Agency in Institutional Reform: Creating the Ethiopia Commodities Exchange
| Author | Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff |
| Published date | 01 October 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1732 |
| Date | 01 October 2015 |
AGENCY IN INSTITUTIONAL REFORM: CREATING THE ETHIOPIA
COMMODITIES EXCHANGE
JENNIFER M. BRINKERHOFF*
School of Public Policy and Public Administration/Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, USA
SUMMARY
The role of agents and agency in institutional reform literature has largely been underplayed and decontextualized, even being
described as a “black box.”Despite calls for linking individual agency with organizational and societal analysis, the specific
contours of agency remain under-theorized. This paper presents and illustrates a framework for institutional entrepreneurism,
outlining the essential role and specific actions institutional entrepreneurs can contribute to introducing, promoting, and crystal-
lizing institutional reforms. The framework identifies how institutional entrepreneurial actions shift in their targets and responses
as the resource needs change in different stages of the reform process. Using the example of establishing the Ethiopia Commod-
ities Exchange (ECX), I illustrate each stage of institutional entrepreneurial action. The ECX experience illustrates institutional
entrepreneurs as networked, political actors, who announce institutional reforms through cultural efforts that make it as easy as
possible for stakeholders to comply with proposed reforms. The who and the how of agency may shift through the stages of
institutional reform. The ECX experience confirms that institutional reform is political and requires engaging with both
macro-level and micro-level politics and power. The paper closes with implications for policy and practice. Copyright ©
2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—agency; institutions; reform; institutional entrepreneur
Several scholars have recently called for integrating the study of entrepreneurship, rather than solely the label, into
research on institutional entrepreneurism, and, more broadly, institutional theory and research on institutional
change (e.g., Pacheco et al., 2010; Tolbert et al., 2011). In the institutional reform literature, individual change
agents’actions have received “scant attention”(Battilana, 2006: 668; Perkmann and Spicer, 2007). When agency
is recognized in institutional theory, institutional entrepreneurs tend to be presented as “black boxes devoid of in-
ternal processes”(Levy and Scully, 2007: 986). Or, agency theories “promote heroic models of actors”(see
Aldrich, 2010); these have been criticized for being ahistorical, decontextualized, and universalistic (Garud
et al., 2002). Neither of these approaches is helpful to moving beyond blueprint approaches to institutional reform.
Battilana (2006) advocates a need to link individual agency with organizational and societal analysis. Other
scholars operationalize that link as “political action embedded in a historical system of interconnected yet incom-
patible institutional arrangements”(Seo and Creed, 2002: 223). In this orientation, the institutional entrepreneur is
necessarily a political entrepreneur, even a “modern prince”(Levy and Scully, 2007). Yet it remains difficult to
specify the contours of the agency black box, simply with reference to political strategizing. Needed is a framework
that identifies a menu of possible actions across the stages of institutional reform.
This paper presents and illustrates a framework for institutional entrepreneurism, outlining the essential role and
specific actions institutional entrepreneurs can contribute to introducing, promoting, and crystallizing institutional
reforms. The framework identifies how institutional entrepreneurial actions shift in their targets and responses as
the resource needs change in different stages of the institutional reform process. As the resource needs shift, so
*Correspondence to: J. Brinkerhoff, School of Public Policy and Public Administration/Elliott School of International Affairs, The George
Washington University, USA. E-mail: jbrink@gwu.edu
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 35, 301–314 (2015)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1732
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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