Organizational Institutional Theory Research Articles

The Institutional Sources of Educational Reform: The Case of School-Based Management

This study describes an aspect of school-based management that previously has been ignored. Drawing on concepts from an institutional theory of organizations, this study describes the actors who shaped and promoted school-based management in the national arena, their interests, and the network that linked them. Three categories of actors are identified: policy actors, teachers union actors, and academic actors. The most prominent actors were often organizations rather than individuals. The actors shared two overarching goals: to improve the effectiveness of public schools and enhance the professional status of teachers. The actors were linked by an informal network; that is, they were loosely organized. These and other findings suggest that school-based management was at least partially the product of the institutional environment in which schools and school districts operated.

Industrial policy liberalization and TNCS: The Indian experience

In recent years a number of host governments have declared their intention to liberalize their industrial policies toward transnational corporations (TNCs). Taking India as an example. economic liberalization is defined here as an industrial policy implementation issue, and is studied with reference to licensing procedures between 1984 and 1990. Liberalization is effected through a Government-TNC network. The four dimensions used to measure the results of liberalization show that this network has remained more or less intact during the period, so that it is still time- and resource-consuming to obtain licences. A study of changes in the number of controls and the efficiency of the executive bodies also indicates that policies towards TNCs have been only partially liberalized. This result is explained by an institutional organization theory.

What Happens to Reforms That Last? The Case of the Junior High School

This case study of the origins and development of junior high schools offers an answer to the question: What happens to reforms that get institutionalized? The history of junior high schools reveals that their design as a fundamental change in American schooling was, over time, downsized and revised to become a modest addition to the high school. A latter-day effort to correct the flaws of junior highs through the middle school movement shows little change over the original design. This shrinking of aspirations and adaptation of the reform to the existing social architecture of schooling as it survives is the major finding of this study. Explanations for this phenomenon are found in institutional theories of organizations.

Forward Integration into Distribution: An Empirical Test of Transaction Cost Analysis

The issue of forward vertical integration has attracted a good deal of attention from researchers in several disciplines, including economics, marketing, and law. Many explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, including technological interrelationships involving economies of scale and scope (Chandler), uncertainty and risk considerations (Arrow, 1969), information externalities (Green), and strategic purposes. Blair and Kaserman (1983) offer an extensive survey of the extant literature in this area. Of particular note, however, is the recent rise in prominence of the transaction costs analysis (TCA) of vertical integration. This approach consists of a blend of institutional economics, organizational theory, and contract law, and has been developed primarily by Oliver Williamson (1979, 1985). He views vertical integration as a response to the inability of arms-length market relationships to govern exchange efficiently under particular circumstances. The level of specialized assets' required to support the exchange, the uncertainty2 surrounding the exchange, and the frequency3 of exchange are

Institutional Theories of Organization

Institutional theories of organizations provide a rich, complex view of organizations. In these theories, organizations are influenced by normative pressures, sometimes arising from external sources such as the state, other times arising from within the organization itself. Under some conditions, these pressures lead the organization to be guided by legitimated elements, from standard operating procedures to professional certification and state requirement, which often have the effect of directing attention away from task performance. Adoption of these legitimated elements, leading to isomorphism with the institutional environment, increases the probability of survival. Institutional theories of organization have spread rapidly, a testimony to the power of the imaginative ideas developed in theoretical and empirical work. As rigor increases, with better specification of indicators and models, it is likely to attract the attention of an even larger number of organizational researchers. Institutional theory is inherently difficult to explicate, because it taps taken-for-granted assumptions at the core of social action. The main goal of this review, then, is to make institutional theory more accessible. The review begins with a brief summary of the two current theoretical approaches to institutionalization in organizations, moves to identification of indicators of central concepts, and then progresses to a review of empirical research. It concludes with two short sections, one on points of intersection with other theories of organization, the other on the new institutionalism in economics and political science.