Organizational experience and institutional innovation: The effects of task and industry experience on power marketer registration in the United States electric power industry, 1994--1998

In this dissertation, I argue that market building requires varied skills and capabilities of participating organizations. I explore how two types of prior organizational experience influence a crucial early process of the creation of one new market: power marketer registration. My dissertation proposes an organizational learning approach to an important phase of market creation, the deliberate choice both to participate in the market and to help to create new market creation, the institutions. Drawing on theories of vicarious learning, I examine the impact of two types of prior experience on market registration and also on how organizations react to cumulative prior registrations and cancellations.;My dissertation contributes to the literature in organizational learning by identifying distinct types of organizational experience and how they affect a higher-level outcome, market creation. This study also contributes to both the theories of markets and the theories of entrepreneurship by specifying the role that organizational experience plays in the construction of new markets---a form of institutional innovation.