Turtles All the Way Down – And Up: Macro-Institutions

Abstract

Institutions operate at the core of all social structures, and it is vital to social science that we understand how they are established, maintained, and transformed. Considerable progress has been achieved in pursuit of this agenda, particularly in the last three decades, which have witnessed a resurgence of scholarly attention and productive inquiry. Institutions operate at multiple levels within a social structure. Recent students have concentrated efforts on their microfoundations, focusing on the agents who construct and reconstruct them and the mechanisms at work in producing, reproducing, and changing them. And of late, new efforts have been addressed to macro-structures and forces at work in sustaining and changing societal and global institutional systems.

Citation

Scott, W.R. (2020), "Turtles All the Way Down – And Up: Macro-Institutions", Steele, C.W.J., Hannigan, T.R., Glaser, V.L., Toubiana, M. and Gehman, J. (Ed.) Macrofoundations: Exploring the Institutionally Situated Nature of Activity (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 68), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 261-271. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20200000068011