World Society, Institutional Theories, and the Actor

Abstract

Much modern social theory depicts society as made up of autonomous and purposive individual and organized actors. In reaction, the new institutional theories build arguments about the wider social conditions supporting stable systems of such agentic actors. Phenomenological versions, which are especially relevant to analyses of modern integrating but stateless world society, treat actor identities as themselves constructed in the wider and now global cultural context. These ideas call attention to the modern collective construction of expansive models of actors, the rapid diffusion and adoption of elaborated models of actor agency and rights, the consequently decoupled character of actor identities and activities in the modern system, and the extraordinary mobilizing potential built into the elaborated models of individual and organizational actors in world society and into the inconsistencies between these models and activity.

Non-affirmative Theory of Education as a Foundation for Curriculum Studies, Didaktik and Educational Leadership

“…However, these questions are typically rather taken care of by policy researchers. Yet, a growing emphasis on transnational organizations requires a corresponding consideration of organizational theory as well as institutional theories (Meyer 2010). Organisational theory and research relating to a transnational perspective has developed early on in the business sector.…”

“…Institutional theories, thus, go beyond open systems theory in explaining the influence of policies and other dimensions of the external environment on organizational homogeneity. In particular, neo-institutionalism has influenced on scholars who seek to explain the transnational level and literature on global social change (Meyer 2010). Meyer and colleagues, for example, have developed world society theory to consider the relations among global institutions and culture and the structures and behaviors of individuals and organizations at nation state and transnational levels.…”

Internationalising Nordic higher education: comparing the imagined with actual worlds of international scholar-practitioners

“…The agenda is adaptable to world society theory (Meyer, 2010) which claims that global political and economic systems are ever more integrated. Modernisation drives a global academic ecosystem which is converging in internationalisation and concurrently brings about a clouding of definitions without any critical inquiry, for example, about internationalisation and international pedagogy being taken to mean the same thing (Teelken & Wihlborg, 2010).…”

“…The research inquiry in this paper is conceptually emergent with world society theory applied to international higher education by relying on phenomenologist cultural constructivism (Meyer, 2010). It seeks to identify the imagined hypothetical from the actual social worlds of actors (Krücken & Drori, 2009) affecting the ways in which international education may be conceptualised.…”

Special Issue: Population and Development: Comparative Anthropological Perspectives

“…Much has been learned by examining not just whether NGOs achieve their stated aims, but by also by attending to the effects they have beyond their ostensible purposes, in relation to institutional and organizational transformations (Elyachar 2005;Swidler 2006Swidler , 2009 and with regard to the lives of individuals working for or receiving assistance from NGOs (Bornstein 2005;Dahl 2014;Mosse 2011;Maes 2012;Peters 2013). This literature suggests that although NGOs are powerful actors that in some respects appear to create institutional homogeneity across diverse cultural settings, in other ways NGOs and the individual actors associated with them must constantly adapt to complex local realities (Smith 2003;Meyer 2010;Closser 2010).…”