Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ing inl uenced by the institutions. Giddens (1984) points to this fact with the notion of
'duality of structures'. The plasticity of institutions results from the interpretative l ex-
ibility of their meaning. The selection impact of institutions based on the establishment
of incentives and constraints is dependent on the assessment of actors. The space for
interpretative l exibility of institutions dif ers with regard to dif erent kinds of institution
and is dei ned by their sanctions for deviation.
Formal, regulative institutions such as laws or standards provide little room for the
l exible interpretation of their meaning compared to informal, normative rules like values
or norms. The deviation from the latter is associated with social sanctions, whereas the
deviation from regulative institutions is mostly legally sanctioned, which reduces
the room for interpretative l exibility, yet by no means removes it totally. Sanctions gen-
erally enhance the probability that actors commit and follow one dominant interpreta-
tion, but others do not cease to exist.
One important feature of place specii cities is the intersection of multiple institutional
coni gurations, which produces a rich environment for variation. The overlapping of
various i rm- and industry-specii c institutions and their intersection with national
institutional settings provides a repertoire of already existing institutional composi-
tions in idiosyncratic context conditions evolved over time. Actors are able to use these
pre-existing institutions for the creation of new solutions in ways that may lead to evo-
lutionary change. Geography fosters processes of exploring and exploiting institutional
plasticity. Spatial proximity often combined with other types of proximity (Boschma,
2005) and localized learning of individual and collective agents (Malmberg and Maskell,
2006) facilitate both the exploration of the interpretative scope of institutions as well as
the closing down of the varieties of meanings and the coming through of an interpreta-
tion as the dominant one. Whereas particularly social and cognitive proximity (Boschma,
2005) may facilitate the consolidation of a dominant meaning among actors through
shared understanding, unanticipated encounters and neighbourhood ef ects (Malmberg
and Maskell, 2006) may lead to opening the space for the interpretative l exibility of an
institution by getting to know a variety of dif erent actors' meanings. Institutional forms
arising from such processes need not necessarily be completely new, they are rather novel
combinations of earlier institutional components. These are created together by com-
munities of actors, reconi gured and combined into various hybrid forms to serve new or
modii ed goals. In localized learning processes, aspects of meaning and legitimacy from
earlier institutions are transferred to the novel combinations that in turn facilitate their
coming through. The exploration and exploitation processes of institutional plasticity to
achieve new purposes start at the micro level, but contribute to institutional change and
institutional dynamics within path-dependent processes. Plasticity of path does not only
exist at the micro level through the interpretative l exibility of institutions, it is also based
on the elastic stretch of institutional coni gurations at the macro level.
Plasticity of institutional coni guration
Institutional complementarities and coherence are obviously important mechanisms
for the stability of path-dependent developments by generating disincentives to radical
change. But it is often neglected that the composition of institutional coni gurations is
not static, but rather simultaneously providing a l exible scope for change. Amable (2000)
points to the institutional hierarchy, the relative importance of one or a few institutions
