Reflections: The Past and Future of Research on Institutions and Institutional Change (original) (raw)

Institutionalization and Structuration: Studying the Links between Action and Institution

Organization Studies, 1997

Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because their models of institutionalization as a pro cess are underdeveloped. Structuration theory, on the other hand, largely remains a process theory of such abstraction that it has generated few empirical studies. This paper discusses the similarities between the two theories, develops an argument for why a fusion of the two would enable institutional theory to significantly advance, develops a model of institutionalization as a structuration process, and proposes methodological guidelines for investigating the process empirically.

Institutional theory and institutional change: Introduction to the special research forum

The Academy of Management Journal, 2002

Institutional theory has risen to prominence as a popular and powerful explanation for both individual and organizational action. It is a vibrant theory that has heen synthesized and contrasted with a number of other approaches. Although its scope has certainly heen expanded, institutional theory has often been criticized as largely being used to explain hoth the persistence and the homogeneity of phenomena. We helieve that this focus did little to tap the full power or potential of institutional theory. We find, for example, that institutions change over time, are not ttniformly taken-forgranted, have effects that are particularistic, and are challenged as well as hotly contested. Thus, we acknowledge that although institutions serve both to powerfully drive change and to shape the nature of change across levels and contexts, they also themselves change in character and potency over time. It was in this spirit that we put forth a call for papers on the study of institutional theory and institutional change. We also believed that the topic of institutional change has emerged as a central focus for organizational researchers. Therefore, we sought to provide new understandings of the manner in which institutions are created, transformed, and extinguished and the way in which institutional processes interact to affect institutional change.

Institutional Theory

International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, 2008

Institutional theory, a building block of today’s organization studies, drawing from sociology, social psychology, political science, and economics, offers explanations for social order, social action and cultural persistence. It does it with regard both to the stability of social systems at various levels (i.e. organization, field, society, world), and to the effects of institutional processes in situations of change or of conflicting legal, cultural or normative jurisdictions. Institutional theory highlights the role of rules, norms, and typifications (cultural beliefs and scripts) in constraining and empowering social action and giving meaning to social life. Earlier contributions emphasized the stabilizing role of institutions through the constitution of structures, organizational forms, fields and social actors’ identities. More recent contributions draw attention to the concurrent role of institutions in situations of change, where interests, agency and power play their own role in reaching stability or domination.

The Typical Tools for the Job: Research Strategies in Institutional Analysis*

Sociological Theory, 2006

Institutional theory rests on a rejection of reductionism. Instead of reducing higherorder phenomena to aggregates of behavior, institutional theory reverses this causal imagery. It attributes the behavior of organizations and nation-states to contextual factors, notably organizational fields, national institutional systems, or the emerging global polity, Institutionalists, particularly within sociology, also emphasize specifically cultural mechanisms for these higher-order effects. This article develops the methodological foundations for these claims. It surveys and elaborates research designs for documenting higher-order effects and for differentiating the cultural mechanisms of institutional influence. It also presents new strategies for assessing multiple logics and the coherence of institutional orders, moving beyond adoption and diffusion studies to analyze the dynamic and contested processes of institutionalization and institutional change. . For all their comments, criticisms, and suggestions, we would like to thank Sun-

Institutionalism: Old and New

This chapter is about how and why institutions matter in political life. More specifically, it is about how the behaviour of political actors is shaped and conditioned by the institutional contexts in which they operate. This perspective and question define the central concerns of the so-called 'new institutionalism' in political analysis.

An introduction to the theories of institutional change

Journal of Economics Library, 2018

Institutional change explains the change of institutions considered as rules and expectations that govern human interactions and paths of development in society. This conceptual paper describes, with an historical perspective, the most important definitions of institution and of institutional change and shows some theories that analyze these critical topics in economics to assess similarities and differences. The future challenge of institutional scholars concludes this study.

Institutional Work: Refocusing Institutional Studies of Organization

Journal of Management Inquiry, 2011

In this paper, we discuss an alternative focus for institutional studies of organization -the study of institutional work. Research on institutional work examines the practices of individual and collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. Our focus in this paper is on the distinctiveness of institutional work as a field of study and the potential it provides for the examination of new questions. We argue that research on institutional work can contribute to bringing the individual back into institutional theory, help to re-examine the relationship between agency and institutions, and provide a bridge between critical and institutional views of organization.

Different Paths for Institutional Theory: Foundational Dichotomies and Theoretical Framing

It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This paper explores that common treatment of institutions as rules with a treatment wherein societies and institutions as images of one another. If there were no rules governing interactions among some set of people, you would have a mass of people but that mass would not constitute what we recognize as society. This simple distinction between institutions as rules by which a society is governed and institutions as society itself creates divergent paths for institutional theory, which this paper explores.