Anchoring Institutional Entrepreneurship and Resilience in Institutional Field: The Establishment of the Danish Design Board

The emergence of new institutional forms that maintain continuity with existing structures presents a challenging paradox in institutional theory. We propose that one critical process through which new institutional forms emerge is the creation of anchoring institutions, which involves institutional entrepreneurs developing modified clones of incumbent institutions to address local mismatches between needs and existing arrangements. Our study builds on a multi-level in-depth case study of the Design Board in Denmark, an alternative dispute resolution body established to handle design infringement cases more efficiently and affordably than traditional court proceedings. Based on this case, we present a model of the anchoring institution that provides a solution to field-level problems without disrupting institutional arrangements. The model highlights the paradoxical nature of anchoring institutions, which aim to preempt incumbents yet gain support from their participants while addressing shortcomings without challenging incumbents’ legitimacy. Also, the DB represents a significant institutional transformation in design protection, shifting from traditional legal/regulatory mechanisms toward civil institutional arrangements that emphasize normative and cultural-cognitive elements through alignment with established Danish collective governance traditions and institutional logics. Our study contributes to the literature by: (1) examining how institutional entrepreneurs create new forms that align innovation and maintenance; (2) identifying the contexts in which institutional anchoring can take place; and (3) exploring how institutional logics from different domains can subtly penetrate the logics of established institutions through anchoring. This research advances our understanding of nuanced institutional change processes that occur within existing institutional constraints, shedding light on the relationship between individual agency, organizational adaptation, and field-level institutional dynamics.