Willing and Able: A General Model of Organizational Responses to Normative Pressures

We develop a conceptual understanding of when and how organizations respond to normative pressures. More precisely, we examine two main factors underlying the willingness and ability of organizations to respond to an issue: issue salience and the cost-benefit analysis of resource mobilization. We su...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Academy of Management review 2019-04, Vol.44 (2), p.299-320
Main Authors: Durand, Rodolphe, Hawn, Olga, Ioannou, Ioannis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boundary conditions
Compliance
Conceptual knowledge
Conformity
Cost benefit analysis
Decision makers
Mobilization
Policy making
Resource mobilization
Strategic management
Willingness
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Summary:We develop a conceptual understanding of when and how organizations respond to normative pressures. More precisely, we examine two main factors underlying the willingness and ability of organizations to respond to an issue: issue salience and the cost-benefit analysis of resource mobilization. We suggest that decision makers' interpretation of issue salience in conjunction with their perception of the costs and benefits of taking action to address the issue generates five potential responses: symbolic compliance and symbolic conformity, substantive compliance and substantive conformity, and inaction. We extend the baseline model by examining a number of boundary conditions. By focusing on the willingness and ability of organizations to respond to normative pressures, and by adopting the issue as the unit of analysis, our model helps explain intraorganizational as well as interorganizational response heterogeneity to institutional complexity. We contribute to the institutional research tradition and offer useful implications for managerial practice, from strategic management to policy making.
ISSN:0363-7425
1930-3807
DOI:10.5465/amr.2016.0107