Institutionalized Environment

The idea of the institutionalized environment is based on the more fundamental concept of the institution. The definition of institution has itself been subject to a reasonable amount of debate: Institutions may be defined narrowly—understood to mean formalized governmental structures (such as agencies) and written rules—or more broadly, in that all informal rules and practices that have been socially legitimized may be considered to be institutions. Using either definition, evoking an institutionalized environment is thus a way of examining the effects of a complex set of collectivities, rules, and practices on an individual or an organization. In general, the institutional perspective on governance provides a popular route for the application of sociological theory, allowing scholars to consider the combined effects of structural and cultural elements on their subject of inquiry. Prescriptively, such a perspective may suggest that familiarity and facility with existing institutions are the keys to effective political action.

Because the institutional environment represents such a potentially enormous set of influences, theorists have found different ways of breaking elements of the institutionalized environment into more usable pieces. One popular method is to define the effect of institutions against the dictates of rational, decontextualized efficiency. Where an organization or individual is perceived to act in a way that is not the most efficient for the direct achievement of a goal, the institutional environment may be examined for ways that it prompted an inefficient course of action. This form of analysis typically seeks to demonstrate that the action ultimately was rational in that it was the most efficient action available under the institutional circumstances, or that the legitimacy the actor gained by acting within the institutional guidelines ultimately most efficiently furthered the achievement of the actor's goals. A rational analysis may also consider the degree to which an environment is institutionalized—the number or power of individual institutions operating in an actor's environment. More provocatively, some theorists have pointed out that the valuation of rational efficiency is [Page 456]itself a cultural institution—a position that invalidates the opposition of rationality against all other institutions and seeks, rather, to understand the interplay of institutions on actors.

Other approaches turn to the institutionalized environment to understand organizational isomorphism—the tendency of actors to conform to their environments. To explain this, some theorists differentiate the institutionalized environment according to the forms of pressure that are brought to bear on organizational actors. Coercive institutional pressure is the pressure to conform to the dictates of governmental regulations or laws and is the most stringent form. Normative institutional pressure describes pressures to conform to cultural values derived from social or professional groups. Finally, mimetic institutional pressure describes the tendency of organizational actors to resemble other actors in their environment without any obvious sanction driving them to do so. This last form is also described as the cognitive effects of institutions—the ability of institutions to manipulate symbolic systems in such a way as to alter social perceptions and interests.