The institutional environments impact on sales at an engineering consultancy firm : The institutional environments impact on sales at an engineering consultancy firm

Sammanfattning: This thesis uses a case study approach and investigates how the institutional environment has an impact on decision making regarding sales within three departments at WSP Management in Sweden. With the application of neo-institutional frameworks, the study explains how decision making is constrained by the institution and the actors that make up the institutional environment, as well as how a pursuit for stability and legitimacy isolate engineering consultant companies from other sectors within the market.   The study concludes that the institutional environments inducements have created a sales structure within the departments that is solely focused on the public sector and acquiring contracts through public procurement. This sales structure is heavily imprinted within the departments and has created a culture where employees rely in department management to solely sell their services to potential customers. The success and efficiency within this institutional environment has made it that the departments key performance indicator-demands from upper the upper management are based on a sales structure that requires little or no proactive sales. The inducements within the regulative institutional environment thus has a big impact on their decision making when they are trying to maintain a financial stability in relation to the company’s upper management. With the current structure they have been placed in an institutional comfort zone in which they will be stuck within if no change is made.