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Inertia in Informal Institutions: Concepts and Effects

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Institutional Inertia

Part of the book series: Contributions to Economics ((CE))

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Abstract

This chapter investigates inertia in informal institutions, that is, the culture and values of a society. The limited cognitive capacity of the human mind and the complex relationships between different institutions are the reasons identified for the inertia of informal institutions. Humans’ limited cognitive capacity forms beliefs, on the one hand, and human habits, on the other. Concerning institutions and organizations, beliefs and habits cause institutional inertia. The limited human cognitive capacity, accompanied by issues such as human interest and the “free rider problem”, forms the inertia of informal institutions in another way. Furthermore, since we are not always faced with the inertia of informal institutions and sometimes sudden changes may occur in informal institutions, we address in this chapter the speed and direction of changes in informal institutions. Of course, culture should be dynamic and able to change along with technological and economic developments, protecting society’s cultural endowment, identity, and special values to avoid cultural revolution and decay. Furthermore, this chapter addresses viewpoints that ignore inertia in informal institutions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For instance, informal social norms adopted in a society can be considered the coordinators of the expectations (or cultural beliefs) of many (rational) players concerning what they carry out within or outside the course of their games (Greif, 2006).

  2. 2.

    For more information about these two theories, see, for example, Parsons (2017), Mesoudi (2016), Keltner et al. (2022), and Jagiello et al. (2022).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

    Zahra Kheiridoust

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  1. Zahra Kheiridoust
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNESCO Chair Professor Emeritus, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Nezameddin Faghih

  2. Department of Economics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

    Ali Hussein Samadi

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Kheiridoust, Z. (2024). Inertia in Informal Institutions: Concepts and Effects. In: Faghih, N., Samadi, A.H. (eds) Institutional Inertia. Contributions to Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51175-2_5

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