ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses institutional theory or institutionalization theory in the context of college and university functioning and structure. Emerging from political science, the institutional theory topics of interest to higher education include isomorphism, organizational choice and decision making, human agency, and the influence of larger institutions. In higher education, institutional theory can explain how colleges and universities come to resemble each other even when the organizations under comparison are notably different. Old institutional theory held that institutional influence could be understood through the data point of organizational behavior. New institutional theorists explored the ways that organizations are shaped by, and operate with, competitive and cooperative exchanges with other organizations and institutions. Neo-institutional theorists returned to the isomorphic and homogenizing ideas of old institutional theory to posit that organizations are embedded in wider social and political environments that shape practices and structures.
