Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Field of Postwar Industrial Relations: Incumbent Mobilization at the General Electric Company

• In Event: 2350 - Fields and Identities

Abstract

Conventional accounts of postindustrial restructuring in the United States trace the decline of the Postwar Accord to the 1970s when globalization, corporate restructuring and new workplace technologies began to undermine the power of labor unions. This paper uses institutional theory to investigate change in the field of postwar industrial relations, but extends the timeline back to the 1940s when a network of conservative businessmen mobilized against the terms of the Accord. Executives at General Electric played a central role in this movement despite their dominant position in the field. Analysis of competing postwar managerial ideologies within the larger field of American political economy helps explain this case of incumbent institutional entrepreneurship, and emphasizes endogenous sources of institutional change.

Author

• Caroline Hanley, William & Mary