Skip to content

The new institutionalism in organization theory and sociology comprises a rejection of rational-actor models, and interest in institutions as independent variables, a turn toward cognitive and cultural explanations, and an interest in properties of supra-individual units of analysis that cannot be reduced to aggregations or direct consequences of individual’s attributes or motives.

— Paul DiMaggio

Another quote →

More quotes by Paul DiMaggio

Organizations compete not just for resources and customers, but for political power and institutional legitimacy, for social as well as economic fitness.

Organizations tend to model themselves after similar organizations in their field that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful.

Institutional theory presents a paradox. Institutional analysis is as old as Emile Durkheim's exhortation to study 'social facts as things', yet sufficiently novel to be preceded by new in much of the contemporary literature.

Institutionalism purportedly represents a distinctive approach to the study of social, economic, and political phenomena; yet it is often easier to gain agreement about what it is not than about what it is.

Organizations may try to change constantly; but, after a certain point in the structuration of an organizational field, the aggregate effect of individual change is to lessen the extent of diversity within the field.

All Paul DiMaggio quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Paul DiMaggio (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.