Rationality and Institutionalized Expectations: The Development of an Organizational Set of Rules

In this study I analyze changes of an entire set of organizational of rules over time. I also analyze how the size of individual rules develops over time. The theoretical background for this study is based on the bureaucracy theory of Weber and his successors and on the considerations of the New Institutionalism and contingency theory. I find that over time, the portion of the general rule mass continues to increase. This result corresponds to the considerations of the New Institutionalism, since the general section of the rule body contains the rules that are oriented to fundamental institutionalized management principles or legal regulations. However, my results also suggest that institutional adjustment and rational management need not be mutually exclusive. Rather, both phenomena can co-exist within an organization.