Restoring Undermined Institutions: How Firms Combine Nonmarket Strategies to Respond to Digital Piracy

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Date

2020-09-24

Authors

McDonald, Aaron

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Publisher

University of Oregon

Abstract

How do firms strengthen their institutional environment after the unplanned and radical weakening of a strong regulatory institution? For some industries, regulative institutions play a dominant role in defining the institutional environment by providing stability and certainty for firms. Yet, environmental jolts can radically weaken regulative institutions causing increased uncertainty and instability in the institutional environment. Driven by this uncertainty, firms may attempt to strengthen their weakened institutional environment. By exploring this question, in the context of weakened copyright protection after the rise of digital piracy, I can make important contributions to the institutional change literature. Specifically, I build new theory on how firms coordinate actions targeting multiple institutional pillars (e.g. regulative and normative) to change their institutional environment and the institutional environment of different industries. I test these theories using a longitudinal dataset of the corporate political activity of copyright-reliant firms, and the copyright infringement takedown notices sent to Google.

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Keywords

corporate political activity, digital piracy, industry self-regulation, institutional change, intellectual property, nonmarket strategy

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