Return to search

Ideas Traveling Across High Institutional Distances : A Case Study of Digitalization in the Costa Rican Agriculture Sector / Idéer som reser tvärs över höga institutionella avstånd: : En fallstudie av digitalisering i den costaricanska jordbrukssektorn

Institutional theory asserts that an organization’s context determines which circulatingideas it considers appropriate and thus chooses to adapt. Yet, ideas are able to travelacross high institutional distances between significantly different contexts when assistedby intermediaries in the recipient context. Via an institutional translation perspective,emphasizing that ideas are adapted to fit local contexts through processes of translation asthey travel, we explore how such local intermediaries facilitate ideas to travel into contextswith which they have a poor institutional fit. The extant literature, however, offers littleinsight into this phenomenon, endemic high-distance translation, despite being importantfor both practice and theory as it enables countries and organizations to adopt foreignideas without external support and answers calls for research on how distinct contextsshapes processes underlying translation, respectively. Thus, with aim to elaborate uponthe extant literature we conduct a qualitative case study of local intermediaries in CostaRica facilitating translation of ideas concerning digitalization of the agriculture sector,which is highly traditional and institutionally a poor fit for digitalization. From our casefindings, we develop a theoretical framework for high-distance translation facilitated bylocal intermediaries. The framework outlines an end-to-end process of endemic highdistancetranslation and provides novel insights into how three functions — transferringforeign ideas to the local context via transposition, presenting the idea to recipients inan understandable and interest evoking way via adaptive conveyance, and collaborativelyiterating upon the idea to adapt it to the local context via joint recontextualization —allow local intermediaries to bridge translation barriers imposed by institutional distance.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-202486
Date January 2022
CreatorsGranath, Linus, Luusua, Emil, Keelty, Joshua
PublisherStockholms universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Page generated in 0.0022 seconds