The Process of Institutionalization

This chapter is about the institutionalization of organizational change. That is, it is concerned with the persistence of organizational change. Lewin (1951) describes change in terms of three processes--unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Institutionalization is concerned with the process of refreezing. After a new policy or program is introduced into an organization, we plan to focus on factors that affect its persistence. A whole series of questions underlie this problem statement: What does institutionalization or persistence mean? Row do we describe different degrees of institutionalization? What are the critical processes that affect institutionalization? What are the critical predictors? These questions serve to organize this discussion.