Marie-Laure Djelic

Globalization and Institutions

This volume investigates the relationship between economic globalization and institutions, or global governance, challenging the common assumption that globalization and institutionalization are essentially processes which exclude each other. Instead, the contributors to this book show that globalization is better perceived as a dual process of institutional change at the national level, and institution building at the transnational level. Rich, supporting empirical evidence is provided along with a theoretical conceptualization of the main actors, mechanisms and conditions involved in trickle-up and trickle-down trajectories through which national institutional systems are being transformed and transnational rules emerge.

The Telecom Industry as Cultural Industry? The Transposition of Fashion Logics into the Field of Mobile Telephony

The term “fashion” triggers images of frivolous symbolic production with a particular impact on women, quite a world apart at first sight from high technology and mobile telephony that traditionally tend to be associated with science, rationality and masculinity. Surprisingly, we show in this paper that the field of mobile telephony has, for a number of years now, been impacted and significantly transformed by the transposition of fashion logics. We deconstruct the process of logic transposition, considering key moments and key actors, key modes and mechanisms. The comparison of multiple case studies within the mobile telephony industry also points to the limits of transposition and to varying degrees of hybridization and logic co-habitation. This process of logic transposition is, we argue, profoundly transforming the mobile telephony industry, bringing it closer, on many counts, to “cultural industries”. In the end, we draw a number of theoretical conclusions on logic transposition as an important mechanism of institutional change.

Theoretical Building Blocks for a Research Agenda Linking Globalization and Institutions

This volume investigates the relationship between economic globalization and institutions, or global governance, challenging the common assumption that globalization and institutionalization are essentially processes which exclude each other. Instead, the contributors to this book show that globalization is better perceived as a dual process of institutional change at the national level, and institution building at the transnational level. Rich, supporting empirical evidence is provided along with a theoretical conceptualization of the main actors, mechanisms and conditions involved in trickle-up and trickle-down trajectories through which national institutional systems are being transformed and transnational rules emerge.

Conclusion: Globalization as a Double Process of Institutional Change and Institution Building

Globalization is a word that suffers from overuse. Still, behind the overstretched concept lies the reality of an economic world that is not fully contained nor constrained by national boundaries. Economic organization and coordination increasingly reach across national borders and the impact is being felt both within the transnational sphere and, through rebound and indirect impact, at the national level as well. We started this book by acknowledging the need to take into account this transnational reality and its potentially quite significant impact. We now want to point, however, to its full complexity. [First paragraph]

Does Europe Mean Americanization? The Case of Competition

This paper traces the process whereby competition has come to be valued in our economies. Taking a step back in history, we show how it all started not with competition but with cooperation in fact, in the last decades of the 19th century. Comparing Germany and the USA, we then show how national paths diverged after that. While cooperation remained the accepted and dominant rule in Europe, a particular understanding of competition, what we call oligopolistic competition, came to triumph in the United States. After World War II, this particular understanding was diffused to other parts of the world and particularly to Western Europe. When it comes to competition, we thus show that the basic and formal rules of the game that structure Europe today owe a lot, historically, to American models. However, we ponder in the conclusion on the limits to that process of “soft convergence”.

Institutional Dynamics in a Re-ordering World

The chapters in this volume point to a profound re-definition of structuring frames for action and of normative and cognitive reference sets. All chapters, individually and as a whole, document in other words significant institutional transformation. The transnationalization of our world, sometimes hastily labeled “globalization”, is not only – and far from it – about flows of goods, capital or people. Nor is transnationalization simply a discourse even though it does have important discursive dimensions. Our transnationalizing world is a re-ordering world, a world where institutional rules of the game are in serious transition. Furthermore, the chapters in this volume clearly suggest – and many mundane contemporary experiences confirm it – that the impact of re-ordering processes is significant and consequential for our everyday lives. [First paragraph]

Introduction: Dynamics of Interaction between Institutions, Markets and Organizations

Whereas the comparative business systems literature has studied how different national institutional settings encourage the development of different forms of economic organization, organization theory has tended to focus on the nature of different kinds of organizations and how these change, including vertical and horizontal alliances and networks of firms. Strategic management research, on the other hand, has concentrated on how firms develop different competences and strategies in different markets and competitive circumstances. The connections between these strands of research have, on the whole, remained quite limited. Studies of organization and strategy often neglected the role of institutions and national settings, while many studies of business systems have not considered the strategic behaviour of firms in the development of different kinds of economic coordination and control systems. One reason for the continued separation of these research approaches is their reflection of different disciplinary backgrounds, especially between those stemming from the economics of market structure and competition, the sociology of organization and networks and the sociology and political science of institutions and national settings. Economics has tended to emphasize demand conditions, market structure and competition, with notions such as economy of scale, entry barriers and differentiability of products explaining firm structure and behaviour. It has also often relied on functionalist accounts of economic organization, presuming that what survives is ipso facto efficient, as well as assuming ultra-rational owners and managers with perfect knowledge. In contrast, institutional analysis has highlighted the role of institutional arrangements governing the constitution of economic actors and their interactions, such as authority and trust norms, legal systems, state structures and policies, financial systems, the organization and hierarchy of professions and interest groups, skill-formation systems and the governance of labour markets. Many sociological approaches emphasize the importance of power relations, social conditioning, social capital and networks and social structures. Explanations in these two approaches invoke institutionalized expectations and rationalities as causal agencies in accounting for the ways that firms and other actors make sense of their situations and in deciding what to do, as well as more straightforward struggles over resources and control between groups with different capabilities and assets. Organization Studies 26(12): 1733–1741 ISSN 0170–8406 Copyright

Introduction: Governing globalization – bringing institutions back in

The image of a ‘runaway world’ (Giddens 2000) – a very fast train without drivers going along the tracks of market and technological evolutions – will probably remain associated with the 1990s. During that decade, this image triggered essentially three kinds of reactions. First were the believers – those who observed, predicted and championed an intensifying and accelerating movement of globalization, understood as an unavoidable, ahistorical, neutral and progressive force. Then came the sceptics for whom the nation-state remained a robust structuring principle. Without denying processes of internationalization, sceptics pointed at the most to a regionalization of exchanges around three poles – Europe, Asia and the Americas. From that perspective, ideas of a ‘borderless world’ or of a ‘global village’ (McLuhan 1968; Ohmae 1990, 1995) were mere utopias. Finally, one found the critics – those who agreed that globalization was a reality in the making but did not see it as progressive. Critics pointed to the negative externalities associated with globalization, in terms of inequalities, durable growth, ecological conditions and also in terms of the reduction or destruction of diversities. Naturally those three groups had quite different ideas on how to deal with this ‘runaway world’. For believers, forces such as market competition, technological change and rationalization were bringing along wealth, development and social, if not moral, progress. Those forces hence should be set free and liberated. Political and regulatory intervention created particularly problematic hurdles and obstacles from that perspective. Globalization would not progress and push along its benefits if the polity did not wither away. For sceptics this was naive wishful thinking. From their perspective, the nation-state remained extremely robust as a locus of structuration and organization of social and economic life. This vouched for the persistence of differences, made convergence unlikely and in itself this strength of the polity at the national level set limits and constraints to the process of globalization. As for critics, they identified the whithering away of the polity, particularly in its national dimension, as indeed a process associated with globalization. They saw it as one of the negative externalities of a globalizing world that

Message and Medium: The Role of Consulting Firms in Globalization and its Load Interpretation

This volume investigates the relationship between economic globalization and institutions, or global governance, challenging the common assumption that globalization and institutionalization are essentially processes which exclude each other. Instead, the contributors to this book show that globalization is better perceived as a dual process of institutional change at the national level, and institution building at the transnational level. Rich, supporting empirical evidence is provided along with a theoretical conceptualization of the main actors, mechanisms and conditions involved in trickle-up and trickle-down trajectories through which national institutional systems are being transformed and transnational rules emerge.

From the Rule of Law to the Law of Rules

Globalization can be read as consequential reordering, where national rules of law increasingly have to confront the progress of a transnational law of rules. We use conceptual building blocks from political science and sociological institutionalism to approach two sets of issues. First, we explore the nature of this consequential reordering and some of its structuring dynamics. We underscore some of the key features of the emergent transnational law of rules system and contrast it with more traditional, nationally bound, rule of law systems. Second, we consider the potential local, or national, impact of such profound reordering. In the conclusion, we identify key channels and mechanisms of impact as well as potential sources of resistance or of local adaptation. An exploration of those early propositions would be useful to both scholars and practitioners as it would make it possible to read, understand, and even anticipate the variability of cases and situations.