EXPLORING THE LIMITS OF THE NEW INSTITUTIONALISM - THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF ILLEGITIMATE ORGANIZATIONAL-CHANGE

While the ''new institutionalism'' has emersed as a dominant theory of organization-environment relations, very little research has examined its possible limits. Under what circumstances might the neoinstitutio nal predictions regarding organizational inertia, institutional isomor phism, the legitimacy imperative, and other fundamental beliefs be ove rshadowed by? more traditional sociological theories accentuating orga nizational adaptation, variation, and the role of specific global and local technical environmental demands? We analyze longitudinal data fr om 1971 to 1986 for 631 private liberal arts colleges facing strong in stitutional and increasingly strong technical environments. Our findin gs reveal surprisingly little support neoinstitutional predictions. (I ) Many liberal arts colleges changed in ways contrary to institutional demands by professionalizing or vocationalizing their curricula; (2) global and local technical environmental conditions, such as changes i n consumers' references and local economic and demographic differences , were strong predictors of the changes observed; (3) schools Became l ess, rather than more, homogeneous over time; (4) schools generally di d not mimic their most prestigious counterparts; (5) the illegitimate changes had no negative (and often had positive) performance consequen ces for enrollment and survival. Our results suggest that current rese arch on organization-environment relations map underestimate the power of traditional adaptation-based explanations in organizational sociol ogy.