Improving the Choreography: Challenges in Institutional
Theory and Research

Chair and Commentator:

W. Richard Scott, Stanford University, USA

Panelists:

Renate Meyer, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Coordinator of webpage 'New institutionalism'

Glenn Morgan, Warwick Business School, United Kingdom, EGOS Standing Working Group 'Comparative Studies of Economic Organization'

Roy Suddaby, University of Alberta, Canada

Marc Ventresca, Said Business School, United Kingdom and University of Stanford, USA

Institutional theory (IT) is unquestionably one of the most vigorous and vibrant arenas within organization studies. The panel, comprised of major European and North American scholars, will identify and debate the merits of the major variants that have developed – including whether or not substantial differences exist between US and European versions. We will consider the special methodological and research design challenges posed by this approach – for example, how are cultural assumptions and cognitive frames to be assessed? And we will speculate as to whether current trends are staking out too wide a theoretical and empirical domain to be tractable.

Panelists could address some subset of the following types of questions:

• How do you describe the major contending versions of IT?

• What are the primary differences among major variants in assumptions and arguments?

• How do you see the role of agency in IT?

• How do you view the role of strategy in IT?

• What are productive ways of accounting for stability and change?

• Do you see important differences between US and European approaches?

• Are their other theoretical arenas that could be fruitfully engaged by/incorporated into IT?

• Which and why?

• What connections to other theoretical traditions have been particularly productive for IT?

• What do you regard as the most promising research approaches?

• What are the special research challenges posed by IT?

• Does IT confront special measurement problems in assessing its key variables?

• Do research designs or methods for IT differ from those in other arenas?

• How and why?

• What piece of research do you regard as exemplary or especially fruitful? Why?

• Is their a significant danger that IT will become too broad, too encompassing?

• Has IT staked out too wide a theoretical and empirical domain?
  

W. Richard Scott