Innovation and institutional change: the transition to a sustainable ...

68 Chapter 3
185). Institutional logics are related to institutions but transcend them in way
that they form a sublimation of sets of institutional practices related to a
system. Institutional logics synchronise action within production and
consumption systems, and are also based on synchronisation of the linkages
with broader systems in society. These linkages are also crucial as they also
function as carrier and creator of different types of legitimacy that are
essential for the functioning of the system as a whole and especially for
maintaining the institutional logics that underlie them. The association of
low-cost electricity provision with expansion of central power stations, and
electricity consumption increases with economic growth and progress is an
example of such institutional logics which was crucial for the expansion of
the electricity system. Various actor groups provided legitimacy for the
logics, as each group was being able to define institutional logics as being
congruent with their own motives, goals and values.
A highly institutionalised system of production and consumption
furthermore locks out alternatives based upon different fundamental
principles and alternative linkages to knowledge, economic, policy and
societal fields. Basic principles of path dependence are at work here, but also
more cognitive aspects such as that alternative are either not considered, not
taken seriously (what we have works fine and we are not sure the alternative
will work) or exhibits a serious mismatch with the principles and
components of the existing system.
Several processes are then necessary to start the search for alternatives and
to further develop potential alternative. It can occur if the existing practice
does not continuously reconfirm established institutional logics, e.g. when
electricity consumption growth is no longer matched by low-cost electricity
provision (Hirsh, 1999). In the institutional literature the role of disruptive
events, or external shocks, is also seen as an important source for deinstitutionalisation
and erosion of dominant institutional logics (Meyer and
Rowan, 1977; Hoffman, 1999; Sine and David, 2003). Such events may
trigger the search for alternatives. Through rethinking of existing routines,
modes of organisation and coordination, alternative previously rejected may
come under consideration. But often, and also in the case of the electricity
system, alternatives are either not mature enough and do not match the
existing system.
Depending on the nature of the technology and its intended application,
integration of an alternative technology in an existing system involves some
level of adaptation and alteration of the existing modes of organisation and
coordination. The integration of such an alternative form within an existing
system is more than a straightforward diffusion process where superior
characteristics lead to selection of the alternative at the expense of the