Dr. Achim Oberg veröffentlicht zusammen mit Prof. Woody Powell von der Stanford University den Aufsatz Networks and Institutions im SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, 2nd edition 2017.

Summary: We began our chapter with the convictionvthat the traditions of research on networks and institutions ought to be brought into closer alignment. After showing that canonical institutional work incorporated both relational and cultural concepts, we provided examples of three lines of research that connect network analysis and institutional analysis empirically. The three streams highlight the variability of relational structures to form new social entities quickly, emphasize the deeply institutionalized and hard-to-alter expectations connected with social relations, and illustrate the dynamic interplay between relational and meaning structures that forge divergent paths of institutional change. We showed, in the first line, that social relations are building blocks for institutions within organizations at the micro-level as well as between organizations within organizational fields. We then turned to a second burgeoning line of research on the relational aspect of meaning structures. The third line of multi-level analyses is located at the frontier, bringing together both cultural and relational analyses. We are convinced that all three avenues have propitious futures; each will benefit from the expansion of big data sources becoming available for relational analyses, the advancement of social network methods, and theoretical progress in both network analysis and institutionalism.