| Abstract: | Institutions are commonly understood as stable social forces to guide people’s behavior, but research has shown that they go through periods of stability as well as change (Scott, 2001). Although change has traditionally been identified with exogenous effects (Hoffman, 1999; Munir, 2005), a significant stream of work has emerged that introduces the agency capable of explaining the endogenous change (Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007) and focuses on actor’s agency to create, maintain, and disrupt institutions (DiMaggio, 1988; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006).
In this paper, we rely on the concept of institutional entrepreneurship to explore how actors change the institutions in which they are embedded. We examine the emergence of a new institutional practice of “Advanced Research Program” (ARP) from the traditional model of “Technology Research Program” (TDP) within the field of government supported R&D system in Taiwan over the period 1987 to 2009. The new ARP practice was pioneered and championed by a national research institute – Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), which was established in 1973, got most funding annually from TDPs, and transferred lots of technological outputs into industrial sectors. That is, we regard ITRI as an actor, occupied in the central position within a mature field of Taiwan’s R&D system, and explore how the actor become an successful institutional entrepreneur to lead new practice creation. |
