Abstract
This paper discusses institutional change through a detailed analysis of the innovative diffusion technique. Previous studies on institutional change have depended largely upon the concept of the ‘institutional entrepreneur’. While these studies’ perspectives often regard an institutional entrepreneur as an agent with causal impact on our social world, they also have a tendency to regard others as not having any causal impact. However, because all people have autonomy to a certain degree, even within already-established institutions, such perspectives oversimplify today’s society. Based on the awareness of the above-mentioned problem, this paper tries to delineate the theoretical framework of emergent institutional change brought on by various people who have some autonomy and various interests in the causal impact upon an institution. From the framework’s point of view, institutional change can be understood as a kind of warfare between one social group comprising people who are satisfied with an existing institution’s policies and another group unsatisfied with current policies. To further illustrate that theoretical framework, we showcase the results of our analysis concerning the diffusion of the innovative slope reinforcement technique, a technique also known as the ‘Non-frame method’.
