Public institutional routines change incrementally rather than through wholesale overhauls

Evidence

A second division of folk psychology that infants must eventually master is concerned with settings (FP- S) and includes at least two sorts of experiences. One is simply routinized institutional behavior, which has well-known scripts within a culture (Schank & Ableson, 1977). In many cultures, including American culture, much of public life (e.g., eating at a restaurant or going to the dentist) is governed by routines that we often begin learning in childhood and, as adults, watch as familiar routines change over time, usually in a plank-by-plank basis rather than as an overhaul of the entire ship of the institution. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 424

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘plank-by-plank’ metaphor for institutional change is intriguing — worth chasing whether some institutions do change wholesale rather than piecemeal, and what distinguishes them.
• XREF: Connects to Schank & Abelson’s script theory and to work on how routines evolve in organizational life. — connects to: New economic forms usually revert to established practices rather than fully institutionalizing — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 145; Institutional bricolage operates through alteration, aggregation, and articulation. — Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Institutional Bricolage and Commoning…, 4; Small everyday decisions can reshape institutions through accumulated practice — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 119 (+2 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: the plank-by-plank metaphor for how social institutions actually change — gradual accretion rather than demolition, and what that implies for reformers.