While the concept of functional differentiation is one of sociology’s oldest analytic tools, there is significant confusion about its meaning and purpose in the contemporary discipline. This article addresses one source of uncertainty: the conflicting array of ontological and methodological positions which are currently attached to the differentiation term. Drawing on Laudan’s philosophy of science, I argue that sociology does not house a unified program of differentiation theory, but is instead marked by at least two discrete traditions of differentiation thinking. (...) Disentangling these traditions will, I contend, clarify our thinking, and help reduce the prevalence of internally contradictory conceptual models. (shrink)

Inspired by Weber’s charismatic carrier groups, Eisenstadt coined the term institutional entrepreneur to capture the rare but epochal collective capable of reorienting a group’s value-orientations and transferring charisma, while making them an evolutionary force of structural and cultural change. As a corrective to Parsons’ abstract, ‘top-down’ theory of change, Eisenstadt’s theory provided historical context and agency to moments in which societies experienced qualitative transformation. The concept has become central to new institutionalism, neo-functionalism, and evolutionary-institutionalism. Drawing from the former two, a (...) more robust theory of institutional entrepreneurship from an evolutionary-institutionalist’s perspective is posited. In essence, entrepreneurs formulate institutional projects with dual logic: a collective side focused on innovation where efforts are directed towards organizational symbolic mechanisms of integration and a self-interested side directed towards resource independence, monopolization, mobility, and power-dependence. While outcomes vary based on numerous environmental factors, success leads to (1) greater structural/symbolic independence and (2) ability to reconfigure physical-temporal-social-symbolic space. (shrink)