Institutions and Firm Strategy:
Exploring the Interface between Firms and Institutions
Firms competing in international markets face a host of challenges. Understanding market conditions and risks is important, but equally salient are institutional issues. This symposium will feature a panel discussion among six experienced scholars whose work spans a variety of literatures, but who have all written extensively on the interface between firms and institutions, particularly formal institutions in cross-national settings. Given the broad range of extant research on institutions, our goal is to discuss whether or not a more structured and integrated approach to institutional research is desirable, and if so, how this might be achieved. The symposium will also address a series of related questions on research that focuses on the interface between firms and institutions. The discussion will cover theoretical questions such as whether or not institutional issues are better managed by firms through ex-ante or ex-post actions; empirical issues such as the validity of our measures of institutional characteristics; and applied questions such as, "what is the role of the manager vis-à-vis institutions?" Participants and audience members are expected to leave with a better understanding of the state of the art regarding institutional research, a better toolkit with which to address their own research in this area, and suggestions from the panelists for the unresolved but important questions that have yet to be tackled.