Customer Reviews

The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis

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Powell and DiMaggio have collected a variety of major works in the sociology of organizations, all of which use some variant of neo-institutional analysis. Their introductory chapter helps to make clear why these works are "new" institutionalism, and how they do not take identical views. The importance of culture and symbolism is given much greater emphasis in all of the papers/chapters than will be found in more economic analyses of organizations. Like all collected works, variability in style and intended audiences (or targets of criticism) requires more effort from the reader. The time is well worth the effort. It is not possible to fully appreciate institutional analysis in politics, economics, sociology, or education without an understanding and awareness of the papers collected in this volume.

Sociologists who are trying to understand the basic theoretical principles undergirding the neoinstitutional framework will find this book indispensable. As other reviewers have said, Powell and DiMaggio include some of the foundational pieces of the new institutionalism. In addition, they include several pieces that were seen as groundbreaking (or at least attempting to innovate neoinstitutional thought) at the time this book was published. For instance, papers by Powell and Friedland and Alford attempt to integrate notions of power and political interest into the otherwise top-down, culturally centered theory.

Potential readers should keep in mind that there are several new institutionalisms out there in social science. Those who want to understand the difference between rational choice, economic, and polity-actor versions of the theory will find the introduction by DiMaggio and Powell very useful. It has been one the center pieces of my theoretical toolkit in helping me to map out the conceptual distinctions between the variants of institutionalism.

Neoinstitutional theory has been one of the most influential approaches to sociology in the past 30 years. This book, which represents the "social constructionist" as opposed to the "ratoinal-choice" version of neoinstitutionalism, is useful because it pulls together some of the foundational articles in this field and also places them in context.

This collection of new and classic articles provides a thorough survey to the new institutionalism in Sociology. The introduction is a very broad ranging and exciting survey of recent writings in the social sciences on institutions. The chapters apply the ideas to a wide range of empirical settings from banks to universities. The book is a must have for researchers in organizational theory and management.

Buy this book and you will lose your maney, check it from a library and you will lose your time. The book is OK for undergraduates, but if you really want to learn anything about institutional sociology, chech out the works of Oliver Williamson, James March, or Michael Hannan.

The book is one more good example that Indtitutional Sociology (and Sociology in general) is going nowhere. Instead of looking at global processes, behavior during conflict resolution, pshychology of political actors, the authors once againg waste paper on micro and middle range analysis.