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Don’t Be Unhappy, You Can Be Perfect! The Institutionalization of Aesthetic Surgery

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Institutions Inc.

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Abstract

Institutional entrepreneurship is an important determinant for the legitimization of emerging practices. Institutional entrepreneurs theorize new practices (Strang and Meyer, 1993; Greenwood, Suddaby and Hinings, 2002) and open the way for their wide adoption. Entrepreneurship, however, fails to explain why practices remain marginal, are temporary, or are forever abandoned. In particular, institutional theory needs more insight into unsuccessful entrepreneurship. Some accounts already exist. Scholars point, for example, to the role of coincidence and haphazardness (Greenwood, Suddaby and Hinings, 2002) or spatially dispersed, heterogeneous, and uncoordinated activities by actors (Lounsbury and Crumley, 2007) in the emergence of new fields.

Our analysis of American aesthetic surgery shows that institutional hostility is able to put the very existence of an emerging field at stake. For most of its history aesthetic surgery was slowed in its development, but it eventually gained ground. However, this process does not seem to have always been significantly triggered by members of the emergent field. In this regard, the case of aesthetic surgery both exposes the role of institutional entrepreneurship and supports the point that institutional change relies on chance.

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Authors
  1. Raluca Kerekes
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  2. Peter Walgenbach
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leicester, UK

    Elke Weik

  2. Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany

    Peter Walgenbach

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© 2016 Raluca Kerekes and Peter Walgenbach

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Kerekes, R., Walgenbach, P. (2016). Don’t Be Unhappy, You Can Be Perfect! The Institutionalization of Aesthetic Surgery. In: Weik, E., Walgenbach, P. (eds) Institutions Inc.. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481498_4

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