Waking up

For the past month or so, I've been waking up in the morning with relatively delicious thoughts about my areas of specialization. There's nothing like waking up to an idea about policy implementation or institutional theory ;)

I've been trying to think more about change because implementation is about changing, while institutional theory studies stability and change.

• what changes and what doesn't? what conditions promoted or hindered that change?
• why does change happen?
• what are sources of change? People? Places?
• where does change happen?
• who causes/blocks change?

I'm noticing that implementation follows an organization's responses to a policy that asks it to change. Much of the implementation literature is trying to explain the variability in responses to policy. Why do organizations and actors respond differently when encountering and engaging with the same policy? In a way, the policy is a recipe, but different chefs concoct entirely different dishes.

I'm very interested in the ways that neo-institutionalism looks outward--to the environment--and also inward--to the cognitive mechanisms affecting actors to account for change. The environment is a source of logics, rules, beliefs, and resources, including professional associations. Yes, policy might originate in the environment, but neo-institutionalists ask us to consider the cognitive mechanisms shaping actors' interpretation of policy. If policy is interpret, it may be framed. Those frames are resources influencing organizational actions, including its implementation processes.