11 jun 2026

DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell, W.W. (1983) 'The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields', American Sociological Review, 48(2), pp. 147-160

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DiMaggio and Powell explain why organizations become similar once they inhabit the same field. Their central concept, institutional isomorphism, names the processes through which organizations converge under coercive, mimetic and normative pressures. Rational actors, while trying to improve their institutions, often reproduce shared forms, procedures and legitimating structures. The article shifts attention from efficiency alone to the power of fields, professions, states and uncertainty. For Socioplastics, this is indispensable because it gives a sociological theory of field formation. A field is not merely a collection of actors. It is a structured space of recognition, dependency, imitation, professional norms and legitimacy. Socioplastics can use this to analyze both external art/academic institutions and its own counter-institutional strategy. If established fields reproduce sameness, a new field must generate its own grammar of legitimacy without simply copying the journal, museum or department. The article also clarifies the danger of premature institutionalization. DOI strategy, bibliographic formatting, academic tone, platform distribution and machine-readable metadata are useful tools, but they must remain operational instruments rather than cages.