Institutional entrepreneurs and local embedding of global scientific ideas—The case of preventing heart disease in Finland

Summary

Investigating the activities of institutional entrepreneurs at the intersection of local institutions and global influences in the context of science-based fields is necessary for further development of the institutional entrepreneurship approach. We draw on complementary insights from the literatures on institutional entrepreneurship, Scandinavian Institutionalism, social/intellectual movements and spatial scales to study the activities of scientists in the local institution of global scientific ideas. Building on a qualitative case study, a globally pioneering heart health initiative in Finland, we found that the scientific profession regulates agency in science-based fields; that the holistic view of scientists is necessary to understanding mobilization activities in this context; and that the capacity of scientists to operate across spatial scales defines their capability for institutional entrepreneurship.

Introduction

The debate around the role of agency in institutional theory, i.e. the ability of actors to envision and enact changes in institutions (Holm, 1995), is intensifying in the key journals devoted to the study of organizations and management (e.g. Edwards & Jones, 2008; Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007; Maguire & Hardy, 2009). We contribute to this debate by further developing the concept of institutional entrepreneurship and by merging conceptual ideas from related literatures to strengthen its analytical foundation. The institutional entrepreneurship approach (Beckert, 1999, DiMaggio, 1988, Fligstein, 1997) has addressed agency in the context of the emergence of various fields from different perspectives including, what role do the formal position and activities of institutional entrepreneurs play in field emergence (Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004; Perkmann & Spicer, 2007), and how institutional entrepreneurs participate in shaping the boundaries and creating shared understandings of a field (Lawrence and Phillips, 2004, Maguire et al., 2004, Munir and Phillips, 2005, Rao, 1998) and in the development of novel standards, policies, and practices (Garud, Jain, & Kumaraswamy, 2002; Lounsbury and Crumley, 2007, Wijen and Ansari, 2007). The concept has gained increasing support among neoinstitutional scholars as a viable way for explaining institutional renewal. However, existing studies tend to concentrate on narrow geographical settings, neglecting both the interaction between local institutions and global influences in the process (Morrill, 2007, Scott, 2001). We argue that a focus on a single institutional context neglects the investigation of the links to broader societal changes, and risks overemphasizing the role of local issues and actors, rather than seeing them as local variants and enactors of globally circulating ideas.

Furthermore, in the institutional entrepreneurship approach there remains a peculiarly scarce understanding of the role of agency in science-driven institutional change. We believe this is due to the curious neglect of science-based fields as objects of empirical inquiries. As a result, there is little empirical evidence on who are the institutional entrepreneurs in science-based fields, and through which activities they institute novel fields. We define science-based fields as domains of activity where progress in science and the scientific profession play a major role in the structuration of the field. Science-based fields are a particularly interesting case for the investigation of agency and mediation of influences between different institutional contexts for various reasons. Firstly, it has been demonstrated that individual scientists play an important role in break-through discoveries, which induce paradigmatic changes within science, and may result in major institutional transformations in society (Hargadon and Douglas, 2001, Zucker and Darby, 1997). Secondly, scientific communities tend to be global, which adds to their complexity, and to the importance of studying how novel scientific ideas travel globally, and how they become embedded in local institutions. In previous studies science is conceptualized as a means for producing texts to build new institutions (Maguire & Hardy, 2006); or as a cultural resource challenging old practices through new analytical theories and tools, which then institutionalize a new practice (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006, Lounsbury and Ventresca, 2002). However, there are few studies on the processes through which global scientific movements lead to the emergence of local institutions.

In order to address such lacunae in the institutional entrepreneurship literature, we examine who are the institutional entrepreneurs in science-based fields, and how they mediate between global scientific communities and local social and political institutions. We develop the institutional entrepreneurship approach by merging conceptual ideas from other literatures. These include the notion of translation (Latour, 1986), which has been adopted into “Scandinavian Institutionalism” (Czarniawska & Sevón, 2005); and the literature on spatial scales (Lefebvre, 1991, Leitner, 1997). These literatures are employed to create an understanding on the cross-spatial links in institutional emergence, particularly to cast light on the tasks of institutional entrepreneurs in embedding ideas from global communities to local institutions. The study builds on Latour's (1986) formulation, that the spread of any idea in time and space is in the hands of people who modify, interpret and appropriate it in different ways. In the context of our study, the agency of scientists is crucial in the translation of global scientific ideas in setting the scene for institutional change at local level. We borrow the concept of scientific/intellectual movements (Frickel & Gross, 2005) to cast light on the special nature of mobilization of ideas in the context of science.

We empirically examine the community intervention program for the prevention of heart disease in North Karelia in Eastern Finland. The North Karelia Project involved a lengthy process that aimed to change grass-root understandings of the relationship between food and other lifestyle factors, and heart health. The project, launched in 1972, was triggered by an international scientific research program, and is now considered a globally important benchmark for a community intervention program. Our study investigates how the novel understanding of the diet-heart health relationship became adopted in Finland, and how local embedding and consequent activities resulted in the birth of a globally disseminating best practice for heart health community interventions. While chronic diseases, such as heart disease, are the major health burden in Western societies, they are increasing rapidly in the developing world due to demographic and economic transitions (Nissinen, Berrios, & Puska, 2001). This highlights the importance of studying the origins and dissemination of community prevention programs. The lessons learned in these programs may have important implications for resolving other contemporary issues, such as climate change, which also calls for broad community mobilization efforts.

Our findings contribute to the management and organization literature, and more particularly to the institutional entrepreneurship approach, in several ways. Firstly, the study adds to the scarce literature on the interaction between macro-level structuring of institutions and micro-level agency by discussing how local agents participate in the institutional work (Edwards and Jones, 2008, Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006) necessary for creating and leveraging ground-breaking scientific ideas. Secondly, the study develops the institutional entrepreneurship approach by investigating agency across spatial scales; that is, how agents identify and mobilize issues from their global communities to transform local institutions. Finally, the study casts light on the special nature of science-based fields as contexts for institutional entrepreneurship.