Institutional theory

Institutional theory studies the deeper, more durable parts of social structure: the schemes, rules, norms and routines that harden into taken for granted guides for behavior and then persist over time, often outliving the specific interests that first produced them. The sociologist W. Richard Scott, one of the field's central figures, describes institutions as social structures that have gained a high degree of resilience by combining cultural cognitive, normative and regulative elements, giving social life both stability and shared meaning. An older institutionalism looked mainly at formal rules and organizations, while the newer institutionalism associated with Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell's influential 1991 collection turned instead to cognitive and cultural explanations, arguing that organizations often copy their peers' practices to appear legitimate rather than purely to optimize performance. This idea of institutional isomorphism, organizations converging on similar rules and belief systems to fit their environment, has since been used to explain why corporations, NGOs and government agencies in very different fields often end up adopting remarkably similar structures and practices.