The MNE as a Challenge to Institutional Theory: Key Concepts, Recent Developments and Empirical Evidence

• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Author: Ayse Saka‐Helmhout,Royston Greenwood,Richard Deeg
• Date: 01 January 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12172

The MNE as a Challenge to Institutional Theory: Key

Concepts, Recent Developments and Empirical

Evidence

Ayse Saka-Helmhout, Richard Deeg and

Royston Greenwood

Radboud University Nijmegen; Temple University; University of Alberta

ABSTRACT The co-existence of multiple, often contradictory, institutional demands pose

challenges to organizations. Despite the intriguing context that multinational enterprises

(MNEs) present for the study of organizational action to such demands, research has focused

on organizational fields. To more deeply consider the MNE context, we argue that MNEs offer

an opportunity to examine the role of society in the ‘management’ of multiple institutional

logics. Further, we highlight organizational attributes such as economic ties, foreignness, and

location strategy that filter institutional complexity in the context of MNEs. The papers in this

Special Issue explore how the dynamic interaction between MNEs and the varying institutional

demands across their multiple environments creates avenues for active agency.

Keywords: comparative institutional analysis, institutional complexity, institutional logics,

multinational enterprises, organizational institutionalism

INTRODUCTION

In this Special Issue, our interest is to have the organizational and comparative institu-

tional communities and the international business (IB) community engage in a dialogue

on how institutional complexity shapes organizational action. This dialogue should yield

a rich conceptualization of agency that accounts for the enabling, capacity-building and

change-facilitating nature of institutions. Our interest in this dialogue was motivated by

the common research concern of how multiple institutional demands are experienced

and managed albeit from different conceptualizations of institutions and the limited

attention given to societal influences. We envisioned this limitation to be addressed by

contributions drawing on political science or comparative institutional analysis (CIA).

Address for reprints: Ayse Saka-Helmhout, Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Management

Research, Nijmegen School of Management, PO Box 9108, 6500 HK Nijmegen, The Netherlands

(a.saka-helmhout@fm.ru.nl).

V

C2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 53:1 January 2016

doi: 10.1111/joms.12172