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The author distinguishes between state, process, and object perspectives on institutions and institutionalization. While all-purpose process approaches dominate the literature, the author argues that these are analytically insufficient without theorizing the nature of “institutional objects.” Building on recently developed analytic disaggregations of the culture concept in cultural sociology, the author argues that doings, sayings, codes, and artifacts exhaust the broad classes of potential objects subject to institutionalization processes. The proposed approach provides a coherent ontology for future empirical work, features robust microfoundations, places institutional routines and practices in a material context, and acknowledges the importance of semiotic codes and vocabularies in organizational fields.

Although drawing from neoinstitutional theoretical apparatus and ontology, management fashion theory is understood as a theory that explains the transitory nature of popular ideas and practices while institutional theory explains their stabilization, persistence and further institutionalization. In a nutshell, it seems that being opposed to each other, these two theories describe and predict different, incommensurable diffusion trajectories and organizational behaviour patterns. The purpose of this paper is to unify these two competing perspectives.

This paper makes an attempt toward further unification of management fashion theory with new institutionalism by offering an alternative understanding and conceptualization of institutional change and deinstitutionalization and by distinguishing emerging concepts from already popular fashions.

Most emerging concepts never achieve popularity and disappear while few of them achieve massive media attention and diffuse widely becoming new management fashions. Once these concepts have achieved a wide popularity institutional forces would favor them and lead to further institutionalization. Institutional change is understood not as a deinstitutionalization of existing management fashion in terms of erosion, discontinuity or disappearance but as a decline in its media coverage while media attention focuses on new fashionable concept. The former management fashion gets institutionalized, institutional change occurs in terms of shifting attention toward new fashion and diffusion and institutionalization cycle restarts. Institutional prediction of isomorphism and institutionalization as irreversible tendencies thus can be unified with MF prediction about the bell-shaped curves in fashions’ popularity. Therefore, postulates and predictions of management fashion theory can be derived from new institutionalism and vice versa.

The paper aims to cover, generalize and explain different trajectories of various management and organizational concepts, deducing theoretical propositions from both institutional theory and management fashion theory. Theoretical and methodological ideas offered in this paper can be helpful in future research on management fashions and diffusion. Studies on the evolution of management concept can benefit from proposed categorization and causal relationships between different stages of the life cycle.

Unifying seemingly conflicting and disparate perspectives and views allows making organization theory more coherent in terms of both explanatory power and ontological commensurability. Following other mature sciences, we share the same notion of progress, namely, the aim of achieving unification and demonstrating that different organizational theories still describe the same reality.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural consequence of ever-increasing entropy seems to directly contradict the major institutional thesis, namely, that over time isomorphic forces increase and, as a result, possibilities for deinstitutionalization decrease culminating in the impossibility of abandoning in highly institutionalized fields.

This paper is conceptual in nature. Oliver’s 1992 paper on deinstitutionalization is taken as a key text on the subject and as a starting point for building an alternative theory of deinstitutionalization. More broadly, institutional theory and organizational literature on diffusion/adoption are reviewed and synthesized.

The authors argue that possibilities for deinstitutionalization have been overestimated in institutional literature and offer a revisited account of deinstitutionalization vs institutional isomorphism and institutionalized vs highly diffusing-but-not-institutionalized practices. A freedom for choice between alternative practices exists during the pre-institutional stage but not when the field is already institutionalized. In contrast, institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices are immutable to any sort of functional and political pressures and they use to persist even when no technical value remains, thus deinstitutionalization on the basis of a functional dissatisfaction seems to be a paradox.

By revisiting the nature and patterns of deinstitutionalization, the paper offers a better conceptual classification and understanding of how organizations adopt, maintain and abandon organizational ideas and practices. An important task of this paper is to reduce the scope of application of deinstitutionalization theory to make it more focused and self-consistent. There is, however, still not enough volume of studies on institutional factors of practices’ abandonment in institutional literature. The authors, therefore, acknowledge that more studies are needed to further improve both the former deinstitutionalization theory and the framework.

The authors offer a solution to this theoretical inconsistency by distinguishing between truly institutionalized practices and currently popular practices (highly diffused but non-institutionalized). It is only the latter that are subject to the norms of progress that allow abandoning and replacing existing organizational activities. Deinstitutionalization theory is, thus can be applied to popular practices that are subject to reevaluation, abandonment and replacement with new optimal practices while institutions are immutable to these norms of progress. Institutions are immutable to deinstitutionalization and the deinstitutionalization of optimal practices is subject to the logic of isomorphic convergence in organizational fields. Finally, the authors revisit a traditional two-stage institutional diffusion model to explain the possibility and likelihood of abandonment during different stages of institutionalization.

The processes of legitimation and institutionalization are difficult to study because they are hard to measure. Instead, theories of legitimacy use its elements to explain various effects. We propose that these effects are due to the trust-building aspects of legitimation and institutionalization. If research can establish the trust-building nature of legitimation, then theoretical research programs in the area may progress more rapidly. Research on leadership in groups can be used to assess fundamental questions of legitimacy and trust because group leadership represents an interface between research on organizations and basic group processes. We describe an experimental setting to investigate legitimation, institutionalization, and trust.

This paper seeks to understand how new practices that challenge established norms and values become institutionalized by studying the development of corporate philanthropy in France over three decades (1979–2011). Our inductive qualitative study uncovers the processes that enable actors at both field- and organizational-levels to enhance a new practice’s internal and external legitimacy, ultimately leading to its institutionalization. In particular, we identify the central role of a community of practice as a bridge between the field-level, purposive interventions (theorizing, influencing policy) of an institutional entrepreneur and the organizational-level, emergent interventions (mobilizing, embedding) of frontline practitioners experimenting with the new divergent practice, thereby enabling its legitimation and, ultimately, its institutionalization. As such, our findings contribute to refining our understanding of institutionalization processes as inherently distributed and to uncovering communities of practice as the missing link between “heroic” entrepreneurs’ interventions and the hidden work of frontline practitioners implementing the new practice.

This double volume presents the state of the art in research on the microfoundations of institutions. In this introductory chapter, we develop an overview of where the emerging microfoundational agenda in institutional theory stands and in which direction it is moving. We discuss the questions of what microfoundations of institutions are, what the “micro” in microfoundations represents, why we use the plural form (microfoundations vs microfoundation), why microfoundations of institutions are needed, and how microfoundations can be studied. Specifically, we highlight that there are several traditions of microfoundational research, and we outline a cognitive, a communicative and a behavioral perspective. In addition, we explain that scholars tend to think of microfoundations in terms of an agency, levels, or mechanisms argument. We delineate key challenges and opportunities for future research and explain why we believe that the debate on microfoundations will become a defining element in the further development of institutional theory.

The aim of this study is to trace the factors that have contributed to the adoption and institutionalization of foresight practices within the Singapore Public Service, Government of Singapore.

This study discusses the history of the adoption and institutionalization of foresight practices in the Singapore Government; this study has carried out content analysis of secondary literature and conducted 11 in-depth semi-structured interviews with elite informants.

This study finds that the adoption and institutionalization of foresight practices in the Singapore Government was brought about by a combination of five factors. The most foundational factor in our model is the role of institutional entrepreneurs, who drew upon the symbolic representation of Singapore’s vulnerability to legitimize the use of foresight, thus resonating well with local technocratic groups to maintain steady economic progress. This study further argues that the underdevelopment of foresight in the local private and academic domains can be at least in part explained by the historical connotations of foresight that were uncovered.

As the findings are fruit of the authors’ interpretation of the secondary literature/interview data, they require further triangulation by future research.

This study presents the interpretation of elite informants’ accounts and historical documents to explain one of the most exemplar yet classified case studies of governmental foresight globally.

Institutional theory assumes practice adoption and subsequent decoupling. However, there is a range of alternative organizational theories that challenge this view and offer instead their reinterpretation, extension and modification of institutional predictions with regard to the adoption and possible range of various responses and processes that follow the decision to adopt. This paper aims to review this spectrum of theories and suggest how they clarify, supplement, correct, restrict and/or abandon some institutional explanations and predictions.

Extensions and alternatives to institutional theory are mainly motivated by the need to have a theory of practice adoption and variation, and a plethora of alternative practice adoption theories currently exists in the literature. The authors review these theories and compare them against institutional theory and against each other.

The analysis revealed shortcomings and advantages of alternative theories compared to institutional theory and against each other. It is suggested which theory is most useful in each domain of application. The authors review and compare institutional theory, Scandinavian institutionalism, management fashion theory, virus theory and institutional inertia theory and analyze how and whether they are able to reproduce the success of institutional theory and successfully address and resolve its shortcomings and gaps. The authors conclude by discussing whether regular emergences of new theories that account for the idea-handling stage of diffusion signals institutional theory’s limit of validity in this domain.

The problem of idea emergence/diffusion/disappearance and adoption/variation/use are fundamentally different, but both of them motivated researchers to go beyond institutional theory. Despite being the dominant theory of organizations internally consistent and explaining a wide range of empirical observations, it is evident that institutional theory is not a complete theory. This paper contributes to this problem by exploring and comparing existing candidates for practice variation theory.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the idiosyncratic features of the adoption and institutionalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices.

This is a conceptual paper in which current theory on the institutionalization of practices within organizational fields is extended. This is achieved through considering how well established models of the institutionalization process accommodate the idiosyncrasies of CSR practices.

Established models of the institutionalization process do not properly account for the patterns of CSR adoption that are identified. This is because CSR has some features that differentiates it from other organizational initiatives, including idealism, delayed discovery of instrumental benefits, public attention, and the tension between public and private logics.

This is a conceptual paper which now needs to be explored empirically, either at the level of the CSR practice or at the organizational field. It is believed that a detailed examination is warranted of the effects of the truncated adoption process (a coercive bandwagon) on organizations' adoption of CSR practices. Neither has it been considered whether all categories of CSR practices are subject to the same dynamics or development path.

It is argued that prizes and regulations that are introduced before the organizational case has been worked through properly can have a negative effect on the adoption of beneficial practices throughout the wider field. Similarly, accusations of greenwashing of firms who implement CSR prematurely, and the negative publicity that results, can result in the valuable ideals of CSR being operationalised in a sub‐optimal form.

The paper offers a new conceptualisation of the path of the institutionalization of CSR practices.

The article aims to investigate the potential of successfully implementing e-government in Zambia by considering citizens ' and businesses ' perceptions on e-government. Further, the study investigates what interventions have been put in place to encourage e-government development. The motivation of the study is that despite huge investments in e-government, there has been relatively slow adoption rendering the said interventions not to culminate into meaningful socio-economic value prepositions.

Using the mixed methods research (MMR) approach, the study intends to identify factors influencing the adoption of e-government solutions in Zambia both at the individual and organizational level. The questionnaire utilized in this research is informed by the technology acceptance model (TAM) as well as the institutional theory and the Giddens ' structuration theory. Spearman ' s ρ was used to determine concurrent and construct validity of the data collection instruments.

The study posits that a lot needs to be done if e-government were to succeed in Zambia. A majority of the research respondents are not aware of e-government implementation in Zambia. It is desirable that e-government should be implemented with due reference to local contextual characteristics. If factors negatively influencing e-government growth in Zambia are addressed, the prospects for e-government ' s contribution to revitalizing the public service are high.

Since the empirical component of this study did not cover all the nine provinces of Zambia and utilised a limited sample size of 411, the findings may not be truly representative of the situation on the ground. However, the study provides insights on what factors may influence successful implementation of e-government in Zambia. The paper recommends that further empirical study with a larger and more representative sample should be done in order for the findings to command higher statistical relevance.

The identified factors may act as pointers to decision makers ' endeavours to design context-aware e-government interventions. This is very important to reduce failure incidences of e-government interventions considering huge costs incurred mostly using tax payers ' money. Further, study findings may be used to inform strategies for effervescent e-government development in Zambia by outlining desired interventions and anticipated adoption levels by the citizenry (supply versus demand).

Very limited studies have focused on understanding e-government development in Zambia especially from individuals ' perspective. Most studies have attempted to understand the e-government development at a global level. This study, however, highlights factors that influence e-government proliferation at both the macro and micro levels of the socio-economic hierarchy in Zambia.