What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Normal accidents. Living with high-risk technologies

This paper discusses the recurrence and the recurrent limitations of liberalism as a general discourse, strategy, and regime. It then establishes a continuum of neoliberalism ranging from a project for radical system transformation from state socialism to market capitalism, through a basic regime shift within capitalism, to more limited policy adjustments intended to maintain another type of accumulation regime and its mode of regulation. These last two forms of neoliberalism are then related to a broader typology of approaches to the restructuring, rescaling, and reordering of accumulation and regulation in advanced capitalist societies: neoliberalism, neocorporatism, neostatism, and neocommunitarianism. These arguments are illustrated in the final part of the paper through a critique of the World Report on the Urban Future 21 (World Commission 2000), both as an explicit attempt to promote flanking and supporting measures to sustain the neoliberal project on the urban scale and as an implicit attempt to naturalize that project on a global scale.

/pdf/liberalism-neoliberalism-and-urban-governance-a-state-33yi24bseg.pdf

Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance: A State‐Theoretical Perspective

dismantling the welfare state reagan thatcher and politics of retrenchment are a good way to achieve details about operating certainproducts. Many products that you buy can be obtained using instruction manuals. These user guides are clearlybuilt to give step-by-step information about how you ought to go ahead in operating certain equipments. Ahandbook is really a user's guide to operating the equipments. Should you loose your best guide or even the productwould not provide an instructions, you can easily obtain one on the net. You can search for the manual of yourchoice online. Here, it is possible to work with google to browse through the available user guide and find the mainone you'll need. On the net, you'll be able to discover the manual that you might want with great ease andsimplicity

Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment

The paper assesses current trajectories of change in the German system of industrial relations by analysing the co-determination and collective bargaining systems. It argues that two parallel developments undermine the institutional stability of the German model. First, the institutional base of the German industrial relations system, which has served as the precondition of its past success, has been shrinking during the last two decades. This is due to a decline in coverage by the two major industrial relations institutions: the works council system and wage agreements. Today fewer than 15 per cent of German plants are covered by both a valid collective agreement and a works council. Second, increasing decentralization pressures within collective bargaining tend to undermine the division of labour between co-determination and collective bargaining. The dynamics of an institutional erosion of the German industrial relations institutions and the decentralization of collective bargaining disturbs the fine-tuning of the mediating process between macroeconomic steering capacity and co-operative workplace industrial relations. This tendency has been aggravated by the effects of German unification. The current institutional developments of the German industrial relations system leave serious doubts about the future of a successful model of co-operative modernization.

/pdf/the-erosion-of-the-german-system-of-industrial-relations-554ik0x8m1.pdf

The Erosion of the German System of Industrial Relations

What do the recent trends in German economic development convey about the trajectory of change? Has liberalization prepared the German economy to deal with new challenges? What effects will liberalization have on the coordinating capacities of economic institutions? This paper argues that coordination and liberalization are two sides of the same coin in the process of corporate restructuring in the face of economic shocks. Firms seek labour cooperation in the face of tighter competitive pressures and exploit institutional advantages of coordination. However, tighter cooperation with core workers sharpened insider-outsider divisions and were built upon service sector cost cutting through liberalization. The combination of plant-level restructuring and social policy change forms a trajectory of institutional adjustment of forming complementary economic segments which work under different rules. The process is driven by producer coalitions of export-oriented firms and core workers’ representatives rather than by firms per se.

The paradox of liberalization – understanding dualism and the recovery of the German political economy

What do the recent trends in German economic development convey about the trajectory of change? Has liberalization prepared the German economy to deal with new challenges? What effects will liberalization have on the co-ordinating capacities of economic institutions? This article argues that co-ordination and liberalization are two sides of the same coin in the process of corporate restructuring in the face of economic shocks. Firms seek labour co-operation in the face of tighter competitive pressures and exploit institutional advantages of co-ordination. However, tighter co-operation with core workers sharpened insider–outsider divisions and were built upon service sector cost cutting through liberalization. The combination of plant-level restructuring and social policy change forms a trajectory of institutional adjustment of forming complementary economic segments which work under different rules. The process is driven by producer coalitions of export-oriented firms and core workers’ representatives, rather than by firms per se.

/pdf/the-paradox-of-liberalization-understanding-dualism-and-the-3ahxfvdffp.pdf

The Paradox of Liberalization — Understanding Dualism and the Recovery of the German Political Economy

The reform of the welfare state entails changes in interdependent policy fields stretching from social policies to employment and wage policies. These linked policy fields are often governed by varying sets of corporate actors and involve different decision-making procedures. Adaptation in one policy field is often unco-ordinated with other policies, and can work at cross-purposes, produce negative externalities, or fail owing to the lack of supporting conditions. The article has two objectives. First, it argues that the renewed emergence of tripartite concertation is due to the need to co-ordinate policies across policy fields. Second, it evaluates the institutional factors which have facilitated concertation in some cases, but not in others. Using a similar country design, the article compares four continental European countries with similar reform pressures but different reform trajectories: France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_1235117_2/component/file_2069332/JEPP_7_2000_Ebbinghaus.pdf

Striking deals: concertation in the reform of continental European welfare states

The paper develops an analytical framework for the politics of negotiated voluntary wage restraint in the context of social pacts. It argues that, in contrast to earlier political exchanges, tripartite negotiations on wage restraint under restrictive economic policies are not based on a political exchange whereby governments had to compensate trade unions for wage restraint. Rather, governments can threaten trade unions with tight monetary policy and trade unions can either engage in negotiated adjustment or suffer restrictions. Social pacts are therefore an instrument of adjustment by governments to a new economic environment, and not a tool of economic policy.

/pdf/the-politics-of-social-pacts-3zlh4nb65u.pdf

Anke Hassel

Papers

The Erosion of the German System of Industrial Relations

The paradox of liberalization – understanding dualism and the recovery of the German political economy

The Paradox of Liberalization — Understanding Dualism and the Recovery of the German Political Economy

Striking deals: concertation in the reform of continental European welfare states

The Politics of Social Pacts