Phenomenology and Institutional Theory: Should Institution Be Taken for Granted?

Abstract

The concept of institution has been used by scholars from across a number of disciplines to explain a wide variety of phenomena. One fundamental idea among organization scholars is that institutions become taken for granted to some degree. Over the years this linkage between the two concepts has itself become institutionalized and taken for granted. Any sense of difference that may have once existed between institution and taken for granted seems to have been forgotten. In an effort to retrieve this distinction, the paper returns to Husserl, on whose philosophy these concepts rest. In doing so we find a richness and distinction otherwise glossed by merely reciting the idea that institution becomes taken for granted. The paper finds that indeed institution and taken for granted are phenomenologically distinct concepts. Through writing and documentation institution can become taken for granted. However, the process is reversible. Indeed Husserl's real project seems to have been a demonstration of how taken for granted can and must become institution if we are to ever truly know ourselves and our world.

Keywords: institutional theory, phenomenology, taken for granted, Husserl, institution