Institutionalization and Structuration: Studying the Links between Action and Institution

Abstract

Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because their models of institutionalization as a process are underdeveloped. Structuration theory, on the other hand, largely remains a process theory of such abstraction that it has generated few empirical studies. This paper discusses the similarities between the two theories, develops an argument for why a fusion of the two would enable institutional theory to significantly advance, develops a model of institutionalization as a structuration process, and proposes methodological guidelines for investigating the process empirically.

Logics of fluency in the transformation of the Finnish rail traffic control network

“…In the following section we examine the dimensions of fluency in their practical contexts found in the workshop data. Tolbert, 1997;Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). Logics make networks meaningful features of social and economic worlds by disciplining (though not determining) the formation and implications of relationships and networks.…”

Dialogue and distributed agency in institutional transmission

“…The third-wave institutionalism focuses on the institutional work that underlies the process of institution-building (Lawrence & Suddaby 2006). This approach reconciles the action and structure orientations of the old and new institutionalism (e.g., Barley & Tolbert 1997;Hasselbladh & Kallinikos 2000) and enables us to explore "the effects of individual and organizational action … aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions" (Lawrence & Suddaby 2006: 216). This third-wave institutionalism has greatly advanced our understanding of agency and institutionalization.…”

A Multivocal and Multilevel Institutionalist Perspective to Analyze Information Technology-Enabled Change in the Public Service in Africa

“…By focusing on agency at the microlevel as a locus of change, the framework is meant to analyze the intersubjective and interaction processes through which human agents interpret and enact institutional logics (DiMaggio 1988;Greenwood and Suddaby 2006). It does so by integrating microlevel institution theory with a structuration (Barley and Tolbert 1997) and sensemaking (Weber and Glynn 2006) perspective.…”

“…In order to analyze how IT users make sense of competing logics in information processing, the framework adopts a script perspective (Gioia and Poole 1984), which allows us to look into micro-level processes by which users either reproduce or revise the cognitive schema informing information behavior (Barley and Tolbert 1997;Johnson et al 2000).…”

“…Under the normative pillar, the main institutional elements are norms related to the main professional category of the public organization staff (e.g., medical staff) and norms of behavior related to the African context (Higgo 2003). Hence, imbued with different institutional logics from NPM and OPA, these institutional elements encode specific action scripts (i.e., patterns of typified or taken-for-granted behaviors) (Barley 1986;Barley and Tolbert 1997;Weber and Glynn 2006) representing the legitimating resources in information processing behavior. Finally, at the micro level, IT users draw from this set of institutionalized patterns of information behavior.…”