The Dialectics of Institutional Development in Emerging and Turbulent Fields: The History of Pricing Conventions in The On-Line Database Industry

Abstract

Through an analysis of an entire institutional history of pricing conventions in the on-line database field during 1971–1994, this study documents and explains institutional development in emerging and turbulent fields. The dialectic process model developed and illustrated here suggests that inherent contradictions and opposition, generated and reinforced by institutionalization, serve as internal sources of continuous dialectic contest. Fused with external developments, the process by which these endogenous potentials develop is path-dependent and is central to their realization in the form of overt institutional stability or change.