http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/201/4359/899.2.full.pdf

Phenomenology of perception.

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)

On Symbolic Interactionism

Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or Why It's Amazing That Federal Programs Work at All . By Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Pp. xviii, 182. $7.50.)

This paper analyzes trust and power as means of co-ordinating trans-organizational relationships. It is argued that, depending on the institutional environment, there are two distinct patterns of controlling relationships, where trust and power are interrelated in quite different ways. First, both mechanisms are generated at the inter-personal level and either trust or power dominates the relationship. Second, power occurs at the level of the structural framework of relationships and is highly conducive to developing trust between individual organizations. Thus, specific forms of trust and power are identified and the institutional environment is viewed as playing a crucial role in shaping the quality of trans-organizational relations. The theoretical background of the paper mainly draws on conceptual ideas of Systems Theory, Structuration Theory and New Institutionalism

Trust, Power and Control in Trans-Organizational Relations. Working Paper WP 129 (6/99)

Research on institutional logics has exploded in the last decade. Much of this work has taken its inspiration from Friedland and Alford’s call to “bring society back in” to organizational analysis. Interestingly, when Friedland and Alford published their seminal piece, another body of work with similar focus emerged in France under the banner of French Pragmatist Sociology. In this article, we discuss how French Pragmatist Sociology complements institutional logics by helping it address its main limitations or blind spots. These include (a) microfoundations and recursiveness (how institutions are formed, maintained, or changed at a micro level), (b) legitimacy struggles (how struggles are resolved on a day-to-day basis), (c) morality (as an important element underscoring institutional logics), and (d) materiality (as physical and tangible instantiations of logics). We conclude by suggesting that a rapprochement between both approaches provides an elegant means of bridging the lingering divide between “old...

The Logic of Institutional Logics: Insights From French Pragmatist Sociology

In recent years, there have been many calls for scholars to innovate in their styles of conceptual work, and in particular to develop process theoretical contributions that consider the dynamic unf...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2631787720902473

What Makes a Process Theoretical Contribution

This article draws on recent developments in institutional theory to better understand the managerial efforts implicated in the implementation of government-led reforms in public sector services. Based on a longitudinal study of a massive reform effort aimed at transforming the province of Quebec’s publicly-funded healthcare system, the article applies the notion of institutional work to understand how managers responsible for newly formed healthcare organizations defined and carried out their individual missions while simultaneously clarifying and operationalizing the government’s reform mandate. We identify and describe the properties of four types of work implicated in this process and suggest that structural work, conceptual work, and operational work need to be underpinned by relational work to offer chances for successful policy reform. By showing the specific processes whereby top-down reform initiatives are taken up by managers and hybridized with existing institutionalized forms and practices, this article helps us better understand both the importance of managerial agency in enacting reform, and the dynamics that lead to policy slippage in complex reform contexts.

Agency at the Managerial Interface: Public Sector Reform as Institutional Work

In this essay, we discuss how tables can be used to ensure—and reassure about—trustworthiness in qualitative research. We posit that in qualitative research, tables help not only increase transpare...

/pdf/using-tables-to-enhance-trustworthiness-in-qualitative-39e3c640il.pdf

Using tables to enhance trustworthiness in qualitative research

Although scores of articles and books have been written on what constitutes good writing in academia, we’ve granted far less attention to academic writing as a daily practice. Yet it is precisely b...

Charlotte Cloutier

Papers

The Logic of Institutional Logics: Insights From French Pragmatist Sociology

What Makes a Process Theoretical Contribution

Agency at the Managerial Interface: Public Sector Reform as Institutional Work

Using tables to enhance trustworthiness in qualitative research

How I Write: An Inquiry Into the Writing Practices of Academics