Institutional Theory

Over the past three decades Meyer Jepperson and colleagues have contributed to the development of one of the leading approaches in social theory by analyzing the cultural frameworks that have shaped modern organizations states and identities. Bringing together key articles and new reflections this volume collects the essential theoretical ideas of ''sociological neoinstitutionalism.'' It clarifies the core ideas and situates them within social theory writ large. Among other topics the authors discuss the changing nature of the actors that have operated within contemporary social structure. The book concludes with the evolving frameworks that have structured social activity in the postWorld War II period of ''embedded liberalism'' in the more recent neoliberal period and in an emergent post-liberal period that appears to be a radical departure.