Goodness overloaded: The role of bystanders in undoing institutional change

Why are good changes prone to being reversed? Although this is an important question to
institutional scholars, surprisingly little is known about the inherent limitations on change due to
a primary focus in studies on the promoters of change and their successful outcomes. In this
study, I address the question by turning my attention to bystanders, combining institutional
theory with research on bystander effects and common knowledge. Based on an integrative
theoretical framework, I introduce the concept of an ‘imagined scope of responsibility’.
Bystanders, as ordinary people, are more likely to be influenced by their perception of fellow
bystanders’ behavior, rather than that of activists or institutional entrepreneurs. When they notice
that those around them apparently contribute to a morally right and socially desirable change, the
scope of responsibility they imagine increases, and they are more likely to engage in the process
of change. When almost all members of a community join the cause, however, they are all aware
of each other’s participation; they come to see the support as routine performance, thus shrinking
the scope of responsibility. Eventually, bystanders no longer show their support, suggesting that
the change is prone to being reversed. I test my thesis using original data on organized versus
spontaneous help in the context of Danish Jew displacement during WWII, and conduct
multinominal logistic regressions to predict bystanders’ help. In this paper, I consider a societylevel desirable change as breaking official rules to help people on the run. My study holds
implications for institutional theory and research on institutional change in particular. It also
helps explain barriers to the spread of goodwill in this current era of displacement