-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Johannes Glückler, Yannick Eckhardt, Illicit innovation and institutional folding: From purity to naturalness in the Bavarian brewing industry, Journal of Economic Geography, Volume 22, Issue 3, May 2022, Pages 605–630, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbab026
- Share Icon Share
Abstract
We take an institutional perspective to examine how innovation thrives under conditions of resistance. Specifically, we conceive illicit innovation as a process of successive institutionalization of a new practice in the face of contrary law. In the German federal state of Bavaria, the global movement of craft-beer brewing collides with a regional jurisdiction that prohibits precisely these brewing practices and instead protects the traditional institution of purity-brewing (Reinheitsgebot). Grounded on an embedded qualitative case study of brewers and industry representatives, we build a theory of institutional folding of new norms and practices over established ones. This way, creative brewers have succeeded in legitimizing new practices of naturalness-brewing (Natürlichkeitsgebot). Whereas the legal resistance has stimulated brewers to create an original counter-institution, the illicit innovation has also begun to change the institutional context of the beer industry in Bavaria.