Retirement ages among older Americans have only recently begun to increase after a precipitous fifty-year decline. Early retirement may result from incentives provided by retirement systems; but it may also result from the rigidities imposed by market work schedules. Using the American Time Use...

The work of maintaining institutions has been barely studied by neo-institutional analysis. We propose to enrich this notion thanks to the empirical study of credit rating. The credit rating industry is characterized by a paradox that lies in the opposition between the permanence that comes with...

Institutional maintenance is particularly intriguing when it occurs in the case of technological shifts, with both changes in technologies but persistence in fundamental ways of thinking. In such a case, artefacts may play a significant role, since they are impacted by new technologies but may...

In this paper, we examine the issue of how certain actors tend to maintain institutionalized elements, in spite of significant technological and social change. In particular, we focus on the notion of artifacts, which represent one type of institutional carriers, but mostly overlooked in the...