ABSTRACT
The New Institutionalism grew out of the notion that organizations are open systems with permeable boundaries and considerable interaction with their environments (Scott, 2003). The idea of interaction, presaged by Easton in his A Framework for Political Analysis (1965), is central to understanding the social and political context of the organization. Not only does the environment shape the organization and institution in complex and multiple ways, the organization interprets, responds, and adapts to its many layered environments. Scott regards the development from closed to open systems in the study of organizations to be a watershed event that swept through the natural and social sciences forever changing the way we see organizations and their environments (Scott, 2001). Organizations are highly formalized, socially embedded systems oriented toward the attainment of their goals. The environment, by contrast, is everything that is outside the boundaries of the organization or organizational groupings (Scott, 2005). To be sure, the concept of institutionalism can bridge both the organization and the environment. As we clarify later in this chapter, various organizations comprise an institutional environment. And, at times, as in the blurred lines surrounding schools, the environments or organizational fi elds are considered to be a signifi cant force, as in the institution of schooling.
