A STRUCTURAL-COGNITIVE THEORY OF INSTITUTIONAL COORDINATION: SYMBOLIC MEDIATION, COGNITIVE INTEGRATION AND COORDINATIVE SUSTAINABILITY

Oleh Khalabudenko

doi:10.69635/mssl.2026.2.3.60

Authors

Oleh Khalabudenko PhD in Law, Associate Professor, Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, Kyiv, Ukraine Author https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9478-0164

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.69635/mssl.2026.2.3.60

Keywords:

Institutional Coordination, Structural-Cognitive Theory, Symbolic System, Cognitive Economy, Cognitive Integration, Coordinative Sustainability, Institutional Crisis, Legal Constructing

Abstract

This article develops and substantiates a structural-cognitive theory of institutional coordination. It explains how institutional structure acquires a practical capacity to coordinate action and reproduces that capacity over time. Existing strands of institutionalism convincingly elucidate the roles of rules, incentives, legitimacy, discourse and practices; however, they leave insufficiently specified the mechanism through which structural organisation is translated into compatible orientations and coordinated behaviour. The study employs problem-oriented conceptual analysis, theoretical modelling and a legal specialisation of the model. The proposed mechanism begins with participants’ cognitive constraints — an underlying condition of social interaction — and proceeds through institutional structure and a symbolic system that interfaces its formal and informal contours; cognitive economy and cognitive integration then convert this structure into an emergent state of shared orientation, which is enacted as coordinated behaviour, reproduced through recurrent practices, and sustained as coordinative sustainability. The article distinguishes cognitive economy from cognitive integration, sustainability from invariability, and coordinative dysfunction from institutional crisis. Institutional crisis is defined as a regime in which two conditions hold at once: an accumulated mismatch between the complexity of interaction and an institution’s structural-symbolic capacity impedes the reproduction of sufficiently compatible orientations and coordinated action; and the costs of sustaining coordination exceed the level compatible with cognitive integration. The legal specialisation shows that legal constructing encodes social factuality into legally relevant forms, whereas legal constructions support typification, predictability, reciprocal legal expectations and the procedural processing of disagreement. The theory provides a basis for comparative research on institutional reforms, legal orders and crises of coordination.

References

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall.

Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1

Beetham, D. (2013). The legitimation of power (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Bitektine, A., & Haack, P. (2015). The “macro” and the “micro” of legitimacy: Toward a multilevel theory of the legitimacy process. Academy of Management Review, 40(1), 49–75. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2013.0318

Borsboom, D., van der Maas, H. L. J., Dalege, J., Kievit, R. A., & Haig, B. D. (2021). Theory construction methodology: A practical framework for building theories in psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(4), 756–766. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620969647

Cannon-Bowers, J. A., Salas, E., & Converse, S. A. (1993). Shared mental models in expert team decision making. In N. J. Castellan Jr. (Ed.), Individual and group decision making: Current issues (pp. 221–246). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Castelfranchi, C. (2006). The cognitive and behavioral mediation of institutions. Cognitive Systems Research, 7(2–3), 176–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2005.11.003

Coase, R. H. (1937). The nature of the firm. Economica, 4(16), 386–405. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x

Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2011). Building theory about theory building: What constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review, 36(1), 12–32. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2009.0487

Cornelissen, J. P., Durand, R., Fiss, P. C., Lammers, J. C., & Vaara, E. (2015). Putting communication front and center in institutional theory and analysis. Academy of Management Review, 40(1), 10–27. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0381

DeChurch, L. A., & Mesmer-Magnus, J. R. (2010). The cognitive underpinnings of effective teamwork: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 32–53. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017328

Dellmuth, L. M., Scholte, J. A., & Tallberg, J. (2019). Institutional sources of legitimacy for international organisations: Beyond procedure versus performance. Review of International Studies, 45(4), 627–646. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021051900007X

DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095101

Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Polity Press.

Hodgson, G. M. (2010). Choice, habit and evolution. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 20(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-009-0134-z

Jaakkola, E. (2020). Designing conceptual articles: Four approaches. AMS Review, 10, 18–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13162-020-00161-0

Khalabudenko, O. (2024). Basic transformation of legal pictures: Purpose and method of comparative law. The Journal of Comparative Law, 19(1), 103–125. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17908237

Khalabudenko, O. (2025). Defining the boundaries of law: Deconstruction and constructivist methodologies in the analysis of legal norms. In Humanitarian priorities in the conditions of socio-political transformations of Ukraine (pp. 124–136). New Course. https://doi.org/10.61718/mon202511.03

Khalabudenko, O. (2026). Institutional coordination: Prolegomena to a structural-cognitive theory of social institutions. In Scientific space of modernity (pp. 78–89). New Course.

Lawrence, T. B., & Suddaby, R. (2006). Institutions and institutional work. In S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. B. Lawrence, & W. R. Nord (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organization studies (2nd ed., pp. 215–254). SAGE Publications.

Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R., & Leca, B. (Eds.). (2009). Institutional work: Actors and agency in institutional studies of organizations. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511596605

Lenz, T., & Viola, L. A. (2017). Legitimacy and institutional change in international organisations: A cognitive approach. Review of International Studies, 43(5), 939–961. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210517000201

Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1984)

Luhmann, N. (2004). Law as a social system. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1993)

MacCormick, N. (2007). Institutions of law: An essay in legal theory. Oxford University Press.

Mathieu, J. E., Heffner, T. S., Goodwin, G. F., Salas, E., & Cannon-Bowers, J. A. (2000). The influence of shared mental models on team process and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(2), 273–283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.2.273

Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363. https://doi.org/10.1086/226550

Meyer, R. E., Jancsary, D., Höllerer, M. A., & Boxenbaum, E. (2026). Ernst Cassirer and the symbolic foundation of institutions. Journal of Management Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13038

North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808678

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763

Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding institutional diversity. Princeton University Press.

Raz, J. (1986). The morality of freedom. Oxford University Press.

Schmidt, V. A. (2008). Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 303–326. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135342

Schmidt, V. A. (2010). Taking ideas and discourse seriously: Explaining change through discursive institutionalism as the fourth “new institutionalism.” European Political Science Review, 2(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/S175577390999021X

Scott, W. R. (2014). Institutions and organizations: Ideas, interests, and identities (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Searle, J. R. (2010). Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford University Press.

Simon, H. A. (1947). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization. Macmillan.

Simon, H. A. (1957). Models of man: Social and rational. John Wiley & Sons.

Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571–610. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9508080331

Thornton, P. H., Ocasio, W., & Lounsbury, M. (2012). The institutional logics perspective: A new approach to culture, structure, and process. Oxford University Press.

Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why people obey the law. Princeton University Press.

Tyler, T. R., & Jackson, J. (2014). Popular legitimacy and the exercise of legal authority: Motivating compliance, cooperation, and engagement. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 20(1), 78–95. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034514

Wagner, A. (2009). Semiotics and institutional legal theory. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 22(2), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-009-9112-x

Weber, K., & Glynn, M. A. (2006). Making sense with institutions: Context, thought and action in Karl Weick’s theory. Organization Studies, 27(11), 1639–1660. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840606068343

Williamson, O. E. (1985). The economic institutions of capitalism: Firms, markets, relational contracting. Free Press.

Zietsma, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2010). Institutional work in the transformation of an organizational field: The interplay of boundary work and practice work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(2), 189–221. https://doi.org/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.2.189