History and the present: Institutional legacies in communities of organizations

Abstract

An important source of organizational variation in communities is institutional legacies: institutions that persist and affect the community over long periods of time. Institutional legacies have received attention in the past, but recently there has been increased interest in their origins and effects. We examine three carriers of institutional legacies—legal structures, voluntary organizations, and intra-community relations—and show some work on each of these carriers. We discuss how research on institutional legacies presents a particular challenge in causal identification, but we also offer potentially viable solutions to this challenge. Finally, we outline extensions of research on institutional legacies through work that documents how the interrelationships between community organizations and businesses are shaped by institutional legacies and in turn contribute to their evolution.