How do firms adjust to regulations? - A qualitative study on how tobacco companies tune promotion practices when a state enacts tobacco control regulations

Abstract: This thesis contributes to the existing literature on creation, maintenance, and disruption of institutions by analyzing how firms adjust regulations whilst laws is enactment. Drawing on the institutional work perspective of mainly Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), the promotion practices of four leading Bangladeshi tobacco companies are studied by the thesis, by questioning how the companies adjusted to regulations by modifying, constructing, and deconstructing the practices. Portraying from the extensive interview, the thesis unleashes a three-fold contribution to the extant literature of institutional work. First of all, the study shows how regulations abruptly disconnect the innate practices on the spur of the enactment of the regulations. Secondly, the study adumbrates how firms take new policies, strategies, and actions in order to adjust to regulations and outreach the consumers by understanding the complexities in the context. Thirdly, the thesis demonstrates how firms modify and alter practices by utilizing loopholes and limitations in the regulations, even though many provisions of the laws slightly touch the practices but indirectly.