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Intro very confusing

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The third sentence is really sloppy language. I don't know the field, so tell me, in defining new institutionalism, what's the article trying to say here? "One of the instiutional views that has emerged has argued that institutions have developed to become similar isomorphism across organizations even though they evolved in different ways, and how institutions shape the behavior of agents (i.e. people, organizations, governments)."

I tried to reword it to recover the meaning and I got something like: "One of the institutional views that has emerged has argued that institutions across (within?) organizational fields, though they evolved in different ways, have developed to become isomorphic in the way they shape the behavior of agents (i.e. people, organizations, governments)." That's a sentence I can at least understand; is it right? Does it actually describe what is novel about new institutionalism? Kyle Cronan (talk) 01:32, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am an expert on this field and I agree that the article is extremely confusing. To my mind the core of the problem is that it tries to cover too many variations on the theory and so it's hard to understand the basic idea, or to tell what is the basic idea and what is some fairly idiosyncratic variation. Typically when new institutionalism is taught in grad school, there's a bit of background on Carnegie school bounded rationality associated w Herb Simon and a bit on Pfeffer and Salancik's resource dependence model, then the theory itself begins with Meyer and Rowan 1977 (organizations use ritualized behaviors to signal legitimacy to stakeholders), and then to DiMaggio and Powell 1983 (like M+R, but distinguishing three broad classes of stakeholders).

That's the basic theory and what needs to be clearly laid out. Anybody who needs more than that shouldn't be reading Wikipedia but should go to the academic literature. There's also the problem that "new institutionalism" is a term used by different social science disciplines but they all use it slightly differently and the literatures by and large don't overlap. Hence the mess that is the "sub-fields" section.

Bottom-line the article needs a complete rewrite and that rewrite should be much more focused in its ambitions. Ghrossman (talk) 15:13, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This lemma is not very accessible and therefore not always helpful. Especially the paragraph on "Critiques of new institutionalism" needs to be re-written completely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbröer (talk • contribs) 13:47, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New institutionalism

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this whole page is a bit confusing. "new institutionalism emphasizes sociological views of institutions" whereas "old or historical institutionalism is from the tradition of dewey, veblen and others and is opposed to the new institutionalism since the new places an over-emphasis on maximizing behavior" ???

that makes no sense! is new institutionalism emphasizing social and cultural behavior or maximizing behavior??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.173.33.161 (talk) 08:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

as far as I understand, the three 'sub-types' actually developed autonomously with little dialogue, and are all called 'new institutionalism'. historical institutionalism is a part of comparative politics, which is a part of poli sci; rational choice is somewhere in poli sci as well; and 'normative' developed under sociology, possibly political sociology but not exclusively. the paper at the bottom 'political science and the new institutionalism' is short, clear, and sums up the theories, there strengths and weaknesses, and their relations quite well.

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I want to see what was deleted from the page. I'm new here, but my opinion on the matter is 'who other than an academic (per se) or academic-type person would search for "new institutionalism"?' There should at least be an option for a more-developed discourse, we already suffer from enough over-simplification in this world.

mcgrathster@gmail.com (can anyone tell me how to contact other people on this site?)

Sure. When you click on "history", you can see who has made each edit to the page. Most people also sign their comments; click on the "Lunkwill" link at the end of my comment and you can leave me a personal message on my page, or leave it here and I'll see that it's been edited recently, because it'll show up on my "watchlist". You can have one too by creating an account, which requires only choosing a username and password. Lunkwill 23:17, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Here's the discussion and voting from when this page was listed on "Votes for deletion":

Non-notable (first three Google hits are Wikipedia and two mirrors), reads like original research. Susvolans 14:23, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

(My google search returned many pages of references, including quite a lot of academic papers.) Lunkwill 20:42, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Read's like someone's term paper for school. Interesting, but not particularly encyclopedic as it stands. Delete. -FZ 14:36, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm in the process of revising this article. I admit that it currently reads like a term paper, but I don't believe that new institutionalism is non-notable. It is an emerging school in sociology. Obscure, perhaps, but relevant. While its true that wikipedia mirrors dominate the google results, there are also legitimate academic citations ([1] and [2] for example). Dimaggio and Powell are two regularly cited academics who are proponents of this theory [3]. Their book "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields" was as significant contribution to this field. mennonot 15:24, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: What's new about it? What makes it different from Institutionalisation? -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:31, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Institutionalisation describes the process by which large, often bueracratic organisations began to dominate our society, what Max Weber describes as the Iron Cage and in more common usage is the process by which movements or networks become formalized into institutions. New institutionalism is the study of the way those institutions operate, relate to each other and organize themselves[4]. It builds on Webers work (hence the Iron Cage Revisited title above) but goes in more depth. I admit that I only have a superficial knowledge of the field, but I'm willing to put time into improving the article and making it more understandable. mennonot 16:16, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep and cleanup. I've finished a major revision of the article. Please check it out. It still has a long way to go, but I hope you'll agree that it is now readable enough to avoid deletion. mennonot 19:02, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete - original work/derivation - Tεxτurε 19:34, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep - I find plenty of references to the concept in google, both academic and derivative. The article uses lots of sociology lingo (it was, in fact, written for a class presentation on the topic by a grad student), but is NPOV, informative and relevant. Lunkwill 20:42, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep and cleanup. Google finds quite a lot of hits (20,000, it appears that a significant fraction is relevant). It still needs work, though. What is the history of this theory? Who introduced it? How does it relate to other theories? Andris 22:59, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)
    • Comment: I've added a history section in an attempt to begin to answer these question. Its fairly vague, but its a start. mennonot 15:43, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Worthy topic; notable, with literature. Keep. Rhymeless 00:49, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep - The influence of institutions on individuals seems to me a key subject, although imo more related to social psychology than directly to sociology. --Pgreenfinch 13:04, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • (Ineligible anon vote) Keep. The new institutionalism is an important movement not only in sociology but in economics and political science. (Douglass North won the Nobel Prize in economics for an early contribution in 1993.) Because of diverse contributors to the movement, everyone who tries to summarize it has trouble. But the article is as good an effort as any, and can be very useful.
  • Keep - I even linked to it from organizational studies

Cuts to article by GoodOlPolonius

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I'm not happy with the deletion of five paragraphs from the New institutionalism article by GoodOlPolonius with only "simplified approach" as an explanation. Cuts those extensive need a better justification than that. I'm open to listening to the rationale for major cutting, but I don't think those cuts should be made without discussion. mennonot 10:27, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)


I am quite happy to talk about the cuts, the lack of changes to this page and its votes for deletion led me to believe that it was not being actively modified, so I went ahead and made the changes. The original version of this page did not serve as an introductory article in which a layperson could expect to find their way, nor did it place new institutionalism in the context of other approaches to the field of organizational studies/sociology. For example, your intro included:

"In new institutional theory Institutions are durable, transmittable, maintainable, and reproducible (Scott 2001). Berger and Luckmann (1966) speak of a dialectic process in which institutions are socially constructed but also influence the people who create them. "Man…and his social world interact with each other. The product acts back upon the producer" (p. 61). In this way, institutions are durable - they persist across time (transmittable) and are somewhat difficult to change. Institutions are also maintainable and reproducible. When individuals follow appropriate institutional logics, they are reproducing institutions."

This is very difficult to understand, since you dive right into some heavy academic discourse about various approaches to institutions, rather than discussing what new institutionalism is and how it relates to other fields of study. I thought it would be much better to explain, in general, what the approach of new institutionalism is. Think of this as a general interest encyclopedia.

I am, however, definitely open to change.--Goodoldpolonius2 18:41, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To clarify, I didn't write most of the article. I just did a fair amount of revision when it came up for deletion in order to try to improve it. It was even more inaccessible before I started messing with it.
I agree with what you say about the introduction being too academic. My main concern was with cutting the whole "Regulative, Normative and Cultural-Cognitive Frameworks" section. While this section was pretty academic, I think there might be more that could be used from it. I think you did a good job of starting the process of synthesizing it, but perhaps we can work to pull some of the explanation of the different frameworks back into the article in a more readable format.
Thanks for taking the time to write a longer explanation. It's helpful for understanding how to go forward from here. mennonot 14:46, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Good to get a dialogue going. I guess I did not see that the Regulative, Normative, and Cultural-Cognitive frameworks were the key structural elements within New Insitutionalism. If you want to take a crack at putting them back, with some context around why they are important, that would work. --Goodoldpolonius2 20:08, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I tried to add three types of the new institutionalism in fairly non-academic language here (although my writing is quite clumsy.) I think it's important to look at how different approaches to institutionalism can be. I welcome the alteration of the text to make it more accessible still. Nach0king 18:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can see that the discussion is here among persons really interested in the field, mayby there might be someone helpfull? I have some problems undestanding the link (or if there is any) between social constructionism and the new institutionalism? Maria

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