Nested institutions and the retardation of the adaptive process

New institutionalism, constituting a middle-range theory in the social sciences over the past decade, has failed to explain the ways whereby an institutional change takes place. Viewing the world through a lens that targets the institution alone, adherents of the approach focus chiefly on the logic of institutional persistence, that is, embeddedness. A critical analysis of the notion of new institutionalism, from a systems perspective, shows that the embeddedness becomes the very source of institutional change. The established institution, the members of which adhere to the continuity that the institution embodies, cannot escape exposure to complex systemic and environmental changes. That is, the institution, which is nested in a system, cannot but experience a retardation of the adaptive process. The retardation results in institutional change and, furthermore, often precedes a systemic transformation, depending upon the significance of the institution within a given system.