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We employ field theory as an approach to analysing sustainable regional development by reconciling funding needs and funding procurement. Initial expectations that private capital would bridge the financial gap to decarbonize our economies and societies have not materialized. Instead, state‐led coalitions increasingly introduce spatialized decarbonization strategies in which public development banks are pivotal, yet underappreciated, actors. Field theory provides a fresh perspective for mapping the particular context in which regional industrial policies intersect with broader national and supra‐national investment programmes and funding needs for these long‐term initiatives. Transitions are typically directed but open‐ended social processes, necessitating agency to both alter context and institutions and stabilize the emerging new structures. Field theory can surpass limitations in approaches like transition studies and integrate change mechanisms across scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the debate on the platformization of society by presenting a theoretical framework that describes the influence of strategic action fields (SAFs) on the emergence of platform architectures. It shifts the focus from already successful platforms to contested processes of platformization, understood as the gradual reorganization of fields around the architectures of digital platforms. To assess the influence of fields on platformization processes, the article combines the architectural view of platforms and the theory of SAFs. The resulting framework emphasizes that platform organizations may occupy powerful positions in fields, but they also depend on the contributions of users and complementors to establish these positions in the first place. Therefore, the forms and outcomes of platformization are influenced by the conditions in SAFs, particularly the stage in the field's temporal trajectory and the field position of platform organizations. By re-examining a growing body of empirical research, the article distinguishes platformization processes in emerging, stable, and transforming fields, and presents scenarios for each case. By theorizing a wide range of platformization processes and outcomes beyond disruption, the article offers a nuanced understanding of the proliferation of digital platforms and the influence of platform organizations in contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historical contribution of the German Informatics Society (GI) to the establishment of computer education in German schools. It highlights the role of societal interests, international developments, public and professional debates, and technological change in the GI’s educational policy recommendations. The historical source base consists of conference proceedings, position papers and other publications by key actors within and outside the GI. Methodologically, the article refers to the concept of strategic fields of action. The article shows how the GI’s understanding of computer science played an important role in its initial policy recommendations. With increasing computerisation and then the World Wide Web, the GI had to adapt its recommendations to the now more complex situation in Germany and the polyphonic debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through four qualitative case studies, we explore how smaller nonprofit human service organizations (SNHSOs) in England and Wales responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and consider the implications for state-nonprofit relations. SNHSOs pandemic response was immediate, dynamic, flexible, and adaptive in response to urgent needs. They supported communities most severely affected by the pandemic due to factors such as health, economic status, geography race, and ethnicity. Whereas several theories of state-nonprofit relations position the relationship as relatively settled at an organizational level, we argue for greater attention to how these relationships can be fluid, dynamic, and subject to change over time. During times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, smaller nonprofits are typically first responders to urgent needs, but larger public sector organizations are likely to play a more central role as time progresses. Smallness confers limited organizational hierarchy and minimal bureaucracy, which enables smaller nonprofits to respond dynamically and flexibly during crises to meet urgent and developing needs. Larger, more bureaucratic and hierarchical organizations take longer to respond to crises and can be less flexible due to their size. Smaller nonprofits often work with people who were most severely and acutely affected by crises due to factors such as health, economic status, geographic location, race, and ethnicity. These groups tend to be less well-served by mainstream human services provided by public sector bodies and larger nonprofits. Partnership and collaboration between smaller and large nonprofits and public bodies, that maximizes the strengths of each and mitigates their weaknesses, is vital for an effective and well-coordinated crisis response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) seeks to address injustices in the food system by supporting small-scale farmers applying agroecological practices through a long-term partnership: a community of members covers the cost of production and receives a share of the harvest throughout the season in return. Despite an orientation towards a more just and inclusive food system, the existing literature points towards a rather homogeneous membership in CSA. A majority of CSAs tends to involve (upper) middle-class consumers with above average education and income levels. Low income is still a major obstacle in joining a CSA. Membership diversification through social support actions is one possible way. Our main objective is to systematize and appraise social support actions of the CSA movement. Taking the CSA principles as a starting point, our main research question is: How do social support actions in CSAs operate in terms of social inclusion and what obstacles and challenges are associated with them? The theory of strategic action fields assists in describing how the CSA movement is positioning itself as an actor in and across neighboring strategic action fields. The CSA movement is clearly positioned in the Food Sovereignty field. By shifting the focus from justice to farmers to justice for members, the CSA movement is now also exploring the Food Justice field. Indeed, the CSAs' contribution to the food justice movement is still largely uncharted. In our results, we identify both social support actions that are already implemented in the CSA movement in different countries, and the challenges that are associated with these actions. We pinpoint a classification of social support actions implemented by CSA organizers to increase access to their initiatives. We make a distinction between the emancipatory actions that empower beneficiaries and contribute to a systemic change, and punctual, charitable interventions that neither affect the structure of a CSA nor the food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the public's sentiments about vaccines by analyzing Twitter data during the CDC's vaccination management planning stage in the United States. Sentiment scores were assigned to each tweet using a sentiment dictionary and the sentiment changes were analyzed over 52 weeks from November 2020 to November 2021. An interrupted time series model was used to analyze the difference in sentiment, which revealed that there was a shift. Initially, overall sentiments were negative but became positive as the stage of general vaccine supply approached. However, negative sentiments sharply rose when the vaccine supply transitioned to the phase of universalization. The results identified two dominant strategic action fields for vaccines providing polarized messages on Twitter and the negative trend was strong for most of the period. The findings highlight the importance of managing strategic action fields on social networks to prevent mass hysteria during vaccine policy implementation. This study stresses the significance of effectively managing strategic action fields on social media platforms to prevent mass hysteria while implementing vaccine policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates how qualitative and network evidence complement one another for obtaining a deeper understanding of meso-level social orders theorized as strategic action fields. Making use of network data based on Twitter follower relationships and building on a previous qualitative study on the food charities active in Greater Manchester, we show how network-analytic formalizations of even apparently unimportant digital connections—Twitter 'follows'—can provide meaningful insights into the functioning of strategic action fields. Focusing on this local charitable food provision field, the article makes a number of broader empirical and methodological contributions potentially relevant to the study of non-profits and other multi-organizational fields. The results of the network analyses mostly confirm the findings obtained using qualitative data, but also point to potential contradictions and puzzles that may indicate further lines of inquiry. In the discussion, we highlight the strengths and limitations of this approach and suggest how researchers could use easily available digital network data at different phases of their field investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Big Science projects and networks experience conflict. A plethora of disciplines have examined conflict causes in science collaboration and Big Science, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of why conflicts emerge. Yet, so far, there is no theoretical model that explains which mechanisms connect conflict cause and outbreak in Big Science. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature on science collaboration and Big Science as well as on scholarship on strategic action fields (SAFs), I address this blind spot by proposing a model that outlines which mechanisms induce and fuel conflict in Big Science projects and networks. Five interlinked mechanisms – attribution of threat or opportunity, mobilization of resources, coalition-building, boundary deactivation and innovative action – are central to it. Tracing these mechanisms in conflictual episodes which emerged in three typical, yet most-different, Big Science cases – the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER), the Human Brain Project (HBP) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) – this study also provides a proof of concept for the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Planning Education & Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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 study examined the public’s sentiments about vaccines by analyzing Twitter data during the CDC’s vaccination management planning stage in the United States. Sentiment scores were assigned to each tweet using a sentiment dictionary and the sentiment changes were analyzed over 52 weeks from November 2020 to November 2021. An interrupted time series model was used to analyze the difference in sentiment, which revealed that there was a shift. Initially, overall sentiments were negative but became positive as the stage of general vaccine supply approached. However, negative sentiments sharply rose when the vaccine supply transitioned to the phase of universalization. The results identified two dominant strategic action fields for vaccines providing polarized messages on Twitter and the negative trend was strong for most of the period. The findings highlight the importance of managing strategic action fields on social networks to prevent mass hysteria during vaccine policy implementation. This study stresses the significance of effectively managing strategic action fields on social media platforms to prevent mass hysteria while implementing vaccine policies.

Prevailing theories of poverty governance emphasize how political and economic constraints associated with urban neoliberalism have led to the retraction of protective welfare commitments and an increased criminalization of poverty. While research on this "disciplinary turn" has been generative, it tells us little about countervailing trends or how institutional responses to poverty change over time. Addressing these gaps, this article offers a case study of the emergence and acceptance by the business community of a supportive Housing First and harm reduction initiative called JustCARE—a distinct technique of poverty governance not readily explicable within existing theoretical frameworks. By situating JustCARE within a wider strategic action field of poverty governance, we reveal the macro-, meso-, and micro-level dynamics that together facilitated its inception, growth, and eventual embrace by members of the formerly hostile business establishment. Specifically, we underscore how two exogenous shocks (COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter [BLM] uprisings) enabled a well-positioned advocacy organization to articulate and implement a non-punitive homelessness response alternative. We conclude that field-based scholarship centering "theoretically deviant" cases can reveal how the contradictions and failures of neoliberal poverty management can generate unique opportunities for meaningful institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational interactions in fields, including their antecedents and consequences, remain under-researched, in particular with regard to relational distance and transformative skills. Through a comparative study of the German and Japanese wind power sectors, we explore the importance of distance among organizational actors and the development of skills. While in the case of Germany a radical increase in wind energy generation can be witnessed, the situation in the field of Japanese wind power remains largely unchanged. We show how different degrees of distance among organizational actors in these two countries result in the different development of skills that stimulate transformation in the field of energy generation. More precisely, we illustrate the pivotal role of distant challengers with their transformative skills for the successful conversion of already established field structures. Our study contributes to field theory by elaborating on the understanding of the evolution of relational distance, thereby grasping the dynamic interplay between the diversity of actors and their skill formation within a certain strategic action field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the field of public audit as a collibrative element of public sector accountability. It reports on the consequences of substantial collibrative intervention in such a field. The intervention studied is the change to local authority audit in England that culminated in the Local Audit and Accountability Act, 2014, and entailed the abolition of the Audit Commission. Drawing on strategic action field theory, and through examination of submissions to the Redmond Review and other documentary materials, an analysis is developed of the field of public financial audit in its ongoing efforts to re‐equilibriate following the intervention. The analysis explores the action taken in pursuit of the restoration of field stability, effective functioning, and legitimacy, and the effects on public accountability. The analysis supports Julia Black's contention that different accountability regimes are not readily substitutable and exposes some of the risks and difficulties associated with attempts to modify accountability through collibrative intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of global norms that affect work is a crucial element to how multinational companies (MNCs) achieve a degree of HR integration internationally. We establish a 'strategic action fields' framework to guide research into global norm‐making in MNCs in general and for analysing the work of those that we term 'globalising actors'—those who are active in globalising a firm's management of its human resources—in particular. We position our framework with relation to existing research in international human resource management, and show how the field can benefit from achieving an approach to global norm‐making that is contextualised, personalised and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how industrial development can occur in a peripheral region through the gradual development of strategic coherence between organisations, materiality, and agency. In a longitudinal case study of how the mechatronics industry became a main area for regional development spanning 50 years in the region of Agder in Norway, the authors have followed how national and regional innmovation policies, individual actors, and organisational strategies eventually flow together and influence organisations and firms to collaborate towards new and shared aims. In the paper, the authors perform field theory analysis, with emphasis on the significance of the development of reciprocal relations between institutions, understood as authorities, businesses, and universities, and strategic agency within and between strategic action fields. They question how industrial development in a peripheral region can be understood through a strategic action fields framework. The findings reveal that development of the industry spanned the evolution from small-scale entrepreneurial engineering activities in the 1960s to a regional innovation system and National Centre of Excellence with global knowledge hub ambitions in the 2010s. In conclusion, the analysis shows how mechatronics achieved a central role in regional development through common action between previously decoupled academic and industrial strategic action fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the conditions under which forest-dependent groups in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest may overcome inequalities in the legal access to forest resources. Through the development of contrasting case studies, we address attempts made by two community-based associations that represent those groups to legalize their timber production. We explore the dominance and mobilization of resources and draw on the Strategic Action Fields perspective to organize and systematically compare the case studies. Results reveal that to overcome existing barriers to legalization, communities need to create a social movement dynamic to seize opportunities caused by the exogenous interferences in local social orders. Skilled social actors need to mobilize powerful supporters to accumulate resource endowments necessary to put forward the legalization process. These results are particularly important considering the enormous environmental importance of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, the increase in deforestation rates, and the precarious socio-economic situation of forest-dependent peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the political mobilization of Tibetans in Toronto. I develop the hypothesis that Tibetans in Toronto who enter into local politics are already politicized, which facilitates the transition from activism within the Tibetan community to activism in Canadian society. To explore this transition from an inward- to an outward-looking type of mobilization, I draw on theoretical insights about the political integration of migrants developed by leading scholars in Social Movement Studies and Diaspora Studies. The careers of the two Tibetans who stood for office in Toronto in 2018, Bhutila Karpoche and Kalsang Dolma, as well as of Tibetan blogger and campaign manager Gelek Badheytsang, then serve to analyze the “strategic action fields” (Fligstein and McAdam 2012) or “arenas” (Jasper and Duyvendak 2015) invested by the Tibetans who choose to enter into local politics.

This study utilizes the Strategic Action Field (SAF) framework as a lens to study implementation effectiveness of Ohio START, a multiactor and multilevel implementation process. We examine the extent to which perceptions of successes and challenges vary across organizational roles in county-level child welfare agencies during Ohio START implementation. Preliminary findings reveal that perceptions of implementation effectiveness differ based on organizational role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Established in 2009, Complete College America (CCA) has emerged as one of the leading single-issue intermediary organizations advocating policy solutions to improve college completion in the USA. Although other entities that influenced the policy conversation at that time have ceased operation, CCA has maintained and, in fact, expanded its role in US higher education policy. Through a collective case study developed from archival data and interviews with CCA officials and respondents from three member states (Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas), this study examines the evolution of CCA as an organization and investigates how it has been able to challenge other actors within the higher education field. Findings suggest that CCA created and strengthened its influence through strategic identification of members, pointed communication, and intentionally aligning themselves with power brokers in both the completion sphere and targeted states. This study highlights the growing role and influence of intermediary organizations in higher education policy conversations and offers insights into how these types of organizations influence decision-making in state and national strategic action fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pasos: Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural is the property of Universidad de La Laguna, Instituto Universitario de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales 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.)

• Strategic action field theory is gaining attention in sustainability transition studies. • Five conceptual clusters are identified that are useful for the analysis of agency, strategy, and power. • Field theory also provides an integrated approach to the analysis of institutional change. • Transition researchers have made significant changes and additions to strategic action field theory. With the growing attention to political dimensions of sustainability transitions (STs), researchers have shown interest in theoretical frameworks from policy studies and sociology. A framework that has growing popularity is the theory of strategic action fields (SAF) as developed by Fligstein and McAdam (2011; 2012). This review shows 1) how the integrated and holistic approach of SAF theory can contribute to growing interest in ST research in institutions, power, and agency; and 2) how ST researchers have modified and extended SAF theory. Based on a systematic sample of publications, the study identifies five theoretical clusters of SAF theory in ST research: actor relations and resources; change, emergence, and destabilization of fields; field rules; agency, framing, and coalitions; and strategic action in an interfield matrix. The potential of field theory as an analytical framework for ST research is discussed and critically assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The article seeks to analyze the development of deforestation governance actions in the Amazon, based on the analysis of two case studies using the Strategic Action Fields theory (FLIGSTEIN; MCADAM, 2012). It analyzes the experience of mobilization for the removal of the city of Paragominas/PA from the deforestation Black List and the development of deforestation control actions in the São Jorge settlement, in the city of Cidelândia / Maranhão. Interviews with main actors and satellite images were used to analyze the two cases. The results indicate the relevance of using the Strategic Action Fields theory to gain an understanding of deforestation governance processes in the Amazon, highlighting the importance of central concepts to this theory, such as the performance of skilled social actors and the construction of internal units of governance.

Broad higher education contexts shape how community college students and postsecondary personnel approach transfer from community colleges to baccalaureate-granting institutions. We leverage the concept of strategic action fields, an organizational theory illuminating processes that play out as actors determine "who gets what" in an existing power structure, to understand the role of political-ecological contexts in "vertical" transfer. Drawing on interviews with administrators, transfer services personnel, and transfer-intending students at two Texas community college districts and with administrators, admissions staff, and transfer personnel at public universities throughout the state, we examine how institutional actors and students create, maintain, and respond to rules and norms in the community college transfer field. Our results suggest university administrators, faculty, and staff hold dominant positions in the field, setting the rules and norms for credit transfer and applicability. Students, who hold the least privilege, must invest time and energy to gather information about transfer pathways and policies as their primary means of meeting their educational aspirations. The complex structure of information—wherein each institution provides its own transfer resources, with little collaboration and minimal alignment—systematically disadvantages community college students. Although some community college personnel voice frustration that the field disadvantages transfer-intending community college students, they maintain the social order by continuing to implement and reinforce the rules and norms set by universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Municipal utilities and electric cooperatives are local, democratic organizations. • Integration of distributed energy resources across these electric utilities varies. • Strategic action field theory is used to focus on agency and collective identity. • Four strategies shape technology and distributions of economic and political power. • Policy insights are provided for sustainable and just transitions. Renewable energy and social justice advocates are organizing around the potential for community-based democratic organizations to promote more decentralized, sustainable, and just societies. Within this movement, consumer-owned electric utilities are often seen as central actors. Yet, there has been little systematic investigation into why integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) varies across these utilities. We explore this question using literature on sustainability transitions and strategic action fields. Choices about when and how to integrate DERs are shaped by new interpretations of long-standing principles, existing institutional relationships, and a utility's political power. We identify how four divergent strategies shape distinct technology configurations with differences in physical scale, concentration of political authority, and distribution of economic benefits. These differences suggest that local technology ownership may not be sufficient to motivate change in some contexts. Policy addressing political processes and ownership scale may be needed to accelerate more sustainable and just energy transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent sociological studies of urban poverty have drawn inspiration from the Chicago School model of social disorganization. Studies of urban poverty and formal organizations have been profoundly shaped by this theoretical perspective, casting organizations as components of neighborhoods and thus relevant for study as potential contributors to neighborhood social control. We argue that this approach obscures many ways in which formal organizations are involved in the production and management of urban poverty. In order to take advantage of the many insights offered by sociological studies of organizations, we propose that students of urban poverty expand their theoretical perspective on formal organizations. We develop such an approach, an amalgamation of key concepts from two existing theoretical frameworks rarely discussed in urban poverty studies: urban governance and strategic action fields. This perspective offers new directions for research on urban poverty and urges greater integration with related studies from political science and geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at organizations working on issues of sex work/sex trafficking in Chicago as a strategic action field (SAF): a space where actors engage in collective action with a shared understanding of the field's purposes, rules, and norms. Through analysis of SAFs, scholars focus on how actors intersect, manifesting in a context that simultaneously allows for reproducing the status quo, as well as producing social change. Using qualitative interviews with members of this particular SAF in Chicago, I demonstrate how actors in the field use the SAF concept of social skill to control the policy field. The challenger organization in particular uses social skill to exploit exogenous shocks to their advantage, pursuing legitimacy through their alignment with human service nonprofits. This paper concludes with a consideration of the use of SAF theory to dynamic fields such as sex work/sex trafficking, conceptualizing how field-level social change may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Strategic action field analysis is combined with institutional work. • Policy fields for local energy systems are compared across Great Britain. • Distinct policy fields are developing in England, Scotland and Wales. • Centralised energy structures and norms limit SAF embedding in all locations. • Lack of multi-level governance structures constrain local energy system development. The concept of Strategic Action Fields (SAF) is combined with analysis of institutional work to investigate the tactics actors adopt to support or deter policy for integrated local energy systems. Integrating heat, power, and mobility systems at local or regional scale would entail highly significant changes in energy systems yet is an area of increasing policy interest. We explore how this field is being constituted differently across the devolved jurisdictions of Great Britain, but faces similar challenges. The obduracy of legacy centralised institutions is a powerful force in blocking new sustainable energy SAFs, with Government retaining significant countervailing power. Additionally we demonstrate how overlaps between policy domains can obstruct the formation of new rule structures; notably emerging local energy planning rules are constrained by wider limitations in devolved governance powers. These findings raise questions about whether net zero can happen, and in what form, under current multi-level governance structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the field dynamics that facilitated the emergence of a dominant understanding of business' role in sustainable development (SD). Based on a study of the U.N. Earth Summits, we examine how actors meet every decade to battle for definitional control of what SD means for business, and what business means for SD. Through a discourse analysis of texts from business, policy, and civil society actors during each Summit, we illustrate how an ensuing discursive struggle shifts the role of business in SD from being largely undefined in 1992, to being considered an SD partner in 2002, and finally to becoming a driver of SD by 2012. We contend that these shifts occurred largely due to two field dynamics: (a) rearranging of field boundaries and (2) forming of a discourse coalition. Accordingly, our study highlights how disparate actors coalesce around a shared-meaning system and collectively shape the role of business role in SD. However, we argue that despite the allure of a unified meaning-making process between once antagonistic actors, business–SD relations are underpinned by politicized interaction where certain actors come to dominate, and, in doing so, marginalize others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By utilizing the theory of Strategic Action Fields (SAFs), the present article explains how a new meso-level social order seems to have emerged in Mexico as a result of the paramilitarization of organized crime, militarization of security, and the opening of Mexico's energy sector to private investment. This work describes the transformation of Mexico's energy field after a process of major constitutional and economic changes that were the consequence of a security crisis and an agenda of energy reform for which the so-called 'drug war' was a key underlying foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a theoretical perspective to study the conditions for media policy formation under the condition of digitalization – the Media Policy Field approach – building on an organizational field approach in combination with theories of policy development. The theory of strategic action fields offers a meso-level view of how actors in media fields interact and how their respective opportunities for influencing policy are structured by the state of the field and their respective positions. This theory is linked with the Multiple Streams Approach, which maintains that change occurs when policy entrepreneurs connect problem, policy and politics streams, and create policy windows. The Media Policy Field approach proposes three analytical foci for the study of current media policy processes: collective frames, incumbent and challenger roles and policy windows. Empirical strategies for pursuing this theoretical programme are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behaviour of incumbent energy companies is critical for a transition to a sustainable energy system. We address the recent call for closer conceptualisation of power and agency within transition studies by combining concepts of strategic action fields (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012) and the flat-ontology perspective of arenas of development (Jørgensen, 2012) to identify potential ruptures emerging on the micro scale in the field of sustainable energy. We investigate how new actor configurations in new experimental arenas open field rules for renegotiation. We provide a long-term analysis on how traditional energy field rules have emerged, how two of the most powerful energy companies in Finland have responded to the emergence of sustainable energy and how new forms of collaborations are emerging in the space created by new arenas of development that create ruptures within the incumbent energy coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to contribute to the debate about social entrepreneurship, we take an empirical perspective and describe the phenomenon in Catalonia, Spain, during the financial crises of the early twenty-first century. For this aim, we conducted 43 in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs, launched a web-based survey with 90 responses, and built a database with 347 organizations and/or ventures settled in Catalonia with an explicit social/environmental goal. The data show that many social/environmental initiatives emerged during the economic crisis, either as a self-employment alternative to unemployment, or as a commercial venture started by nonprofit organizations as a reaction to the reduction in public expense in this sector. In addition, the crisis fueled the emergence of ventures oriented to non-market exchange and social currencies. As a whole, we argue that this new reality can be conceptualized as the emergence of an unsettled Strategic Action Field where banks, business schools and public administrations alike promote the label of “social entrepreneurship” through awards and startup services, whereas other groups claiming the same social/environmental goals contest this market-oriented definition of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the concept of ‘strategic action fields’ to examine the interaction of law and organisations in the nineteenth-century United States. Focusing on the emergence of savings banking, it analyses how new legal rules were created to define the actors, actions and relationships that constituted the organisational field. The article develops three conceptual claims about the dynamics of institutional contexts: (a) the configuration of state fields shaped the nature and timing of legal rule making vis-à-vis organisational fields; (b) state actors engaged in ‘inter-field framing’ by applying analogies from the legal field to define social order in the organisational one; and (c) the legal and organisational fields were mutually constituted through these interactions. The article concludes by elaborating on the broader value of the theory of fields in business history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]