An institutional analysis of the US foreign sales corporation

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how institutional analysis can be applied to the study of an evolving institution--the Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC). The FSC was created by the US government to provide a tax incentive to domestic exporters. It has a checkered history because the European Union views it as an export subsidy. After establishing that the FSC is definitely an institution, Scott's institutional synthesis is utilized as a conceptual prism to demonstrate how his framework can be utilized to examine complex phenomena. The study also tests a crucial proposition for institutional theory and explores a research question critical to the continuing development of the theory. That question deals with the persistence of the FSC as an institution.