The institutionalization of professional communities: Insights from studies of professionals in Hungary

The work summarized here is a portfolio dissertation consisting of an introduction, five peer-reviewed articles (Chapters 2-6), and a concluding chapter. Chapter 2 serves to set the stage for later chapters by providing a traditional literature review of our knowledge of the roles of business associations (BAs), with the following key findings: 2.1: The widespread approach which distinguishes between the beneficial, market-supporting, and the harmful, rent-seeking roles of associations is not justified as all of the proposed economic roles of BAs can involve activities linked to the private order and the public order, and all of the economic roles can contribute to both value-creating and redistributive rent-seeking. 2.2: The proposition that a certain institutional strength is needed for a BA to be able to fulfil beneficial “market-supporting” economic roles is not supported by the evidence, as beneficial contributions from each of the economic roles of BAs are possible at each of their levels of institutionalization. 2.3: Socially beneficial or harmful orientations of BA activities are explained by the incentives institutionalized by private-order (market pressures, organizational competition, and internal governance) and public-order (political accountability, monitoring) actors. Chapter 3 seeks to test hypotheses on whether specific groups of professional community institutions – in our case BAs –fulfil a transaction-supporting role, with the following key findings: 3.1: The majority of BAs in our sample institutionalize transaction-supporting functions such as moral and professional selection and control, business dispute resolution, and information sharing. 3.2: BAs are important elements of the institutional framework behind contractual relationships, as several functions of BAs contribute to perceived internal and external trust in business partners. 3.3: BA membership in general does not increase credible commitment among business partners. However, BAs with functions relevant to contract enforcement ...