Structural innovation in Irish wholesaling - the voluntary group format

Studies of structural evolution at industry level are still quite rare, and rarer still are those of structural innovation in the wholesale area, particularly in the Irish context. This article sets out to examine the early attempts to introduce the voluntary group format into the Irish grocery and hardware wholesale sectors. In particular, it investigates why the innovation was successful in the former, but not the latter. Two main perspectives dominate the relevant literature, transaction cost economics and resource dependency theory. The first builds its explanations around efficiency, the second around power and the control of resources. Neither, alone, can explain the contrasting fortunes of the voluntary group format in the two sectors concerned, and the implications of this for future studies of structural innovation are discussed.