Liquid institutions

How popular is institutional theory? “40% of the new papers published in management journals nowadays are somewhat of an institutional study”, as indicated by an AOM editor who visited us last year. Stemmed from sociology and revolving around two important concepts: social structure and human agency, the footprints of institutional theory can be found in all mainstream business research fields. However, due to its popularity, institutional theory has also attracted considerable criticism, primarily because it has been misused or overused to “explain everything”. And it is often deemed too ambiguous, inconsistent, and even “uninhibited”, like “tautologies” (e.g., embedded agency). As such, after several distinct but intertwined theoretical debates – classical institutionalism (pre-80s), neo-institutionalism (80-90s), and a combination of both (post-2000s) – we are perhaps in need of nuanced perspectives to help study and advance the theories of institutions. Motivated by this initiative, I revisit the fundamentals of institutionalism and propose the notion of ‘liquid institutions’ – the institutions that can be translated between fields – to rejuvenate the application of institutional theories in organizational analysis, strategy making, and theory development.