In the field of organization studies, two types of theories of the firm exist: “why” and “how” theories. “Why” theories use the instrument of comparative analysis to explain why firms exist despite various institutional alternatives. “How” theories, in contrast, employ intra-organizational perspectives to explore how firms meaningfully connect the actions of many interdependently operating indi...

This paper presents a synthesis of the main theoretical and empirical contributions that analyse production choices of farm households living and operating in developing countries. The review is particularly concerned with recent micro-economic contributions that highlight the trade-off farm households typically face, between full-income risk and expected return, while making production decisio...

This study seeks to disentangle claims of institutional and organizational learning theories and to shed light on the impact of Knightian (environmental) uncertainty in discovery opportunities. This article suggests, and fi nds empirical support for, the concept that emerging professional service industries retain high levels of causal ambiguity. High uncertainty interferes with institutional t...

This paper examines the political, economic, and institutional variables associated with the presence of state laws that mandate the use of public input in local budgeting. The results show that political and institutional variables can help explain the presence of such laws, but the relationships between variables of interest shift depending on whether laws aimed at cities or counties are the ...

— In this paper we assess the institutional and environmental impacts of forest decentralization in Bolivia, Kenya, Mexico, and Uganda. We develop theories of institutional impacts based upon the specific content of decentralization reforms. We classify each country’s reforms in terms of the creation/change in local user group empowerment and accountability mechanisms. Using data from the Inter...

— Few examples exist in the common property literature of community-managed forestry enterprises (CFEs) operating in competitive markets. Yet, in Mexico, there are hundreds of such examples at varying levels of vertical integration. At a time when devolution of rights to forests is expanding worldwide, collective management of timber operations presents an emerging community forestry policy opt...

This study draws on the institutional and resource-based theories of the firm and examines whether multi-product firms use mergers as a strategic tool to reconfigure their product-mix toward high-profit products. We propose that mergers facilitate product-mix reconfiguration by relaxing institutional and organizational constraints on resource redeployment. Analysis of data from the U.S. hospita...

Many innovation studies focus on adoption behaviors at the individual and organizational level, while studies examine innovation adoption at the community and population level is relatively limited. These studies, focusing on the diffusion of an innovation across organizations, are important as they illustrate the dynamics of adoption behaviors in a broader context of socio-political factors. I...

This study contributes to the literature on Corporate Social and Environmental Disclosure (CSED hereafter) in the developing countries by exploring various influential factors for CSED and grouping them into three categories: normative, interest, and company groups (Solomon and Lewis 2002). These categories can create normative, coercive, and mimetic pressure respectively for a company to adapt...