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)

/pdf/engaged-scholarship-a-guide-for-organizational-and-social-1od3lo0196.pdf

Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research

The authors present an overview of the academic literature on charitable giving based on a literature review of more than 500 articles. They structure their review around the central question of why people donate money to charitable organizations. They identify eight mechanisms as the most important forces that drive charitable giving: (a) awareness of need; (b) solicitation; (c) costs and benefits; (d) altruism; (e) reputation; (f) psychological benefits; (g) values; (h) efficacy. These mechanisms can provide a basic theoretical framework for future research explaining charitable giving.

/pdf/a-literature-review-of-empirical-studies-of-philanthropy-4iz4zg70of.pdf

A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms That Drive Charitable Giving

We develop the institutional configuration perspective to understand which national contexts facilitate social entrepreneurship (SE). We confirm joint effects on SE of formal regulatory (government activism), informal cognitive (postmaterialist cultural values), and informal normative (socially supportive cultural norms, or weak-tie social capital) institutions in a multilevel study of 106,484 individuals in 26 nations. We test opposing propositions from the institutional void and institutional support perspectives. Our results underscore the importance of resource support from both formal and informal institutions, and highlight motivational supply side influences on SE. They advocate greater consideration of institutional configurations in institutional theory and comparative entrepreneurship research.

/pdf/institutions-and-social-entrepreneurship-the-role-of-5367tlwr8z.pdf

Institutions and social entrepreneurship: The role of institutional voids, institutional support, and institutional configurations

/pdf/global-shift-mapping-the-changing-contours-of-the-world-bn8ixxkmph.pdf

Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy

On the international stability of health care expenditure functions: are government and private functions similar?

Cooperatives have gained prominent attention in recent years as strategic elements to achieve sustainable economic development and greater social cohesion in the context of neoliberal globalization. This article explores, theoretically, the current challenges and opportunities for cooperatives to develop successfully in the globalizing economy. To this end, we provide an analytical, critical review of the key bibliography concerning some fundamental aspects that shape the relationship between economic globalization and cooperatives, an issue that has been generally neglected by previous literature. Three key fields are addressed: 1) the viability of cooperatives, based on their strengths and possible weaknesses, under current globalization; 2) the role of these organizations in promoting the local development and stability of local communities; and 3) the tensions and potentialities that internationalization entails for cooperatives. Based on the analytical review and the organization of the literature, we propose an agenda for further research. This includes some hypotheses and strategies for testing them that would be essential to assess the role of cooperatives in economic globalization, and sheds light on key areas for future research that could provide a better understanding of the complexity surrounding the relationship between globalization and cooperatives.

/pdf/revisiting-globalization-challenges-and-opportunities-in-the-2o346zlwp4.pdf

Revisiting globalization challenges and opportunities in the development of cooperatives

The economic literature has proposed different explanations about the role and existence of the non-profit organizations in the economy. These theories can be divided into two types: demand theories and supply theories. However, Ben-Ner and Van Hoomissen (1991, 1992) suggested that, in some cases, demand and supply factors operate simultaneously and it is particularly difficult to separate them. Thus, it is necessary to consider these two factors in the study of the determinants that have influence in the existence of non-profit organizations. In this paper, this argument is considered in order to analyse the demand and supply determinants of the non-profit organizations’ development in Catalonia, a Spanish region.

Determinants of the Non‐profit Sector Size: An Empirical Analysis in Spain

The aim of this paper is to analyse one of the principal problems in primary health care management: the evaluation of efficiency in primary health care centres. Given the special characteristics of measuring outcome in primary care it is necessary to evaluate the performance of centres from a quality perspective too. The methodology used, DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis), allows us to introduce quantitative and qualitative variables in a sample of primary care centres in a Spanish province. Once the efficiency of the different centres is known, we investigate the sensitivity of the methodology to changes in the definition of outputs used.

Evaluation of Efficiency in Primary Health Care Centres: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

In general terms, participation in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) generates social benefits, raising human capital through the transfer of knowledge and interpersonal trust through the interaction ...

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0899764006293179

Carmen Marcuello

Papers

On the international stability of health care expenditure functions: are government and private functions similar?

Revisiting globalization challenges and opportunities in the development of cooperatives

Determinants of the Non‐profit Sector Size: An Empirical Analysis in Spain

Evaluation of Efficiency in Primary Health Care Centres: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Members, Volunteers, and Donors in Nonprofit Organizations in Spain