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)

Five decades of research on export barriers: Review and future directions

This study presents a retrospective on Journal of International Marketing using bibliometrics. The study finds that the journal’s run has been characterized by continuous growth in publications and...

Research Constituents, Intellectual Structure, and Collaboration Patterns in Journal of International Marketing: An Analytical Retrospective:

Disentangling the Impact of Different Innovation Types, Financial Constraints and Geographic Diversification on SMEs' Export Growth

Intellectual evolution of social innovation: A bibliometric analysis and avenues for future research trends

Exporting research is an established facet of the field of international marketing. That stated, the radical increase in recent export activity necessitates a sustained research effort devoted to the topic. In this article, the authors provide a qualitative review of the core theoretical exporting areas and evaluate the exporting domain quantitatively over six decades (1958–2016). For the quantitative analysis, they use multidimensional scaling and apply established bibliometric principles to offer an understanding of the field and to provide suggestions for future exporting research. For the evaluations, the authors used data from 830 articles with 52,191 citations from 35 journals. Using cocitation analysis as the basis to evaluate the data, they propose a series of intellectual structure implications on exporting that relate to internationalization process stages, dynamic capabilities, knowledge scarcity, social networks, export marketing strategy, absorptive capacity and learning, and nonlinea...

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An Assessment of the Exporting Literature: Using Theory and Data to Identify Future Research Directions

Although the importance of leader-follower relationships in the workplace is widely acknowledged, the impact of changes in such relationships has not been adequately examined in the literature. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory and research suggest that leader-follower relationships develop, mature, and then stabilize. Integrating recent work finding important and impactful within-individual variations in what was thought to be relatively unvarying relationships, we theorize that leader-follower relationships (like other types of linkages), are not only differentiated (varying between people), but also fluctuate across time periods (varying within people). We also discuss how people can understand their relationships better by comparing them to a relevant and proximal referent; this underlines how prior levels of LMX serve as a lens by which followers evaluate their current LMX. Across two studies, we discuss how comparing this week’s LMX to last week’s LMX can signal improvement (i.e., gains) or deterioration (i.e., losses) in the relationship, with differential implications for positive and negative affect. We also provide additional insights into LMX fluctuations by contrasting within- and between-individual variance in established and newly founded relationships and by examining those incidents that are more likely to influence LMX in a given week. 

Blake Runnalls

Papers

An Assessment of the Exporting Literature: Using Theory and Data to Identify Future Research Directions

Gains and Losses: Week-to-Week Changes in Leader-Follower Relationships