Faculty
Professor Roy Suddaby, Alberta School of Business; Professor Renate Meyer,Vienna University of Economics and Business; Associate Professor Eva Boxenbaum, Professor Jesper Strandgaard, and Professor Ann Westenholz, all from the Department of Organization, CBS

Course Coordinator
Professor Jesper Strandgaard

The PhD student must be working on a research project involving the institutional sociological approach or – if this is not the case – be willing to explore if the approach could be applied. Naturally, the idea is not to push students into becoming institutional theorists, but to make them reflect upon their projects from this theoretical perspective.

The PhD student is required to present a five-pages (maximum) written presentation in which s/he relates the curriculum literature in the course to his/ her project. The presentation must include specific references to the literature applied. Deadline for submission of presentations is Monday 13 August 2012.

The student presentation should provide material for discussion in minor groups during the course, and the student must be willing to participate in discussions of other presentations.

It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that the student attends the whole course

In the last decade, institutional theory has revolutionized the social sciences, and there is no doubt that the institutional revolution will achieve significance equal to that of the behavioral revolution in the 1950s and the 1960s. At the same time, the social constructionist approach has achieved significant status within anthropology and sociology, and it is currently spreading to a number of other disciplines.

The goal of the course is to give participants a broad overview of organizational neoinstitutionalism and develop their capacity to use the approach in their own work.

The course focuses on the school within institutional theory that is rooted in sociology. Within this boundary, first we concern ourselves with the provocative foundational works of organizational neoinstitutionalism. We will review institutional contributions, exploring the unique, social constructionist approach used by organizational sociologists. Next, we will turn to some of the more recent advances in institutional analysis.

Neoinstitutionalists are distinctive in that they are both historical and interpretive in orientation, exploring historical change and transformations in the meaning of organizational structures and practices. We analyze how institutions are constructed and diffused; how institutional elements are incorporated into and translated in organizations as well as how institutional change and institutional entrepreneurship is taking place within specific organization fields. We discuss diverse methodological approaches to the study of institutionalization processes – macro- as well as micro approaches. In addition, we will explore the applicability of neoinstitutional theory and methods to the empirical projects course participants are currently working on.

Participants get insights into the historical development of institutional organizational theory and the latest development within this approach understanding organizational stability, change and transformation. The participants also get insights how to use the theory on empirical work, especially their own projects. 

Lecture plan

Time/period	Faculty	Title
Monday 17 September 2012	All faculty	Welcome and presentation of the course programme and the participants
	Renate Meyer	Classic and New Institutional Theory
Tuesday 18 September 2012	Jesper Strandgaard	Institutional fields and transformations
	Ann Westenholz	Institutional Change and Multi Logics
	All faculty	Group work and discussions of received papers
Wednesday 19 September 2012	Eva Boxenbaum	Empirical findings on diffusion and decoupling
	Renate Meyer & Roy Suddaby	Methods in Institutional Analyses
	All faculty	Group work and discussions of received papers
Thursday 20 September 2012	Jesper Strandgaard	Translation of Ideas
	Roy Suddaby & Eva Boxenbaum	Institutional Entrepreneurship
	All faculty	Group work and discussions of received papers
Friday 21 September 2012	Roy Suddaby, Renate Meyer, Eva Boxenbaum & Jesper Strandgaard	New directions in neo-institutional analysis

Lectures with workshops, dialogues and student discussions.

Selection of the preliminary reading:

Selznick (1949), TVA and the Grassroots

Meyer & Rowan (1977), "Institutional organizations: formal structure as myth and ceremony"

DiMaggio & Powell (1983), "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields

Tolbert & Zucker (1983), "Institutional sources of change in the formal structure of organizations: The diffusion of civil service

reform, 1880-1935"

Meyer, R. (2008), New sociology of knowledge: Historical legacy and current strands

Powell (1991): Expanding the Scope of Institutional Analyses

Friedland & Ahlford (1991) Bringing Society Back in: Symbols, Practices and Institutional Contradictions

Hoffman (1999) Institutional Evolution and Change: Environmentalism and the US Chemical Industry

Reay & Hinings (2009) Managing the Rivalry of Competing institutional Logics (compendium)

Boxenbaum, E. & Jonsson, S. (2008). Isomorphism, diffusion and decoupling.

Lounsbury, M. (2001). Institutional sources of practice variation: Staffing college and university recycling programs.

Suddaby & Greenwood (2009), Methodological Issues in Researching Institutional Change

Schneiberg & Clemens (2006), The typical tools for the job. Research strategies in institutional analyses

Mohr (1998), "Measuring Meaning Structures

Battilana, J., Leca, B., & Boxenbaum, E. (2009). How actors change institutions: Toward a theory of institutional entrepreneurship.

DiMaggio, P.J. (1988). Interest and agency in institutional theory

Maguire, S., Hardy, C., & Lawrence, T.B. (2004). Institutional entrepreneurship in emerging fields: HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy in

Canada

Lawrence & Suddaby (2006) Institutions and Institutional Work

Lounsbury & Crumley (2007) New Practice Creation: An institutional Perspective on Innovation .

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