[5][6] Institutionalism experienced a significant revival in 1977 with two influential papers by John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan on one hand and Lynn Zucker on the other.
More-recent work has begun to emphasize multiple competing logics,[10][11] focusing on the more-heterogeneous sources of diversity within fields[11] and the institutional embeddedness of technical considerations.
[12][13] The concept of logic generally refers to broader cultural beliefs and rules that structure cognition and guide decision-making in a field.
At the organization level, logic can focus the attention of key decision-makers on a delimited set of issues and solutions,[14] leading to logic-consistent decisions that reinforce extant organizational identities and strategies.
[15] In line with the new institutionalism, social rule system theory stresses that particular institutions and their organizational instantiations are deeply embedded in cultural, social, and political environments and that particular structures and practices are often reflections of as well as responses to rules, laws, conventions, paradigms built into the wider environment.
[19] Some sociological institutionalists argue that institutions have developed to become similar (showing an isomorphism) across organizations even though they evolved in different ways.
Major scholars associated with the subject include Masahiko Aoki, Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz,[25][26] Steven N. S. Cheung,[27][28] Avner Greif, Yoram Barzel, Claude Ménard (economist), Daron Acemoglu, and four Nobel laureates—Ronald Coase,[29][30] Douglass North,[31][32] Elinor Ostrom,[33] and Oliver Williamson.
It employs analytical tools borrowed from neo-classical economics to explain how institutions are created, the behaviour of political actors within it, and the outcome of strategic interaction.
[39] Emphasizes how timing, sequences and path dependence affect institutions, and shape social, political, economic behavior and change.
A critical juncture may set in motion events that are hard to reverse, because of issues related to path dependency.
[42][43][44][45] Historical institutionalists tend to focus on history (longer temporal horizons) to understand why specific events happen.
Thus ideas and meaning provide a mechanism for multiple actors to achieve consensus on norms and values and thus create social change.