Organizational Fields: Past, Present and Future

Introduction

The term ‘institutional theory’ covers a broad body of literature which has grown in prominence and popularity over the past two decades. But consistency in defining the bounds of this activity has not always been easy. The lament of DiMaggio and Powell in 1991 still holds true today: ‘it is often easier to gain agreement about what it is not than about what it is’ (1991: 1). There are a great number of issues that have and continue to remain divisive within this literature and among related literatures that apply institutional arguments (i.e. economics, political science, and history). What these literatures have in common, however, is an underlying skepticism towards atomistic accounts of social processes, relying instead on a conviction that institutional arrangements and social processes matter in the formulation of organizational action (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991).

At its core, the literature looks to the source of action as existing exogenous to the actor. More than merely suggesting that action is a reaction to the pressures of the external environment, institutional theory asks questions about how social choices are shaped, mediated and channeled by the institutional environment. Organizational action becomes a reflection of the perspectives defined by the group of members which comprise the institutional environment; out of which emerge the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive systems that provide meaning for organizations (Scott, 1995, 2001). Action is not a choice among unlimited possibilities but rather among a narrowly defined set of legitimate options. As an organization becomes more profoundly aware of its dependence on this external environment, its very conception of itself changes, with consequences on many levels. As this happens, Selznick states, ‘institutionalization has set in’ (1957: 7). Hence, institutionalization represents both a process and an outcome (DiMaggio, 1988).

While not highly emphasized in early institutional analyses (i.e. Selznick, 1949, 1957), the central construct of neo-institutional theory has been the organizational field (Scott, 1991). Strictly speaking, the field is ‘a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system [Page 131]and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field’ (Scott, 1995: 56). It may include constituents such as the government, critical exchange partners, sources of funding, professional and trade associations, special interest groups, and the general public - any constituent which imposes a coercive, normative or mimetic influence on the organization (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991; Scott, 1991). But the concept of the organizational field encompasses much more than simply a discrete list of constituents; and the ways in which the institutional literature has sought to capture this complexity has evolved over the past decades, and continues to evolve. In this chapter, we present this evolution, discussing the past, present and future of this important construct. We illustrate its early conceptualization and present its progression in a way that invites scholars to both consider their work within this historical trajectory and contribute to its further development. We conclude the chapter with our thoughts on promising avenues for future research within this domain.

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