Institutional entrepreneurship: an analysis of a case in the brazilian electric power sector

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the understanding of the role, characteristics and strategies of individuals when they act as what the  academic literature categorizes as institutional entrepreneurs. Despite the recent growth of research on the subject of institutional entrepreneurship, work on the individual level continues to be scarce. To achieve our  objectives, we probe the literature in search of papers that focuses the actions of individuals as institutional entrepreneurs. We review five articles published in high impact international journals between 2006 to 2009. We identify the individual characteristics of the entrepreneur in these papers, especially those related to the actions of these actors, the  stage of institutional change at which they acted and what attributes  have been ascribed to them. After that, we confront the results found in the literature review with the role of three entrepreneurs who have created a private company and pioneered the field of commercialization of electric power in Brazil, contributing to the changes taking place in that industry during  the 1990s. We describe the institutional context in which they worked, their  personal trajectory and the role they played in the field. As  research methodology, we adopt the case study method.  The phase of data collection relied on multiple sources of evidence, mainly deep interviews. We find predominantly convergent results between the literature and the case analyses. As a contribution, our study suggests that the activities of agents can be divided into two main categories as to their extension. In addition, the analysis of the case study suggest the emergence of a certain  consensus about the acting  of individuals acting as institutional entrepreneurs.