This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution. The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its failure to sufficiently open up the black box of...

Executive Overview This article identifies the emergence of the institution-based view as a third leading perspective in strategic management (the first two being the industry-based and resource-based views). We (a) review the roots of the institution-based view, (b) articulate its two core propositions, and (c) outline how this view contributes to the four fundamental questions in strategy. Ov...

Varieties of the "new institutionalism" hold a promise of theoretical integration across several sub-disciplines of the social sciences and a wide range of research fields, including comparative politics, the study of European integration, comparative political economy, comparative industrial relations, or comparative industrial governance (Hall & Taylor 1996; Jupille & Caporaso 1999; Thelen 19...

The “institutional turn” (Evans 2007) is now dominant in development economics all be it originating in new institutionalism and opens up prospects for the deeper analysis of the nature and role of markets in development. This paper therefore seeks to expand the tools for the institutionalist analysis of existing markets by examining the usefulness of Polanyi’s concept and categorisation of the...

The article provides a discussion of Mark Bevir’s important book on ‘Democratic governance’. It first discusses the conceptual part and in particular the categorisation in terms of ‘modern social science’. It disputes the analysis of neo institutionalism. Second, it stresses the UK case, which is the base of Bevir’s analysis and suggests that the author relies far too much on policy networks. H...

This essay considers the nature and evolution of both the old and the new institutional economics and considers the possibility of dialogue or even convergence between these schools. It also considers shifts of thinking inside and outside mainstream economics that have altered the conception of the economic agent, even within mainstream theory. In particular, the stipulation of endogenous prefe...

While welfare reform matters for workers and workplaces, it is peripheral in English-language sociology of work and industrial relations research. This article’s core proposition is that active labour market policies (ALMPs) are altering the institutional constitution of the labour market by intensifying market discipline within the workforce. This re-commodification effect is specified drawing...

Abstract This study contextualises the official introduction of double entry bookkeeping in Royal Navy, 1832. The objective is to consider how accounting developed and changed through competing logics path dependent processes provide insights explanations those changes Navy. An innovative theoretical framework combines longer-term lens historical institutionalism with roles key actors investiga...