Comparación de resultados con otras investigaciones

The field theory literature proposes three drivers of change: authority, social skills and interdependencies. Each of these is addressed below.

Authority

The Strategic Action Field Framework focuses on the activation of legitimate authority as fundamental in shaping how policy implementation occurs in practice. As defined by Weber authority can be understood as a legitimate form of power (cited in Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009, p. 6) and within a given policy subsystem or strategic action field, policy implementation often involves ambiguous authority relationships or competing sources of authority (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Koschmann, 2012; Moulton & Sandfort, 2017; Ostrom, 2011).

Authority can derive from a range of non-material sources, including legal instruments, hierarchical position, political relationships, economic incentives, norms, and shared beliefs. From the perspective of structuration theory, the significance of any particular source of authority is interpreted in context. Social structures consist of rules, which are the patterns people follow, and resources, which control people or objects. Social structures are emergent and form through interaction with actors (Fligstein &

McAdam, 2012; Giddens, 1984). According to Moulton & Sandfort (2017) “...the

significance of any rule or resource is not predetermined; actors make decisions about the relative importance...” (p. 146). For example, RTOs are required to balance the interests of direct market participants, state regulatory policies, FERC policy directives, and the interests of those affected by market transactions. These interests are reflected through a combination of state and federal formal political authorities, the distribution of benefits and costs associated with power market transactions and transmission infrastructure, and various organizational norms and beliefs that enable and constrain what is considered possible. Policy implementation is thus understood as a process of negotiating which sources of authority provide rationale for practices that are enacted and involves actors in a process of interpreting what is and what is not possible.

In voluntary collaborations, such as an RTO or the EIM, formal authority from political or economic mechanisms is limited and cultural authority derived from shared meanings and collective identity becomes more important in providing the rationale for collective action (Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Hardy, Lawrence, & Grant, 2005; Koschmann, 2012). This is of particular relevance for understanding RTOs and the expansion of EIM markets. The stakeholders involved in discussion of market rules and governance are engaged in collaborative relationships that are voluntary and only bound within certain limits by formal authority or exchange of resources. This type of

collaborative relationship to determine market structures is identified by Lawrence, Phillips, & Hardy (1999), which clarifies that it is possible for organizations to engage in voluntary collaborative relationships that are critical to joint success in the marketplace.

These formal and informal sources of authority can be theorized as more than just structural properties of the strategic action field. We can also analyze them as discursive resources that actors draw on as a rationale for action around a public service

intervention.

Social Skills

To go beyond identifying the sources of authority that provide rationale for certain actions or constrain what is perceived as legitimate action, and gain insight into

how change occurs, the Moulton and Sandfort (2017) framework focuses on the social skills of actors as drivers of change or stability. From a field theory perspective, action within fields can occur through competition, coercion, and cooperation, and consideration of all these different types of coordination is fundamental to analysis. However,

collective action among voluntary participants depends on cooperation. Actors induce cooperation and achieve negotiated authority through interactions in which members work to convey purpose, shared meanings, and collective identities (Cooren, 2010; Fligstein & McAdam, 2012; Koschmann & Burk, 2016; Kuhn, 2008; Taylor & Van Every, 2014). Social skills can include tactics such as framing, agenda setting, brokering resources, or seizing opportunities (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012, p. 46). This construct of social skills is based on a model of the individual that differs from the model used in most policy process frameworks and theories.

Fligstein and McAdam (2012) suggest that any adequate model of the individual or theory of human strategic action must account for both instrumental and existential motives (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012, p. 43). Instrumental motives reflect individual and collective self-interest and form the basis for the rational choice and bounded rationality

models used in most theories of the policy process. Existential motives reflect the human need to fashion shared meanings and identities. This model of the individual, which recognizes both instrumental and existential motives, is particularly useful in

understanding voluntary collaboration that depends on cooperation. Importantly, given the assumption that humans seek sociability and define meaning in relation to others, legitimacy is an important driver of strategic action.

Fligstein and McAdam (2012) challenge scholarship that focuses on the

disposition or personal qualities of an individual and suggest instead that “entrepreneur” is a role in which socially skilled actors vary in their ability to recognize the structural situation, produce shared meanings, and take advantage of their resources, positions, relationships, and rules. In particular, Fligstein and McAdam (2012) challenge the traditional concept of human agency as entrepreneurship, in which agency is only relevant at particular moments or for particular individuals. From a field theory

perspective, “individuals and groups are always acting and they are always looking for an edge” (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012, p. 180). The structure of the field determines what actions make sense and social skills give actors an understanding of their opportunities and constraints.

Interdependencies

Fligstein and McAdam (2012) conceive of fields as embedded within a complex web of other fields that can be distant or proximate and can be dependent, interdependent or independent. From this perspective, “the stability of any given field is largely a

function of its relations to other fields” (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012, p. 19). The ties among fields impose constraints and opportunities that are routinely affected by actions

in other fields. Thus, stability is a dynamic process of interaction among actors and the opportunity for change occurs through interactions that involve “innovative and previously prohibited forms of collective action” (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012, p. 21).

Drawing on field theory, the Strategic Action Field Framework allows researchers to explore how policy implementation processes occur across multiple fields and focuses attention on how the horizontal and vertical ties among these fields affect the purposes of the field, the actors who are involved, what is possible, and introduce new discursive resources and sources of authority (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012; Moulton & Sandfort, 2017).