Institutional entrepreneurship and organisational learning: financial stability policy design in Turkey

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), financial stability' emerged as one of the key pillars of economic policy-making and as a new mandate for central banks. In spite of the acceptance and prominence of financial stability goal, we know very little about the mechanisms of institutional change and the role of institutional entrepreneurship in particular, to pursue financial stability objective in national contexts. This study investigates the active financial stability pursuit of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) following the GFC and argues that institutional entrepreneurship of CBRT as an organisation and the governor of CBRT as an individual paved the way for active financial stability pursuit and resulting institutional and policy changes in Turkey by accomplishing organisational learning' at the CBRT. Governor of CBRT also played a key role as an institutional entrepreneur by gaining Turkish Treasury's political support in design of unconventional monetary policy measures for financial stability objective. Utilising institutional theory, organisation theory, and public policy literature, this study offers an interdisciplinary, agency based and process-oriented analysis to the study of the political economy of central banking in the aftermath of GFC and sheds light on the questions of why and how central banks take specific policy decisions from a micro-level analysis.