This document discusses how institutions maintain social inequalities through relational processes. It argues that inequality is inherent in institutional structures and interactions. Institutions establish typified roles, situations, and activities that encode inequalities. The structural relationality of institutions "puts people in place" in roles, while relational practices between role takers, like habituation, adjustment, and rejection, "hold in place" this unequal structure over time. This relational perspective highlights how institutions reproduce inequality despite individual agency, and how drifts in relational practices can gradually transform institutions.

1. How Do Institutions Matter
in Creating, Maintaining and Disrupting
KLAUS WEBER
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
MARY ANN GLYNN
Carroll School of Management
Boston College
MAXIM VORONOV
Goodman School of Business
Brock University
Social Inequalities?

2. Central Argument
Inequality is inherent in institutional processes.
An understanding of institutions in maintaining social
inequalities requires a relational account of institutional
processes (Emirbayer, 1997).
We focus on both the structural and interactional bases of
institutional inequality.

3. A Relational
Perspective on
Institutions
Neo-institutionalism
unintentionally resulted in the
defocalization of people who
inhabit organizations.
We focus on the institutional
reproduction of inequality in
spite of the agency often
afforded to people,
acknowledging that
breakdowns in reproduction
can also occur.
Incorporates concerns with
systemic power.

4. An institution furnishes particular
roles that are associated with
prescribed subjectivities and
motivations, as well as with
different relational models and
corresponding treatments for
different types of others.
From a relational perspective,
inequality is more than difference
or distinctiveness.
Relational Structure
and Relational Practice
A Relational
Perspective on
Institutions

5. 1) The Structural Relationality
of Institutions
Typification of action for particular typified situations and actors
Frame
(typified situation)
Ritual
(typified performance)
Identity
(typified actor)
See e.g.: Douglas, Bourdieu, Goffman

6. Frame
work - care
Ritual
strategize - implement
Identity
owner - employee
Examples:
Inequalities Are Encoded In Types
• System of social categories
• Status and domination rights attached to some
• Focus of most institutional research: Social
inequality from access to valued roles (e.g.,
income distribution)
• System of institutional domains
• Unequal worth within an inter-institutional system
• Limited incorporation in institutional research:
Social inequality from access to valued situations
(e.g., pay for gendered work categories)
• System of typified activities
• Privilege based on valued public ritual
• Mostly ignored (ritual <> ceremony): Social
inequality from access to rituals

7. Neo-institutionalism
unintentionally resulted in the
defocalization of people who
inhabit organizations.
We focus on the institutional
reproduction of inequality in
spite of the agency often
afforded to people,
acknowledging that
breakdowns in reproduction
can also occur.
The macro-foundations of
institutional processes cannot be
understood fully without
uncovering the micro-
foundations.
A Relational
Perspective on
Institutions
Institutions’ relational
structure
“puts people in place” while
relational practices between
role takers “hold in place”
this structure.

8. A Relational
Perspective on
Institutions
Institutions’ relational
structure
“puts people in place” while
relational practices between
role takers “hold in place”
this structure.
The Production of Inequality
We believe that a largely neglected set of
mechanisms are critically important for
institutional inequality.
These are relational practices that would be
ill described as work, since they entail more
intuitive and less effortful behaviors.

9. Relational Practices Maintaining
Institutional Inequality
- Occupants of Under-Privileged Typified Roles
Habituation Adjustment Rejection
Thinking, and
feeling about
oneself in a
manner
consistent with
the expectations
of their typified
role
Modifying one’s
thoughts,
feelings, and
actions to better
align with the
expectations of
the typified role
Attempting to
retaliate or
abandon the
typified role one
is supposed to
occupy

10. Relational Practices Maintaining
Institutional Inequality
Figure 1

11. • Unintentional deviations from typified role
that are not initially detected by self or
others; institution becomes temporarily
“uninhabited”
• Retrospective normalization fixes the altered
relational structure and reinforces “new”
relational practices
Institutional drift and gradual
transformation

12. Implications
The personhood of institutional actors
Shift of focus to inequality as an outcome
in its own right
Insight into how the pragmatic life is the
foundation of institutional maintenance.