Institutionalized organizational forms sediment and become taken for granted across organizations over time.

Evidence

Most important, this theory highlights the relevance of the symbolic-normative environment of organizations and how this influences the formal and informal structuring of organizations over time. Apart from the pace of the development (Lawrence et al., 2001), it addresses institutional inertia and stability by revealing how a specific organizational structure or form becomes sedimented and taken for granted over time, preferably across sets of organizations. — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 72

Categorization

• XREF: Links the sedimentation of institutional forms to path dependence via the shared emphasis on inertia and stability.