Institutional complexity often manifests in enterprise environments as a resistance to innovation due to reliance on legacy systems. For example, in industrial automation, companies may maintain outdated products and code because customers rely on them. Additionally, long-term employees may resist new methods because traditional workflows have historically been successful.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Google

"institutional complexity refers to the cultural or microsocietal structures that exist within an organization, including norms, attitudes, roles, political tensions, sources of power, and institutionalized ways of doing things."

Those who are long-time users of a system usually prefer the legacy version of a system. There is often resistance to change from designer as well due their relative newness compared to domain experts. 

Institutional Complexity

"A senior UX interaction designer in the energy industry described her experience working with work-domain experts who have little empathy for practitioners with limited domain knowledge:   

'There's a lot of subject-matter experts on the team. And they've been in this space for 10-plus years…They sometimes forget (how long they’ve been around) — like, "Hey, you didn't just come here and know everything." You had to ramp up for years…And any sort of UX people that come in —…, it just takes a long time to get them to 1) understand the business, and 2) (understand)…these user goals and motivations, and how can we enhance (the) experience?' "

Quote from Article from UX interaction designer dealing with Institutional Complexity (2)

"Another senior UX designer in healthcare-electronics manufacturing echoed this point and suggested using grassroots efforts to create partnerships with already respected staff to mitigate the challenge:

'What I do is usually I find somebody who can…help me out...Maybe they have more say in that area (of expertise) and then I just partner with them and they help me…bring my idea forward. Because I'm new. It seems like (company name redacted) has a culture of "if…you haven't been here (for a long time), you don't know what you're talking about.' "

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