Institutional capabilities that endow the individual and collective agency for institutional change (Revisiting Selznick)

Abstract

Organisational neoinstitutionalism is formed by a plethora of analytic approaches for understanding the institutions, presenting both macro and micro-sociological perspectives. In the former, the action is defined by the institutions and, in the latter, there is an emphasis on the social actors in institutional life. This study conducts a critical review of the literature of the old organisational institutionalism, focusing on the construct of institutional capabilities proposed by Selznick, and develops a comparative analysis between these capabilities and those of the organisational neoinstitutionalism, as well as approaches derived from it. From this analysis it is possible to synthesise an alternative for studying the institutional change, i.e., re-institutionalisation, based upon the institutional organisational capabilities.

Keywords

• Institutional Capabilities
• Individual Agency
• Collective Agency
• Institutional Change