Only in Social Action!

1997/02/01 by Peter Karnøe, PETER KARNØE · 15 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Accounting and Organizational Management #Action (physics) #Computer science #Conceptualization #Context (archaeology) #Epistemology #Functionalism (philosophy of mind) #Individualism #Management and Organizational Studies #Methodological individualism #Perspective (graphical) #Political science #Social Sciences and Governance #Sociology #Temporality

paper · doi:10.1177/0002764297040004005

published in American Behavioral Scientist 40(4), 419-430 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 1997/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21

Abstract

This article compares the neoinstitutional perspective to the business systems perspective and addresses the way in which they can be used for accounting for social action. Despite their important insights against methodological individualism and functionalism, they still have some weaknesses. This article integrates four conceptual elements—sense making and enactment, social context, ongoing social relations, and a temporality view on time—to develop a more adequate conceptualization of the role of institutional rules in shaping social action.

Citations

• Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
• Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness
• The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields

Related

• Organisation and Function: Reclaiming the third mandate in the age of grand challenges
• Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness
• A Behavioral Theory of Social Institutions
• Systems of Social Action
• The social and solidarity economy: from single-point interventions to systemic policies