Forging Global Institutional Homogeneity: Intellectual Property Evolution in Brazil's Software Industry

Abstract

This study analyses to what extent institutional entrepreneurship plays a role in the transformation of a formal institution such as intellectual property rights. We studied change in Brazilian intellectual property rights in the 1980’s - 1990’s. We did interviews and document research that were analysed on their content. The local institutional field, initially protected from external threats by a market reserve policy, legitimated practices that had been condemned in the global organizational field. We concluded that multiple and contradictory institutions favoured the emergence of the institutional change and agency of powerful actors at the centre of the global organizational field.c