Organizer: Sean C. Buchanan; York U.;
Participant: Michael Lounsbury; U. of Alberta;
Participant: Paul M Hirsch; Northwestern U.;
Participant: Renate Elisabeth Meyer; WU Vienna;
Participant: Gerald A. McDermott; U. of South Carolina; Institutions are the formal and informal rules that operate in society which shape and give meaning to human interaction (North, 1990). They are underpinned by coercive structures, normative systems, and cognitive understandings (Scott, 2008). Given this definition of institutions, it is fair to say that capitalism is one of the most dominant institutional systems operating in modern societies. Accordingly, we would expect the study of capitalism to be a central focus of institutional research. Yet, in organizational institutionalism (Greenwood et al., 2008), the examination of capitalism is surprisingly underdeveloped in comparison to other streams of institutional research rooted in political science and economics (e.g. Amable, 2003; Crouch, 2005; Hall & Soskice, 2001; Morgan et al., 2011; Streeck & Yamamura, 2001; Whitley, 1999). In line with this year�s theme of �Capitalism in Question�, this symposium begins the task of more thoroughly attending to capitalism in organizational institutionalism by bringing institutional scholars to discuss some of the central questions, issues, and challenges involved in studying capitalism from an organizational institutional perspective. | Search Terms: | Institutional Theory , Capitalism , Organizations | |