The institutionalization process of governance in a Virtual Business Community: a case study

Virtual Business Communities (VBC) are market organizations, supported by Information and Communication Technology, that improve business interactions and the exchange of information and knowledge in virtual networks of organizations. In the inter-organizational context of a VBC, governance is related to division of work and distribution of power and responsibility. Only a small number of authors studied this process and they reported problems faced with the governance of VBC. Therefore, our research question is “how the dynamics of the institutionalization process of governance contributes to develop VBC?” In order to answer this research question, we based our study on Institutionalization Theory and on Tolbert and Zucker’s (1996) model. We performed a case study in an agricultural value chain. The main results of our study are the challenges faced during the institutionalization process of governance, concerning the stages habitualization, objectivation and sedimentation, and the analysis of legitimacy in these stages.