MULTILEVEL DETERMINANTS AND PROCESSES OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN THE BRITISH COLUMBIA COASTAL FOREST INDUSTRY.

Abstract

This article discusses the multilevel determinants and processes of institutional change in the British Columbia coastal forest industry. Institutional change is attracting increasing attention among organizational scholars. Individual organizations change first, often stimulated by changes in the broader environment. Innovations are later mimetically adopted by other organizations under certain conditions. Within an organization, the need for change is noticed and championed by an individual or team, and the adoption of change requires adjustments in the interpretations of other organization members. For years in British Columbia, environmentalists and forest companies engaged in a War of the Woods. Environmentalists protested clearcutting (a logging practice in which all of the trees in an area are cut), by blockading roads and chaining themselves to logging equipment. Clearcutting was institutionalized by practice, by legislation, and normatively. Forest companies staunchly defended clearcutting as tree farming, the safest way to log, and the only way they could stay in business. In 1998, forest company MacMillan Bloedel (MB) shocked its industry and stakeholders, and earned environmentalists' accolades, when it announced it would completely replace clearcutting with variable retention logging. MB subsequently pressured other firms to adopt variable retention and negotiate with environmentalists. Several of the largest companies did, and the institutional environment changed radically.