Institutional theory rests on a rejection of reductionism. Instead of reducing higherorder phenomena to aggregates of behavior, institutional theory reverses this causal imagery. It attributes the behavior of organizations and nation-states to contextual factors, notably organizational fields, national institutional systems, or the emerging global polity, Institutionalists, particularly within sociology, also emphasize specifically cultural mechanisms for these higher-order effects. This article develops the methodological foundations for these claims. It surveys and elaborates research designs for documenting higher-order effects and for differentiating the cultural mechanisms of institutional influence. It also presents new strategies for assessing multiple logics and the coherence of institutional orders, moving beyond adoption and diffusion studies to analyze the dynamic and contested processes of institutionalization and institutional change. . For all their comments, criticisms, and suggestions, we would like to thank Sun-

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Organizations in an emerging organizational population face an identity problem. Collectively, organizations cannot yet rely on a coherent and stable definition of what membership in that new industry means. Individually, each organization must also establish its own distinctive identity to differentiate itself from competitors and secure resources. To explore the relationship between differentiation and the consolidation of recognizable identity element clusters, we examine the emergence of organizational form in the early years of the Arizona charter school industry. This industry is particularly interesting for scholars studying institutional processes because the legislative mandate of the new industry was for schools to experiment and provide education in an unconventional manner. Thus, the legislative definition of the organizational form or template for the charter school identity was intentionally underspecified. Using inductive analysis and regression models, we examine the process of identity realization occurring among charter schools and assess how the local institutional context of charter schools affected the realization process. The analyses demonstrate that new industries may come to be characterized by multiple element clusters; a single label for an organizational form may be linked to different combinations of identity elements. Our results also demonstrate that identity realization at the organizational level occurs through mimicry and differentiation processes and is facilitated by the local institutional context. In particular, the diversity of organizational resources available to industry entrepreneurs enables identity differentiation from one's peers.

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