Regional transition fields: How processes of adaptation and delimitation shape regional transitions

Abstract

While we have increased and refined our knowledge on transition processes at the level of concrete actions and activities, despite important starting points, our understanding of the impact of processes of institutionalisation and de-institutionalisation remains rudimentary. This paper investigates which dynamics shape interactions in transitions in regions.

Building upon Strategic Action Fields and applying them to regional transition processes, we derive the concept of Regional Transition Fields (RTF) (Fligstein and McAdam 2011). RTF thereby provide a regional perspective onto transitions that encompasses all actors, activities and institutions in a particular region involved in this process. This includes supporting as well as hindering structures and actors. The issue at stake, here, is the regional transition. It follows that all actors that participate in negotiating over the regional transition, whether they are in favour or against, are part of the regional transition field.

Different procedures, normative expectations, and knowledge lead to imbalances and frictions within RTF. These result in conflicts between institutional logics and actors and trigger isomorphisms. DiMaggio and Powell (1983; cf. also Powell and DiMaggio 2012) differentiate between three types of isomorphisms: coercive isomorphisms (via force), normative isomorphisms (following established social norms) and cognitive isomorphisms (letting yourself be convinced by best practice examples).

Isomorphisms relate to processes of adaptation that are neither automatic nor inevitable, but that frame and shape the individual and (at least to a certain degree) autonomous decision-making process of the actors involved in RTFs. Based on these isomorphisms, the RTF is constantly being restructured. They may result in adaptation (in line with what the isomorphistic pressure suggests), but can likewise lead to delimitation (institutionalising conflicting logics). Delimitation hence results in heterogeneous sub-fields that incorporate stabilised institutional contradictions.

This paper investigates coercive, normative and cognitive processes of adaptation and delimitation and the resulting institutional structures of the RTF. In an empirical case study, we illustrate the existence of a regional transition field which shares the concern for the regional transition. We also give examples for the theoretically derived institutionalisation dynamics of coercive, normative and cognitive adaptation and delimitation.

References:

DiMaggio, Paul; Powell, Walter (1983): The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. In: American Sociological Review 48 (2), S. 147–160.

Fligstein, Neil; McAdam, Doug (2011): Toward a general theory of Strategic Action Fields. In: Sociological Theory 29 (1), S. 1–26.

Powell, Walter W.; DiMaggio, Paul (2012): The New institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.