Special issue on institutional theory in information systems research: contextualizing the IT artefact

W e are pleased to introduce this special issue of the Journal of Information Technology on Institutional Theory in Information Systems (IS) Research. The publication of The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Powell and Dimaggio, 1991) and Institutions and Organization (Scott, 2001) were significant contributions to the renaissance in the study of institutions in the social sciences (Dimaggio and Powell, 1991). These influential books remind us that institutionalism is a highly complex field, where work is delineated across core disciplines, including economics, sociology, political science, history and ecology. To add to the complexity and richness of the theory, contributions have been divided into time frames labelled the ‘old’ and ‘new’ institutionalism (Greenwood et al., 2008). These authors suggest the conceptual foundations of ‘organisational institutionalism’ were established between 1977 and 1983 with seminal works by Meyer and Rowan (1977), Zucker (1977), Dimaggio and Powell (1983), Meyer and Scott (1983) and Zucker (1983). Between 1983 and 1991, institutional studies acknowledged that social values affect organizations and that organizations adopt structures for legitimation purposes. Yet, few attempts were made to test ‘institutional ideas’, and citations to the seminal papers were sparse (Greenwood et al., 2008). What was apparent was that many studies relating to ‘institutionalized organisations’ were located in the government and notfor-profit sector, thus overlooking that the ‘markets’ and private sector firms were also influenced by institutionalized effects and processes. Another observation was that organizations were often portrayed as ‘too passive’, so the theory was criticized as lacking an ‘agency’ dimension to understanding and explaining social phenomena. Since the early 1990s, institutional theory has gained momentum in the social sciences despite continuing ambiguity about concepts such as institution, institutionalization and institutionalism, and how both macroand microinstitutional influences can be reconciled within a single study. In an effort to provide conceptual clarity, Jepperson (1991: 145 and 152) offered the following definitions: institution is ‘a social order or pattern that has attained a certain state or property’; institutionalization, ‘denotes the process of such attainment’; and Institutionalism, is ‘a theoretical strategy that features institutional theories and seeks to develop and apply them’. Two additional concepts further emerged within the institutional theory literature. Deinstitutionalization is ‘the erosion or discontinuity of an institutionalized organizational activity or practice’ (Oliver, 1992: 563) and reinstitutionalization, represents an ‘exit from one institutionalization, and entry into another institutional form, organized around different principles or rules’ (Jepperson, 1991: 152). The last two decades have witnessed increased use of institutionalist concepts, such as legitimacy, logics and isomorphism. Suchman’s (1995) study distinguished among pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy. Others called for better empirical measures to evaluate and test legitimacy (Zucker, 1987). Work on institutional logics further flourished, with some writers cautioning against using the term as a ‘buzzword’ (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). Institutional isomorphism, for example a commonality in form and function (Dimaggio and Powell, 1991) generated renewed interest from researchers with work emphasizing the processual and transmission studies of earlier decades (Greenwood et al., 2008). More recently, work has emerged which is a departure from prior work on institutional persistence and isomorphism to explore new ideas on institutional entrepreneurship and change (Garud et al., 2002; Hardy and Maguire, 2008). The impetus for much of this work is to explore how and why agency plays a part in altering institutionalized patterns of behaviour. Characterized by epistemological pluralism and conceptual ambiguity, institutional theory has emerged as an important set of concepts and ideas for researchers across the disciplines. In the past decade, the IS field has seen a growing interest in institutional theory. These contributions are varied, with many studies using institutionalist concepts as a lens to interpret and analyse data, and fewer seeking to extend our theoretical understanding of institutionalism. With the exception of contributions that examine the relationship between technology and institutions (Barley, 1986; King et al., 1994; Orlikowski and Barley, 2001), IS that work using institutional theory has included topics on adoption and diffusion, development and implementation and structural changes across societal and industrial sectors, notably, SMEs, manufacturing, health and financial services. This Special Issue recognizes and promotes the relevance and richness of institutional theory in IS research. It questions the rhetoric that serves to isolate the IT artefact Journal of Information Technology (2009) 24, 283–285 & 2009 JIT Palgrave Macmillan All rights reserved 0268-3962/09