Research Seminar: Prof. Christophe Boone

The Chair of Entrepreneurship invites you to a research seminar on Tuesday, May 23, 2017, at 12:30 in room H326 at WEV.

Title: Oppositional logics and the antecedents of hybridization: A country-level study of the diffusion of Islamic banking windows (with S. Öczan)

Abstract: Although the growing prevalence of hybrid organizations that combine elements of oppositional institutional logics has recently attracted much scholarly attention, little is known about when and where hybrids diffuse in the first place. Because strong isomorphic pressures towards conformity work against hybridization, we argue that neo-institutional perspectives, which stress the constraining role of market categories and institutional logics, have to be complemented with economic approaches that focus on the enabling force of economic incentives associated with bridging oppositional logics. We use the theory to predict the country-level diffusion of hybrid forms in Islamic banking in the period 1975-2017, where many conventional banks invaded the domain of Islamic banking by starting to sell Islamic banking services, so-called Islamic windows. Our findings underscore the relevance of simultaneously studying the impact of constraining and enabling forces. Consistent with neo-institutional theory, we find strong evidence that lack of constitutive legitimacy of the window form and ideological polarization of local audiences reify the ideological boundaries between the oppositional banking logics, which in turn hampers the diffusion of windows in the focal country. At the same time, however, country-level economic globalization and local financial market failure appear to provide strong economic incentives that facilitate the diffusion of windows. We also found that the 2008 systemic conventional banking crisis -- an exogenous shock that sharpened the boundaries between the oppositional logics – strongly attenuates the opportunities provided by country-level globalization and market failure for conventional banks to straddle oppositional logics after the crisis. Interestingly, unlike expected, this shock did not moderate the constraining role of lack of legitimacy and audience polarization.

About the Speaker: Christophe Boone holds a PhD in Applied Economics of the University of Antwerp (1992) and currently is a full professor of Organization Theory and Behavior at the same university (2001-). Before that he was full-time faculty at the Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE) of Maastricht University, The Netherlands (1992-2001). He held an honorary chair in Organization Theory at the University of Groningen (2005-2006). Recently, he was nominated as a fellow extra muros at the GSBE of Maastricht University (2014-2017). He is co-founder of the Antwerp Centre of Evolutionary demography (ACED), an international and interdisciplinary research institute established at the University of Antwerp in 2007 dedicated to the study of the antecedents and consequences of diversity in the realm of teams, organizations, industries and communities. Together with Victor Gilsing, he currently is director of ACED.

Schedule:

12.30 Joint lunch (complimentary sandwiches and drinks for registered guests)

13.00-14.00 Presentation and discussion

Location:

WEV H 326, MTEC, ETH Zurich

Weinbergstrasse 56-58, 8092 Zürich