The institution of tribal sovereignty: from historical challenges to modern expressions
Authors: Pittz Thomas , Adler Terry , Claw Carma 
Published: December 2024

Purpose

This paper aims to offer fresh insight into new institutional theory in the context of Native American tribal sovereignty. This paper outlines the history of tribal sovereignty to propose it as an 8th institution, express how it is differentially applied in Native Nations and discuss how conflicts between institutional logics have an impact on economic and cultural outcomes. While doing so, this paper provides a review of tribal sovereignty to contextualize how the institution has developed over time, how it is exercised today and how the complexity of economic logics continues to affect its attainment. The power of the institutional logics that undergird tribal sovereignty has shifted over time, and this paper highlights the ontological and practical consequences of this shift on the institution of tribal sovereignty itself.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper reviewed the literary history of Native American tribal sovereignty using the lens of institutional theory to uncover dynamics that have been previously overlooked. This study stems from this review and extends the understanding of neo-institutional theory by offering a fresh contextual perspective from the lens of tribal sovereignty. The inclusion of a historical perspective, as well as modern expressions of tribal sovereignty, enables the narrative to suggest that tribal sovereignty is better understood as an institution. This paper is also able to highlight how some of the tension within conceptualizations of tribal sovereignty relies, in part, upon the institutional logic of Hózhó, and why these tensions persist even today within the exercise of sovereignty. This study is akin to what Arseneault, Deal and Helms Mills (2021) call a “review with attitude” that provides an alternative view of Native American tribal sovereignty and its relationship with new institutional theory to suggest a new research agenda for organizational studies.

Findings

This paper demonstrates the challenges that tribal leaders face and enumerates the various strategies used by Native American nations to exercise sovereignty from the US Federal Government. It shows the conflicts between economic and cultural outcomes and the ways in which tribes struggle to balance these conflicts both from within the tribe and without. While all organizations face various forms of environmental pressures, tribal nations in the USA exercise sovereignty to achieve a balance that is unlike other, paradigmatically capitalistic and Western, institutional forms.

Originality/value

At a time when marginalization and inclusiveness have become more prominent themes in management discourse, this paper expands upon the background of tribal sovereignty in the USA to highlight these concepts. Much has been written about the legal and social aspects of Native American culture and integration, or lack thereof, within Western culture. What has been missing, however, is the way in which tribal nations rely on sovereignty as a social structure beyond the mere legal and formal aspects of being recognized as a “nation within a nation.” One of the contributions of this study is to link the concepts of tribal sovereignty and the study of institutional theory, providing a rich framework for distancing ourselves from traditional logocentric Westernized approaches to a more inclusive understanding of alternative social structures.