Erlingsdottír, Gudbjörg () (Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Lund University) Lindberg, Kajsa () (GRI, School of Economics & Commercial Law)
Abstract
New institutional theory has been criticized, for describing institutionalization as a static qualitative state rather than a process. In this paper we provide an extended understanding of the process of institutionalization by replacing the mechanical concept of diffusion by the concept of translation and an analytical model of “travel of ideas”. Analyzing the field material from three cases of translation of ideas in the Swedish health care sector we have traced not only various homogenizing but also heterogenizing processes which reproduce organizational ideas, models, and practices. In the paper we thus suggest and discuss how name, form, and practice can be seen as different expressions of an idea through which organizations can be homogenized or heterogenized in an institutional process.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Lund University, Institute of Economic Research in its series Working Paper Series with number
2005/4.