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The American Review of Public Administration
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Modeling Operational Decision Making in Public Organizations

An Integration of Two Institutional Theories

Tanya Heikkila

Columbia University

Kimberley Roussin Isett

Texas A&M University

Institutional theories, which explain how rules, norms, and shared strategies shape human behavior, have been used to examine why public and private organizations look different structurally, why actors decide to coordinate the provision of goods and services, or how characteristics of a political system shape public management strategies. Many institutional scholars have recognized the importance of developing accurate institutional theories and models to explain policy and management decision making, yet the authors find that few scholars have attempted to bridge institutional theories coming from the political science and organization theory disciplines. In this article, they present a model of operational decision making in public organizations that integrates concepts from these two institutional schools of thought. The authors then apply this model to two distinct cases—one in the field of water resource management and the other in the field of mental health provision—to demonstrate the usefulness of this integrated approach to institutional analysis.

Key Words: institutions • decision making • public management • water resources • health care

The American Review of Public Administration, Vol. 34, No. 1, 3-19 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0275074003260911
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