On Doing Institutional Analysis without Institutional Theory

Can we do institutional analysis without institutional theory? Should we? These provocative questions prompt a reflection on institutional thought, but they also serve as an invitation for scholars in adjacent fields—process scholars among them—to reconsider the boundaries between fields and the benefits of crossing them. Such benefits are evident in the work of the founders of institutional theory, none of who were self-consciously “institutional” as they embarked on their careers. Reviewing their work reveals four keys for doing institutional analysis without institutional theory, and the importance of doing so. It also reveals some of the limits of contemporary institutional theory: The dominance of institutional theory in organizational studies is problematic in the sense that many of the most important insights and developments in institutional theory emerged through cross-fertilization across multiple fields, rather than the narrow cultivation of one.