A best seller in its first edition, Institutions and Organizations has been thoroughly revised and expanded. This second edition provides a comprehensive overview of the institutionalist approach to organization theory. Dick Scott presents a historical overview of the theoretical literature, an integrative analysis of current institutional approaches, and a review of empirical research related to institutions and organizations. He offers an extensive review and critique of institutional analysis in sociology, political science, and economics as it relates to recent theory and research on organizations.

The second edition gives particular attention to the topics of agency and structure and to institutional change. Given the constraining and constitutive properties of institutions, how can actors intervene to introduce novelty? How is change possible? To a previous concern with "convergent" change, a focus on increasing structural isomorphism, the author adds a thorough analysis of the sources of "disruptive" change, deinstitutionalization, and the emergence of new kinds of institutions.

First edition 1995; Selected as one of the Outstanding Academic Books of 1995 by Choice.

A holistic approach to the financial problems of the elderly focuses simultaneously on their expenditures that are self financed as well as those that are financed by transfers from the young (under age65). It also focuses simultaneously on paying for health care and paying for other goods and services. The income and health care expenditures not paid from personal income, provides a useful framework for empirical application of the holistic approach. In 1997, approximately 35 percent of the elderly's full income was devoted to health care; 65 percent to other goods and services. Approximately 56 percent of full income was provided by transfers from the young and 44 percent by the elderly themselves. The paper shows how these percentages might change under alternative assumptions about the growth of health care relative to other goods and services and the effect of these changes on the need for more saving and more work prior to retirement.

The 35 chapters of The Handbook of Health Economics provide an up-to-date survey of the burgeoning literature in health economics. As a relatively recent subdiscipline of economics, health economics has been remarkably successful. It has made or stimulated numerous contributions to various areas of the main discipline: the theory of human capital; the economics of insurance; principal-agent theory; asymmetric information; econometrics; the theory of incomplete markets; and the foundations of welfare economics, among others. Perhaps it has had an even greater effect outside the field of economics, introducing terms such as opportunity cost, elasticity, the margin, and the production function into medical parlance. Indeed, health economists are likely to be as heavily cited in the clinical as in the economics literature. Partly because of the large share of public resources that health care commands in almost every developed country, health policy is often a contentious and visible issue; elections have sometimes turned on issues of health policy. Showing the versatility of economic theory, health economics and health economists have usually been part of policy debates, despite the vast differences in medical care institutions across countries. The publication of the first Handbook of Health Economics marks another step in the evolution of health economics.

In recent years, the hospital industry has been undergoing massive change and reorganization with technological innovations and the spread of managed care. As a result, the total number of hospitals countrywide has been declining, and a growing number of not-for-profit hospitals have converted to for-profit status. These changes raise two fundamental questions: What determines a hospital's choice of for-profit or not-for-profit organizational form? And how does that form affect patients and society?

This timely volume provides a factual basis for discussing for-profit versus not-for-profit ownership of hospitals and gives a first look at the evidence about new and important issues in the hospital industry. The Changing Hospital Industry: Comparing Not-for-Profit and For-Profit Institutions will have significant implications for public-policy reforms in this vital industry and will be of great interest to scholars in the fields of health economics, public finance, hospital organization, and management; and to health services researchers.

In recent years, the hospital industry has been undergoing massive change and reorganization with technological innovations and the spread of managed care. As a result, the total number of hospitals countrywide has been declining, and a growing number of not-for-profit hospitals have converted to for-profit status. These changes raise two fundamental questions: What determines a hospital's choice of for-profit or not-for-profit organizational form? And how does that form affect patients and society?

This timely volume provides a factual basis for discussing for-profit versus not-for-profit ownership of hospitals and gives a first look at the evidence about new and important issues in the hospital industry. iThe Changing Hospital Industry: Comparing Not-for-Profit and For-Profit Institutions will have significant implications for public-policy reforms in this vital industry and will be of great interest to scholars in the fields of health economics, public finance, hospital organization, and management; and to health services researchers.