Deinstitutionalization revisited

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Deinstitutionalization revisited © Emerald Publishing Limited Accepted version (Final draft) Aksom, Herman Aksom, H. (2021). Deinstitutionalization revisited. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijoa-06-2021-2845 2021 International Journal of Organizational Analysis Deinstitutionalization revisited Journal: International Journal of Organizational Analysis Manuscript ID IJOA-06-2021-2845.R1 Manuscript Type: Original Article Keywords: Institutional theory, Deinstitutionalization, organizational practices, Diffusion, Adoption, Decoupling International Journal of Organizational Analysis International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 Deinstitutionalization revisited Abstract. Purpose: The aim of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural consequence of ever-increasing entropy seems to directly contradict the major institutional thesis, namely, that over time isomorphic forces increase and, as a result, possibilities for deinstitutionalization decrease culminating in the impossibility of abandoning in highly institutionalized fields. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is conceptual in nature. Findings: We argue that possibilities for deinstitutionalization have been overestimated in institutional literature and offer a revisited account of deinstitutionalization vs. institutional isomorphism and institutionalized vs. highly diffusing-but-not-institutionalized practices. A freedom for choice between alternative practices exists during the pre-institutional stage but not when the field is already institutionalized. In contrast, institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices are immutable to any sort of functional and political pressures and they use to persist even when no technical value remains thus deinstitutionalization on the basis of a functional dissatisfaction seems to be a paradox. Originality/Value: We offer a solution to this theoretical inconsistency by distinguishing between truly institutionalized practices and currently popular practices (highly diffused but noninstitutionalized). It is only the latter that are subject to the norms of progress that allow abandoning and replacing existing organizational activities. Deinstitutionalization theory is thus can be applied to popular practices that are subject to reevaluation, abandonment and replacement with new optimal practices while institutions are immutable to these norms of progress. Institutions are immutable to deinstitutionalization and the deinstitutionalization of optimal practices is subject to the logic of isomorphic convergence in organizational fields. Finally, we revisit a traditional two-stage institutional diffusion model in order to explain the possibility and likelihood of abandonment during different stages of institutionalization. Research Implications/limitations: By revisiting the nature and patterns of deinstitutionalization, the paper offers a better conceptual classification and understanding of how organizations adopt, maintain and abandon organizational ideas and practices. An important task of this paper is to reduce the scope of application of deinstitutionalization theory to make it more focused and self-consistent. There is however still not enough volume of studies on Page 1 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 2 institutional factors of practices’ abandonment in institutional literature. We therefore acknowledge that more studies are needed in order to further improve both the former deinstitutionalization theory and our framework. Keywords: institutional theory, deinstitutionalization, organizational practices, diffusion, adoption, decoupling. “More commonly the term institution is applied to those features of social life which outlast biological generations or survive drastic social changes that might have been expected to bring them to an end. . . A ceremony may be celebrated by people who no longer know its origin and would repudiate its first meaning if they but knew it. A once technically useful means of achieving some known end persists as an accepted and even sacred practice after better technical devices have been invented” (Hughes, 1939: 283-284). 1. Introduction. Almost any scientific theory as it evolves over time finds itself limited by established boundaries (Popper, 1963; Weinert, 1994; Bokulich and Bokulich, 2005;) and begins facing empirical anomalies and theoretical inconsistencies (Laudan, 1977; Niiniluoto, 1984). New domains of experience and new phenomena emerge that existing theory either can’t explain or its explanations create ambiguities and logical incommensurability between internal theoretical claims and/or with explanations of rivalry theory which provide either equally possible accounts or even better solve the perceived problem (Laudan, 1977). It is argued in this paper that institutional theory experiences a number of theoretical puzzles and inconsistencies that the former institutional isomorphism theory, management fashion theory and deinstitutionalization framework create when considered as constituencies of a common theoretical program. If institutionalized organizational practices come to be seen as “the only natural and obvious way to conduct an activity” (Oliver, 1992:565), if they persist and survive drastic social changes, being accepted and celebrated while “exist[ing] without obvious technical or economic value” (Staw and Epstein, 2000:524) or “when better technical solutions have been invented” (Hughes, 1939:283-284) then how these institutions can be deinstitutionalized? If nature and power of institutions are of a higher order than individuals and/or group of individuals (Jepperson, 2002; Schneiberg and Clemens, 2006), how actors can recognize the need and possibility of reevaluating and abandoning something that by definition is beyond any evaluation and doubts? How deinstitutionalization is possible given that the field is governed and structured by everPage 2 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 3 increasing isomorphic forces that after some point in the field evolution lock organizations up into the iron cage of institutional conformity, stability and inertia? How the concept of decoupling can be reconciled with deinstitutionalization given that according to institutional theory rational myths from the very beginning are inconsistent with ongoing activities and internal functional needs are decoupled from adopted practice? And at the same time, how then the fact can be explained that many once-successful practices nevertheless fade away and disappear, being replaced by newer solutions (Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999; Green, 2004; Strang et al., 2014; Dacin et al., 2010; Aksom, 2021; Raynard et al., 2021)? We offer answers to these and related theoretical questions and reconcile them into the same coherent, noncontradicting framework as different refinements of a single institutional theory formulated in Meyer and Rowan (1977) and DiMaggio and Powell (1983). In doing so we revisit both adoption and abandonment patterns and limits. The phenomenological version of institutional theory is not a theory of pragmatic and cynical evaluations and calculations; organizations perceive truly institutionalized practices as social facts and institutional criteria for evaluation are used to be understood as objective reality (Jepperson, 2002). On the other hand, theories of institutional change and, in particular, a theory of deinstitutionalization developed by Christine Oliver in her 1992 paper claim that even highly institutionalized practices and behaviors associated with them can experience a decline of legitimacy, erosion and subsequent abandonment when political, functional and social factors of deinstitutionalization are strong enough and outweigh institutional inertia (Dacin et al., 2002; Greenwood et al., 2002; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). In this paper, we argue that although being a milestone and landmark advancement in institutional theory, this is nevertheless an overly optimistic depiction of institutional dynamics in organizational fields and we offer an alternative account that sees organizational fields’ evolution as a trend towards ever-increasing institutionalization and isomorphism while deinstitutionalization attempts are getting weaker and are inversely proportional to institutional convergence. The higher is the institutionalization of the field and isomorphic pressures towards convergence and stability, the weaker are the forces of entropy. We argue that deinstitutionalization of truly institutionalized practices cannot occur linearly in a reversal manner – back from institutionalization via bandwagon-like rejection. In contrast to non-institutionalized practices, institutions cannot be subject to reevaluations, doubts and abandonment. Confusing institutions and non-institutionalized although popular practices means confusing institutionalization with diffusion, persistence with temporal persistence and overestimating both the number of institutions and the number of abandonment cases. The Page 3 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 4 possibility and the scope of deinstitutionalization are therefore much more limited than it is used to be considered. We offer a solution to the theoretical inconsistency between DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) model of ever increasing institutionalization and isomorphic pressures towards stability and conformity and Oliver’s (1992) deinstitutionalization thesis by distinguishing between completely institutionalized practices and currently highly-diffused, optimal but noninstitutionalized practices. It is only the later that are subject to the norm of progress (Abrahamson, 1996) which allows abandonment and replacement of existing organizational activities (Oliver, 1992; Green, 2004; Dacin and Dacin, 2008; Dacin et al., 2019). Oliver’s theory is thus can be applied to non-institutionalized practices that are subject to reevaluation, abandonment and replacement with new optimal practices while institutions are immutable to these norms of progress. Institutions are immutable to deinstitutionalization and the deinstitutionalization of popular practices is subject to the logic of isomorphic convergence in organizational fields. Our reassessment of deinstitutionalization prospects culminates in a reinterpretation of isomorphic diffusion from the perspective of abandoning possibilities. A standard institutional account of adoption, diffusion and institutionalization focuses on adoption motivation, remaining silent about abandonment. In particular, Kennedy and Fiss’ (2009) matrix of motivations holds for adoption decisions but this logic cannot be applied to abandonment decisions. We revisit a traditional two-stage institutional diffusion model in order to explain the possibility of abandonment for early and later adopters. While recent institutional diffusion studies argued for acknowledging the broader motivation to adopt for both early and later adopters (Kennedy and Fiss, 2009), our framework suggests that during the course of institutionalization abandoning ability decreases and is restricted by institutional pressures. Revisiting the possibilities for deinstitutionalization opens the possibility to predict the likelihood of abandonment during different stages of institutionalization. We argue that while the institutionalization model may not clearly and accurately reflect adopters’ motivation (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2009; Suddaby, 2010), this institutional trajectory clearly captures and indicates a gradual decrease in the possibility for abandoning once adopted practice. They may have different and often mixed motivation for adoption, but ever-increasing institutional forces towards isomorphism restrict and reduce their ability for deinstitutionalization at each stage of institutionalization. Neither individual cases of abandonment nor a general deinstitutionalization of certain organizational practice in the field are possible when the field has crossed the threshold of institutionalization as soon as institutional pressures outweigh the forces of entropy. Finally, we locate a notion of Page 4 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 5 decoupling in this framework, which, at the first sight, seems to contradict with the notion of abandonment/deinstitutionalization. 2. Defining the nature, scope and dimensions of deinstitutionalization Diffusion of organizational innovations researchers typically focus on four interrelated questions: 1) how and why efficient innovations diffuse (first stage of DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), 2) how and why inefficient innovations diffuse, 3) how and why efficient innovations do not diffuse or disappear over time and 4) how and why inefficient innovations disappear. Institutional theory successfully answered questions 1, 2 and 3, distinguishing between early and later adopters and referring to institutional norms, beliefs and understandings that to some extent substitute rational calculations and drive diffusion and institutionalization. Deinstitutionalization theory aimed at answering the last question, the most puzzling one from the perspective of new institutionalism, namely, how already established and taken-for-granted practices lose their legitimacy and disappear (Becker, 2014). The theory of deinstitutionalization, in fact, has covered both technical and legitimacy crisis that lead organizations to “challenge, discard or abandon legitimated or institutionalized organizational practices” (1992:564). In this respect, deinstitutionalization has been defined as “the process by which the legitimacy of an established or institutionalized organizational practice erodes or discontinues” and refers to “the delegitimation of an established organizational practice or procedure as a result of organizational challenges to or the failure of organizations to reproduce previously legitimated or taken-for-granted organizational actions.” (Oliver, 1992:564). In her seminal paper, Oliver included both technical and social factors as causes of deinstitutionalization and we would also operationalize both of these dimensions in the present paper. We however offer a more narrow definition of deinstitutionalization as our understanding of this process excludes truly institutionalized practices and instead only non-institutionalized practices are subject to deinstitutionalization. We thus define deinstitutionalization as a reversal diffusion of noninstitutionalized practices when adoption rate decreases due to the changes or/and erosion of technical or/and institutional value at the macro-level or/and an abandonment of noninstitutionalized practice by a single organization due to the decrease in technical and social value. Page 5 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 6 This definition does not refer to completely institutionalized practices but implies a rejection of established but not completely socially institutionalized innovations. By referring to institutionalization and deinstitutionalization we assume that any organizational innovation diffuses and evolves simultaneously within two dimensions – technical and institutional (Zbaracki, 1998). Almost any organizational and management innovation emerges as a purely technical solution to some perceived technical problem (irrespective of whether this problem really exists). Diffusion often implies institutional value infusion, that is, the social importance of the practice per se, beyond its technical value. This doesn’t preclude that technical value can be completely replaced and disappear, leaving only social value. In this case innovations either become institutions immutable to deinstitutionalization efforts or such innovations are reevaluated, abandoned and replaced by better alternatives if complete institutionalization has not been achieved by that time while organizations are disappointed by the loss of technical value (Abrahamson, 1991; 1996; Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999). In many typical cases, as Kennedy and Fiss claimed, adopters may be interested in both efficiency and legitimacy as a strategic advantage (Suchman, 1995) at both early and later stages of diffusion. We only want to specify here that Kennedy and Fiss’ model can be applied to non-institutionalized practices that do not acquire a taken-for-granted cognitive status. Oliver’s deinstitutionalization theory can be deduced from K&F (2009) model since her political, functional and social pressures for deinstitutionalization although inapplicable to institutionalized practices are fully true and valid for those cases where adopters are driven by pragmatic search for legitimacy and efficiency as a strategic resource and when they frame economic and technical advantages and disadvantages as opportunities versus threats (Abrahamson and Rosenkopf, 1993; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009). Summing up, deinstitutionalization is applicable to those practices that are non-institutionalized but have economic and/or social value. Our conceptualization of deinstitutionalization and our disentangling between institutionalized practices and highly diffused but non-institutionalized practices (Green, 2004) allow escaping an often-cited ambiguity in institutional theory that equates highly diffused practices with institutionalization and abandonment of these practices with deinstitutionalization (Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999; Green, 2004; Boxenbaum and Jonson, 2008; Greenwood et al., 2008). In most cases highly diffused practices are not institutionalized and DiMaggio and Powell and Meyer and Rowan limit their analysis by focusing only on institutional fields where isomorphic processes are stronger than the competition. Decoupling diffusion and institutionalized taken-forgrantedness allows further explaining why popular practices decline and disappear and why truly institutionalized practices are immune to deinstitutionalization and persist. Page 6 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 7 3. Diffusion vs. institutionalization, abandonment vs. deinstitutionalization. Diffusion, adoption, maintenance and abandonment of organizational practices belong to key topics in organizational and management literature (Abrahamson, 1991; 1996; Kostova, 1999; Mazza and Alvarez, 2000; Sturdy, 2004; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009; Ansari et al., 2010; Dacin et al., 2010; Colyvas and Jonsson, 2011; Rovik, 2011; Siebert et al., 2017; Gidley, 2020). As researchers acknowledge, among hundreds of management ideas, concepts and techniques, few diffuse broadly and become organizational standards (Staw and Epstein, 2000; Green, 2004). Instead, most organizational innovations emerge and disappear, giving way to new innovations (Zucker, 1989; Green, 2004; Abrahamson, 1996; Benders an van Veen, 2001; Aksom, 2021). There is some sort of ambiguity in institutional literature when diffusion and institutionalization is equated and wide diffusion is taken as an indicator that popular practices, structures and models have become institutionalized (Benders and van Veen, 2001; Colyvas and Jonsson, 2011). First, organizational practices can diffuse widely, being adopted in most companies but at the same time, this diffusion is not associated with institutionalization. That is, they are adopted, probably having some social value but even a high rate of adoption and social benefits from adoption do not signal institutionalization. This wide diffusion doesn’t result in institutional persistence. Instead, after some period of time, these practices lose their technical and social advantage and fade away, being abandoned and replaced with new innovative solutions. Second, as management fashion researchers demonstrate, there may be a rapid increase in popularity and media attention but this wide media coverage doesn’t result in adoptions (Benders and van Veen, 2001; Rovik, 2011). As such, a pattern of action that has not become taken-for-granted and associated with natural enactment and objective reality (R.Meyer, 2008) is subject to reevaluation and abandonment almost by default as Abrahamson (1996) demonstrated in his management fashion theory. When diffusion is equated with institutionalization it is possible to talk about deinstitutionalization but in fact, researchers deal with the abandonment of currently optimal practices that are subject to the norms of progress: they are not only open for reevaluation and rejection as they become obsolete but the very logic of institutional criteria of rationality implies that management techniques and practices should be regularly revisited and replaced. By discarding exiting practices and adopting new promising solutions organizations demonstrate their ability to be modern and progressive (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Meyer, 1983; Mellemvik et al., 1988; Abrahamson, 1996). Oliver (1992) uses and applies the notion of deinstitutionalization Page 7 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 14 rejection of efficient and inefficient innovation they mobilize these two institutional constructions in order to distinguish between the ability to rely on internal technical needs and the propensity to be motivated by social influences. When Oliver refers to the lack of functional utility as an explanation for disappointment and deinstitutionalization she distinguishes between rational considerations and legitimacy-based judgments. Whether innovations really have technical and economic value or the benefits they offer are only symbolic signal of progress, the major point is whether potential adopters are able to judge them as beneficial or risky. 6. Institutionalized practices vs. highly diffused practices In the next section, we compare truly institutionalized practices with weakly or noninstitutionalized popular practices along different dimensions such as the type of legitimacy, motivation for adoption, the ability for reevaluation and abandonment and adoption outcomes in order to understand their evolution and adopters’ behavior. In the end, it will be possible to clearly outline and delineate the scope of institutional explanations of abandonment and deinstitutionalization. 6.1. The impossibility of reversal institutional trajectory and deinstitutionalization The distinction between these two types of states is drawn on the basis of what happens to innovations after their adoption and on the extent of institutionalization. Institutional theory as well as diffusion theory (Rogers, 2003) have been frequently criticized for their lack of attention and explanatory power with regard to the post-adoption period (Zeitz et al., 1999; Sahlin and Wedlin, 2008; Rovik, 2011). Deinstitutionalization theory aims at answering two urgent questions that the former institutional theory has been silent about – what happens after a decision to adopt and how institutionalized practices disappear. Deinstitutionalization theory assumes that institutional diffusion trajectory, that is, the movement towards complete isomorphism and institutionalization can be simply reversed (Zeitz et al., 1999; Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999; Green, 2004). In turn, this argument is based on the assumption that diffusion reflects institutionalization: the increase in the number of adoptions signals an increase in the institutionalization and, in the same vein, the decrease in the number of adopters (or increasing number of abandonments) signals decrease in legitimacy and deinstitutionalization. According to Oliver’s assumption, if institutional theory explains Page 14 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 15 widespread diffusion and adoption by referring to ever increasing institutionalization of organizational practices and their increase in legitimacy which organizations value, then the backward direction is equally possible: legitimacy may erode and disappear and the number of adopters decrease, reflecting the reversed institutional trajectory – from institutionalization to deinstitutionalization, from global, widespread acceptance to equally widespread erosion and rejection as these practices do not provide technical and social benefits anymore. However, such reversal movement, while typical for non-institutionalized practices and techniques is impossible for institutionalized practices and forms since they have reached the point where they are immutable to rational consideration and, in contrast, to the former institutional move, organizations cannot anymore critically evaluate and make decisions to adopt or ignore innovations. After institutionalization such practices are taken-for-granted as social facts and independent objective reality. The taken for granted quality of institutions prevents them from being called into question, reevaluated and abandoned. This model of deinstitutionalization is moreover problematic since Oliver attempted to explain the second stage of diffusion, namely, dissemination and adoptions caused by legitimacy-seeking behavior by referring to the motivation typical only for early adopters during the pre-institutional stage of diffusion. Her deinstitutionalization framework extrapolates early adopters’ ability for choice to all adopters after the field institutionalization and isomorphic convergence. Explanation of early adopters’ implementation differs substantively from explaining later adopters. Namely, for late adopters “a threshold is reached beyond which adoption provides legitimacy rather than improves performance” (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983:148) and practice proliferation cannot be explained anymore by rational considerations and efficiency concerns. Both early and late adopters are subject to the forces that dominate after field institutionalization. Instead, deinstitutionalization theory predicts that institutionalized practices are sensitive to loss of taken-for-granted status and subsequent abandonment when functional and social benefits disappear or weaken: “The perceived worth of an institutional practice, however, is not invulnerable to re-evaluation or reconsideration in technical terms. Deinstitutionalization may be the consequence of changes to the perceived utility or technical instrumentality... These changes are predicted to occur when institutional constituents in the environment withdraw the rewards associated with sustaining an institutionalized organizational activity; when social and economic criteria of organizational success begin to conflict significantly with one another; and when the organization experiences an increase in its technical specificity or goal clarity. These changes may also be tied to environmental changes, including intensified competition for resources and the emergence of Page 15 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 16 dissonant information or unexpected events in the environment that directly challenge the advisability of sustaining an institutional activity. An institutionalized activity may discontinue or decay because its perpetuation is no longer rewarding” (Oliver, 1992:571). When Oliver explains deinstitutionalization by arguing that institutionalized practices can be called into question, weaken and erode as a result of failing to offer utility and/or legitimacy she seems to mobilize the explanations that can be applied only to non-institutionalized practices such as management fashions. In fact, the nature of institutions and the logic of their persistence suggest that neither the decline in technical value nor the erosion of legitimacy benefits can fuel the deinstitutionalization of truly institutionalized practices. Institutions would be maintained and celebrated even when these practices, organizational forms and behaviors are useless, nonbeneficial, costing in some sense and ridiculously obsolete. Returning to our characteristics of institutions, their two features, namely, ability to persist without functional utility and being independent of any critics of obsolesce allow them to avoid the lifecycle typical for most noninstitutionalized practices. 6.2. Distinguishing sociopolitical (strategic) and cognitive legitimacy in popular practices and institutions Our division between non-institutionalized and institutionalized practices finds a correspondence with institutional literature on legitimacy (Suchman, 1995; Tost, 2011; Bitektine, 2011; Suddaby et al., 2017). In particular, for non-institutionalized practices legitimacy constitutes an operational resource which they compete for together with efficiency motives. When institutional researchers claim that early and/or later adopters have motivation to appear legitimate they refer to the legitimacy of non-institutionalized practices and structures as organizations do not yet perceive these forms as cognitively taken-for-granted and objective reality. They afraid of losing legitimacy and they aim at gaining it. In contrast, institutionalized practices are excluded from being evaluated as socially attractive or undesirable: organizations cannot judge them anymore as risk or opportunity (Kennedy and Fiss, 2009). “The instrumental reward is, at most, a peripheral component of the larger cultural construct” (Suchman, 1995:576) and usually institutions rest upon cognitive legitimacy without Page 16 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 17 any dependence on technical value. Organizations cannot extract legitimacy from institutionalized practice simply because they don’t consider this practice through the prism of benefits and this practice cannot lose legitimacy and social attractiveness like noninstitutionalized practice does. It is the later that is a subject to the norm of progress and abandonment over time as strategic legitimacy is lost and new practices that signal innovativeness, modernity and progress replace them on the market of management solutions (Abrahamson, 1996). External or socio-political legitimacy (Suchman, 1995) allows organizations to be perceived as a proper and legitimate unit of the system while internal, cognitive legitimacy is about organizations’ social reality, how its members understand and perceive institutional reality (Berger and Luckman, 1967). In the first case they can critically scrutinize practices and abandon them while internally legitimate institutions constitute the reality that organizations live in. Institutions manifest themselves through cognitive exteriority and objectivity; other alternatives are unthinkable (Zucker, 1987) and the very possibility for interests and evaluations excluded (Suchman, 1995; Berger and Luckman, 1967). Socio-political legitimacy is typical for popular non-institutionalized practices that are open for evaluation, reassessment and abandonment. It is an external socio-political legitimacy that enables organizations to consider popular practices as beneficial or no longer rewarding in both economic and social terms (Oliver, 1992; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009). These two different dimensions of legitimacy have been confused in deinstitutionalization theory: sociopolitical legitimacy (external) is built and depends upon critical evaluations and by adopting such practices organizations adopt and reject them on the basis of technical efficiency and legitimacy gains. In order to do this, legitimacy must be visible and recognizable. And this feature prevents full institutionalization where sociopolitical legitimacy evolves into cognitive legitimacy and subsequently escapes critical evaluation and reassessment. The first type of legitimacy is typical for management fashions and other transitory practices while cognitive legitimacy is what distinguishes institutionalized practices from non-institutionalized. In the case of truly institutionalized practices organizations do not concern about others’ opinion or selfsatisfaction with institutions. They do not evaluate, doubt or manipulate in any other way with cognitively legitimate institutions. They don’t think about them – they simply know them as objective reality. Again, when researchers refer to strategies and actions that organizations and individuals take in order to manipulate legitimacy, they capture the processes of external legitimacy issues that Page 17 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 18 organizations face with non-institutionalized forms and practices. They gain, maintain, repair and lose legitimacy by adopting, maintaining or abandoning legitimate yet non-institutionalized practices (Oliver, 1992; Suchman, 1995; Abrahamson, 1996; Aksom, 2021). Oliver refers to non-institutionalized practices with socio-political legitimacy-as-resource (Suchman, 1995) when she offered examples of deinstitutionalization caused by the legitimacy crisis. Similarly, studies where socio-political legitimacy manipulations examined deal with non-institutionalized practices and forms. 6.4. Decoupling vs. deinstitutionalization The problem with the most popular understanding of decoupling as a deliberate manipulation and window-dressing (Meyer and Rowan, 1977) not only contradicts with the ontology of institutional theory (Tolbert and Zucker, 1996; Haack and Schoeneborn, 2015) but the very inconsistency between predictions of decoupling and deinstitutionalization directly follows as a problem that needs to be solved if one aims to maintain both notions. The question that arises is How deinstitutionalization is possible and whether it is needed given that organizational already decouple adopted practices and structures from ongoing activities? Put differently, the notion of decoupling creates the following logical inconsistencies: 1. If adopting organization intentionally decouples institutional practice from ongoing activities, then this practice has no impact on performance and no need to reevaluate and abandon arises over time. Organizations cannot abandon existing practices due to functional, political and social problems since these factors have no impact on decoupled practice; 2. Deliberate decoupling cannot be attributed to truly institutionalized practice which should be perceived as fact and “come to take on a rulelike status in social thought and action” (Meyer and Rowan, 1977:341). An organizational element that is not practiced is not institutionalized (Tolbert and Zucker, 1996). Institutional literature provides two consequences of post-adoption behavior: organizations either 1) enact adopted institutional practices or 2) decouple them from actual activities. In turn, decoupling can be between policy and practice and between means and ends (Bromley and Powell, 2012). It follows that enacted practices cannot be deinstitutionalized while decoupled Page 18 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 19 structures have no impact on social and technical considerations as organizations disintegrate functional utility and social value from the very beginning. Policy-practice decoupling ensures that institutional form has no impact on ongoing activities while means-ends decoupling is unconscious failure to enact adopted practices in a proper way. In the first case, decoupled practices cannot raise “doubts about the instrumental value of an institutionalized practice” (1992:571). For truly institutionalized practices, together with abandonment, deliberate and intentional decoupling is impossible because organizations can’t manipulate institutions as they can’t manipulate something they perceive as objective reality. A “conscious disconnect between organizational practice and organizational structure” (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008:80) is impossible. Here again, we need to distinguish decoupling between adoption and use in terms of realist accounts (Staw and Epstein, 2000) and decoupling as it is conceptualized in Meyer’s writings (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Meyer et al., 1997). The former type of decoupling has been illustrated by Staw and Epstein (2000) in their analysis of decoupled but legitimacy-conferring practices. Means-ends decoupling is possible for both institutions and fashions as organizations technically can’t implement intended changes or don’t realize that implementation is limited due to the lack of information or misunderstanding (Bromley and Powell, 2012; Malmi, 1997). For example, organizations want deliberately adopt and implement performance measurement systems but fail to understand or lack a detailed scheme and algorithm for design and mobilization. In this case, it cannot be said that organizations intentionally decouple institutional practice from ongoing activities. Similarly, an organization may maintain and even use information processing systems and practice but ignore the information they gather and decouple it from decision-making process (Feldman and March, 1981; Malmi, 1997; Mättö and Sippola, 2016). Thus, although it is a kind of decoupling between adoption and use (Li, 2017) it doesn’t signal symbolic benefits in terms of collective approval and demonstrated conformity with institutional norms (although it may provide such value); instead, it is the way organizations reflect “objective” social reality in its structure as they take their “reality and “knowledge” for granted (Berger and Luckman, 1967; Bitektine and Haack, 2015). Education is taken for granted and everybody “knows” that it is the most rational and progressive expression of state policy (Meyer et al., 1997; Meyer, 1977) but most organizations in post soviet area simply cannot implement it in technical terms. Although education models rest on claims of universal applicability and are presumed to be applicable everywhere, Ukrainian, Belarusian or Russian higher education institutions fail to implement and teach according to world standards because, in particular in social sciences universities are constructed from the soviet tradition of total isolation from the global academic community and the absence of research requirements for career promotion (Aksom, 2018). For many post-soviet countries and universities adopting Page 19 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 20 modern education policies means adopting slogans and most of them really perceive these changes as a true implementation of modern effective education policies. For these organizations, there is no decoupling between saying and doing because they do not recognize this disintegration due to their isolation from the global community. Conscious manipulations with legitimacy and subsequent decoupling or coupling of institutionally valued practices and structures and ongoing activities are possible only when organizations deal with non-institutionalized practices and structures. In this case, decoupling is a means for achieving social benefits from adopting popular practices. When these practices do not provide social value anymore, decoupled practices are abandoned at all: organizations discontinue pragmatic maintenance. At the same time, truly institutionalized practices are either 1) cannot be decoupled due to their reality status or 2) they are decoupled unintentionally, without having in mind pragmatic institutional benefits. Institutions cannot be decoupled in a traditional realist sense – only non-institutionalized practices can be. Also as universal and abstract taken-for-granted practices and structures, institutions cannot fit all organizations (Meyer et al., 1997) but non-institutionalized practices can (Ansari et al., 2010). Meyer and Rowan’s theory can be read as a theory of pragmatic manipulation when organizations must consciously adopt structures that they can socially benefit from and reduce risks of non-adopting while pretending to be proper organizations and at the same time decoupling institutional structure and actual practices. But the key to the understanding of their theory may be found in Meyer’s 1977 single-authored paper where he clearly referred to the cognitive legitimacy of institutions as social facts. In this respect, M&R1977 refers to the reality that organizations join because they “know” this is the only natural and obvious way. That institutional isomorphism promotes the success and survival of an organization is a consequence that organizations initially do not aim at. When they lag behind this reality they experience losses in legitimacy but this is the process that is not connected to organizational motivation. As individuals are not aware they are victims of propaganda, they are not aware that institutional influence defines and drives their actions and behavior. They perceive social purposes and criteria as technical ones and vice versa, institutions mask social purposes as objective technical criteria2. In this paper, we offer a reconceptualization of decoupling when looking at this phenomenon from the perspective of abandonment efforts. In order to understand this notion more deeply, it is 2 “rationalized and impersonal prescriptions that identify various social purposes as technical ones and specify in a rulelike way the appropriate means to pursue these technical purposes rationally” (Meter and Rowan, 1977:343). Page 20 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 21 essential to examine it from the standpoint of later adopters who are not satisfied with adopted practice but cannot reject it due to ever-increasing institutional pressures towards conformity (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Kraatz and Zajac, 1996). Decoupling signals different motivations for adoption that occur at different stages of institutionalization. For early adopters decoupling is a special case of adopting for social benefits (Staw and Epstein,2000; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009), for later adopters, it is the only available option when they cannot ignore institutional pressures to adopt and when they cannot abandon it anymore. The act is similar for both types of adopters but for early adopters it is a manifestation or voluntary adoption while for later adopters it is a coerced decision under institutional pressures. When institutional threshold reaches the point when institutional pressures are stronger than entropy, adopters cannot ignore innovation and they cannot abandon it once they have adopted it. Therefore the notion of decoupling experiences different stages of evolution depending on the stage of institutionalization and for each stage decoupling signals qualitatively different motivation for adoption and ability to adopt and abandon. While a traditional assumption in institutional and diffusion literature holds that abandoning a once adopted practice is a matter of learning and subsequent reassessment and dissatisfaction, institutional theory maintains that institutional pressures prevent organizations from abandoning institutionally approved practices. Thus while the deinstitutionalization perspective assumes that organizations would abandon irrelevant practices, we challenge this optimistic depiction arguing that decoupling is the only compromise available to late adopters. Finally, for completely institutionalized practice a means-ends decoupling signals unintended consequences of the inability to implement an abstract solution to the local problem due to ambiguity (Meyer et al., 1997; Meyer, 2010). Policy-practice decoupling is impossible at this stage (see Tolbert and Zucker, 1996). 7. Abandoning popular organizational practices In order to explore and understand the limits of actors’ ability to abandon popular and institutionally accepted organizational practices it is important to revisit Tolbert and Zucker’s (1983) classical diffusion model from the perspective of abandonment rather than adoption (Oliver, 1992; Younkin, 2016). For the purpose of this study we focus on what actors cannot do and why rather than what they can and what is their motivation. In these terms we extend Oliver’s initial question about actors’ ability to abandon institutionalized practices by attending their ability to abandon at each stage of institutionalization. This question is relevant for both Page 21 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 22 early and later adopters and for different stages of institutionalization and extents of institutional pressures. The problem of deinstitutionalization, after all, can be solved only in relation to other states of institutionalization and against the whole specter of adopters. The key conclusion of early institutional studies implies that motivations for adoption shift over time as innovations diffuse and proliferate (Tolbert and Zucker, 1983; Palmer et al., 1993; Abrahamson and Rosenkopf, 1993; Westphal et al., 1997). Early adopters are primarily interested in economic and technical benefits while later adopters are interested in improving their social position in the field irrespective to real internal needs. Modern modifications and extensions claim that both motivations can coexist and they do not exclude each other at any stage of diffusion (Kennedy and Fiss, 2009; Compagni et al., 2015). In contrast, we argue that while the institutionalization model may not clearly and accurately reflect adopters’ motivation (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2009; Suddaby, 2010), this institutional trajectory clearly captures and indicates a gradual decrease in the possibility for abandoning once adopted practice. They may have different and often mixed motivation for adoption, but ever-increasing institutional forces towards isomorphism restrict and reduce their ability for deinstitutionalization at each stage of institutionalization. The main implication here for the two-stage diffusion model of institutionalization is that the second stage is not so much about adopters’ search for social gains but rather about their inability to deviate and resist institutional pressures. During the early stages of institutionalization, adopters can adopt in a desire to benefit either in terms of economic benefits or social gains (Kennedy and Fiss, 2009). For later adopters, once the threshold is crossed, the motivation shifts from desires and ability to adopt and benefit towards the inability to either ignore widely diffused practices or abandon them despite dissatisfaction during the later stages of institutionalization. In this latter case, the policy-practice decoupling is the only option that remains in response to institutional pressures. 7.1. The scope, limits and possibilities for abandonment In previous sections we have discussed two main arguments of this paper, namely that organizational theorists use to overestimate 1) the number of institutions and 2) the ease of abandoning institutions. But while institutions researchers overestimate their number and underestimate their stability, for non-institutionalized popular practices it is also a tendency to overestimate adopters’ ability to abandon them. In order to hypothesize when adopters are more likely to abandon or maintain popular practices we offer a framework where different stages of diffusion, motivation and adoption outcomes are interlinked. Instead of focusing on adoption and Page 22 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 23 diffusion, we analyze a two-stage institutional diffusion model from the perspective of abandonment prospects. In this century Staw and Epstein (2000), Kennedy and Fiss (2009) and Compagni, Mele and Ravasi (2015) have fundamentally revisited the classical two-stage model of institutional diffusion. For them, legitimacy-seeking behavior does not preclude efficiency motives and organizations may be interested in both resources in their decisions to adopt, maintain and reject popular practices. Their models reduce and narrow the scope of the domain of institutional theory in two important ways. First, they exclude institutionalized practices from their analysis as adopters in their model can clearly recognize, evaluate and reevaluate institutional factors as if they could have recognized and judge institutions. Second, as they incorporate such explanations as learning or dissatisfaction with economic benefits (Greenwood et al., 2008; Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008) they delineate the boundary of institutional explanations as they acknowledge alternative plausible explanations. In order to find out the patterns in revisited two-stage model we put a third limitation on institutional explanation by limiting the likelihood of abandoning after the threshold has been crossed – an explanation derived from DiMaggio and Powell (1983). The analysis and theoretical explanation of practices abandonment requires reconciling and integrating three widely acknowledged claims in institutional theory: 1. Both early and later adopters may be motivated by both economic and social benefits (Staw and Epstein, 2000; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009) and they can abandon adopted practice once they are believed to be no more valuable in economic or/and social terms (Oliver, 1992); 2. Few organizational practices become institutions (Zucker, 1988) while most practices routinely emerge and disappear, being replaced by new solutions. As such, organizations abandon practices when they cannot extract or are dissatisfied with economic and/or social benefits (Abrahamson, 1996; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009); 3. Institutions are characterized by their stability and persistence and they do not depend on any pragmatic benefits and can be evaluated and scrutinized against risks and opportunities. Organizations take them for granted and even for highly popular but noninstitutionalized practices after some point in isomorphic convergence organizations are no more able to change contrary to institutional demands and abandon practices with strong institutional support (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983); When putting these arguments together and building a causal relationship between them we would get the following self-contradicting picture of institutional dynamics: Page 23 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 30 adopt and abandon practices. The major challenge we sought to overcome is the inconsistency various developments since Meyer and Rowan and DiMaggio and Powell’s papers brought into once coherent and consistent institutional theory. As different explanations of adoption, maintenance and abandonment used to blur, fragment and isolate institutional isomorphism theory, empower actors and restrict institutions, we aimed at restoring the prevalence of institutional forces over actors’ interests, power and consciousness (Schneiberg and Clemens, 2006; Suddaby, 2010). Responding to the call for explaining the coexistence of institutional persistence and transience in organizational concepts’ lifecycles we offer an explanation of these divergent evolutionary trajectories by revisiting all stages of institutional diffusion in a way that puts boundaries on theoretical explanations by specifying what, when and why should be expected within certain conditions and which instances are not likely and impossible at all. To explain change and agency means subordinate and limit their role compared with institutional effects. Moreover, explanations should strive towards simplicity instead of inflating the theoretical apparatus of institutional theory by tinkering artificial ad hoc hypotheses. The division between institutionalized and non-institutionalized practices reflects the distinction between different types of legitimacy, different post-adoption outcomes that range from acquiesce to decoupling and, after all, different possibilities for abandoning organizational practices. Only truly institutionalized practices leave no alternatives but acquiesce (Zucker, 1987). In turn, policy-practice decoupling signals that practice is not institutionalized. Tolbert and Zucker (1996) asked the relevant question when they wondered whether decoupled structure is actually institutionalized. It is not. Policy-practice decoupling is one of the strategies organizations undertake when they are early and later adopters of popular but noninstitutionalized practice. The framework we have outlined in this paper helps explaining different patterns of diffusion and institutional trajectories various organizational forms and practices take during the course of their life cycle. In particular, we explain 1) why most organizational practices do not become institutions, being abandoned much earlier, 2) why some practices can be easily abandoned while others survive the turnover period and become immune from abandonment even before complete institutionalization and 3) why completely institutionalized practices cannot be abandoned. Studying and understanding deinstitutionalization and abandonment is important in at least one way: the inability to abandon existing organizational routines has crucial implications for organizations and their adaptation and evolving prospects. If organizations cannot abandon some fundamental but obsolete practice means they do not implement new solutions that are Page 30 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 31 incompatible with old routines. It is especially true for those organizational and management innovations which cannot simply be installed at the top of existing solutions but require a space for implementation and abandonment of existing routines. Limitations and implications for future research. There is still not enough volume of studies on institutional factors of practices’ abandonment in institutional literature. We therefore acknowledge that more studies are needed in order to further improve both the former deinstitutionalization theory (Oliver, 1992) and our framework. 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Stages of organizational practices’ lifecycles and the extent of diffusion and institutionalization Economic/social benefits/losses New practices (early adopters) Early adopters can freely adopt and abandon practice as they learn from adoption and access whether this practice fit for them (Tolbert and Zucker, 1983; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Staw and Epstein, 2000; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009) Before the threshold Abandonment is likely and predefined by the logic of the norms of progress (Abrahamson, 1996) Highly-diffused but non-institutionalized practices (later adopters) After the threshold Abandonment is not likely due to isomorphic convergence that is stronger that entropy and individual agency Page 35 of 36 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 International Journal of Organizational Analysis 36 Institutionalized practices Deinstitutionalization is not possible Table 1. Stages of organizational practices’ lifecycles, the extent of diffusion and institutionalization and the possibility of abandoning practices. Page 36 of 36International Journal of Organizational Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 View publication statsView publication stats