Scandinavian Working Papers in Business Administration
Working Paper Series,
Lund University, Institute of Economic Research
No 2005/4: Isomorphism, Isopraxism and Isonymism - Complementary or Competing Processes?
Gudbjörg Erlingsdottír () and Kajsa Lindberg ()
Additional contact information
Gudbjörg Erlingsdottír: Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Postal: Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Box 7080, SE-220 07 Lund, Sweden
Kajsa Lindberg: GRI, School of Economics & Commercial Law, Postal: Göteborg University, Göteborg, Sweden
Abstract: New institutional theory has been criticized, for describing institutionalization as a static qualitative state rather than a process. In this paper we provide an extended understanding of the process of institutionalization by replacing the mechanical concept of diffusion by the concept of translation and an analytical model of “travel of ideas”. Analyzing the field material from three cases of translation of ideas in the Swedish health care sector we have traced not only various homogenizing but also heterogenizing processes which reproduce organizational ideas, models, and practices. In the paper we thus suggest and discuss how name, form, and practice can be seen as different expressions of an idea through which organizations can be homogenized or heterogenized in an institutional process.
Keywords: isomorphism; isopraxism; isonymism; insitutionalization; translation of ideas; organizational change
21 pages, April 12, 2005
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2005-4.pdf
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