entailing rules that fit better with the activities and routines carried out at headquarters, and so being more easily institutionalized. In contrast, institutionalization has not had much success in the factories primarily because of a lack of fit between complying with the new rules and maintaining the success of brewing operations, and because of historical circumstances that the factories have had some independence in operational matters, although part of an organizational hierarchy. Given the location of this study in a Chinese setting, the findings may contribute that, despite its Western roots, institutional theory may explain the low success rate of the implementation of the BSC in China.

By integrating signaling research with an institutional perspective we examine how country of origin, corporate governance, and host market effects impact foreign IPO performance. Using a sample of 202 foreign IPOs listed in the U.S. or U.K in 2002-2007 results indicate both the legal environment surrounding these organizations in their countries of origin and board independence impact the success of foreign firms at IPO. However, the institutional environment of the chosen IPO market impacts the salience of country and corporate governance signals for foreign IPO firms suggesting a more contextualized framework of IPO valuation is necessary.

This research was motivated by the desire to understand how regulatory reforms affect the task environment in an emerging market. Regulatory reforms in emerging markets have been used amongst others to correct market failures, increase competition or grow economic sectors. However, on occasion unintended consequences arise from these interventions leading to “liabilities of foreignness” for some of the entities operating in the institutional environment. To this end, this study aimed to establish if these effects were prevalent in the South African mining environment by studying two cases of companies operating in the sector, represented by a foreign and a domestic entity.An exploratory qualitative research design was followed since the researcher was unsure whether the phenomena being observed constituted LOFs or not. A literature study was conducted in order to define the construct of liabilities of foreignness and its impact on the task environment. Therefore the objective of the study was to;Establish the effect of institutional reforms in facilitating the development of LOFs in emerging markets.The research did show the regulatory reforms to alter the business environment somewhat, therefore leading to LOFs in the task environment. However, no entities appeared to be benefiting from the current regulatory reforms, as suggested by the literature. This is possibly due to organisational learning or the efficacy of the individual entities in applying coping strategies to mitigate against LOFs in the institutional context. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study applies a theoretical framework from institutional organization theory (Scott, 2001) to examine the problem of managing government contracting, conceptualized as the "smart buyer problem" by Kettl (1993). Kettl argued that, while embracing the market-based promises of contracting, governments have failed to develop the capacity to address even the most fundamental contracting questions, such as what to buy, who to buy from and what was bought? He suggests that the problem is partly attributable to bureaucratic barriers to information sharing in government agencies that prevent them from becoming learning organizations. This study explores the proposition that institutional characteristics within acquisition organizations may contribute to this problem. Governments do not behave as a single buyer with clearly defined buying objectives. Multiple organizations, each shaped by institutional factors, lay claim to processes relating to Kettl's smart buyer questions. As key organizational participants become aligned with their own regulative, normative, and socio-cognitive institutional "pillars," smart buying behavior may become confounded by institutional factors and constraining organizational structures. For this study, an organizational field consisting of the program office, contracting office, and budget office was selected as the level of analysis. A qualitative multi-approach methodology was developed to analyze data from public sources, including government policy documents, audit reports, and other published information related to five individual cases. Data from autoethnographic accounts, interviews, content analyses, and the case studies helped frame the institutional characteristics of these offices. The study confirmed that the three offices are key participants in acquisition programs, although their roles are not always formally recognized. Strong evidence was found that they each possess unique institutional characteristics. These differences could be creating conditions of divergence and misalignment with the acquisition objectives, raising the possibility of conflicting institutional demands, competing challenges for legitimacy, and institutional change. Policy initiatives to formally recognize the roles and responsibilities of these offices and the use of working-level oversight boards, project teams, and interagency contracting may help mitigate these institutional differences. The study points to the importance of recognizing participants' institutional characteristics when planning and managing an acquisition program. / Ph. D.

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Vi har gjort en fallstudie som utforskar hur ledarskapet påverkar och påverkas vid entillämpning av ISO 14001, samt hur tillämpningen av standarden är utformad påstudiens företag. Analysen har genomförts med hjälp av institutionell teori somteoretisk referensram. Vi kom fram till att ISO 14001 inte leder till eninterorganisatorisk homogenisering mellan olika företag, inomsamhällsplaneringsbranschen som vårt fallföretag agerar i. Vidare fastslog vi även enparadox i utformningen av ISO 14001-systemet hos företaget; otydliga istället förtydliga krav ökar chansen för att behålla certifieringen. Till sists kom vi också framtill att ledarskapets svårighet att kommunicera aktörernas rätt att översätta ISO 14001i sin praktik, beror på att ISO 9001 och ISO 14001 hos vårt fallföretag är utformatsom ett gemensamt system. Där ISO 9001 ligger i fokus. Uppsatsen syfte är att bidratill existerande institutionell teori. / Program: Civilekonomprogrammet

Från och med redovisningsåret 2014 måste mindre organisationer ha valt mellan redovisningsregelverken K2 och K3. För bostadsrättsföreningar är detta val komplicerat eftersom redovisning enligt regelverken inte anses anpassad för dem. Denna studie syftar därför till att undersöka vilka faktorer som ligger bakom bostadsrättsföreningars val mellan dessa K-regelverk. I studiens undersöks variablerna storlek, skuldsättningsgrad, anläggningstillgångar, ålder och kooperativtillhörighet. Utifrån Positive Accounting Theory och Institutional Theory ställs fem hypoteser upp över vilket K-regelverk föreningarna förväntas välja i förhållande till dessa faktorer. Hypoteserna testas med en logistisk regressionsanalys genomförd på insamlad data från 303 svenska bostadsrättsföreningar. Studiens resultat tyder på att tre av de ovanstående faktorerna påverkar föreningarnas val: storlek, anläggningstillgångar och kooperativtillhörighet. Signifikanta resultat för skuldsättningsgrad och ålder erhölls ej. Vidare indikerar resultaten att Positive Accounting Theory inte kan förklara bostadsrättsföreningarnas val av regelverk. Institutional Theory verkar dock delvis kunna förklara valet.

<p>In recent years, family firms have been stressed as important contributors to economic wealth. An increased focus from both researchers and practitioners can therefore be seen in various forms such as research institutes and conferences. Furthermore, family firms are often treated as a group of similar kind while inherent differences are played down.</p><p>From a theoretical perspective, organisations look at the behaviour of others that face similar complex situations, such as succession. Information can be found in institutional carriers who connect groups of firms. By imitating what is perceived as successful practices, family firms face the risk of employing inefficient procedures in times of succession.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis was to investigate what kind of ideas Dagens Industri as institutional carrier communicates about succession in family firms. To fulfil the purpose, data was retrieved in the form of Dagens Industri articles concerning family businesses and succession. Interpretations were based on theoretical constructs on family firms as well as institutional theory.</p><p>From our findings, it was observed that family firms differ on the basis of industry presence and ownership structure. Furthermore, importance of time and communication was stressed in Dagens Industri.</p>

Specifically, this dissertation explains the rise of the for-profit university in the United States. Generally, it explains the legitimation of a new (form of) organization in an institutional environment.In this dissertation I demonstrate that organizational legitimation is a process whereby a key audience serving as an institutional gatekeeper cognitively comprehends an applicant as a member of an existing category in the audience's classification system. When this process is problematic or contested, it consists of active negotiations between the audience and the applicant (and sometimes third parties) over how to apply or interpret the rules of classification.Using a case-study framework I selected seven cases from the history of the leading for-profit university, the University of Phoenix. These cases represented episodes of successful legitimation by the three key gatekeeping audiences in the postsecondary education environment. I assembled the documentary record for each of these cases and supplemented them with informant interviews. With this evidence I compiled a narrative for each episode which I then analyzed using comparative and historical methods.I found that audiences' classification systems varied according to their category configurations and their classification rules, and that these variations may affect how legitimation proceeds. I further found that audiences and applicants draw from their own tool kits of unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral strategies. Finally, I found that legitimation may proceed according to one of several different temporal models.