Neo‐Institutional Theory

The relationship between neo‐institutional theory and strategic communication can be analyzed on three levels. First, institutionalization processes occur in the field of strategic communication. This perspective helps to understand how practices, routines, and structures of strategic communication develop, change, or evolve in different organizational settings. Second, the role of strategic communication in creating, maintaining, and changing institutions sheds light on the crucial role of communication. Third, the use of strategic communication within institutional theory explains how institutional mechanisms work. This entry describes how institutional theory evolved in relationship to strategic communication. It introduces the analytical framework of institutional theory including regulative, normative, and cultural‐cognitive dimensions, concepts of the organizational and communicative fields as well as institutional logics. Institutionalization is a process occurring in the field of strategic communication. But strategic communication is an important ingredient of institutional change. To conclude, the recently established field of communicative institutionalism is introduced.