New Institutional Approaches to Formal Organizations: An Anthropological Perspective

Abstract

This chapter addresses anthropology's place within new institutional theory and some of the ways in which it may contribute to understanding of formal organizations. The chapter begins by exploring the meaning of the institutional construct and its relationship to formal organizations, and illustrates some potential advantages to an anthropological approach to new institutionalism. Certain large‐scale formal organizations can be understood as exhibiting institutional characteristics in their own right, and therefore are subject to processes of institutional stability and change (including potentially deinstitutionalization) over long periods of time. Finally, the chapter explores three distinctive analytic dimensions of an anthropological approach to new institutionalism which may orient contributions to this field with those of other disciplines and provide a framework for future discussion.