The Iron Cage Enchanted: Institutional Isomorphism and the Embrace of Mindfulness as Organizational Practice

In 1983, Paul DiMaggio together with Walter Powell published what would become one of the most influential articles in social science. “The Iron Cage Revisited” stipulated new drivers of collective rationality in organizational fields that departed from Weber’s emphasis on bureaucratic rationalization and disenchantment of society. In recent years, scholars have argued that forms of enchantment nevertheless persist as organizational practices. Along these lines, this article adopts the central conceptual framework proposed by DiMaggio and Powell to examine the rise of mindfulness as corporate practice through the lens of institutional isomorphism. We use historical analysis of organizational change and case studies to identify the extent to which normative, mimetic, and coercive isomorphism pressures help explain mindfulness practices in corporations, how these pressures interact with the role of social movements in organizational change, and manifestations of emotional economies in late capitalism. On the whole, the analysis points to how an attempt at revisiting the iron cage today identifies glimmers of re-enchantment; however, these do little to erode capitalism’s enduring iron grip.