Institutional Contradictions, Praxis, and Institutional Change: A Dialectical Perspective

Abstract

We use a dialectical perspective to provide a unique framework for understanding institutional change that more fully captures its totalistic, historical, and dynamic nature, as well as fundamentally resolves a theoretical dilemma of institutional theory: the relative swing between agency and embeddedness. In this framework institutional change is understood as an outcome of the dynamic interactions between two institutional by-products: institutional contradictions and human praxis. In particular, we depict praxis—agency embedded in a totality of multiple levels of interpenetrating, incompatible institutional arrangements (contradictions)—as an essential driving force of institutional change.