The emerging cruise shipping industry in the arctic: Institutional pressures and institutional voids

Abstract

Arctic cruise shipping is an emerging tourism sector subject to fast growth. Eight countries surround the Arctic, which implies that the governance and policymaking occurs in a complex, and multi-jurisdictional regulatory context. We have an incomplete understanding of how such emerging sector is structured and evolve. Institutional analysis provides a rich theoretical framework to address this gap. According to institutional theory, organizations are embedded in an institutional environment that guides behavior by shaping interactions between organizations, individuals and stakeholders. We analyze the three sources of institutional pressures—coercive, normative, and mimetic—on cruise ship organizations in the Arctic to understand how they influence the way this sector is structured, to identify institutional voids, and to point out implications for governance and policymaking.