The Missing Account of Institutional Formation
Why organisational change theory struggles to account for transformation
Organisations routinely describe change programmes as transformational, yet influential theories of organisational change offer limited agreement about what transformation is or how we would know whether it has occurred. This paper argues that part of the problem is a missing theoretical object: institutional formation. Institutions do not merely provide settings in which people change; through repeated relationships, permissions, obligations and patterns of participation, they participate in forming perception, identity, agency and responsibility. The paper develops Relational Architecture as a way of examining these formative conditions and proposes that institutional transformation requires not only changing people or practices, but altering the relational conditions through which an institution forms people, distributes agency and becomes answerable to those affected by its actions.
RIfT Working Paper I · Draft v0.4
This is the first paper in RIfT’s developing research programme on institutional transformation and Relational Architecture. It is published as a working paper to invite dialogue, criticism and refinement.
Paper I develops the problem of institutional formation. Paper II will ask what forms of organisational design, inquiry and practice allow an institution to become alterable by what its participants come to know. Paper III will examine how relational transformation can be studied empirically, and Paper IV will explore what relational transformation demands of power and answerability.