Organizations, Institutions and Society: Persistence and Change Among Public, Pr

1 Unit · Graduate

Organizations, Institutions and Society: Persistence and Change Among Public, Private and Non-Profit Sectors This graduate seminar will introduce theories of institutional persistence and change in the context of public, private and nonprofit settings. The course is organized as a seminar and will blend foundational studies in institutional theory with contemporary work from sociology, organization sciences, education and nonprofit studies. An overarching theme of the course addresses how new practices and organizational forms spread (diffusion), how they stick (institutionalization) and how they take the form that they do (emergence). Topics covered will include accountability and performance, organizational learning, contemporary debates about social mechanisms, and micro-foundations of institutional theory. Ideally, this course will provide a platform for students to develop and advance their own research projects, in the form of a research proposal for beginning doctoral students or an empirical analysis for more advanced students.