Economic sociologists stress that economic actors are embedded in a sociohistorical context that shapes and constrains activity. Neoinstitutionalists build on this idea and argue that economic actors are embedded in two key ways. First, they are embedded in the rationalized worldview described by Weber in which every end has an optimal means. Second, economic actors are embedded in a local context in which they collectively search for optimal strategies. Whereas local contexts and strategies vary greatly, neoinstitutionalists find great regularity in the script by which economic actors converge in strategies. The present article expounds on this “double embeddedness” by way of a single historical case: the construction of strategy by early American railroaders.
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