New institutionalism

New institutionalism or neo-institutionalism is a theory that focuses on developing a sociological view of institutions — the way they interact and the way they affect society. It provides a way of viewing institutions outside of the traditional views of economics by explaining why and how institutions emerge in a certain way within a given context. One of the institutional views that has emerged has argued that institutions have developed to become similar (showing an isomorphism) across organizations even though they evolved in different ways, and has studied how institutions shape the behavior of agents (i.e. people, organizations, governments) (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983).