Grounding new institutional theory on a micro-sociological and practice-based foundation - exploring models of translation

Institutional and more practice-based perspectives on organizing and change are increasingly being combined in order to understand the micro-processes on which institutional "orders" are built and changed. The aim of this paper is to analyze how this work is done in practice by researchers interested in explaining how and why ideas travel in and out of organizations and become institutionalized in organizational fields. More specifically the paper focuses on the way actor-network theory and the concept of translation have been translated by researchers trying to understand institutionalization processes related to ideas that travel from one place in time and space to another. The paper suggests that combining the concept of translation and theories about institutional change will make it possible to ground macro-sociological claims about how ideas travel and become institutionalized in organizational fields on a micro-sociological and practice-based foundation. It also suggests, however, that the way the actor-network concept of translation has been translated by institutional theorists impedes them from realizing this potential.