[Schemata are] knowledge structures that represent objects or events and provide default assumptions about their characteristics, relationships, and … - Paul DiMaggio

Organizations compete not just for resources and customers, but for political power and institutional legitimacy, for social as well as economic fitness.

Organizations tend to model themselves after similar organizations in their field that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful.

The new institutionalism focuses instead on nonlocal environments, either organisational sectors or fields roughly coterminous with the boundaries of industries, professions, or national societies. Environments, in this view, are more subtle in their influence; rather than being co-opted by organisations, they penetrate the organisation, creating the lenses through which actors view the world and the very categories of structure, action and thought.