Topic 11 The Meso Context of Policy Studies: The Institution

1
Topic 11The Meso Context of Policy StudiesThe
Institution
EDM 6209 Policy Studies in Education
2
Boundedness and Embeddedness of Public Policy

• If public policy is (for simplicity sake) defined
  as what the state choose to act or not to act,
  these state actors certainly act in particular
  historical, socioeconomic, cultural and political
  contexts.
• In the field of policy-making studies, it is
  common knowledge that policy-makers cannot employ
  their rationality freely to seek the maximal
  solutions for the policy problems at hand. As
  Herbert Simon has aptly reminded us that
  policy-makers' rationalities are "bounded" by the
  relational networks and the institutional
  environment, in which they reside.

3
Boundedness and Embeddedness of Public Policy

• In the field of policy-implementation studies, it
  has become conventional wisdom that the state
  cannot omni-potently impose a policy directive
  onto the policy field and expects it to be
  carried out to the full because individuals as
  well as organizations responsible for the
  implementation are not operate in social vacuum
  but are heavily embedded in relational networks
  and institutional environments.

4
Boundedness and Embeddedness of Public Policy

• These conceptions of boundedness and embeddedness
  emerged from policy studies can be put against
  the theoretical framework of new institutionalism
  and construe them as enduring patterns found in
  institutions organizations, interpersonal
  relationship, or even personal habitual actions
  and perceptions.

5
Concept of Institution The Contextual
Embeddedness of Public Policy

• James March and Johan Olsens conception
• An institution is a relatively enduring
  collection of rules and organized practices,
  embedded in structures of meaning and resources
  that are relatively invariant in the face of
  turnover of individuals and relatively resilient
  to the idiosyncratic preferences and expectations
  of individuals and changing external
  circumstances. (March and Olsen, 2006, p.1)

6
Concept of Institution The Contextual
Embeddedness of Public Policy

• James March and Johan Olsens conception
• According, in institutions
• There are constitutive rules and practices
  prescribing appropriate behavior for specific
  actors in specific situations.
• There are structures of meaning, embedded in
  identities and belongings common purposes and
  accounts that give direction and meaning to
  behavior, and explain, justify and legitimate
  behavioral codes.
• There are structures of resources that create
  capabilities for action. (ibid)

7
Concept of Institution The Contextual
Embeddedness of Public Policy

• John Campbells conception
• Institutions consist of formal and
  informal rules, monitoring and enforcing
  mechanisms, and systems of meaning that define
  the context within which individuals,
  corporations, labor unions, nation-states and
  other organizations operate and interact with
  each other. Institutions are settlements born
  from struggle and bargaining. They reflect the
  resources and power of those who made them and,
  in turn, affect the distribution of resources and
  power in society. Once created, institutions are
  powerful external forces that help determine how
  people make sense of their world and act in it.
  They channel and regulate conflict and thus
  ensure stability in society. (Campbell, 2004, p.
  1)

8
Concept of Institution The Contextual
Embeddedness of Public Policy

• Richard Scotts conception
• Institutions consist of cognitive,
  normative, and regulative structures and
  activities that provide stability and meaning to
  social behavior. Institutions are transported by
  various carries -- cultures, structures, and
  routines-- and they operate at multiple levels of
  jurisdiction. (Scott, 1995, p.33)

9
Concept of Institution The Contextual
Embeddedness of Public Policy

• Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann indicate that
  institutionalization occurs whenever there is a
  reciprocal typiifcation of habitualized actions
  by types of actors. Put differently, any such
  typification is an institution. What must be
  stressed is the reciprocity of institutional
  typifications and the typicality of not only the
  actions but the actors in institution. The
  typifications of habitualized actions that
  constitute institutions are always shared ones.
  They are available to all members of the
  particular social group in question, and the
  institution itself typifies individual actors as
  well as individual actions. (1966, p. 72)

10
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• The conception of institutional elements Richard
  Scott suggests that institution are viewed as
  made up of three component elements (1994, p.56)
  or as he later called three pillars (1995)
• The regulative pillar The effect or order of
  institutions is accounted for by ways of
  emphasizing the prominence of explicit regulative
  processes prevailing in institutions. They
  consist of rule-setting, monitoring, and
  sanctioning activities undertaken in
  institutions. Hence, the institutional effects,
  i.e. the institutional order, depend on the
  capacity to establish rules, inspect or review
  others conformity to them, and as necessary,
  manipulate sanctions --rewards or punishments--
  in an attempt to influence future behavior.
  (Scotts, 1995, p. 35)

11
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• The conception of institutional elements Richard
  Scott suggests that institution are viewed as
  made up of three component elements (1994, p.56)
  or as he later called three pillars (1995)
• The normative pillar Theorists emphasize the
  normative pillar in accounting for institutional
  effects by focusing on the prescriptive,
  evaluative, and obligatory dimensions of social
  life. Normative systems include both values and
  norms. Values are conceptions of the preferred or
  the desirable together with the construction of
  the standards to which existing structures or
  behavior can be compared and assessed. Norms
  specify how things should be done they define
  legitimate means to pursue value ends. (p. 37)

12
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• The conception of institutional elements Richard
  Scott suggests that institution are viewed as
  made up of three component elements (1994, p.56)
  or as he later called three pillars (1995)
• The cognitive pillar The institutional effects
  can also be accounted for by emphasizing
  cognitive elements in institutions, which refer
  to the rules that constitute the nature of
  reality and the frames through which meaning is
  made. (p. 40) Constitutive rules have been
  identified as the foremost cognitive elements in
  this perspective. By constitutive rules, it
  refers rules involve the creation of categories
  and the construction of typifications processes
  by which concrete and subjectively unique
  experiences are ongoingly subsumed under general
  orders of meaning that are both objectively and
  subjectively real. (p.41)

13
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism
14
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Levels of institutional analysis Institutional
  arrangements (i.e. elements) can be found at a
  variety of levels in social system in
  societies, in organizational fields, in
  individual organizations, and in primary and
  small groups (Rowan Miskel, 1999, p. 359
  Scott, 1995, p. 55-60)
• System level The conception of Institutional
  environment
• Institutional environment Institutional
  environments are, by definition, those
  characterized by the elaboration of rules and
  requirements to which individual organizations
  must conform if they are to receive support and
  legitimacy (Scott and Meyer, 1991, p.123)
• Two of the most prominent institutional
  environments in modern society are the
  nation-state and market, both of which share one
  of the most salient features of modernity,
  namely, rationality.

15
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Levels of institutional analysis
• Sector level The conception of organizational
  fields
• Organizational field It refers to a community
  of organizations that partakes of a common
  meanings system and whose participants interact
  more frequently and fatefully with one another
  than with actors outside of the field. Hence,
  fields are defined in terms of shared cognitive
  or normative frameworks or a common regulative
  system. (Scott, 1995, p. 56)

16
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Levels of institutional analysis
• Sector level The conception of organizational
  fields
• Isomorphism Organizations in an a organization
  field tends to become homogenous in terms of
  cognitive, normative and regulative aspects of
  the organizations. The concept best captures this
  process is isomorphism. Isomorphism is a
  constraining process that forces one unit in a
  population to resemble other units that face the
  same set of environmental conditions.
• Two of the forces at work in modern society are
  efficiency and legitimacy. The former is more
  likely to be related to the competitiveness of
  the market, while the latter to the state.

17
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Levels of institutional analysis
• Organization level The formal structure of the
  organization
• To comply with the isomorphic constraints of the
  organizational field and institutional
  environment, individual organizations have to
  structure themselves in regulative, normative and
  cognitive aspects to meet with the institutional
  elements of the filed and environment.
• As a result, two of the ideal types of formal
  structure of the organizations have constituted
  in modern society, the firm and the bureaucracy
  of government agencies.

18
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Levels of institutional analysis
• Human interaction level reciprocal
  typifications and interpretations of habitualized
  actions
• Members of an individual organization,
  organizational field, or institutional
  environment will share many commonalities in
  meanings, interpretations, and typifications,
  i.e. common cognitive elements.
• They will institutionalize common languages,
  interacting and communicating patterns, and
  routines in practices.
• They will also institute common logic of
  appropriateness and normative elements.
• Their interactions are also subjected to the
  regulative elements of the institution in which
  they find themselves.

19
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Levels of institutional analysis
• Individual level - Internalization and Identity
• In reaction to rational choice theory, new
  institutionalism perceives individuals not simply
  as actors governed by rational calculus of
  preferences and self-interest, i.e. logic of
  consequences (James, 1994, p.3) but as agent
  having internalized set of norms, values and
  rules and their agency is governed by the logic
  of appropriateness of particular institutional
  settings.
• When individuals and organizations fulfill
  identities, they follow rules or procedures that
  they see as appropriate to the situation in which
  they find themselves. Neither preference as they
  are normally conceived nor expectations of future
  consequences enter directly into the calculus.
  (March, 1994, p. 57)

20
(No Transcript)
21
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New Institutionalism at organizational level The
  concept of isomorphism
• Conception of isomorphism New institutionalists
  stipulate that organizations in modern rational
  institutional environment and/or organizational
  field tend to develop similar structures,
  procedures and practices (organizational elements
  in Meyer Rowan's terminology). They term this
  process of homogenization of organization
  isomorphism. "Isomorphism is a constraining
  process that forces one unit in a population to
  resemble other units that face the same set of
  environmental conditions." (DiMaggio Powell,
  1991, p.66)

22
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New Institutionalism at organizational level The
  concept of isomorphism
• Distinction between competitive and institutional
  isomorphism DiMaggio Powell (1991) and Meyer
  Rowan (1991) have made similar distinctions
  between competitive and institutional
  isomorphism.
• By competitive isomorphism, it refers to the
  process of homogenization of organizations taken
  place in "those field which free and open
  competition exists." (DiMaggio Powell, 1991,
  p.66) Organizations in these fields usually
  possess "clearly defined technologies to produce
  outputs" and therefore those "outputs can be
  easily evaluated" (Meyer Rowan, 1991, p. 54) As
  a result, development of common organizational
  elements, i.e. isomorphism, can be attained
  through market competition, competitive niche,
  standardized output performance and
  organizational efficiency. (DiMaggio Powell,
  1991, p. 66)

23
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New Institutionalism at organizational level The
  concept of isomorphism
• Distinction between competitive and institutional
  isomorphism
• By institutional isomorphism, it refers to the
  process of homogenization of organizations
  invoked in the context of "collective organized
  society" (Meyer Rowan, 1991, p. 49) in which
  institutional environment of modern bureaucratic
  states have replaced market mechanism to act as
  institutional rules of the field. As a result, in
  institutional organizations, the development of
  common organizational elements can not be attain
  by market competition and internal efficiency,
  instead "they incorporate elements which are
  legitimated externally" and "they employ external
  or ceremonial assessment criteria to define the
  value of structural elements." (Meyer Rowan,
  1991, p. 49)

24
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New Institutionalism at organizational level
• Mechanism of institutional isomorphism
• DiMaggio Powell identify three mechanism
  through which institutional isomorphism are
  achieved, maintained or changed. The thesis can
  be taken as analysis apparatus to study how
  schools, as institutional organization, adopt to
  education policy changes.

25
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New Institutionalism at organizational level
• Mechanism of institutional isomorphism
• Coercive isomorphism "Coercive isomorphism
  results from both formal and informal pressures
  exerted on organizations by other organizations
  upon which they are dependent and by cultural
  expectations in the society within which
  organizations function. Such pressures may be
  felt as force, as persuasion, or as invitations
  to join in collusion." (DiMaggio Powell, 1991,
  p. 67)
• Organizational restructures undertaken by HK
  schools in response to Quality-Assurance
  Inspection, School Self Evaluation, External
  School Review, Senior-Secondary Curriculum
  reform, School-based Management and Incorporated
  Management Committee, etc. may be analyze in
  light of the concept of coercive isomorphism.

26
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New Institutionalism at organizational level
• Mechanism of institutional isomorphism
• Mimetic isomorphism Apart from coercive
  authority, "uncertainty is also a powerful force
  that encourages imitation. When organizational
  technologies are poorly understood, when goals
  are ambiguous, or when the environment creates
  symbolic uncertainty, organizations may model
  themselves on other organization." (DiMaggio
  Powell, 1991, p. 69)
• Confronted by collective puzzlement in
  policy implementation, such as those initiated by
  Senior-Secondary curriculum reform or more
  specifically the teaching of Liberal Studies, or
  School-Self Evaluation, most HK schools could
  only imitate, model or simply copy from other
  schools.

27
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New Institutionalism at organizational level
• Mechanism of institutional isomorphism
• Normative isomorphism Instead of compliance with
  modern institutional environments of competitive
  market or bureaucratic-rational state,
  isomorphism may take the form of
  professionalization. Organizations and their
  operations, which are predominately identified
  with a profession, such as hospitals with doctors
  and schools with teachers, can incorporate
  cognitive, normative and regulative bases of that
  profession into their organizations and apply
  them as criteria in assessing the performance as
  well and legitimation bases of their
  organization.

28
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New institutionalism at group or individual
  level The concept of social capital
• According to Berger and Luckmann, institution
  embeds in individuals and groups of individuals
  in the form of "reciprocal typifications" and
  "habitualized actions." In recent years
  sociologists have initiated concepts such as
  social network and social capital to depict the
  enduring interpersonal relationship in
  institutional context. For example Lin
  conceptualizes that "social capital as is rooted
  in social network and social relations, and must
  be measured relative to its roots. Therefore
  social capital can be defined as resources
  embedded in a social structure which are accessed
  and/or mobilized in purposive action." (Lin,
  2001, p.12)

29
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New institutionalism at group or individual
  level
• Portes and Sensenbrenner (1998) have specified
  four sources from which enduring interpersonal
  co-operations, i.e. social capitals, are
  constituted.
• Value introjection It refers to "moral
  character" and "value imperatives" individuals
  learned in the process of socialization. (Portes
  and Sensenbrenner, 1998, p. 129) This resource is
  basically in congruent with Beger and Luckmann's
  conception of internalization in the process of
  institutionalization at individual level.
• Reciprocity transactions It "consists of an
  accumulation of 'chits' earned through previous
  good deeds to others, backed by the norm of
  reciprocity." In comparison with value
  introjection, in this type of social capital
  "individuals are not expected to behave according
  to a higher group morality but rather to pure
  selfish end." (p. 130)

30
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New institutionalism at group or individual
  level
• Portes and Sensenbrenner (1998) have specified
  four sources from which enduring interpersonal
  co-operations, i.e. social capitals, are
  constituted.
• Bounded solidarity It refers to social capitals
  invoke from "situational circumstances leading to
  the emergence of principled group-orientated
  behavior. Its classic sources are best
  exemplified by Marx and Engels's analysis of the
  rise of proletarian consciousness and the
  transformation of workers into class for
  themselves." (p. 130)
• This type of collective sentiments grown out
  of common (usually socially inferior) situations
  can also be found in unions, minority groups, etc.

31
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• New institutionalism at group or individual
  level
• Portes and Sensenbrenner (1998) have specified
  four sources from which enduring interpersonal
  co-operations, i.e. social capitals, are
  constituted.
• Enforceable trust It refers of social capitals
  grown out of community, in which "particularistic
  rewards and sanctions" are enforceable on its
  members in the form of collective expectation and
  trusts. This type of social capitals may manifest
  in informal institutional settings such as peer
  group pressures or solidarity within new
  immigrant communities or in formal institutional
  setting such as community sanction in
  professional associations.

32
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Explaining institutional changes John Campbell
  (2004) has stipulated the causal mechanism
  accounting for institutional changes as follows
• Negative feedbacks and critical junctures on
  dependence path As indicated above the
  maintaining and sustaining of institutional
  patterns depends on the continuous feedbacks from
  the prevailing "dependence path" of the
  institution. (Pierson, 2004) However, as negative
  feedbacks from the dependence path appear and
  subsequently accumulated to a critical point. It
  may then trigger fundamental changes in
  institution. (Campbell, 2004, p.65-68)

33
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Explaining institutional changes
• Bricolage It refers to innovations in combining
  existing repertoire of institutional principles
  and practices so as to solve crises or dilemma
  confronting an institution. (Campbell, 2004, p.
  69) According to March and Olsen's conception,
  bricolage can be categorized into
• Substantive bricolage It refers to innovative
  combination of well-established technical
  principles or practices within an institution in
  order to bring about adjustment or fundamental
  change.
• Symbolic bricolage It refers to innovative
  combination of normative and cognitive principles
  and practices so as to reconcile normative or
  cognitive conflicts invoked by changes.

34
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Explaining institutional changes
• The role of institutional entrepreneurs or
  bricoleurs The conception of institutional
  entrepreneurs or bricoleurs can specify the agent
  of change in the causal explanation of
  institutional changes. The performance
  entrepreneurs depend basically on two factors,
  namely their connectivity within the institution
  and the availability of repertoires to be
  combined. As Campbell indicates "entrepreneurs
  with more diverse social, organizational, and
  institutional connections tends to have more
  expansive repertoires with which to work. In
  turn, the broader their repertoire, the more
  likely they are to create a bricolage that is
  very creative and revolutionary rather than one
  that is less creative and evolutionary,
  (Campbell, 2004, p.75)

35
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Explaining institutional changes
• Diffusion, translation and enactment
• Changes in punctuated equilibrium may not be
  invoked by bricoleurs from within an institution.
  It may be triggered by input from other
  institutions. In other words, institutional
  innovation or changes may diffuse and circulated
  among institutions. Hence, institutional changes
  can be copies and learnt.
• However, input of changes or innovations from
  outside will not be copied automatically and
  totally by a given institution. They must be
  translated and innovatively combined with
  existing principles and practice.
• Finally, in order for any principles and practice
  input from without to substantiate within a given
  institution, they must be internalized
  cognitively or normatively by members of the
  institution to become part of their daily
  routines and practice. In other words, changes
  have to be enacted by members on daily basis.

36
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Explaining institutional changes
• Normative and cognitive ideas about institutional
  changes
• In accounting for institutional changes, new
  institutionalists play particular attentions to
  how agents accept (interpret, identify,
  internalize, enact, etc.) new ideas and in turn
  make changes in their practices, i.e. agencies.
• Typology of ideas about institutional change
  Campbell has constructed a framework to classify
  ideas into paradigms, public sentiments, programs
  and frames.

37
(No Transcript)
38
Conceptual Tools in the Perspective New
Institutionalism

• Explaining institutional changes
• Normative and cognitive ideas about institutional
  changes
• Typology of actors and their ideational roles
  According to the classification of ideas,
  Campbell has further differentiated actors within
  an institution into five ideational roles

39
(No Transcript)
40
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level institutional
  environment Policy changes can be conceived as
  changes in the institutional environments of
  modern societies.
• The transformation of monarchical state to
  formal-rational bureaucratic state in the 18th to
  19th centuries have brought fundamental changes
  to the institutional environment to the
  educational sector, i.e. organizational field of
  schooling. As a result, education policy assumed
  the role of part of the apparatus of modern-state
  formation. It in turn triggered global education
  reform which changed schooling into
  state-controlled, bureaucratic organized,
  specialized and standardized, universal and
  compulsory schooling systems. (Boli and Ranirz,
  1986 Boli and Meyer, 1985 Meyer and Ramirez,
  2000 Ramirz and Boli 1982 1987)

41
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level institutional
  environment Policy changes can be conceived as
  changes in the institutional environments of
  modern societies.
• The recent education reform undertaken by
  governments in most of the developed countries in
  the last two decades, can be account for as the
  another waves of changes in the technological and
  institutional environments of the rise of network
  society and information age and subsequent
  transformations of Keynesian Welfare National
  State (KWNS) to Schumpterian Worlfare Postnation
  Regime (SWPR) (Campbell and Pederson, 2001
  Rowan, 2006 Harvey, 2005)

42
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level of societal sector
  and organizational field In response to the
  changes in institutional environments, different
  organizational fields, such as those of basic
  education and/or higher education, have to
  undertake correspondent changes in their
  regulative, normative and cognitive
  elements/pillars.
• The institutionalization of modern education
  system taken place since the 18th century in the
  forms of (i) standardization of examination and
  certification system (ii) formalization of
  curriculum and instructional practices, and (iii)
  legal-rationalization of school management can
  all be construed as responses to the
  institutionalization of the rational imperatives
  of institutional environments of modern state as
  well as industrial-capital economy.

43
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level of societal sector
  and organizational field
• Recent education reforms in the forms of (i)
  modularization and flexiblization of curriculum
  and instructional practice, (ii) deregualtion,
  devolution, performance-based evaluation of
  school management, (iii) privatization and
  liberalization of school place supply can all be
  understood in the institutional contexts of
  competition state and global-informational
  economy.

44
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level of organization In
  responses to the changes in institutional
  environments, societal sectors, and organization
  fields, individual organizations have to
  re-institutionalization their regulative,
  normative and cognitive elements. As a result,
  isomorphism among organizations, such as schools,
  began to take shape.
• The school organizations, which take the forms of
  centralized, bureaucratized, standardized and
  publicly funded, can be understood as the result
  of isomorphic changes in the societal sector or
  organizational field of education.

45
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level of organization
• The school re-structuring reforms, which take the
  directions of decentralization,
  de-bureaucratization, and privatization, can also
  be account for as responses to the isomorphic
  pressures from the organizational field of
  education in the network society.

46
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level of human interaction
  level The fundamental effects of any policy and
  institutional changes have to be
  institutionalized into patterns of human
  interactions. They will affect the reciprocal
  typifications and interpretations of habitualized
  actions among members of a given organization
  and institution.
• Since the 19th century, the reciprocal
  typification and interpretation of habitualized
  interactions between role occupants of teachers
  and students, teachers and school management
  staffs, teachers and government official have
  been institutionalized according to the
  centralized and bureaucratized organizational
  structure in industrial society.

47
Education Policy Changes as Education
Institutional Changes

• Policy changes at the level of human interaction
  level
• In response to the rise of the network society
  and network organization in the new millennium,
  the interaction patterns including its respective
  cognitive, normative and regulative bases, have
  to undertake correspondent changes, which can be
  characterized as compatible, flexible,
  dispensable, deleteable and even virtual.

48
11Meso Context of Policy StudiesThe Institution
END