Book Review: Three times around institutional theory: The coherence,connection and contribution of three recent books

Coherence

The past decade has been a dynamic time period in the development of institutional theory, in which many concepts and theoretical insights were introduced. However, relatively few books were published, as most of the theory development took place in journals. As stated in the previous section, it has been some years since the publication of the ‘big books’ on institutional theory. Apart from the content of the book, The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism definitely qualifies as a ‘big book’. The book consists of over 800 pages, divided into 34 separate chapters and contains work by 62 authors. While the two other books are mainly focused on the introduction and elaboration of new concepts, one of the main merits of this book is that it arguably provides the most extensive overview of the development of institutional theory written to date.

The authors portray a great sense of the history of institutional theory, as most of the separate chapters start with an overview of the development of the institutional journey so far. In addition, the first section of the book is devoted to the foundational themes of institutional theory. Because of this, The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism is an invaluable resource for junior researchers and others who are new to the institutional perspective. The book has much to offer for senior researchers too, as many of the leading authors of the past decades discuss the state of the art of contemporary institutional theory. The authors expand on previous books on institutional theory, such as Powell and DiMaggio (1991) and Scott (2001), by paying attention to the dynamics of institutional processes. The book contains valuable contributions about the activities of institutional entrepreneurs (Hardy and McGuire), the implications of institutional pluralism (Kraatz and Block), imitation, translation and editing of ideas (Sahlin and Wedlin) and the role of power (Lawrence). Alongside these merits, the book also has a few drawbacks. Because many of the chapters start with an overview of the institutional perspective, some of the content of the book is repetitive or even redundant. And, although the editors of the book identify future directions for research in the introduction, most of the individual chapters conclude by formulating suggestions for future research as well. Finally, in order to truly live up to the claim of being a handbook, the authors could have made a valuable contribution to the field by including a practice or methodological section in the book.

While the Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism covers much of the state of the art of institutional theory, the other two books are more focused as they attempt to introduce relatively new approaches to the institutional perspective. Institutional Work, edited by Lawrence et al. (2011) is about recent insights into the role of actors in creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions. As such, the book contributes to insights into micro dynamics in institutional theory. The Institutional Logics Perspective, by Thornton et al. (2012), also elaborates on a relatively new approach in the institutional perspective. Although a more extensive definition is presented in the book, an institutional logic can be seen as the content or meaning of institutions. The authors position institutional logics as a midway concept between macro level structural explanations and micro level activities of individuals and organizations.

The distinction between structure and agency is central in institutional theory. This distinction suggests that the book on institutional work is on the agency side of institutional theory, while the book on the institutional logics contributes to the structural side. Although Thornton et al. do not agree with this, by stating that ‘the one is interprenated with the other’ (2012: 179), there is a clear difference in theoretical focus between the books. The same authors, too, acknowledge that it is difficult to account for both sides in one scholarly publication. One of the challenges of institutional theory thus remains to avoid a ‘flip-flop’ between deterministic structures and heroic agency (Cooper et al., 2008).

The authors of the final chapters of the Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism raise the question of whether institutionalism is a single coherent theory (Palmer, Diggart and Dick; Meyer). In another chapter, Thornton and Ocasio comment that institutional theory is not very coherent. With the great pace in which new insights and concepts have been added to institutional theory in recent years, there is a risk that the different approaches under the umbrella of institutional perspective will further diverge. The books on institutional work and institutional logics exemplify this. Although both approaches are necessary and relevant for the further development of institutional theory, there is a need for authors who operate at the frontline of institutional theory to constantly take a step back and relate their work to other approaches in institutional theory. The authors of all three selected books seem to be aware of this challenge. For example, in the Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism and Institutional Work, some chapters relate the current interest in agency to the concept of institutional leadership by Philip Selznick (1957). In The Institutional Logics Perspective, there is an entire chapter devoted to how the concept is related to other concepts in institutional theory, such as institutional work, institutional complexity and social movements. Although looking back is one strategy to prevent a divergence of the underlying approaches in institutional theory, the need for scholarly work that incorporates the multiple approaches of institutional theory remains.

Connections

Institutional theory is applied to disciplines such as political sciences, economics, organizational science, business management and public administration. The applicability of institutional theory across different disciplines may thus seem sizeable, but it should be noted that there are important differences in the application of institutional theory between the different disciplines [see Peters (2005) for an excellent overview]. Rather than rational choice or historical institutional theory, the sociological or normative perspective is the dominant strand of institutional theory in the organizational sciences.

The institutional perspective emerged as a supplement or even much needed antidote (Greenwood et al., 2008) to the dominant rational-adaptive organizational theory of the 1960s. The purpose of institutional theory was to better account for organizational life from a cultural, legitimacy-based perspective. In the years that followed, the institutional perspective quickly become mainstream. Concepts such as rational myths (Meyer and Rowan, 1977), isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and strategic responses (Oliver, 1991) have been applied in multiple disciplines in the social sciences. Contemporary institutional theory is characterized by a distinct vocabulary, as well as a high degree of specialized and detailed concepts and theories. Examples are the institutional entrepreneur or the notion of the paradox of embedded agency. In contrast to some of the relatively aged concepts of the ‘new institutionalism’, these are less frequently applied in disciplines other than the organizational sciences. There is thus a risk that recent insights of institutional theory are less broadly applicable than the key concepts of the 1980s. For scholars in other disciplines, it seems that institutional theory has evolved little beyond ideas of legitimacy and isomorphism. As a result, the relevant audience at the frontline of the development of institutional theory is rather limited. There is thus a risk that the development of institutional theory has shifted from ‘enlightening the masses’ to ‘preaching to the choir’.

In the previous section, it became apparent that the three selected books are quite well connected to each other, and to institutional theory in general. In contrast, the books on institutional work and institutional logics seem to be less oriented on connecting with other organizational theory. The aim of the book on institutional work is to set a research agenda within the approach of institutional work. Similarly, the objective of the book on institutional logics is to further develop institutional theory: ‘this book is about how the institutional logics perspective transforms institutional theory’ (Thornton et al., 2012: 1). The deepening of the institutional perspective thus seems to be a higher priority than its connection to other theory. Moreover, connecting to practitioners is higher on the agenda of Lawrence et al. (2011) than connecting their concept of institutional work to other organizational theory. By highlighting the practice side of institutional theory the authors hope to make the concept more compelling for a non-academic audience.

The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism provides an overview of institutional theory rather than an expansion of a new concept or approach. In contrast with the other two books, the largest section of the book is devoted to interfaces of institutional theory with other theoretical perspectives. In all, this section contains 15 chapters on several topics, including identity theory (Glynn), networks (Owen-Smith and Powell) and institutional leadership (Washington, Boal and Davis). The book on institutional logics edited by Lawrence et al. (2011) also contains a chapter on connecting the institutional concept of agency with leadership. It is striking, however, that the scope of both chapters is limited to the concept of institutional leadership of ‘old’ institutionalism. In order to achieve a broader applicability, contemporary institutional theory could be connected with relevant leadership theories such as transformational leadership, authentic leadership or boundary spanning leadership (Avolio et al., 2009).

Contribution

In the previous sections, I have argued that institutional theory is in itself a coherent theoretical perspective, but that there is a risk of becoming disconnected from other perspectives within organizational theory. To exemplify this claim, I have argued that two of the three selected books in this review are aimed at deepening our understanding of institutional theory, rather than providing links with other theoretical perspectives. This difference in ambition has consequences for the way research is conducted. In The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, only a relatively small portion of the book is devoted to actual application of institutional theory in scholarly research. The other chapters of the book are mostly set-up as conceptual chapters or overviews of the literature. The book on institutional work contains four conceptual essays and six studies of institutional work. The book on institutional logics is set up as a textbook, in which many previous studies are cited, but no new empirical studies are presented. This section therefore applies mostly to the former two books.

As was noted in the previous section, the objective of most authors is to further advance institutional theory. The Sage Handbook on Organizational Institutionalism and the book on institutional work together contain ten chapters in which a study is presented. Among these ten studies there are three conceptual papers and literature reviews. Of the seven empirical papers, six are based on single case study designs with qualitative methods, while only one chapter is based on a quantitative large-N design. Moreover, all the six qualitative papers are aimed at theory generation. The quantitative study is the only study aimed at falsifying theory through hypotheses testing.

It is evident from the many literature overviews presented in the three selected books that institutional theory has rapidly developed over the past years. However, the emphasis in institutional research is on exploration and description, rather than explanation and prescription. Without proper theory testing, the validity of new theoretical insights is not automatically ensured. This can have negative consequences for internal coherence and external connections with other theory, as theoretical insights may prove to be unreliable, (externally) invalid and conflicting with other research. Therefore, institutional researchers may need to restrain their drive to further expand the number of concepts and theories within institutional theory, and put more effort into testing theories and assumptions. This will also have consequences for the designs and methods used in research on institutional theory. Most of the theory development has taken place through conceptual work and single case study designs. While single case studies are useful for theory generation, other designs may be better for theory testing (Yin, 2009). For example, a ‘Sinatra’ ¹ or least-likely case study design, a comparative design selected on key variables (e.g. Fox-Wolfgramm et al., 1998), or large-N quantitative may help to specify or refute existing theory in order to advance the field.

Conclusion

The three selected books are at the ‘frontline’ of contemporary institutional theory. All three books are valuable contributions to the field, as they provide overviews of the development of the institutional perspective so far, and contribute to the further development of institutional theory with the introduction of new concepts and approaches. The question remains: what can other scholars of organization gain from engagement with these recent books on institutional theory? The institutional perspective has not traditionally been branded as a ‘critical’ perspective, but some connections can be drawn nonetheless. The rejection of the rationalist paradigm is the most fundamental. By rejecting the rationalistic orthodoxy, institutional theory helps to bring social processes to the fore—processes which are imbued with power and politics. The move towards an agentic paradigm under the rubric of ‘institutional work’ has much to say about concepts such as resistance and change. It also develops important links to ideas from social movement theory, which gives us insights into how new political and activist movements are born, or intra-organizational perspectives focused on strategic change and its leadership. Despite the move towards more agentic and cognitive theories, a psychological approach is noticeably absent in the institutional perspective. Because the psychological approach is becoming more and more central to the organization sciences, the incorporation of such work represents a key avenue for future theory development and an opportunity for an improved embeddedness with other perspectives in the organization sciences. The notion of institutional ‘logics’ has potential connections with Foucaultian and other post-structuralist thinking by drawing attention to the way in which the subject positions from which we speak are shaped by the ‘logic’ of the discourses in which we are enmeshed. If logics are understood to ‘frame’ the way in which we think, speak and act and inform the material practices and symbolic language of institutions, then connections to post-structuralism also represents an important future source of development for connecting institutional theory and critical theory. Given the dominance—some would say hegemony—of institutional theory in the organization sciences, such developments would be a welcome shift towards a more critical perspective that engages with issues of power, ideology and inequality.