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Wars, and violent conflicts generally, can generate significant institutional dynamics and new legitimacy pressures for multinational enterprises (MNEs). The purpose of this paper is to understand the nature or source of institutional pressures facing MNEs in war and to examine how MNEs respond and navigate these institutional pressures.

This is a conceptual paper.

Through the theoretical lens of institutional theory and drawing on insights from the devastating Russian–Ukrainian war in Europe, the study provides a framework that explains the nature of institutional pressures impacting MNEs in a major war conflict and how MNEs respond to these pressures. Central to the framework is the impact of formal and informal institutions on MNEs during war. As a result of regulatory and social pressures, MNEs have to make important strategic decisions either to protect their legitimacy or to defend their economic objectives against institutional demands.

As the paper situates the pressures of war for MNEs in a formal and informal institutional context, this offers a new approach to understanding the costs and pressures of war on MNEs.

This study focused on establishing the mediating role of opportunistic behavior in the relationship between institutional pressures and procurement cycle time (PCT) in Uganda’s central government (CG) procuring and disposing entities (PDEs). The study also sought to establish the relationship between institutional pressures and PCT, between institutional pressures and opportunity behavior and between opportunistic behavior and PCT. This study was carried out because most PDEs had failed to perform well in terms of PCT, and beneficiaries had often complained of the lengthy PCT.

The unit of analysis was 126 CG PDEs within Uganda while the unit of inquiry was three employees per PDE, namely, giving a total of 378 respondents. Using a quantitative cross-sectional survey, the study realized a response rate of 88% for the unit of analysis and 71.7% for unit of inquiry. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS 4 with focus on ascertaining regression and mediation results.

The findings show that institutional pressures negatively and significantly predict both institutional pressures and PCT (ß = –0.569**; ß = –0.688**, respectively). Also, institutional pressures and opportunistic behavior are significant predictors of PCT, predicting 60.6% change in PCT. Furthermore, opportunity behavior partially moderates the relationship between institutional pressures and PCT.

For Uganda’s CG PDEs to reduce procurement delays and to procure within PCT, they should put more emphasis on institutional pressures and curtailing opportunistic behavior. The study recommends further amendment of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets (PPDA) Act 2003 to reduce delays.

There is need for further amendment of the PPDA Act 2003 to reduce delays, especially those attributed to approvals by contracts committee and the minimum bidding period for competitive bidding.

The study explores PCT and its antecedents whose understanding is critical in exploring avenues of reducing PCT and boosting service delivery to the beneficiaries.

The PPDA Act (2003) was amended in 2014, but still the time spent in the procurement processes has remained long, hence delaying or denying citizens service delivery. This is a matter of concern to the country at large and may spill into political unrests, and yet, there is scant literature exploring PCT and its antecedents. This makes the present study one of the pioneer empirical studies on PCT, with emphasis on Uganda. This study provides a framework for examining PCT in a context where scholarly explanation of PCT is still limited.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review and explore how organizations knowledgeably respond to unfavorable institutional environments that exert institutional pressures and thereby limit their decision-making and eventually their actual behavior.

Based on a thorough structuration and analysis of the literature in management and related fields, the authors present a comprehensive synthesis of organizational knowledgeable responses to institutional pressures.

Based on the review, the authors categorize organizational knowledgeable responses into three major types – passively responding to avoid non-conformity, reactively mitigating institutional pressures and proactively developing institutional environments toward less interfering setups.

The authors discuss the enabling conditions for the categorized organizational knowledgeable responses as well as limitations to their application. They identify research gaps and formulate research questions to offer promising avenues for future work. The authors expect this detailed synthesis to lay the framework for investigating how the knowledge-based view of the organization influences its knowledgeable response to institutional pressure.

The authors elaborate on distinct passive, reactive and proactive strategies, which firms can apply to cope with institutional pressures. The contribution of this study will be of relevance to practitioners managing organizations in the face of unfavorable institutional setups, as well as to policymakers engaged in the development of institutions and interacting with affected organizations.

This study provides a valuable overview on developments in institutional theory, particularly on contributions to the “nascent literature” that examines heterogeneous organizational knowledgeable responses to institutional pressures.

During the current century, environmental sustainability and waste reduction processes have always been subject to scrutiny in developed societies. Developed communities have gained considerable momentum by investing in environmental infrastructure and integrating corporate performance disclosure and less developed communities are involved with it. Carbon disclosure is one of the aspects of green accounting in “corporate strategies,” especially those operating across the capital market. Adherence to the disclosure of facts can facilitate sustainable development in societies. This study aims to present strategic reference points matrix-based model to develop a framework for carbon disclosure strategies through institutional and stakeholder pressures throughout the capital market.

As a case study, by reviewing similar research on carbon disclosure, this study seeks to illustrate various carbon disclosure aspects and strategies in a matrix based on institutional (vertical axis) and stakeholder (horizontal axis) pressures

The study attempts to states that carbon disclosure is affected solely by the company because of the presence of agency gaps between external stakeholders and corporate executives.

However, the firm’s decision to adopt a carbon disclosure strategy depends on the performance of stakeholder pressure (stakeholder salience level) and managers’ perceptions of institutional pressure (institutional pressure centrality level).

The purpose of this research paper is to report the results of a study that explains the relationship between institutional pressure and environmental management accounting (EMA) adoption. Specifically, it looks at the pressure of government and other parties in society concerning EMA adoption among manufacturing companies in Malaysia.

Drawing from the new institutional sociology theory, the paper seeks to identify the extent to which institutional pressure influences EMA adoption level. A total of 74 accountants from manufacturing companies in Malaysia participated in the survey. Institutional pressure (coercive isomorphism, normative pressure and mimetic processes) was tested against the level of EMA adoption via multiple regression analysis. Next, semi‐structured interviews were employed with four survey participants to gain further insights into the survey results.

The findings of this study reveal some influence of institutional pressure on EMA adoption. Of these, normative pressure in terms of training and accounting body membership was found to be the most forceful.

Recognising the important role of accountants in managing environmental issues in organisations, this study highlights the influence of education and training as determinants of EMA adoption.

This paper offers a preliminary understanding from the new institutional sociology perspective concerning the type of pressure that influences manufacturing companies in Malaysia to adopt EMA.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of institutional pressures, institutional logics and institutional complexity on Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) practices across mixed public and private sector supply chains.

Multi-case study data were collected from three tiers of food and catering supply chains: the customer/consumer tier; focal public sector UK Universities; and private sector suppliers/contractors.

The findings indicate that: normative and mimetic pressures are more prevalent in focal Universities, compared to suppliers; there is typically no single dominant logic across these supply chains; and the multiplicity of institutional logics (e.g. sustainability logic versus financial logic) increases institutional complexity. Therefore, in the typical case of homogeneity in terms of institutional pressures and logics, e.g. with a dominant sustainability logic throughout the supply chain, radical change in SSCM practices is facilitated. In contrast, in the more typical case when there is heterogeneity, with competing logics at different supply chain tiers, this limits SSCM to more incremental changes in practices.

This study is limited to three tiers of the food and catering supply chains of UK Universities.

To aid in the successful implementation of SSCM, this study suggests a need for managers to develop an initial understanding of the prevailing institutional logics and pressures at different tiers of the supply chain.

A number of the SSCM practices studied address social sustainability.

No previous studies have empirically investigated the impact of institutional complexity in the context of SSCM practices across supply chains, involving both mixed public and private sector organisations.

This paper aims to explore the role of public sectors auditors in strategically responding to institutional pressures to conduct a performance audit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) implementation in Ghana.

To gather in-depth and rich empirical data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 senior and middle management auditors of Ghana's Supreme Audit Institution (SAI).

The findings indicate that the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions, the government, auditees, political executives and the Audit Service Board all exert institutional pressure on Ghana's audit of SDG implementation. In response to these pressures, the SAI deploys acquiescence, compromise and manipulation strategies that result in the coupling, and in some cases, the loose coupling of SDG audit practices.

Observation method of data collection would have given the researchers first-hand knowledge of the role of auditors, the institutional pressures to SDG audit and the strategic response to the institutional pressures. The authors were unable to accompany the public sector auditors to their field audits. This would have aided in obtaining more detailed empirical data.

The findings suggest that external and internal factors affect public sector audit of SDG implementation. Because the SAI of Ghana is dependent on the central government for budgetary allocation and auditees for miscellaneous logistics, it is under coercive pressure to meet rent seeking demands of political executives. As a result, SAIs in emerging economies must revisit the other side of accountability by reinforcing a constructive dialogue with those held accountable, particularly politicians and auditees.

This study's contribution is the exploration and application of institutional theory and Oliver (1991) model for responding to institutional pressures to a novel research area, namely, SDG implementation audit by public sector auditors in an emerging economy.

When considering the influence of external social, technical and political environments on organizations’ open innovation behavior, especially in emerging markets, institutional theory is especially salient. This study aims to answer the question of how to integrate organizations’ external institutional pressures and internal knowledge structure to mitigate the challenges in the open innovation process.

This study uses a sample of 2,126 observations from the 2012 World Bank Enterprise Survey. A multivariate regression model is designed to explore the impact of external institutional pressure (i.e. coercive pressure, mimetic pressure and normative pressure) on open innovation, as well as the moderating effect of digital knowledge and experience-based knowledge.

The results show that institutional pressure has a positive role in promoting open innovation; digital knowledge weakens the positive relationship between institutional pressure and open innovation; experience-based knowledge strengthens the positive relationship between institutional pressure (especially coercive pressure) and open innovation.

This study combines institutional theory and knowledge management to enriches insights into open innovation in emerging markets. Beyond recognizing the inherent multidimensionality of the concept of institutional pressure, this study creates an integrated path for the legitimacy acquiring of enterprises through the knowledge structure design (i.e. digital knowledge and experience-based knowledge). It also deepens the institutional pressure to enable the implementation of digital knowledge to manage open innovation processes.

How do institutional pressures influence the cluster firm’s innovation? Institutional pressure consists of regulative, normative and cognitive pressures; most scholars have only focused on the influence of regulative pressure as institutional environment on innovation. In addition, the nature of strategic cognition, as the mediator act on innovation strategy, remains underexplored in the literature. Based on institution theory and ambidextrous innovation theory, this study aims to propose a framework to examine the mechanism of institutional pressures acting on ambidextrous innovation through the moderated mediating role of strategic cognition in clusters.

Using survey data collected from 422 sampled firms in China, regression models were used to test hypotheses from the mediating role of strategic cognition between institutional pressures and cluster firm’s ambidextrous innovation.

The results showed that regulative, cognitive pressures and, especially, normative pressures have significant positive effects on cluster firms’ ambidextrous innovation. Strategic cognition presented by prospector and analyzer mediates the relationship between institutional pressure and ambidextrous innovation except defender; dynamic environment positively moderates the mediating effects of prospector cognition on explorative innovation, and negatively moderates the mediating effects of analyzer cognition on exploitative innovation.

The findings of this study have some implications that strategic cognition played a partially meditating role between the institutional pressure and ambidextrous innovation. Government should construct a dynamic innovation policy system according to the resource endowment in different regions; furthermore, classification support system to cluster firms with different strategic cognition should be built.

This paper aims to investigate various institutional pressures driving the adoption and implementation of a new risk management system; enterprise risk management (ERM).

The implementation of ERM-related practices is analysed based on an institutional framework and drawing on empirical evidence from multiple sources in ten large/medium-sized insurance companies. This paper focuses on extra-organisational pressures exerted by political, social and economic institutions on insurance companies which drove the adoption decision.

It was found that different change agents have taken part in the decision to introduce new risk management system as a part of ERM implementation process. Further, the institutional pressures, coercive, mimetic and normative, were found to differ in character and strength over different intervals of time in relation to the adoption of ERM. Companies that adopted ERM early were mostly driven by internal strategic drivers, whereas the recent adoption decision was more driven by coercive and mimetic pressures. Thus, evidence of divergence between insurance companies was found.

The findings have implications for policy makers, regulatory agencies and innovation developers. ERM was considered not only as a necessity but also as a value added to the insurance companies under study. Thus, regulators and innovation developers should survey main players in any specific organisational field to understand their views before issuing new compulsory regulations or developing innovations. They also need to consider exploring companies’ experiences with ERM, which can provide a basis for the development of strengthened and more informative regulatory ERM frameworks. This will support a faster and easier understanding and implementation of ERM framework hindered by the confusions companies may face when considering the complicated/changing regulatory and risk requirements.

This study extends the scope of institutional analysis to the risk management field, particularly ERM and to the explanation of how different institutions affect the decision to move towards ERM and modify the risk management rules applied within the organisational environment. It looks not only at convergences but also divergences associated with the period of time when ERM adoption decision was made. Thus, it develops a processual view of change.