The Institutional Organizational Theory As A New Research Framework For Understanding Contemporary Organizations

This paper presents basic postulates of the institutional, organizational theory as a new research framework for understanding contemporary organizations structuring and functioning. More and more structures in modern societies are being institutionalized due to changes in technical, social, and political spheres. Organizations in institutionalized sectors do not prove their legitimacy by their rationality and effectiveness, but by implementation of the current institutional pattern. Institutional pattern has its regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive components, and it is imposed on organizations within a sector by means of coercive, normative, and mimetic mechanisms. The consequence of implementing of a uniform institutional pattern in the structuring and functioning of all organizations within a sector is organizational isomorphism. The described elements of the institutional, organizational theory are applied in the analysis of structuring and functioning of universities and faculties in the higher education sector in Europe and Serbia. It is shown how the Bologna Higher Education Model, as a typical institutional pattern, impacts structuring and functioning of all universities and faculties in the European higher education area, thereby implicating their organizational isomorphism.