How to Do Things With Words

In this article I describe and compare a number of alternative generic strategies for the analysis of process data, looking at the consequences of these strategies for emerging theories. I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies in terms of their capacity to generate theory that is accurate, parsimonious, general, and useful and suggest that method and theory are inextricably intertwined, that multiple strategies are often advisable, and that no analysis strategy will produce theory without an uncodifiable creative leap, however small. Finally, I argue that there is room in the organizational research literature for more openness within the academic community toward a variety of forms of coupling between theory and data.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259349.pdf

Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data

Knowledge Management

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)

Complex organizations exhibit surprising, nonlinear behavior. Although organization scientists have studied complex organizations for many years, a developing set of conceptual and computational tools makes possible new approaches to modeling nonlinear interactions within and between organizations. Complex adaptive system models represent a genuinely new way of simplifying the complex. They are characterized by four key elements: agents with schemata, self-organizing networks sustained by importing energy, coevolution to the edge of chaos, and system evolution based on recombination. New types of models that incorporate these elements will push organization science forward by merging empirical observation with computational agent-based simulation. Applying complex adaptive systems models to strategic management leads to an emphasis on building systems that can rapidly evolve effective adaptive solutions. Strategic direction of complex organizations consists of establishing and modifying environments within which effective, improvised, self-organized solutions can evolve. Managers influence strategic behavior by altering the fitness landscape for local agents and reconfiguring the organizational architecture within which agents adapt.

Complexity Theory and Organization Science

Many authors have stressed the existence of continuous processes of convergence and divergence, stability and instability, evolution and revolution in every organization. This article argues that these processes are embedded in organizational characteristics and in the way organizations are managed. Organizations are presented as nonlinear dynamic systems subject to forces of stability and forces of instability which push them toward chaos. When in a chaotic domain, organizations are likely to exhibit the qualitative properties of chaotic systems. Several of these properties—sensitivity to initial conditions, discreteness of change, attraction to specific configurations, structural invariance at different scales and irreversibility—are used to establish six propositions. First, because of the coupling of counteracting forces, organizations are potentially chaotic. Second, the path from organizational stability to chaos follows a discrete process of change. Third, when the organization is in the chaotic do...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2635237.pdf

Chaos Theory and Organization

In this article we conjecture that organizational actors, through their actions, create their own context. Once initiated, the context tends to develop a dynamic of its own, which escapes the control of the organizational actors. In con sequence, the context becomes the determining factor of the actors' initiatives. Voluntarism has created its own determinism which will eventually shape the organizational actors' futures. To illustrate our view, we study a crisis which we believe may exemplify a situation induced and perpetuated by the same organizational actors who tried to handle it. To support this thesis, we attempt to show that the observed crisis is chaotic. Our results reveal that deterministic chaos cannot be rejected as an explanation of the dynamics of the situation. The crisis exhibits an apparently random behaviour which, we believe, is deter ministically created through tightly coupled actions and dynamic interactions among actors. Once in the chaotic state, actors cannot control the process ...

Action, Structure and Chaos

This article examines the conditions under which organizations publicly respond to unfavorable consumer evaluations that challenge their market identity. Because organizations’ market identities ar...

Protecting Market Identity: When and How Do Organizations Respond to Consumers’ Devaluations?

L’evolution dans la maniere de concevoir les organisations, depuis la vision rationnelle du management scientifique jusqu’aux systemes ouverts, a progressivement deplace l’interet des chercheurs de l’interieur de l’organisation vers une apprehension plus large englobant l’organisation et son environnement. Environnement et organisation peuvent alors se concevoir comme...

Relations interorganisationnelles : conceptualisation, résultats et voies de recherche

How have the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies worked their way to the top position? Are there several paths to the top, or have most present-day CEOs moved up the ranks in a similar fashion? We examine the employment trajectories of all of the current Fortune 100 CEOs across their entire working careers to answer these questions. The analysis developed in this article is carried out in two steps. We first use sequence analysis to find the patterns that are characteristic of the career paths of these CEOs. We then apply clustering techniques to identify distinct groups of career paths that have led individuals to the uppermost management level. Our results show that the careers of the Fortune 100 CEOs have largely followed traditional career paths that are symbolized by steady progression toward more responsibility, little mobility between firms and industries, and a strong focus on general management functions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Bernard Forgues

Papers

Chaos Theory and Organization

Action, Structure and Chaos

Protecting Market Identity: When and How Do Organizations Respond to Consumers’ Devaluations?

Relations interorganisationnelles : conceptualisation, résultats et voies de recherche

The Way to the Top: Career Patterns of Fortune 100 CEOS