organizational studies Organization studies (also called organization science or organizational studies) is the academic field interested in a ''collective activity, and how it relates to organization, organizing, and management''. It is "the examination of how individua ...

, and particularly new institutional theory, decoupling is the creation and maintenance of gaps between formal policies and actual organizational practices.Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. 1977. "Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony," ''American Journal of Sociology'', 83: 340-63. Organizational researchers have documented decoupling in a variety of organizations, including schools,

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...

s,Westphal, James D., and Edward Zajac. 2001. "Explaining Institutional Decoupling: The Case of Stock Repurchase Programs." ''Administrative Science Quarterly'', 46: 202-28.

government agencies A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administratio ...

,Tilcsik, András. “From Ritual to Reality: Demography, Ideology, and Decoupling in a Post- Communist Government Agency,” ''Academy of Management Journal'', 53:6 (December 2010): 1474-1498.
/ref> police, and

social movement organization A social movement organization (SMO) is an organized component of a social movement. SMOs are generally seen as the components of a social movement. The movement's goal that can be much more narrow, or much broader, than the SMOs' goals. Descrip ...

s. Scholars have proposed a number of explanations for why organizations engage in decoupling. Some researchers have argued that decoupling enables organizations to gain

legitimacy Legitimacy, from the Latin ''legitimare'' meaning "to make lawful", may refer to: * Legitimacy (criminal law) * Legitimacy (family law) * Legitimacy (political) See also * Bastard (law of England and Wales) * Illegitimacy in fiction * Legit (d ...

with their external members while simultaneously maintaining internal flexibility to address practical considerations.Other scholars have noted that decoupling may occur because it serves the interests of powerful organizational leaders, or because it allows organizational decision-makers to avoid implementing policies that conflict with their ideological beliefs. Recent research has also identified the reverse of decoupling: recoupling, the process whereby "policies and practices that were once decoupled may eventually become coupled." Despite the emphasis in the literature on the decoupling between policies and practices, the phenomenon might also occur when organizations attempt to implement initiatives, but their results are far from what was initially expected. The so-called "means-ends" decoupling has received growing attention, especially in emerging institutional fields, such as sustainability.

References

{{Reflist Organizational theory