Entrepreneurial Imagination in Detroit: Creating an Alternative through Anti-Isomorphic Divergence

• In Event: 554 - Regular Session. Economic Sociology: Making New Markets, New Firms: Global, Local, Online

Abstract

This research addresses one of the key questions of institutional theory: how do individual actors diverge from the institutional order in which they are structurally embedded? Despite the significant accomplishment by the recent research on institutional change and divergence, this paradox of embedded agency persists, and there is a limited understanding on how individual actors can create an alternative to the existing institution which constitutes the entire condition of the actors’ existence. This paper presents one possible mechanism whereby such divergence is achieved without compromising the actor’s constitutive embeddedness in the institution – namely, the mechanism of ‘anti-isomorphic divergence’, which refers to the process through which individual organizations construct an alternative to the existing institution by taking the exact opposite of each element of the institutionalized template. Through ethnographic field research in a business incubator in Detroit, this research provides an in-depth description of how the organization constructs an alternative to the prevalent way of incubating startups by engaging in anti-isomorphic divergence. Potential contributions to the contemporary advancement of institutional theory, including dynamics among multiple pillars of institution, institutional complexity and change, and pragmatist influence on institutionalism, are discussed.

Author

• Suntae Kim, University of Michigan