Processes of Deinstitutionalization and Reinstitutionalization Among Israeli Kibbutzim, 1990-1998 Raymond Russell Robert Hanneman Shlomo Getz Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Institute for the Research of the Kibbutz University of California Riverside University of California Riverside Haifa University Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association Washington, D.C. August 12-16, 2000 Abstract This study examines processes of diffusion affecting the spread of 52 innovations among Israel’s 248 nonreligious kibbutzim 1990-1998. We look closely not only at the adoption of innovations, but also at processes of deliberation and implementation, rejection and abandonment. Increasing frequencies of innovations increase the frequencies of all transitions. At the relatively low levels of adoption that are common for these innovations, increasing frequencies do not shorten periods of deliberation or implementation, as Tolbert and Zucker (1996) indicate. Radical changes and changes in compensation or consumption are most frequently rejected, while changes in production involve the most lengthy periods of implementation. Economic crisis and especially demographic crisis in individual organizations stimulate readiness for change, as Oliver (1992) and Kraatz and Zajac (1996) suggest, while membership in the Artzi federation of kibbutzim reduces it. The effects of size, age, and geographic isolation are mixed, stimulating interest in some innovations, while decreasing interest in others. As institutional explanations have become increasingly popular in organizational theory, Tolbert and Zucker (1996) and others have begun to ask what questions remain unanswered after the recent profusion of empirical studies. Tolbert and Zucker