Thursday, April 29 and Friday, April 30, 2010, Radisson University Hotel, Minneapolis, MN

1. Thursday, April 29 and Friday, April 30, 2010, Radisson University Hotel, Minneapolis, MN Social Movements for a Green Economy: Panel on Institutional Theory and Innovation Andy Van de Ven & Joel Malen Carlson School of Management University of Minnesota

2. Institutional Diffusion Collective Action Zoom Out on Multiple Actors at Inter-Org Field • Reproduction, diffusion or decline of an institutional arrangement in a population or organizational field • Evolutionary processes of variation, selection, and retention (isomorphism) • Organizational institutional ecology literature • Political action among distributed, partisan & embedded actors to solve a problem or issue by changing institutional arrangements • Framing processes, mobilizing structures & political opportunities • Social movements & industry emergence literature Focus Institutional Adaptation Institutional Design • Organizational efforts to achieve legitimacy by adapting to institutional environmental pressures & regulations • Coercive, normative & mimetic processes • New organizational institutional literature • Purposeful social construction & strategies by an actor to create/change an institution to solve a problem or correct an injustice • Bounded agency: Affordance and partisan mutual adjustment • Old institutional literature Zoom In on Single Actor Reproduction Construction Mode of Change Models of Institutional Change Source: Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2004

3. Collective Action Model: Social Movement Theory • Political Opportunities Structure • Institutional Arrangements • How/where institutional infrastructure facilitates & constrains change • Collective Action • emergent action & form • partisan mutual adjustment • political tactics & campaigns Framing Processes -social construction of ideas, issues, concerns, ideology Mobilizing Structures Institutional Actors & Resources -groups, organizations, networks -entrepreneurs, activists, insurgents Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Cultural Framings, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996

4. Collective Action: Social Movement on Electricity Feed-in Tariffs • Political Opportunity Structures • Dominant utilities prevent change through market • RE advocates pursue political change • Collective Action/ • Political Behavior • Issue Awareness • Mobilization/demonstrations against nuclear/climate change • Electoral support for pro-renewable candidates/parties • Promote new ideas to facilitate/support RE diffusion • Framing Processes • RE alternative to fossil fuels (fight climate change) • RE alternative to dangerous nuclear energy • RE minimizes negative social externalities • Mobilization Structures • Environmental Groups: • Friends of the Earth Germany, Greenpeace • Professional Organizations: • Institute of Ecology; German Assn for Promotion of Solar Power Eurosolar, Solar Energy Industries Association

5. Collective Action: Dialectics of Electricity Feed-in Law (1990) • Synthesis • Electricity Feed-in Law adopted (1990) • Utilities must provide grid access to RE producers • Utilities must purchase electricity from RE producers • Rates based on percentage of retail price • Thesis(RE Opposition) • Government support for coal and nuclear electricity generation • No support to immature energy technologies • Conflict • German federal legislature debates proposed Feed-in Law • Anti-Thesis(RE Support) • Government support for renewable energy generation • Feed-in law to provide grid access and favorable rates to producers • Power (RE Opposition) • Utilities focused on newly integrated East Germany • Do not view small scale of legislative proposals as significant threat • Despite overall power within German POS, fail wield their power in conflict • Power (RE Support) • RE supporters have substantial power in legislature it conflict • Political support for Feed-in Law from parties across political spectrum adapted from Hargrave and Van de Ven (2006)

6. Participants are Distributed, Partisan & Embedded • Distributed: Different actors play key roles • No single actor controls any developmental path • Partisan: Actors participate from own frames • Interests of producers, regulators, investors, etc. are not the same • Solutions through partisan mutual adjustment • Embedded: Actors become dependent on paths they create. • Many learning opportunities occur as process unfolds • Process of partial cumulative syntheses

7. Conclusions • If social movement, pay attention to: • Political structure, mobilizing actors & framing processes • Collective action: conflict, power & political tactics • Dialectics of thesis, antithesis & synthesis • Politically-savvy innovators will outperform technically-savvy innovators. • Technical savvy is necessary but not sufficient; also need political savvy • Innovators who “run in packs” will be more successful than those that go it alone. • the liability of unconnectedness (Baum & Oliver, 1992)

8. Technical & Institutional Changes Resemble Social-Political Movements