Institutions, entrepreneurship and co-evolution in international business

A recent and promising trend in international business and international management research has been to consider institutions not only as taken-for-granted constraints that need to be accommodated, but also the outcomes of agency; purposive action by individuals, firms, coalitions and other actors. We elaborate the development of research in this vein, and advocate a more nuanced view of the nexus between agency and institutions of different kinds and residing at various levels of analysis, and the associated co-evolutionary processes. Recent developments from cognate fields – particularly, institutional entrepreneurship and institutional work – offer a theoretical foundation for further insights into the nexus of institutions, agency and co-evolution. We discuss the papers that appear in this special issue and how they further develop and expand our understanding of institutions, agency and co-evolution, and conclude with questions and directions for future research.