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Before Philip King sold his five bookstores in Christchurch roughly 10 years ago to Whitcoulls, a large Australian-owned bookstore and office supplies operation, he hardly fancied himself as an entrepreneur. Books were his passion: He loved to read. However, his first job was selling barbeque charcoal to New Zealand℉s South Island residents.

Philip Selznick has been a central, historical figure in the development of institutional theory. In particular his contribution in TVA and the Grass Roots and Leadership in Administration has been key. However, we put forward the relevance of Selznick’s broader portfolio of ideas, to show that they could inform institutional analysis in new ways. There are important ideas and insights that can be brought to bear on contemporary issues within institutional theory. In particular, Selznick was concerned with the ways in which organizational goals are deflected because of different interest groups. Organizations use various kinds of cooptation to deal with interest groups. Selznick’s perspective implies that institutional theorists need to be concerned with both deflection of purposes and interests. These ideas are explored further in his work, The Organizational Weapon, showing a concern with the nefarious effects of organizational practices, an avenue that institutional theory needs to explore further. Indeed, Selznick was always concerned with the consequences of institutionalization. He dealt with issues of organizational governance, purposes and interests, ideas of unanticipated as well as anticipated consequences, negative as well as positive effects of institutionalization all of which require further analysis in contemporary institutional theory. Also at the heart of Selznick’s work was an emphasis on policy and practice, coming from American pragmatist philosophy. For Selznick, knowledge is to be utilized to produce good policy and practice. Institutional theorists need to consider the applications of their knowledge.

Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.

While many modern institutionalists have shown a renewed interest in Philip Selznick’s early work, previous efforts to reincorporate his perspective have given relatively little attention to values (which are the most central element of the theory itself). This paper addresses this disconnect by: (1) revisiting Selznick’s key arguments about values and explaining their various roles in his thought, (2) expressing a theoretical framework through which values could be “reinfused” into the contemporary institutional literature and, (3) developing six different proposals for theory and research which do just this. These proposals are offered as an a la carte menu of possibilities, rather than a programmatic agenda for reform. While we hope that our paper will facilitate a renewed focus on values within institutional theory, we do not see this as a theoretical imperative.

This study aims to examine the potential factors influencing the hiring decisions of experienced auditors in public accounting practices in Hong Kong.

Multinomial logistic regression is used to analyze the survey data, which is the first time such an approach has been used in the literature. A total of 337 interview rating forms are collected in actual employment interviews from two Big 4 firms. Graves and Powell's hiring model is adapted to this Hong Kong study. Interpersonal attraction theory is employed to assist in analyzing the results.

The results indicate that subjective qualifications have the highest explanatory power. Big 4 recruiters regard subjective qualifications as important considerations in the evaluation of experienced auditors. Interpersonal attraction is the second most important factor. These findings are consistent with the theory of interpersonal attraction. Perceived similarity and objective qualifications are also perceived as significant factors. Physical attractiveness, dress effect and gender are not found to be factors influencing the hiring decisions, in contrast to the findings of earlier literature in the USA.

These findings indicate that recruiters would look for attributes other than those primarily based on objective qualifications. Job relevant skills, knowledge and demonstrated initiatives are important. The accounting profession could conduct more training programs for auditors to improve and demonstrate their “soft skills” in the interview process so as to enhance their chances of employment, particularly during a recessionary environment.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study of performance measurement and reporting practices of four government departments in Australia.

Relying on the “context” and “content” aspects of the institutional and strategic choice literatures, the paper suggests how external institutions such as government regulatory frameworks and internal organizational contexts such as strategic plans may shape the design of performance measurement and reporting of government departments. Texts and contents from archival sources such as published annual reports and department web sites provided insightful and interesting findings.

The paper reveals that performance measurement systems design as a central thrust to the subject government departments' strategic planning and management framework. Furthermore, content analyses of the data indicate a clear linkage between the recently introduced “managing for outcomes” framework and performance measurement practices of government departments.

This is an exploratory study based on archival documents only, thereby provides limited insights into how organizational managers perceived the relevance and usefulness of performance measurement data. However, textual analysis from archival documents provides a rich description of how measuring and reporting of the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of today's government organizations could be the interaction of both internal and external contexts within which they operate.

The paper adds to the existing public sector management and accounting literatures by suggesting that the construction and reporting process of performance measurement are crucial and relevant in today's government organizations facing a significant reduction in government funding with increased community demand for quality services.

Experiences in subject government entities will provide a platform for academic researchers and/or practitioners from multiple disciplines to disseminate information on accounting and performance management in the changing public sector worldwide.

Despite intense scholarly interest in social entrepreneurship, opportunity recognition remains a poorly understood facet of the phenomenon. Linkages between the micro- and macro-level forces shaping social entrepreneurship are particularly unclear. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of institutional channeling, the process by which institutions socialize and direct individuals into specific knowledge corridors, as a key mechanism influencing the ability of entrepreneurs to identify and create different types of opportunities.

Through a synthesis of institutional theory and the knowledge corridor thesis, this research offers a theory explaining why some individuals are able to recognize opportunities for social entrepreneurship.

The authors develop a conceptual model that explains how non-contested institutions channel entrepreneurs into homogeneous knowledge corridors, which support the creation of purely for-profit and non-profit organizations. By contrast, experiences involving institutional plurality activate and enable heterogeneous knowledge corridors, which are associated with the ability to recognize opportunities, like social entrepreneurship, that blend institutions.

The central contribution of this paper is an explanation of why certain individuals, because of their institutional experiences, are more likely than others to recognize for-profit, non-profit and social opportunities. This article highlights that previous efforts at addressing this issue were predominantly centered at the micro level of analysis and focus on individual entrepreneurs and their identities, personality traits and social networks. Although these studies have shed light on important facets of opportunity recognition, they do not sufficiently explain the influence that institutions can have on the micro processes involved in social entrepreneurship opportunity recognition.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether, how and why ethical investment practices of charities differ between two countries with quite different ideological and institutional frameworks – Norway and the UK.

The paper uses mixed methods and a cross-sectional field study design to explore the ethical investment practices of 300 of the largest charities by investments in the UK and Norway. Practices are theorized using the dual lens of institutional theory and social origins theory.

The paper provides evidence on why charities established the practice of ethical investment. The results show that large charities were more likely to have an ethical policy; that charities with moderate public sector funding were more likely to have an ethical policy. In line with institutional theory some Norwegian charities with public sector funding mimic the policy of the Government Pension Fund, and the ethical investment policy of Norwegian charities was more influenced by donors. Institutional entrepreneurs (charity founders) had a more prominent influence in UK charities.

The paper highlights that more research is needed on sovereign wealth funds, their investment practices and how they affect charities.

The findings of this paper highlight the potential role that the ethical investment practices of sovereign can play a soft regulatory function in changing the behaviour of other investors.

To the extent that ethical investment practices are construed as having a positive social impact, then this study shows how a government sovereign wealth fund can influence the spread of ethical investment practices.

This paper, which sits at the nexus of the charity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures, contributes by responding to calls for more research on charity practices in different countries and CSR practices in different countries. This comparison also contributes to the development of institutional theory by shedding light on the institutional influence of a sovereign wealth fund and its impact on others. The paper will be of value to academics, policy setters and regulators.

The environment of most organizations is beset by continuous change, instability, flux, and unpredictability. If organizations are to survive and prosper under such conditions, they must be capable of dynamic adaption and stable and reliable performance. Organization theory recognizes the importance of both imperatives, but typically assumes that they pull organizations in different directions. Building on Selznick’s theory of institutionalization, we argue that institutions can, should and sometimes do master the challenge of being responsive and stable, while avoiding the potentially destructive tendencies of rigidity and opportunism. Contrary to a prominent view that strong institutionalization leads to inertia, Selznick’s theory suggests that strong institutions are capable of preemptive adaptation to protect the character of their institutions. We describe this state as one of dynamic conservatism and explore four types of preemptive internal reform strategies: strategic retreat, self-cannibalization, experimentation, and repositioning. We conclude with a consideration of factors that might moderate the ability of strong institutions to proactively change in order to remain the same.

Total quality management (TQM) has received considerable attention as a way to increase both the effectiveness and the efficiency of corporations (Bounds et. al., 1994; Grant, Shani and Krisnan 1994; Olian and Rynes 1991; Powell 1995; Ross 1993). Concerned primarily with the delivery of customer satisfaction, the proponents of quality and/or TQM (Deming 1986; Juran 1992; and Crosby 1979) have developed principles and procedures for achieving total quality and meeting multiple corporate goals. Empirical evidence regarding outcomes is mixed; success and failure case studies abound, statistical methodologies are questioned, and more rigorous empirical studies present some positive findings (Powell 1995). Some maintain that the reasons for the failure of TQM systems is incompatibility between existing Western management thought which is grounded in economic models, and the TQM paradigm, which evolved from statistical theory, and has its own set of assumptions (Grant, Shani and Krisnan 1994). Despite such mixed empirical results, TQM continues to be promoted and implemented. This is the beginning point for our examination of TQM. The TQ management paradigm is practiced in economically and culturally diverse environments, including those which embrace an economic perspective, complete with maximisation of shareholder wealth, self‐interest, rational decision makers, separation of ownership, and agency costs (Grant, Shani and Krishnan 1994).