Cooking Up Change in Haute Cuisine: Ferran Adrià as an Institutional Entrepreneur

Seminar with Silviya Svejenova, ESADE Business School

Silviya Svejenova: Assistant Professor, Business Policy Dept, ESADE Business School (Spain). Silviya’s main research line centers on how professionals in creative sectors resolve the paradoxes of creativity and business, and organize and manage their activities and artworlds. She has published her work in journal articles and book chapters. She is co-author of “Sharing Executive Power: Roles and Relationships at the Top” (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Member of the EGOS Board.

On this seminar Silviya Svejenova will present the paper "Cooking Up Change in Haute Cuisine: Ferran Adrià as an Institutional Entrepreneur" by Silviya Svejenova, Carmelo Mazza, and Marcel Planellas (forthcoming in Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2007).

Abstract: Based on a longitudinal, inductive study of a critical case from a cultural sector, this article explores how institutional entrepreneurs initiate change. Our explanation points to four mechanisms: creativity that generates continuous flow of new ideas; theorization that takes stock of these ideas; reputation within and outside the field that endorses ideas as worthy of attention, and dissemination that brings ideas to the public domain. As novel ideas challenge received practices in the field, paradoxes of logics and identity emerge and provide potential for change. The study contributes to institutional theory by examining a preliminary, understudied stage of institutional change that provides a potential for change. Further, it shows how institutional entrepreneurs engage in the theorization and dissemination of their work. Finally, it reveals how reputation plays a critical role in the dissemination of new ideas and thus in the shaping up of the paradoxes and the potential for change.

Key words:
creativity, theorization, reputation, dissemination, paradoxes, haute cuisine.

Download paper here:

Time: 23.03.07, 10.30-12.00

Place: CBS Kilen, Kilevej 14A (1st floor), 2000 Frederiksberg

Room: K.S.71