Search

Path-dependency theory says that complex systems, such as health systems, are shaped by prior conditions and decisions, and are resistant to change. As a result, major policy changes, such as health system reform, are often only possible in policy windows—moments of transition or contextual crisis that re-balance social power dynamics and enable the consideration of new policy ideas. However, even in policy windows there can be resistance to change. In this paper, we consider the role of ideas in constraining change. We draw on political science theory on the dynamic relationship between foreground ideas (policy programmes and frames) and background ideas (deeply held collective cognitive and normative beliefs) to better understand how ideas exert influence independently of the contextual conditions that give rise to them or the actors that espouse them. To do so, we examine two apparent policy windows in the South African National Health Insurance policy process. The analysis reveals how ideas can become institutionalised in organisations and procedures (such as policy instruments or provider networks), and in intangible cultural norms—becoming hegemonic and uncontested ideas that shape the attitudes and perspectives of policy actors. In this way, ideas operate as independent variables, constraining change across policy windows. While health policy analysts increasingly recognise the influence of ideational variables in policy processes, they tend to conceptualise ideas as tools actors wield to drive change. This analysis reveals the importance of considering ideas (values, norms, and beliefs) as persistent features of the policy-making context that constrain actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative industries produce many one-hit wonders who struggle to repeat their initial success and fewer hit makers who sustain success over time. To develop theory on the role of creativity in driving sustained market success, I propose a path dependence theory of creators' careers that considers creators' whole portfolios of products over time and how their early portfolios shape their later capacity to sustain success. The main idea is that a creator's path to sustained success depends on the creativity in their portfolio at the time of their initial hit—relatively creative portfolios give creators more options for leveraging their past portfolios while adapting to market changes, increasing their odds of additional hits. I tested the proposed theory using an archival study of the U.S. music industry from 1959–2010, including data on over 3 million songs by 69,050 artists, and the results largely support the hypotheses. Artists who reached their initial hits with relatively creative (novel or varied) portfolios were more likely to generate additional hits, but a novel portfolio was less likely to yield an initial hit than was a typical portfolio. These findings suggest that new creators face a tradeoff between their likelihood of initial versus sustained success, such that building a relatively creative early portfolio is a risky bet that can make or break a creator's career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic of Cyprus is a small EU member state, whose domestic structures replicate a durable tradition of centralisation, limiting the overall role of local government. This work employs the vertical research dimension of top-down Europeanisation to investigate the influence of European Integration vis-à-vis the promotion of gender equality at the municipal level. It adopts a local government comparative viewpoint to analyse the adoption of the European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life by the Cypriot Municipalities (2011–present). This work utilises specific analytical frameworks (Europeanisation and Historical Institutionalism) to provide a theoretically and empirically informed analysis based on empirical data resulting from three field studies (2013, 2019 and 2021) and respective electoral data. Our research results suggest that the effects of Europeanisation, in terms of promoting gender equality, have been limited due to long-lasting formal and informal institutional restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rozwój Regionalny & Polityka Regionalna is the property of Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza (IH UAM) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article uses a historical case study to significantly advance theoretical debates on path dependence in institutional change and continuity. In particular, it argues that the heuristic of 'jumping tracks' can be productively developed to explain how institutional arrangements can shift into different policy arenas. The historical criminological case study examines welfare provision and penalties in colonial Australia. Substantively, the case study provides historical support to current claims that the boundaries between crime, poverty and welfare are fluid. Just as the shadow of the contemporary carceral state is enlarging non‐criminal pathways to punishment, it will be shown that in 19th‐century Tasmania the shadow of the penal colony acted to control paupers. When the Tasmanian penal system began to be dismantled, the institutional arrangements that had developed within it jumped tracks to the pauper system. Fundamentally, the key theoretical proposition is that path dependence can work across institutions by jumping tracks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to identify the impact of a commercial turning point in the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) in 1999 and the 2013 takeover by the current promoter's media strategies. Drawing upon 21 qualitative interviews with key stakeholders in the WRC coupled with theories of institutional logics, mediatization and strategic legacy, the findings demonstrate that the decisions and culture of the sport can be powerful as the new owners seek to influence the direction of sport in their own image. Sport managers who are dealing with change processes and sport management researchers should identify where an organization's self-reinforcing mechanisms and processes exist in order to balance sporting tradition with organizational culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actors rarely approach institutional design choices with a blank slate but are influenced by design choices made at earlier stages. How does institutional design evolve over time and are there specific paths to deepening cooperation? We investigate the institutional design paths of subnational cooperation that are chosen to address increasingly complex and interconnected policy problems. We theorize that besides the substantive problem, earlier choices matter to explain what institutional design mechanism is chosen; that is, the design of existing institutions between two subnational governance units, called substates, influences the design of subsequent institutions. Using a semi‐parametric Cox proportional hazards model, we show that the design paths of subnational cooperation in the Swiss water governance sector correlate with earlier design choices. Our results indicate that not all cooperation is self‐reinforcing and path‐dependent, but they show which specific design choices are more likely to follow each other in repeated formal federal intergovernmental cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on our article of 2009, "Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box," which received the Academy of Management Review's Decade Award in 2019. We review how the article has been used in subsequent research, discuss the criticism it has elicited, and reexamine our original propositions in light of theoretical insights gained since the text's publication. We also explore the linkages to related concepts, such as complexity, hierarchy, agency, and expansion. We conclude by outlining new avenues for research on and enhancing the theory of organizational path dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out a coherent framework for debates and discussions on social policy changes during crisis periods. Using Indonesia as a case, this article compares its social policy responses to the 1997–1998 economic crisis and the current COVID‐19 pandemic crisis. Both two crises and their responses, once analysed, lead to an argument that path dependence does not always dominate policy processes, as most literature claims, but rather it operates alongside other path‐creation‐related processes, such as path‐clearing policy accelerators and path‐creation policy accelerators. This article also presents that 'old player' penetration in policy processes does not necessarily preclude alternatives and, in some examined cases, it, instead, strengthens impulses toward substantial reforms. Therefore, revised policies must be viewed as political vehicles for seeking popular support and power reconsolidation as democracy allows. Furthermore, this current analysis contributes to enhancing our understanding of crises, often seen as issues in public policy literature, yet less explored in terms of their importance as unique critical junctures and their implications for social policy changes in multiple paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on China's outward investment largely focuses on its determinants: enterprises' interests and the role of the Chinese state. However, what these approaches often tend to ignore is that China is not a unitary outward-investing country. Instead, some Chinese provinces have been able to become the major drivers of China's outward investment and the investment outflows of these provinces emerge out of locality-unique contexts. This research looks at path-dependencies and encapsulates different provincial internationalisation trajectories to advance our understanding of China's overseas engagement. In investigating two "success stories" of provinces with high investment outflows, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, two different forms of provincial internationalisation based on locality-unique political, economic, and social conditions are detailed. While investment outflows from both provinces were facilitated by cultures of local manufacturing industries, their internationalisation paths are conceptualised as either "hierarchical steering" or "grassroots internationalisation." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes towards education vary between regions and countries. These differences cannot be fully explained by socio-economic inequalities or direct inputs such as teachers or class size. The persistence of historical institutions is also an important issue. In this paper, regional differences in attitudes towards education are investigated in reference to events that took place in 19th century Polish territories when Poland was partitioned by Prussia, Russia, and Habsburg Austria and their educational systems were imposed. The results of the quantitative and qualitative research suggest that historical processes have created different attitudes towards education. In some regions, education is seen as a key for gaining general knowledge, yet in other parts of the country, it is seen as a tool for improving practical and technical skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds a developmental model of probation evolution based on the dynamics generated by its feedback effects, illustrating its claims through a case study of Chile's recent probation politics. The article posits that probation emerges out of the negative infrastructural and political feedback effects of the prison. As probation generalises, it creates its own growing negative political feedback. In time, the field can enter a state that we label the politics of probation, providing for substantial political conflict and fluctuance. The article shows how different actors mediate in the conflict around the politics of probation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite shared history and a common ambition to comply with European standards, post‐Soviet countries differ in the way in which they reform prisons. By investigating two most‐similar cases of policy transfer from Norway – the establishment of the Olaine Drug Centre in Latvia and the Pravieniškės Drug Unit in Lithuania – this article explains why outcomes diverge and how Western‐European carceral individualism clashes with path‐dependent carceral collectivism. Where leadership is unstable, with limited powers, the informal legacies are strong, and policy‐transfer strategy is fragmented, as in Lithuania, the outcome is likely to be non‐transformative. Where, on the contrary, leadership is stable, enjoying larger discretionary powers and the intervention strategy is holistic, as in Latvia, the import of foreign institutional models is likely to be successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explain the persistence of high incarceration rates in England and Wales. Building upon recent theoretical work on path dependence, we identify prison population forecasting as a poorly understood positive feedback mechanism that helps to determine the overall scale, scope and reach of the prison estate by connecting capital expenditure decisions with 'business as usual' planning cycles that assume considerable policy continuity with the past. We illustrate this point with reference to recent controversies over women's imprisonment where the everyday, routinised working practices of the penal system have played an important role in sustaining prison expansionism long after the initial conditions that fuelled the mid‐1990s prison boom have faded. Disrupting these self‐fulfilling logics will not be easy and we conclude this article with a call for a more deliberative democratic politics that confronts penal momentum and invites greater consideration of the many possible futures of penal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade or so a significant body of work on 'Hibernian exceptionalism' to broader punitive trends has emerged. The dominant argument and characterisation of Irish penality within this broad schema is that it is exceptional for having been largely stagnant. This article takes issue with the stagnation or 'stickiness' that is often supposed to characterise the Irish penal system arguing that stagnation as a form of 'path dependency' fails to adequately account for key moments of penal change and downplays the temporal dynamics that are often apparent in policy development. Using two key 'policy windows' as case studies – the 1996 'moral panic' over crime and the post‐2011 turn to a more progressive penal politics – it argues that greater consideration should be given to the 'translation' and 'layering' of policy decisions and the growing complexity of policy space that may result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine the curious stability of outdoor penal labour in California in the 20th century against a shifting social and penal field. Analysing state archival data on prison highway and forestry camps between 1915 and 2000, we frame the persistence of these practices as evidence of a penal labour palimpsest. We demonstrate how the agency and interpretive innovation of penal administrators – as the architects and interpreters of this palimpsest – served as a stabilising mechanism akin to, but distinct from, existing theories of path dependence. Zooming out from the intricacies of the historical record, we position this case as revealing some of the limits of strict theories of path dependence and, instead, as offering a more dynamic understanding of the complex, intersecting and malleable ways in which history matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing tendency to perceive the death penalty as always 'on the move', often in a teleological trajectory inevitably leading to universal abolition. This article aims to question this tendency, noting that in many cases death penalty policies remain stable, especially in cases of de facto abolition. Such cases are overlooked in the literature, treated as brief interludes towards full abolition, though in fact they can be enduring and serve important symbolic functions. Informed by the historical‐institutional approach, which rejects teleology in favour of path dependence and contingency, the article focuses on the Israeli case, where since 1967 the death penalty remained a lawful option in military courts with jurisdiction over Palestinians, but never applied. I argue that such remarkable stability is not due to inertia, but an unanticipated result of contingent events and processes leading over time to entrenchment of a 'limbo' arrangement, which constitute intentional, functional, policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban heritage is a category of cultural heritage. Historic centers are protected by a legal framework that safeguards the values that are the object of the declaration. The study of urban heritage protection policy in Colombia has been limited by the classical perspective. In contrast, this research performs a case study on conservation legislation and the historical centers declared in Colombia as Assets of Cultural Interest (BIC, in Spanish) between 1954 and 2019 from historical institutionalism. The methodology used is the Path Dependence Application Scheme (EAPD, in Spanish), which seeks to recognize the relationships between the variables, periods, and trajectory of the object of study; to demonstrate the hypothesis of this work, namely the emergence of urban heritage and protection mechanisms is due to the debilitation of the law and ideas of historical heritage. The preliminary conclusions outline five periods and emphasize the mutual dependence of urban heritage and protection policies, as well as the recent emergence of citizen participation, and the loss of flexibility and versatility of the legal framework with manifestations of irreversibility in the conservation of urban heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the power configuration and path dependence of state intervention in China's Xin'an River Basin Eco-compensation Pilot (XRBEP) through the lens of state rescaling. The findings demonstrate that state rescaling of watershed eco-compensation, as a process of state power reconfiguration triggered by capital accumulation, reflects the adaptive governance of China's central government. We argue that the path dependence of state intervention always coexists in the rescaling process of watershed eco-compensation. Tensions exist between the power reconfiguration and the path dependence of state intervention, which have promoted the process of state rescaling and the evolution of China's watershed eco-compensation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International governance regimes, such as that underpinned by the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong, feature prominently in the literature on international law and international relations. The efforts of scholars operating at the intersection of these two academic disciplines, however, are heavily geared toward creating and sustaining the "right" entities possessing these structural attributes with scant attention accorded to their demise. The unraveling of the Hong Kong "one country-two systems" governance regime, embodying the vision of the Chinese and British institutional architects who devised it, in the wake of Beijing's recent imposition of a heavy-handed national security law on a capitalist enclave embedded in a common law setting featuring political checks-and-balances, offers an opportunity to methodically examine the intricacies of path dissolution/governance regime demise, as distinct from path dependence. The results suggest that the analytical building blocks for exploring the subject do exist, but that the theoretical foundation on which they rest needs to be expanded and that they should be productively synthesized within a coherent multivariable framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional differences in religious opinions are a major issue in Islamic banking. The Islamic contract of bay' al-'inah (a sale and repurchase agreement), which was commonly practiced in Malaysia but unacceptable in the Middle East, represents these differences well. This study traces the process by which the legitimacy of bay' al-'inah was constituted in Malaysia and examines how actors related the local practice to Islamic tradition. Through interviews and archival research, this study reveals that first adopters of bay' al-'inah selected it as an exceptional means for house financing with some ambivalence; however, the choice consequently enabled this contract to prevail through a long-term reproduction process, which obscured the religious dilemma of the first adopters. This study demonstrates the usefulness of process-tracing analysis for anthropological studies of the institutional formation of local Islamic practices to identify their causal configuration and trace the changes of religious normativity and everyday practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introductory section examines the similarities between the prosecution dilemmas posed by the successive piracy crises off the coasts of Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea. Section 1 analyses how the prosecution-related shortcomings of universal jurisdiction and of the international treaty regime currently applicable to the crime of piracy have been compounded by domestic legal and structural factors affecting littoral states in the east and west Africa coasts. Section 2 follows by examining the role of crises as tipping points for international adjudication and introducing central concepts of the analytical tradition of 'historical institutionalism' such as 'critical juncture' or 'path-dependence'. Section 3 then applies these analytical tools as it reviews the pros and cons of the main international, hybrid and nationally assisted adjudicative alternatives for the prosecution of the crime of piracy, which it divides into the categories of 'ad hoc' and 'permanent' solutions, and examines their potential applicability to the escalating piracy crisis in the Gulf of Guinea. The conclusion recaps the main findings of the article and highlights how the elusive quest for international adjudication of the crime of piracy in Africa illustrates the veiled, yet pervasive, influence of path-dependence on international adjudicative-setting processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovation serves as an intrinsic driver for regional economic development, particularly wherein breakthrough innovations exert a profound impact on the continuous evolution of regional technologies and industrial upgrading. Given the uneven distribution of innovation resources and technological capabilities across regions, regions should not only focus on indigenous innovation but also consider how to leverage knowledge from outside the region. This approach is crucial for breaking the path dependency of innovation to achieve regional technological breakthrough. Our paper broadens the technological relatedness framework from a local scope to an inter-regional context by introducing the concept of external technological densities. Specifically, we investigate the nuanced roles of external technologies distinguished by relatedness and unrelatedness, in shaping the trajectories of regional breakthrough technological innovation. Our research underscores the crucial role of assimilating knowledge spillovers from related external technologies for catching-up regions, as such integration fosters breakthrough innovations, while the inclusion of unrelated external technologies exhibits adverse effects. Moreover, both external identical technology and external related technology complement local related technology, jointly facilitating breakthroughs in relative technological advantages. However, in high-complexity cities and technological domains, it is more critical to leverage local related and unrelated technologies rather than relying on external knowledge spillovers. • Expanding technological relatedness to inter-regional contexts with external technological densities. • Exploring regional technological advantage dynamics in breakthrough innovations. • Spillovers from external identical and related tech support local breakthroughs by complementing local technology. • Spillovers from unrelated external tech reduce local breakthrough entry chances. • Related tech spillovers aid catch-up regions cost-effectively, especially for simpler target technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship on technological path dependence has questioned the credibility of many previous studies for basing their analyses on cases settled in the past. Such cases often do not provide adequate insights into the historical contingencies, nature of incremental innovations, and the type of feedback mechanisms between consumers and producers of technologies. In addition, most of the cases dealing with path dependence focus on firms as users of technology, and miss out on the influence the consumers may have in shaping path dependence. We take the case of water purification technologies in India, where the technologies are still evolving, and analyze the path dependence implications of their evolution by taking the case of urban households with piped water supply. Using patent data, scientific studies, as well as interviews with firms and individuals, we analyze how through various incremental innovations and information contagion, reverse osmosis technologies demonstrate the features of path dependence, leading, possibly, to lock-in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anti-American inclination of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policymaking is well established, and the bitter aspects of the two nation’s history well known. However, to assert a simple causal relationship between history and foreignpolicy structure portrays the Islamic Republic’s anti-Americanism as inevitable, eternal and unrelated to actors’ agency. This article disputes this simple structural understanding by drawing on Greener’s method of applying path-dependency theory to political science. We first identify the ideas and structure of revolutionary Iran, benefiting in particular from the complementary insights of postcolonial theory. Following, we examine US policy choices in the Islamic Republic’s formative period of 1978–79—specifically those related to human rights, the shah and direct US intervention—and how these were perceived and acted upon in Tehran. Our findings indicate that American actions and Iranian decisions both influenced the establishment of a path-dependent process of perception and perpetration that continues until today. Successive Iranian governments have asserted that America ignores Iranian’s human rights, supports their enemies, and pursues direct intervention, while successive US government actions, motivated by Iranian counteractions, have generated ample evidence to validate such claims. This can explain how a spiral of distrust emerged between the two nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theaim of this article is to discuss similarities and differences with regard to how to combat and solve economic crises in Sweden during the 1990's depression, the global financial crisis 2008-09 and the 2020 Covid-19 crisis. In recent years in social science the existence of path dependence has been discussed to a large extent. The conclusion in this article is that there were differences but also clear path dependency in the way Swedish governments and municipal authorities tried to combat and solve economic crises. What was learned particularly in order to put thefinancialand banking sector in shape during the 19905 wasalso used with some success in 2008-09, namely to convince both the financial market actors and the public that the Swedish government was ready to use ample sources in order to serve as a lender of last resort. In the case of the ongoing Covid 19-crisis, the signals from the outset were to put in use parts of this strategy once again. However, I argue, the recent crisis is of a very different kind than the previous two and there is no guarantee that the strategy will work once again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long studied technology evolution. More recently, organizational theorists have begun to explore the role of categories and their associated labels in industry dynamics. Yet little is known about how technological designs and categories coevolve. We build on these two bodies of literature to develop an integrative model of how industries emerge and evolve. We propose that the evolution of both technological designs and categories follows a similar pattern, characterized by an early period of divergence followed by a period of convergence, and we identify the mechanisms that account for this coevolutionary process. We add to the literature on technological evolution by explicating the mechanisms through which designs evolve and identifying how different stakeholders' categorical understandings shape design competition. Our model also augments the categorization literature by detailing categorical evolution as a contested process of category creation and selection, which, in turn, is influenced by the designs that the categories are trying to group. Our model creates a much needed bridge between two bodies of literature that, while addressing similar topics, have evolved largely separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze recent trends in precision agriculture (PA) technology adoption by U.S. corn growers using nationally-representative data from the Agricultural and Resource Management Survey (ARMS). We show that corn production is increasingly reliant on PA tools and practices, but that adoption skews toward larger operations. Large-scale operations are also responsible for a greater share of the growth in PA in recent years. Adoption patterns are consistent with sequential adoption and path dependency in PA. These results imply significant economies of scale in PA, which may accelerate existing trends in farm consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical institutionalism gives special importance to power asymmetries for understanding institutions, but by adopting the concept of path dependence to explain institutional dynamics also falls into a theoretical dilemma. On the one hand path dependence becomes attractive insofar as it gives autonomy to institutional dimension, but on the other hand it isolates institutions from the influence of power asymmetries. Later theories of gradual endogenous change attempt to solve this problem by reintroducing power, but leave a fragmented panorama, full of underlying theoretical tensions for historical institutionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Routledge) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research Summary: Why do some firms routinely acquire more than others? I contribute to the study of technological acquisitions and capability development more broadly by documenting how the interaction between organizational plasticity and environmental munificence can create one demarcation point for some technology firms to become more acquisitive than others. Using a novel dataset on 1,201 firms that went public between 1983 and 2007, I find evidence of a persistent divergence even 20 years after initial public offering (IPO). Additional tests rule out alternative explanations and explore potential mechanisms. Managerial Summary There has been much evidence to suggest that mature innovative firms tend to have a preferred mode for accessing new technology: either by making it internally or buying it from other firms. However, we do not know very well how firms develop these preferences. This article investigates how financial market conditions affect young firms around the time of going public, and shows that recently IPO'd firms that experience depressed M&A markets go on to rely less on acquisitions when they mature. Conversely, these firms seem to develop more technologies in‐house. These findings suggest that some early events in a firm's life may have long‐lasting consequences, which may be difficult to change later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest rate is generally considered as an important driver of macroeconomic investment characterised by a particular form of path dependency, “hysteresis”. At the same time, the interest rate channel is a central ingredient of monetary policy transmission. In this context, we shed light on the issue (which currently is a matter of concern for many central banks) whether uncertainty over future interest rates at the zero lower bound hampers monetary policy transmission. As an innovation we derive the exact shape of the “hysteretic” impact of rate changes on macroeconomic investment under different sorts of uncertainty. Starting with hysteresis effects on the micro level, we apply an adequate aggregation procedure to derive the interest rate effects on a macro level. Our results may serve as a guideline for future central banks’ policies on how to stimulate investment in times of low or even zero interest rates and uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to investigate whether national differences in the institutionalization of the binary divide between universities and Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) lead to different outcomes in performing Academics' Societal Engagement (ASE). Two institutional theory-based core differences of European binary higher education (HE) systems were used to select a theory-led purposeful sample: First, the sequence of UAS-institutionalization and ASE-policy emphasis and second the political drive for a practically oriented research drift. Based on the Finnish, German and Portuguese survey data provided by the cross-country study "Academic Profession in Knowledge Society," three dimensions of ASE are derived: techno-commercial ASE, dissemination ASE and training-related ASE. These ASE-dimensions cover the diversity of ASE across different disciplinary fields. Survey results of the Finnish sample show that all three ASE-dimensions are more strongly performed by UAS-academics than by university-academics. In Germany, robust stronger correlations of research (productivity) and all three ASE-dimensions for UAS-academics, compared to university-academics, were observed. In Portugal, convergence of ASE performed by UAS-academics and university-academics was indicated. Thus, core country-differences in the institutionalization of ASE in binary HE-systems are reflected in the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of the Smart Specialisation approach was expected to require an especially challenging commitment to policy learning in less advanced regions compared with advanced ones. This paper suggests a partially different analytical framework by discussing the relevance of path dependency in the design and implementation of Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3). The research question concerns the relationship between previous experiences in innovation policy also in less advanced regions and RIS3 policy processes. Based on the two case studies of Sicily and Apulia (Italy), the paper investigates in which way policy heritage contributed to the quality of processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance today often requires concerted action by multiple organizations operating within and across sectors. Although scholars fruitfully have assayed many factors that facilitate or constrain interorganizational collaboration, the extant literature largely ignores the ways in which historical patterns of policy and organizational development may figure in present-day obstacles to collaboration. This is unfortunate, for such obstacles may result from path dependence and, thus, be particularly ingrained and resistant to change. In this article, we detail recent advances in path dependency theory, then illustrate our argument with a case study of path-dependent barriers to collaboration between two public programs pressed to work together after decades of deliberately separate operation. The case confirms the utility of new theoretical developments, yet also suggests necessary clarifications and refinements. Though aspects of path dependence theory should be reexamined, we argue that it is ripe for use by scholars of public management concerned with barriers to collaboration and other contemporary governance challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the interplay between institutional continuities and transformations in the making of national planning policies in Argentina since the beginning of the twentieth century until 2015. Building upon evolutionary approaches to path dependence theory, in-depth interviews with planning experts and a re-mining of the historical planning literature in the country, the paper argues that the disruptive and transformative role assigned to exogenous macro-scale events in official accounts of Argentine planning history has been significant, yet regularly overestimated. The study first provides a concise review of these official narratives and, then, introduces an alternative interpretative key for the historical articulation of national planning policies. A shift of focus towards the underlying continuities in the power/knowledge nexus that shape institutional paths of policy evolutions reveals three inertia-building mechanisms: discursive assimilation, organizational solidification and expert adaptation. The inclusion of these mechanisms in historical policy analysis illustrates the potential of more nuanced depictions regarding how common standards to understand planning and govern policy-making unfold in/through complex contexts of institutional evolution. In this way, attentiveness to these elusive continuities in power/knowledge configurations may trigger or inform new and more acute narratives of the historical articulation of planning policy formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a system dynamic modelling of sovereign debt using the path dependence concept. Using simulation modelling we are trying to find a fixed point in a motion of national sovereign debt towards its equilibrium and to change the existing mental model perception towards sovereign debt by changing the structure of the system. The research reveals the idea of the “debt snowball concept” using recursive dynamic approach. The dynamic linear and nonlinear recursive models of Ukrainian sovereign debt with the appropriate multi – order recursive equations are constructed. The fixed point as an equilibrium value for a country’s sovereign debt stock to GDP ratio with a linear dependence has been built. Finding the initial point for resolving sovereign debt issue is especially actual for national economy under strong fiscal pressure caused by COVID-19 and wartime on the East of the country. For this purpose, the sovereign debt cyclical behaviour was also reproduced using phase plot graphic. The fixed point as an equilibrium value for a country’s sovereign debt stock to GDP ratio with a nonlinear dependence was determined. The main purpose of this part of the analysis was to show the more complicated oscillated behaviour of the system and the multiplicity of possible equilibrium points. The stock and flows SD modelling and simulation analysis of sovereign debt in Ukrainian economy allows to make the conclusion of the inevitability of the sovereign debt existence even on the stable level and with the balanced national budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of path dependence has often been criticized as vague and only narrowly applicable. Although we can find some very refined definitions of the concept, we also find a wide range of empirical phenomena being described as path-dependent. We argue that more detailed accounts of the positive feedback mechanisms that form paths can take path dependence beyond this state of being overdetermined, but under-specified. Reviewing three well-described cases of path-dependent dynamics in technology markets, regional clustering, and organizations, we define a core set of positive feedback mechanisms that constitute path dependence at different analysis levels and clarify the relationship between positive feedback and increasing returns. We show that path-dependent processes, that is, processes driven by positive feedback that veer toward rigidity or lock-in, can be (but do not have to be) found under many labels, including structural inertia, coevolution, or institutional persistence. We conclude that a precise definition of path dependence does not need to be at odds with the concept’s widespread use in understanding organizational and industrial development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tracing the origin and development of British ethnic entrepreneurship from the 1800s to the 21st century raises awareness of a salient research gap to make a contribution to entrepreneurship research. We draw on path dependency theory to understand the range of socio‐cultural and economic factors that inform the dynamic behaviour and actions of visible minorities (Africans, Chinese, South Asians and people form the Caribbean) ethnic entrepreneurship. Archival and industry documentations are analysed to identify four distinctive epochal periods of origination of ethnic entrepreneurship that highlight the path dependency of activities. Furthermore, we found network alliances, business clusters and resilience factors, such as founder‐owner social outlook, culture, faith, and social identity as critical success factors. We further outline the implications of the historical development for research, government policy, industry and entrepreneurial practice in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the subfield of American Political Development (APD), like other political scientists, are confronting the identification revolution in the social sciences. They are exploring whether and how evolving standards of causal inference can shape the research the subfield performs. Almost by definition, APD research involves analyzing observational data, where variation in the data is provided by 'nature', and thus faces the formidable challenges that follow from the inability of the researcher to manipulate the assignment of units of interest to treatment and control conditions. Fortunately, the very scope of historical analysis can create opportunities to take advantage of natural experiments and exogenous inputs that alter the course of events to produce more convincing causal analyses. Yet, historical investigation presents unique challenges to standard methodological approaches, certainly no less the case when causal identification is prioritized. Understanding and confronting these challenges is essential to taking advantage of inferential opportunities presented by historical data, as our consideration of scholarship on economic development demonstrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect of location on the development of new universities. The study was conducted in seven new higher education institutions (HEIs) established in India during 1996–2008. I collected the data by conducting semi-structured interviews with 73 faculty members in the HEIs and from official documents, media reports and opinion pieces about the HEIs. Using the conceptual framework of path dependency, I investigated the tensions and challenges faced by the HEIs in their initial years. I find the placement of the HEIs in their respective locations to be a contingent event that can make the development of HEIs path dependent. I find that the initial conditions and decisions of the HEIs were influenced by the location and led to reactive sequential events in their initial years with effects that were hard to shake off, making their development path dependent. I show that having to develop their infrastructure and constrained by resources, the HEIs started their academic programmes first, followed by their research activities, and outreach and regional engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains why Vietnam and China, one-party states that allow only one official trade union, are traversing different paths in their trade unions' institutional structures, the state's and trade union's attitudes towards strikes, their willingness to allow independent trade unions and willingness to engage with the international labour union movement. These will be examined in terms of the path dependency of their recent histories, in which changes have been incremental on a path laid down by pre-existing entrenched institutions, until each national system no longer operated properly and new contingencies obliged the leadership to revamp the system. As a consequence of China's and Vietnam's divergent path dependencies, when external contingencies finally forced institutional change, countries have veered onto divergent trajectories – the Trans-Pacific Partnership energising Vietnam to debate the acceptance of autonomous trade unions, while Xi Jinping in China has intensified Party control over industrial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transactions in the market for corporate control are not fully standardized but rather exhibit a material amount of variation. This Essay explores a possible structural explanation: That the complexity of merger and acquisition (M&A) agreements makes them susceptible to multiple sources of path dependency, which introduce tensions that unsettle incentives toward uniform standardization. Using natural language processing techniques and standard regression analysis, the Essay presents preliminary evidence indicating that the level of standardization of various M&A agreement provisions correlates differently with multiple sources of path dependency, lending support to the hypothesis that endogenous structural factors limit the standardization of M&A transactions. Those findings underscore the importance of including scope economies in theories of contractual innovation and enforcement and emphasize the role of transaction designers' organizational routines as a source of market resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the current tendency to extrapolate China's future trajectory from its current retrenchment, it is argued that China has changed substantially in the past and is likely to continue to change in the future. While change has always been strife-torn and radically contingent, it may be seen in retrospect to fit a rough pattern as occasioned by generational as well as ideological and developmental factors. Can we find clues in this pattern of change that provide some basis for speculation about China's future? A definition of 'generation,' is followed by a review of the past pattern of China's generational evolution and by a theory of generational change to account for it. The essay concludes with a discussion of China's path-dependent cyclical future evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically reviews and synthesizes the contributions found in theoretical and empirical studies of firm-level innovation search processes. It explores the advantages and disadvantages of local and non-local search, discusses organizational responses, and identifies potential exogenous triggers for different kinds of search. It argues that the initial focus on local search was a consequence, in part, of the attention in evolutionary economics to path-dependent behavior, but that as localized behavior was increasingly accepted as the standard mode, studies began to question whether local search was the best solution in all cases. More recently, the literature has focused on the trade-offs being created, by firms having to balance local and non-local search. We account also for the apparent “variety paradox” in the stylized fact that organizations within the same industry tend to follow different search strategies, but end up with very similar technological profiles in fast-growing technologies. The article concludes by highlighting what we have learnt from the literature and suggesting some new avenues for research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The implementation of lean production remains popular among industrial companies, and the requirement for individualised steps in its implementation is widely accepted; however, research has not yet considered the different process choices available to the companies. The conclusions drawn from the automotive industry's mass production environment may be misleading, given the different conditions of many other industries. We therefore compare case data from a craft producer with the rich, case-study based literature of mass producer companies that highlight the transformation from mass to lean production. We derive a list of specific challenges a craft producer must approach using a different strategy than a mass producer. This study adds to the lean production theory by demonstrating how different manufacturing process choices influence the lean transformation process and its successful implementation. It provides specific propositions concerning the transformation to lean by considering the different processes of craft and mass production companies. Furthermore, the case study gives an in-depth understanding of the challenges a craft-oriented company faces when becoming lean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations seek to differentiate themselves in the marketplace by deploying information technology (IT) to develop dynamic IT capabilities and resist competitors' attempts to imitate or improve these capabilities. While this strategy has been justified on the grounds that dynamic IT capabilities are durably heterogeneous, there does not seem to be empirical evidence supporting or refuting this assumption. This study empirically validates the assumption of durable heterogeneity of dynamic organizational IT capability (ITC) due to path dependence. We capture ITC heterogeneity by introducing a framework in which firms try to achieve ITC leadership in their industry and we propose that durable ITC heterogeneity can be attributed to path dependence, and hence, it can be tested using Heckman's true state dependence of ITC leadership status. Using random and fixed effect dynamic logit models, we investigate true state dependence of ITC leadership on a sample of large U.S. firms. The results, which are robust to alternative sample, dependent, and control variable specifications, show that achieving ITC leadership is a true state-dependent process, suggesting durable heterogeneity of ITC due to path dependence. The study contributes to the dynamic capabilities literature and has important managerial implications. The proposed framework for conceptualizing durable resource heterogeneity due to path dependence is general and versatile, thus providing a foundation for future research on dynamic capabilities. The findings provide empirical evidence to confirm that ITC is durably heterogeneous and should be managed as a potential source of competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]