The recursive nature of institutional change : an Annales School perspective

In this essay, we propose a recursive model of institutional change building on the Annales School, one of the 20th century's most influential streams of historical research. Our model builds upon three concepts from the Annales — mentalities, levels of time, and critical events — to explore how punctual disruptions affect different dimensions of institutional logics and exert short- or long-range influences. On these bases, organizations make choices, from decoupling to more radical shifts in logics, leading to severe institutional changes that become a matter of history. As much as organizations are influenced by their times and the prevalent institutional logics, their choices trigger macro-level changes in a recursive manner. More broadly, we comment on how fruitful it our approach to historicize organization studies