Strategic Organization· 2026Q1
EXPRESS: A CONFIGURATIONAL THEORY OF BUSINESS COLLECTIVE ACTION
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Firms facing institutional pressures can either use existing trade associations or create new organizations for collective action, with their choice depending on specific combinations of institutional pressures, field structure, and existing collective action infrastructure.
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Key points
- Firms' collective action choices are shaped by configurations of institutional pressures, field structure, and existing collective action infrastructure.
- Four recurrent coordination problems—contribution, distributional conflict, capacity gaps, and representational authority—emerge from these configurations.
- These problems result in four distinct outcomes for business collective action infrastructure: consolidation, complementation, cooptation, or competition.
- The theory provides a lens to understand the proliferation of diverse business associations, coalitions, and initiatives.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Firms facing institutional pressures often respond collectively through established organizations such as trade associations. However, they may also create new organizations that supplement, redirect, or challenge these incumbent vehicles. Yet we know little about what shapes firms’ choice among these different forms of collective action. Adopting a configurational approach, we theorize how collective responses reorganize the set of organizational vehicles through which business interests are aggregated, represented, and coordinated in organizational fields – the BCA infrastructure. We identify critical contingencies related to institutional pressures, field structure, and existing BCA infrastructure, and we theorize how combinations of these contingencies generate four recurrent coordination problems––contribution problems, distributional conflict, capacity gaps, and representational authority problems––that give rise to distinct BCA infrastructure outcomes: consolidation around incumbent vehicles, complementation through new BCA vehicles offering functional differentiation, cooptation of existing vehicles, or competition via rival BCA vehicles. In doing so, we offer a conceptual lens for understanding the proliferation of business associations, coalitions, platforms, and initiatives across organizational fields.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Strategic Organization, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource ManagementBusiness, Management and Accounting