The institutionalization of cooperation: An institutional work analysis in a vulnerable community of the Amazon region.
| Autor | de Lima, Ana Maria |
1 Introduction
Social vulnerability refers to the condition of groups of individuals who are socially excluded, mainly due to socioeconomic factors. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), persistent vulnerability threatens human development. The report entitled Towards human resilience: sustaining Millennium Development Goals progress in an age of economic uncertainty points to the fact that, although the number of people who live under social vulnerability conditions has been reduced worldwide in recent years, almost 1.5 billion people in 91 developing countries still live in poverty and are deprived of access to basic health programs, education, and adequate living standards (United Nations, 2006).
Regarding the vulnerability issue, the UNDP highlights the need for policies and social norms so that progress can be equitable and sustainable. Thus, it is important to understand what types of policies, norms, behaviors, and social practices have been successful in the fight against social vulnerability. Some important initiatives have demonstrated that cooperation among local actors may develop practices that promote changes in their socioeconomic context. Thus, understanding interorganizational relationship dynamics may be a way for communities living in adverse conditions to achieve important results in terms of local development (Geddes, 2014).
The institutional work theory has been useful for understanding how cooperation networks have been created to promote changes in the institutional environment. It has focused on understanding actors' roles in relation to institutions and their mutual influences (Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2011). In hostile environments whose individual actors have a limited ability to influence and change their social and economic conditions, cooperation becomes a relevant mechanism, particularly regarding access to and complementarity of scarce resources. therefore, this study aims to answer the following question: how does the institutionalization of cooperation occur based on work practices among local actors in a vulnerable community? To answer this question, we sought to understand the practices of local actors that have consolidated cooperation for the development of a vulnerable community in the Amazon, known in the region as the Vale do Amanhecer Settlement (AVA).
2 Institutional Work theory
The institutional work theory seeks to comprehend the relationship between actors and institutions and to understand the role of the individual in relation to institutions and the mutual influence between the individual and institutions (Lawrence et al., 2011). For Lawrence et al. (2011), institutions are elements of social life that affect actors' behavior and beliefs. Social actions for institutional maintenance must support, repair, or create social mechanisms that ensure compliance with established standards. Institutions are maintained because of their submission to norms, rules, and beliefs (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). "Work" may be considered as any physical or mental effort performed with a determined goal and may create, maintain, or interrupt an institution (Lawrence et al., 2011). Institutions do not control human conduct, but it is institutional work that establishes and maintains daily routines, according to the objectives of the actors (Willmott, 2011).
As institutional work suggests the shift from a macro to a micro perspective in institutional analysis theory, another theoretical perspective has emerged highlighting the role of individuals in institutional dynamics. This perspective, known as institutional entrepreneurship, also sees the individual as the main actor in ruptures in institutions (DiMaggio, 1988), but it deals with a voluntarist view (Willmott, 2011). The distinction between the two perspectives is rather tenuous, but some characteristics are important for differentiation. Institutional work focuses on the everyday practices and strategies by which individuals and groups of individuals intentionally shape the institutional patterns in which they operate (Dover & Lawrence, 2010), an ongoing process that evolves and adjusts over time (Styhre, 2014). This vision goes beyond the simple heroic act raised by the institutional entrepreneurship perspective (Willmott, 2011). While institutional work focusses on practices that lead to institutional dynamics, institutional entrepreneurship focusses on individuals themselves and their intentional efforts to question institutional standards (Styhre, 2014).
Institutional work has as its central axis the focus on the daily practices and strategies adopted by individuals or a group of individuals to build the institutional behaviors that they use to operate (Dover & Lawrence, 2010). Practices are performed by individual and collective actors, leading to the creation, maintenance, or disruption of institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006, p. 215). Collective actors may be state organizations (Dobbin, 2001), large corporations (Garud, Jain, & Kumaraswamy, 2002), or professional associations (Greenwood, Oliver, Sahlin, & Suddaby, 2008).
Institutional work suggests that institutionalization occurs in a continuous, permanent, and processual manner. In the field of institutional work, studies are designed and oriented towards the development of integrative dynamics, which allows researchers to appreciate the variety of works whose aim is to create, maintain, and interrupt institutions in the same context (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010). The literature offers different typifications of institutional work practices depending on objectives and characteristics. Lawrence and Sudabby (2006) proposed the main framework for types of institutional work. Regarding the creation of new institutions, several examples of institutional work practices depict three distinct groups: political, technical, and cultural work (Lawrence & Sudabby, 2006). Political work aims to influence the development of rules, property rights, and limits and refers mainly to the regulatory pillar of institutions. It also includes activities that defend practices of other actors through direct social persuasion, defining limits between those inside and those outside the social system. Technical work provides an institution with a degree of rigor and ensures that the work can be more easily transported from one environment to another. Technical work is less effective in bringing and connecting actors to the institution. Meanwhile, cultural work involves the presentation of an institution so that it pleases a wider audience, beyond those who have an immediate or technical interest in it.
In the last two decades of the broad development of the study of institutional work, analyses have focused on the incorporation of new forms of work that involve deliberate efforts to shape organizational facets. Research on institutional work aims to alter the view of social changes on a large scale, so that more attention is paid to the relations between institutions and the actors that form them. To do so, a holistic view of institutional action is required, which goes beyond dyadic relationships and assumes that actors are at times subject to the pressures of different institutions and often need to respond locally, with creativity and reflexivity. The questions become more related to understanding "why" and "how", instead of "what" and "when" (Lawrence et al., 2011).
In order to answer our research question, we mobilized the following aspects of the institutional work theory (see Table 1).
2.1 Cooperation as an institution
One of the essential elements of institutional work is the definition and characterization of institutions. Institutional work emerges from the organizational approach to institutional theory. Firstly, it is important to acknowledge the notion of institutionalization presented by Selznick (1972). Institutionalization is a process that occurs in the organization over time, where the experiences and aspirations of people who work in it, besides the interests of small groups and society in general, begin to shape its performance. So, it is possible to define the institution itself as the enduring elements of social life that affect the behavior and beliefs of individual or collective actors by providing patterns for action, cognition, and emotion (Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2009).
In order to properly enhance performance and achieve competitive goals, cooperative arrangements among organizational actors must have social patterns that shape action and interaction inside their boundaries. Thus, this organizational structure is understood as an institution.
Interorganizational cooperation may be defined as any agreement that establishes cooperation between actors. It occurs voluntarily and begins with actions that involve exchanging, sharing, or codevelopment (Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999). It is cooperation between partners that crosses organizational boundaries (Nolte, Martin, & Boenigk, 2012). In the process of interorganizational cooperation, two or more organizations cooperate to achieve common goals, while each organization's business decisions and actions remain autonomous (Balestrin & Verschoore, 2016). As Balestrin and Verschoore (2016) emphasize (see Figure 1), coordination, the existence of common goals, and connectivity amongst members are essential for the achievement of collective results.
We support the argument that the practices employed by social actors and institutional work create a network through the establishment of common objectives, interaction, and coordination, and this positively impacts local and regional development (Geddes, 2014), or competitive gains in business cases. In this collaborative model, the actors feel motivated to work towards legitimating a practice that is considered important to the social context (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). These efforts are made by the people who create the institutions around...
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