Zwischen Makulatur und Modernisierung: Zur Viabilität reflexiver Institutionen

This paper examines the question to which extent reflexive institutions adequately serve their actual purpose - perpetual modernization. Therefore all (more or less formalized, regularized) practices to promote innovation were outlined as an arrangement of organizational learning. In a case study, these practices were conceptualized as potentially reflexive institutions and analyzed by the theory of institutional reflexivity. From a conceptual point of view, this article proposes criteria to operationalize the way and shape reflexive management tools are institutionalized because the case study results (in the tradition of accompanying socioeconomic research) showed that not only the degree of the reflexive moment, but also the nature of its institutionalization influences the efficacy of striving for modernization. Performance has not been understood and assessed in the conventional quantitative sense of organization studies, however, as viability in von Glasersfeld’s sense of the word.