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Cited by 459Management and Organizational StudiesGlobal trade, sustainability, and social impactRegulation and Compliance Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 184 of the 186 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Means versus Ends in Opaque Institutional Fields: Trading off Compliance and Achievement in Sustainability Standard Adoption

Open access
Wijen, Frank·2014·Academy of Management Review
DOI 10.5465/amr.2012.0218
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Abstract

The long-standing discussion on decoupling has recently moved from adopters not implementing the agreed-upon policies to compliant adopters not achieving the goals intended by institutional entrepreneurs. This “means-ends decoupling” prevails especially in highly opaque fields, where practices, causality, and performance are hard to understand and chart. I conceptualize the conditions under which the adoption of institutions in relatively opaque fields leads to the achievement of the envisaged goals. Voluntary sustainability standards governing socioenvironmental issues illustrate these arguments. I argue that the lack of field transparency drives institutional entrepreneurs to create and maintain concrete and uniform rules, apply strong incentives, and disseminate “best practices” to ensure substantive adopter compliance. However, such rigid institutions are ill-equipped to deal with the causal complexity and practice multiplicity underlying opacity while they smother adopter agency. The ensuing tension between substantive compliance and goal achievement leads to an inherent trade-off: institutional entrepreneurs who remedy the policy-practice decoupling may enhance the disparity between means and ends, and vice versa. While sustainability standards and other institutions in highly opaque fields can, therefore, not fully achieve the envisaged goals, the trade-off can be reduced through systemically designed institutions that promote goal internalization and contain niche institutions.

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  1. Banerjee A. V., 2007, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21, 141, 10.1257/089533007780095556 · DOI · Paper page
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  13. Scott R., 2001, Institutions and organizations

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Metadata

Authors
Wijen, F.
Affiliations
Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL)
Corresponding author
Wijen, Frank
ORCID
Wijen, Frank
Venue
Academy of Management Review
Publisher
Academy of Management
Published
2014-07
Volume
39
Issue
3
Pages
302-323
ISSN
  • 0363-7425 (ISSN-L)
  • 1930-3807
DOI
10.5465/amr.2012.0218
OpenAlex
W2135064655
Cited by
459
References
186
Citations by year
2026: 71 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 57 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 46 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 31 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 3
FWCI
49.12
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Academy of Management Review (publishedVersion)
  • EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion)
  • EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • RePub (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • ERIM Top-Core Articles
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Global trade, sustainability, and social impact
  • Social Sciences › Public Administration › Regulation and Compliance Studies
Keywords
means-ends decoupling, institutional entrepreneurs, institutional field, opacity, voluntary sustainability standards, policy-practice gap, institutional design, goal internalization, causal complexity, best practices dissemination

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