Policy making as bricolage: the role of platforms in institutional innovation

Mélodie Cartel (1) , Eva Boxenbaum (1) , Franck Aggeri (1)

1 CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3

The making of environmental policies is a multi-stakeholders process where actors often hold antagonistic interests. The paper explores how institutional compromises are reached by the mechanism of collective bricolage. Recent studies are developing a view on institutional innovation as bricolage, but the conditions under which bricolage occurs and succeeds in relation to institutional innovation are still unknown. Drawing on the notion of platform developed in the context of economics performativity, we study their role in bricolage mechanisms. We hold an empirical case study of the GETS platform that was instrumental in developing the European carbon market as a corner-stone of European climate policy. Based on the GETS case study, we find three modalities in which platforms stimulate institutional bricolage: catalyzing combinations, managing learning, fostering compromise. These findings draw on, and extend, the notion of platforms developed in the context of economics performativity, contributing to a better understanding of processes of bricolage and, more widely, of institutional innovation. The managerial implication of this study is to identify the conditions under which compromises become manageable in processes of policy making. 2

Mots clés: Institutional bricolage; innovation; platforms

Domaines: Gestion et management

Mélodie Cartel, Eva Boxenbaum, Franck Aggeri. Policy making as bricolage: the role of platforms in institutional innovation. EGOS, Jul 2014, Rotterdam, Netherlands. ⟨hal-01089462⟩