Institutional Theory, New

Abstract

Emerging from the sociology of education in the 1970s, new institutional theory (NIT) has become one of the foremost positions within the mainstream of American management studies. It seeks to explain the ways in which institutions are created, sustained, and diffused. NIT's antecedents lay in the institutional theorizing of writers such as Philip Selznick a generation before. Adherents of NIT are keen to draw a distinction between “new” and “old” institutionalism. While old institutionalism emphasized politics and the role of conflict, NIT took legitimacy as its master concept. The old institutionalism focused on the existence of a negotiated order between different interest groups, while in its place NIT sought to understand the way in which the quest for legitimacy is a driving force behind the isomorphism of organizations. NIT is interested in understanding the means through which the socially constructed external environment enters the organization by “creating the lens through which actors view the world and the very categories of structure, action, and thought” (Powell & DiMaggio 1991).