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Fields of Practice: Connections between Law and Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Walter W. Powell
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Extract

It is, of course, both a privilege and a challenge to have one's work attended to in the thorough and thoughtful manner exemplified by Professors Suchman and Edelman's and Professor Sutton's essays. The New Institutionalism in Organizarional Analysis has been subject of many review symposia—in journals of accounting, business, political science, and sociology. But the traffic has never been two-way: our work is typically imported into new domains, but here we also have the opportunity to see how law and society research might enhance institutional analysis. In reading and reflecting on these valuable commentaries, I am pulled by divergent reactions: “Why didn't we think of that?” and “that's not what we meant” are the most common. But rather than play out these responses in print, I plead nolo contendere and concur with Suchman and Edelman's contention that institutional analysis has treated the law and the legal environment in an overly determinist fashion. In focusing on the letter of the law and its purported impact, institutional analysis neglects the extent to which the law and the legal environment are subject to negotiation, interpretation, and contestation.

Type
Review Section Symposium
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Fall 1996 , pp. 959 - 966
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1996 

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References

1 Suchman, Mark C. & Edelman, Lauren B., “Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and the Law and Society Tradition,” 21 Law & Soc. Inquiry 943 (1996); Sutton, John R., “Rethinking Social Control,” 21 Law & Soc. Inquiry 959 (1996).Google Scholar

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