Discussing "Discourse and Institutions": A Reply to Lok and Willmott

This paper builds on recent contributions to understanding conditions of institutional complexity by developing a theoretical framework to elaborate the interdependencies between actions, contexts and institutional logics. Our aim is to refine existing explanations of how actors inhabit complex institutional settings. Drawing on a critical realist ontology, we treat agency and structure as analytically distinct phenomena to advance our understanding of conditioned action. This is subject to relational analysis in order to explain the structural conditioning that shapes particular socio-historical contexts, the potential 'action options' contained within these contexts and the processes through which actors draw upon these. This reading of institutional reproduction and transformation allows us to reassess the 'paradox of embedded agency' by advancing understanding of the historically grounded and multilevel nature of structures and agency in institutional processes. Our approach offers conceptual refinements, a new sensitizing framework and methodological insights to guide studies of the ways actors inhabit complex institutional settings.

This chapter is about how and why institutions matter in political life. More specifically, it is about how the behaviour of political actors is shaped and conditioned by the institutional contexts in which they operate. This perspective and question define the central concerns of the so-called 'new institutionalism' in political analysis.

Politics & Society, 1998

Scandinavian Political Studies, 1991

The purpose of this article is to point to a number of methodological and theoretical problems connected with a theory of institutional change. Nine philosophical-methodological questions are asked dealing with a wide range of problems rarely raised in neo-institutional political theory. The questions concern the concept of the state, of institutions, and of language and discourse. and deal with the dialectic between individuals and institutions, choice and rationality, formal organizations and institutions as well as prescriptive versus normative analysis. A critical theory of meaning is sought in order to develop neo-institutionalism from a research program into an actual set of descriptive and interpretative theories.

M@n@gement, 15(5): 459-467, 2012

The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, 2008

Various forms of critical theory have been suggested to illuminate social practices. Versions of such theories has been promoted for the analysis of management, organizations and work (e.g. Burrell, 1988; Burrell, 1994; Alvesson and Willmott, 2004) and this chapter considers how such analyses, with their emphasis on power, domination and emancipation, can be used to examine a central focus of institutional theory, namely institutionalization. Limitations and anomalies in institutional theory have stimulated its development from 'old', through 'new', to 'neo' variants of analysis 1 (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991). At each stage, institutional theory has taken on board and accommodated critiques which, alternatively, have called for a rebalancing of the emphasis given to the conditioning constraints of 'structure' or the innovative capabilities of 'agency' (Reed, 1997). This chapter steps back from this process of critique and incorporation to provide a 'critical theoretic' illumination of institutional theory to facilitate reflection on its distinctiveness and limits. We begin by noting how, in their different ways, varieties of institutional theory and critical theory share an attentiveness to institutionalization, conceived as processes that order and constrain but also enable forms of interaction and organization. In institutional theory, dominant 'logics' that are irreducible 28 *An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Organization Theory Research Group at the Tanaka Business School, Imperial College, London. We would like to thank participants at this meeting for their helpful and supportive discussion of the paper and especially the comments received from Marc Ventresca and André Spicer. We are especially indebted to Nelson Phillips and Jaco Lok for their invaluable suggestions for focusing and clarifying central arguments of the paper. Albert James assisted with the references. David Cooper and Mahmoud Ezzamel thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for financial support, and David Cooper thanks the Certified General Accountants of Alberta for their financial support.

2017

Although most political sociologists and political scientists nowadays either consider themselves or are deemed “institutionalists,” key differences remain among major schools of institutionalism (see reviews in Pierson and Skocpol 2002; Amenta 2005). In this chapter, we review sociological institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and political institutionalism. We discuss their similarities and differences, theoretical and methodological insights, research gains, analytical problems, and prospects for the study of politics. To focus our discussion, we mainly consider research regarding the development of public policy, the terrain on which many advances in political sociology and political science have taken place and an occasional battleground for these approaches. The basic similarity in all institutional theoretical claims is that something identified at a higher level is used to explain processes and outcomes at a lower level of analysis (Clemens and Cook 1999; Amenta 200...

Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty: Economics & Administrative Sciences

Beyond the classical boundaries of economic theory, the perspective of institutionalism in explaining economic processes concretises multiple researches in the sphere of the biunivo relationship between institutional quality as the main determinant of economic performance. Contributions in this field revolve around introducing into the analysis concepts and principles belonging to several social sciences, aiming at a trans-disciplinary optics, the only one meant to create the possibility of an integrative explanatory vision. Our approach, starting from a non-exhaustive approach of the institutions from the perspective of sociology, on the historical thread of the evolution of ideas, fits into the above-mentioned tendency, outlining the idea that the various fields of social analysis offer unexplored perspectives of classical economic theory, but mutually reinforcing, contributing to a better understanding of the internal laws of human behavior and the way it is grasped on the existing institutional framework.

Mershon International Studies Review, 1997

Recent developments in the study of international institutions have created a need and opportunity for restating the traditional realist view of the role of institutions in international relations. Advancing what he claimed was realism's perspective on this issue, John Mearsheimer (1994/95) forcefully staked out an extreme position that institutions are essentially epiphenomenal. Mearsheimer's arguments, however, derived from Waltzian neorealism, are inconsistent with traditional realism's concern for the origins and influence of international institutions. Moreover, they do not reflect the views of the newest wave of modified structural realists who adopt many of the insights of neoliberal institutionalism. In an attempt to show that pre-Waltzian realists had much to say about institutions, this essay reviews the neorealist/neoliberal debate over institutions, clarifies the basic differences between traditional realism and neorealism, and resurfaces traditional realist arguments concerning the effects of state power and interests on international institutions and global order. Combining insights from both traditional realism and neorealism, a model is constructed that considers how the characteristics of states, their interactions, and the structure of the international system facilitate understanding the ways in which power will be exercised, the type of global order that will be produced, and the level of global institutionalization that can be expected. lAn earlier version of this essay was presented at the 1996 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 29-September 1. We thank Damon Coletta, John Duffield, Joe Grieco, John Ikenberry,Jack Snyder, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.