Neo Institutional Theory and Leading Change

Currie, Lockett, and Suhomlinova have completed research that underscores the role of environment upon our leadership. In their article, "Leadership and Institutional Change in the Public Sector: The Case of Secondary Schools in England" (The Leadership Quarterly, 20, (2009), 664-679), they make the case that rather than being isolated to either personal characteristics or situation, leadership can be an amalgam of these but with another added: the environment in which the leader serves.

Their work is grounded in neo-institutional theory, a theory that posits the practices of our organizations are affected by the institutions within society. Among these are institutions with power to regulate and thus manipulate conformance and those that reify values and define what is normal. The use of the word "institutions" doesn't refer first to buildings or organizations but to an idea or ideal through which the accumulation of permissions to wield influence over human agency has become a structure of power over that agency. Examples of two such can be government and culture.

In a study that tracked the work of school principles tasked with introducing a "results oriented" leadership to their schools, they noted that the preferred and commonly accepted form of leadership for principles was a "moral" leadership that valued "wider social goals" over test scores. These two, results oriented leadership and moral leadership, in effect, reflected the public face of two institutions: the former representing the government and the latter the educational culture. Though the principle's had good reason to conform to the government's demands - such as sanctions against their schools - in those settings where students were socially deprived, principles chose to express leadership in support of the environment that fostered them: the educational culture and its insistence upon a moral approach to education.

It should not be concluded that the principles sole reason for rejecting the government legitimating their leadership was an unconscious need for acceptance by their faculties. Yet it does underscore the importance of environment upon our leadership and as importantly what we believe about the ultimate goal of that leadership. Further, it suggests that not only are we are a product of the environment that shaped our beliefs but also of the one in which we serve and from which we take cues regarding that service.

For those leading organizational change the implications can be sobering. In this instance, the principles were to counter the culture of their organization and in the process effectively negate decades of permissions that had come to govern human agency. Not all organizational change is so dramatic yet leading people to create a new story about themselves and the organization that defines them can be. To say it requires sensitivity of the leader is not fair to the tremendous strain s/he is placed under. Rather, it is essential for the leader to know themselves and in that knowing be fully aware of their values and what animates them.