The Old Institutionalism Meets the New Institutionalism
department or school: Non UBC
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Sociology, Department of
data provider: DSpace
identifier citation: Abrutyn, Seth, and Jonathan H. Turner. 2011. "The Old Institutionalism Meets the New Institutionalism." Sociological Perspectives 54(3):283-306
creator: Abrutyn, Seth
creator: Turner, Jonathan H.
issued: 2018-08-30T14:04:14Z
issued: 2011-09-01
description: As key socio-cultural building blocks of human societies, institutions are distinct from organizations and, hence, are central to sociological inquiry. In recent decades, however, institutional analysis has increasingly moved towards the analysis of organizations, while treating "institutions" as the environments or fields of organizations. While the insights offered by contemporary organizational theorists have provided important keys to understanding how organizations, especially economic organizations, adapt to pressures within their environments, we argue that the Old Institutionalism has much to offer the New Institutionalisms. In the paper below, the Old Institutional is revisited to construct a precise definition of institutions as well as posit a robust theory of institutional dynamics; a theory which supplements contemporary organizational analysis. Four dynamics stand out: the process of institutional autonomy; the intersection of stratification systems and institutions; modes of integration within and between institutions; and generalized symbolic media of exchange. In particular, the latter two occupy our attention primarily as they have been under-theorized elsewhere.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/67019
note: 1 The Old Institutionalism Meets The New Institutionalism* Seth Abrutyn Jonathan H. Turner University of California-Riverside Published in Sociological Perspectives (2011) Citation: Abrutyn, Seth, and Jonathan H. Turner. 2011. "The Old Institutionalism Meets the New Institutionalism." Sociological Perspectives 54(3):283-306. Abstract: As key socio-cultural building blocks of human societies, institutions are distinct from organizations and, hence, are central to sociological inquiry. In recent decades, however, institutional analysis has increasingly moved towards the analysis of organizations, while treating "institutions" as the environments or fields of organizations. While the insights offered by contemporary organizational theorists have provided important keys to understanding how organizations, especially economic organizations, adapt to pressures within their environments, we argue that the Old Institutionalism has much to offer the New Institutionalisms. In the paper below, the Old Institutional is revisited to construct a precise definition of institutions as well as posit a robust theory of institutional dynamics; a theory which supplements contemporary organizational analysis. Four dynamics stand out: the process of institutional autonomy; the intersection of stratification systems and institutions; modes of integration within and between institutions; and generalized symbolic media of exchange. In particular, the latter two occupy our attention primarily as they have been under-theorized elsewhere. 2 INTRODUCTION One of the most important conceptual shifts in the analysis of organizations came in the 1970s when the environments of organizations were increasingly viewed as critical in understanding organizational dynamics. Along with a new emphasis on networks and markets, organization theorizing took a new direction. The environments of organizations were variously conceptualized along a number dimensions, such as: resource niches (Hannan and Freeman 19…
has type: Article
has type: Postprint
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0371631
language: eng
peer review status: Reviewed
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher DOI: 10.1525/sop.2011.54.3.283
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Faculty
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/67019