New Institutionalism: Roots and Buds

The roots of the new institutional theory are well known (Scott, 2008). Meyer and Rowan (1977) undermined the (then) prevailing imagery of organizations as quasi-rational actors navigating economic and technical contingencies, showing instead that organizations are influenced by socio-cultural and cognitive (institutional) factors that prescribe and proscribe appropriate behavior. Organizations conform to institutional prescriptions because doing so provides social approval (legitimacy) and enhances organizational survival. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) took these ideas forward by elaborating three mechanisms — coercive, normative, and mimetic — by which institutional demands are diffused. They also foregrounded the organizational field as an appropriate level of analysis for observing and exploring these processes and effects.

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