INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENTS AND ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES TO AIDS

Drawing from theory on institutionalized organizational environments, this paper analyzes the actions of community-based service programs pr oviding care for people with AIDS. The focus is on the interorganizati onal relations developed by the lead agencies in demonstration project s attempting to coordinate services in three communities. The paper id entifies differential styles of organizational response to development al and operational issues. These differences are related to the concep tual distinction between organizational responses to technical environ ments and those to normative, or ''institutional,'' environmental feat ures. Various factors are identified that appear to promote a higher d egree of institutionalization in interorganizational relations. Coordi nation as a reform strategy is seen to have become, in itself, an inst itutionalized myth to which organizations must subscribe in order to g ain legitimacy.