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Organizations use innovations and respond to external pressures, creating a transition to the sociotechnical system. In their transitions, they interact with the environment and undergo adaptation-selection. The extant literature used a multilevel perspective (MLP) with a structural view and examined dynamics and transitions (phenomena) in a noninterventionistic setting. This study aims to examine the dynamics and phenomena with a microstructural or functional view and expand the MLP; this paper uses neo-institutionalism and human values as part of the functional view. Moreover, when the authors examine the phenomena in an interventionistic setting, they can obtain certain unique dynamics and their influence on the phenomena.

The authors need to examine the phenomena in its setting, so this paper selected a case study, Indian electricity generation. For diverse heuristic and analytic views, it selected two Indian states.

The findings from the functional view showed that organizations exhibit certain traits of neo-institutionalism and human values, which mediate their responses (behavior) to external pressures. Additionally, due to the interventionist state, their dynamics use shaping instead of selection logic for innovations, which decides the transition pathway selection (technology adoption). It further decided the extent to which innovations cumulate as stable designs. As a result, the responses and the transition provide benefits in the short term while invariably failing in the long term.

By selecting cases with higher investments in renewable energies and combustible fuels, the authors can expand the functional view to include user typologies such as producers, intermediaries and citizen groups and obtain further insights into transitions.

The study highlights the generation dynamics specific to Indian electricity generation and its transition pathways. The study’s outcome provides insights to researchers and practitioners in formulating policy changes and transforming electricity generation.

The study uses a functional view comprising neo-institutionalism and human values and expands the sociotechnical transition theory. In addition, selecting an interventionist setting provided insights into dynamics specific to organizational behavior and associated services. Finally, the obtained insights offer suggestions for technology development to better manage transitions with adaptation-selection.

Neo-institutional theories and their constructs have so far only received limited attention in supply chain management literature. As recent supply chain disruptions and their ripple effects affect actors on a broader institutional level, supply chains are confronted with multiple new and emerging, often conflicting, institutional demands. This study aims to unpack the notion of institutional complexity behind supply chain disruptions and present a novel institutional framework to lower supply chain susceptibility and increase supply chain resilience.

The authors identify the patterns of complexity that shape the supply chain susceptibility, namely, distance, diversity and ambiguity, and present three institutional responses to susceptibility to increase supply chain resilience, namely, institutional entrepreneurship, institutional alignment and institutional layering.

This paper analyses the current situational relevance to better understand the various and patterned ways how logics influence both supply chain susceptibility and the supply chain resilience. The authors derive six propositions on how complexity can be reduced for supply chain susceptibility and can be increased for supply chain resilience.

By expanding and extending research on institutional complexity to supply chains, the authors broaden how researchers in supply chain management view supply chain susceptibility, thereby providing managers with theory to think differently about supply chains and its resilience.

This study, a theoretical article, aims to introduce new institutionalism as a framework through which business and management researchers can explore the significance of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations. Although the new institutional theory is a fully established research program, the neo-institutional literature on AI is almost non-existent. There is, therefore, a need to develop a deeper understanding of AI as both the product of institutional forces and as an institutional force in its own right.

The authors follow the top-down approach. Accordingly, the authors first briefly describe the new institutionalism, trace its historical development and introduce its fundamental concepts: institutional legitimacy, environment and isomorphism. Then, the authors use those as the basis for the queries to perform a scoping review on the institutional role of AI in organizations.

The findings reveal that a comprehensive theory on AI is largely absent from business and management literature. The new institutionalism is only one of many possible theoretical perspectives (both contextually novel and insightful) from which researchers can study AI in organizational settings.

The authors use the insights from new institutionalism to illustrate how a particular social theory can fit into the larger theoretical framework for AI in organizations. The authors also formulate four broad research questions to guide researchers interested in studying the institutional significance of AI. Finally, the authors include a section providing concrete examples of how to study AI-related institutional dynamics in business and management.

This study aims to examine the impact of board characteristics on climate change disclosures (CCDs) in the context of an emerging economy, with a unique focus on regulatory influences.

This study analyzes longitudinal data (2014–2021) from environmentally sensitive firms listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange, using a disclosure index developed within the Global Reporting Initiative framework. The authors use a neo-institutional theoretical lens to explore regulatory influences on CCD through board characteristics. This study uses hand-collected data from annual reports owing to the absence of an established database.

The results indicate that a larger board size, the presence of foreign directors and the existence of an audit committee correlate with higher levels of CCD disclosure. Conversely, a higher frequency of board meetings is associated with lower CCD disclosure levels. This study also observed an increase in CCD following the implementation of corporate governance guidelines by the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission, albeit with a relatively low number of firms making these disclosures.

This study contributes to the climate change reporting literature by providing empirical evidence of regulatory influences on CCD through board characteristics in an emerging economy. However, the findings may not be universally applicable, considering the study’s focus on Bangladeshi listed firms.

This study suggests growing pressures for diverse stakeholders, including researchers and regulatory bodies, to integrate climate change disclosure into routine activities. This study offers a valuable framework and insights for various stakeholders.

By emphasizing the influence of good governance and sustainability practices, this study contributes to stakeholders’ understanding, aiming to contribute to a better world.

This study stands out by uniquely positioning itself in the climate change reporting literature, shedding light on regulatory influences on CCD through board characteristics in the context of an emerging economy.

The authors extend the literature on decoupling by analyzing the microlevel effects of institutionalized practices within the framework of international standards. This study investigates the specific informal management practices that decision-makers embrace in order for organizations to achieve ISO 9001 certification without all regulations being adopted and followed according to the standard's original design and purpose.

As the basis for its research framework, this paper adopts the neo-institutional theory. The research employs the comparative case study method and draws its data from a sample of 21 ISO 9001:2008 certified organizations in Bulgaria.

The results show ambivalent behavior toward the ISO 9001 standard's formal requirements. This behavior is expressed through targeted noncompliance with (certain) regulations and procedures regarding top management commitment, as well as documented information which are formally adopted within the organization and certified as complying with the standard.

The study has implications for future research into decoupling, organizational learning, and standardization. In terms of limitations, the authors examined the process of decoupling from a micro perspective in Bulgaria only. Noncompliance with international standards such as the ISO 9000 may exhibit specific regional or national characteristics.

Findings from this research encourage the International Standards Organization to respond to previous calls for revising the formal structure of ISO 9000 and other international management standards by considering a more flexible and liberal point of view.

As opposed to previous studies which have explored decoupling from a macro perspective, this study focuses on how the internal constraints imposed by the standard's universal requirements are being mitigated at a micro level. That is, the authors provide a detailed account of the specific informal management practices which managers (deliberately) adopt in order to achieve certification without fully integrating the formal criteria imposed by international standards (e.g. ISO 9001).

The article investigates the institutional setup of e-lending in public libraries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Our point of departure is that e-lending has necessitated new library collaborations between local, regional and national levels, and therefore, institutional e-lending setups have emerged. The study seeks to provide better understanding of how the institutional setups are structured, how governance logics have shaped them and what tensions and dynamics become visible in the key actors’ problematisations of these setups.

The study is situated in the neo-institutional tradition and applies the institutional logics perspective. The research questions are answered by taking a qualitative approach, grounded in an extensive interview study with representatives of libraries, publishers and policy actors in three Scandinavian countries. To provide in-depth insight into e-lending setups, the scope of empirical material is then limited to accounts the central library and policy actors involved in establishing e-lending.

The analysis shows that the e-lending setups are both similar (especially when it comes to financing), and different across Scandinavia, especially when it comes to centralisation and involvement of librarians in this task. The differences are attributed to the influence of different governance logics (question of administrative autonomy, collaboration in the field and existing legal and political frames), and to what extent the digital and market logics are incorporated or rejected in the field.

The study provides new insights into the question of how Scandinavian public libraries face the consequences of the digitalisation of book distribution and consumption by investigating how they organise their e-lending services. This has not been explored before, notably in a comparative perspective.

Knowledge-intensive public organizations (KIPOs henceforth) rely heavily on knowledge as the primary resource to provide public services. This study deals with a specific kind of KIPO in the judiciary system: the courts. The paper aims to explore the court’s managerial and organisational change resulting from the national recovery and resilience plan (NRRP) reform in response to Covid-19, focussing on how this neglected KIPO responds to change, either by showing acts of resistance or undergoing a hybridisation process.

The paper adopts a qualitative research design, developing an explorative case study to investigate the process of a court’s managerial and organisational change caused by NRRP reform and to shed light on how this neglected KIPO reacts to change, showing resistance acts and developing the hybridisation process. Thirty-one interviews in six months have been conducted with the three main actors in Courts: judges, clerks and trial clerks.

The paper shows that in this understudied KIPO, judges fiercely resist the managerial logic that decades of reforms have been trying to impose. The recent introduction of an office for speeding up trials (Ufficio Per il Processo (UPP)) was initially opposed. Then, the resistance strategy changed, and judges started to benefit from UPP delegating repetitive and low-value tasks while retaining their core activities. Clerks approached the reform with a more positive attitude, seeing in UPP the mechanism to bridge the distance between them and the judges.

Considering their relevance to society, courts must be more addressed in KIPOs' studies. This paper allows the reader to enter such KIPO and understand its peculiar features. Secondly, the article helps to understand micropractices of resistance that may hinder the effectiveness of managerial reforms.

Universities globally have faced the introduction of research performance assessment systems that provide monetary and ranking rewards based on publication outputs. This study aims to seek an understanding of the implementation of performance-based research funding (PBRF) and its impact on the heads of departments (HoDs) and accounting academics in New Zealand (NZ) tertiary institutions. The study explores NZ accounting academics’ experiences and their workload; the relationship between teaching and research in the accounting discipline and any issues and concerns affecting new and emerging accounting researchers because of PBRF.

Applying an institutional theoretical lens, this paper explores accounting HoDs’ perceptions concerning the PBRF system’s impact on their academic staff. The research used semi-structured interviews to collect data from NZ’s eight universities.

The key findings posit that many institutional processes, some more coercive in nature, whereas others were normative and mimetic, have been put in place to ensure that academics are able to meet the PBRF requirements. HoDs suggest that their staff understand the importance of research, but that PBRF is a challenge to new and emerging researchers and pose threats to their recruitment. New academics must “hit the ground running” as they must demonstrate not only teaching abilities but also already have a track record of research publications; all in all, a daunting experience for new academics to overcome. There is also a teaching and research disconnect. Furthermore, many areas where improvements can be made in the design of this measurement tool remain.

The PBRF system has significantly impacted on accounting academics. Central university research systems were established that subsequently applied coercive institutional pressures onto line managers to ensure that their staff performed. This finding offers scope for future research to explore a better PBRF that measures and rewards research productivity but without the current system’s unintended negative consequences.

This study aims to analyse the strategic moves used by major tobacco corporations to thwart the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Brazil.

The authors conducted a detailed historical case study spanning 1988–2005 and encompassing the period leading up to Brazil’s FCTC ratification. The authors collected qualitative data from various sources to triangulate and develop a comprehensive historical account.

The historical analysis identified three distinct phases. First, the acquisition of a Brazilian cigarette factory, Souza Cruz, by British American Tobacco dramatically altered power dynamics, strengthening the position of the tobacco industry. The second phase regards the era of dictatorship and the efforts of various actors advocating against smoking and the tobacco industry. The third phase involved Brazil’s re-democratisation and the challenges of securing FCTC ratification, during which fierce industry opposition had to be overcome. Throughout these phases, the authors identified four key strategies used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Brazil to uphold unsustainable practices and products that contradicted public interests instead of reforming them: shaping collective memory, dissimulation, re-presentation and redirecting attention.

This study contributes to critical international business research on emerging economies by examining how Brazil’s position in the global capitalist system has influenced its dependency and how MNCs produce and maintain cycles of poverty and unsustainable practices through the exploitation of power dynamics within the country.

This research designed, optimized and tested a context-specific scale to evaluate public sector employees' pension choices.

The authors developed the scale using a comprehensive process of interviews and focus groups with experts across academia and finance. The authors used the refined scale to collect data from 564 faculty members in public sector universities following a multistage systematic cluster sampling technique. The findings revealed diversity in choice across different socio-economic and demographic variables.

The results revealed that items related to the defined benefit pension system explain most of the data variance and are preferred widely. This is followed by a preference for monetizing pension benefits and a defined contribution system. These findings indicated the need for flexible pension plans.

Therefore, the progressive movement towards monetization and the shift from defined benefit to a defined contribution pension system due to economic pressures must be accurately calculated and introduced where it is suitable.

Although the theory of introducing a defined contribution pension system and monetization system is appealing, its practical implementation may not be encouraging for all employees.