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)

conceptions of bounded rationality Recently, behavioral studies of choice have examined the second guess, the way preferences are processed in choice behavior These studies suggest possible modifications in standard assumptions about tastes and their role in choice This paper examines some of those modifications, some possible approaches to working on them, and some complications 1 The engineering of choice and ordinary choice behavior * Recently I gave a lecture on elementary decision theory, an introduction to rational theories of choice After the lecture, a student asked whether it was conceivable that the practical procedures for decisionmaking implicit in theories of choice might make actual human decisions worse rather than better What is the empirical evidence, he asked, that human choice is improved by knowledge of decision theory or by application of the various engineering forms of rational choice? I answered, I think correctly, that the case for the usefulness of decision engineering rested primarily not on the kind of direct empirical confirmation that he sought, but on two other things: on a set of theorems proving the superiority of particular procedures in particular situations if the situations are correctly specified and the procedures correctly applied, and on the willingness of clients to purchase the services of experts with skills in decision sciences The answer may not have been reasonable, but the question clearly was It articulated a classical challenge to the practice of rational choice, the possibility that processes of rationality might combine with properties of human beings to

Bounded rationality, ambiguity, and the engineering of choice

Among the schools of thought on strategy formation, one in particular underlies almost all prescription in the field. Referred to as the ‘design school’, it proposes a simple model that views the process as one of design to achieve an essential fit between external threat and opportunity and internal distinctive competence. A number of premises underlie this model: that the process should be one of consciously controlled thought, specifically by the chief executive; that the model must be kept simple and informal; that the strategies produced should be unique, explicit, and simple; and that these strategies should appear fully formulated before they are implemented. This paper discusses and then critiques this model, focusing in particular on the problems of the conscious assessment of strengths and weaknesses, of the need to make strategies explicit, and of the separation between formulation and implementation. In so doing, it calls into question some of the most deep-seated beliefs in the field of strategic management, including its favorite method of pedagogy.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/smj.4250110302

The design school: Reconsidering the basic premises of strategic management

Interprofessional collaboration is a key factor in initiatives designed to increase the effectiveness of health services currently offered to the public. It is important that the concept of collaboration be well understood, because although the increasingly complex health problems faced by health professionals are creating more interdependencies among them, we still have limited knowledge of the complexity of interprofessional relationships. The goal of this literature review was to identify conceptual frameworks that could improve our understanding of this important aspect of health organizations. To this end, we have identified and taken into consideration: (A) the various definitions proposed in the literature and the various concepts associated with collaboration, and (B) the various theoretical frameworks of collaboration. Our results demonstrate that: (1) the concept of collaboration is commonly defined through five underlying concepts: sharing, partnership, power, interdependency and process; (2) the most complete models of collaboration seem to be those based on a strong theoretical background, either in organizational theory or in organizational sociology and on empirical data; (3) there is a significant amount of diversity in the way the various authors conceptualized collaboration and in the factors influencing collaboration; (4) these frameworks do not establish clear links between the elements in the models and the outputs; and (5) the literature does not provide a serious attempt to determine how patients could be integrated into the health care team, despite the fact that patients are recognized as the ultimate justification for providing collaborative care.

The conceptual basis for interprofessional collaboration: Core concepts and theoretical frameworks

Network Structure and Power Author(s): Marlene E. Burkhardt and Daniel J. Brass Source: Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1, Special Issue: Technology, Organizations, and Innovation (Mar., 1990), pp. 104-127 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2393552 . Accessed: 12/11/2013 03:43

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Changing Patterns or Patterns of Change: The Effects of a Change in Technology on Social Network Structure and Power.

Michel CROZIER, l'auteur du Phenomene bureaucratique, associe a Erhard FRIEDBERG, montre, contre tous les mirages d'une rationalite totalitaire, le caractere essentiellement opportuniste des strategies humaines et la part irreductible de liberte qui existe dans toute relation de pouvoir. Ce livre n'est pas un manuel de sociologie des organisations discipline dont Michel Crozier est l'un des fondateurs en France mais bien une sociologie de l'action organisee.

L' acteur et le systeme

La liberte des acteurs est un fait ; l'existence de systemes organises et coherents en est un autre. Comment ces deux realites s'articulent-elles ? Les auteurs montrent, contre tous les mirages d'une rationalite totalitaire, le caractere essentiellement " opportuniste " des strategies humaines et la part irreductible de liberte qui existe dans toute relation de pouvoir. Ce livre n'est pas un manuel de sociologie des organisations - discipline dont Michel Crozier est l'un des fondateurs en France - mais bien une sociologie de l'action organisee. Il constitue une veritable critique de la raison collective.

L'acteur et le système : les contraintes de l'action collective

Actors and systems : the politics of collective action

Erhard Friedberg : Die vier Dimensionen der organisierten Handlung. Der Aufsatz mochte uber die falsche Dichotomie zwischen Organisation und kollektiven Handlung, zwischen Organisation und organisierten Handlung hinausgehen. Er zeigt, dass die ublichen Absichts- und Codifizierungskriterien der Regeln und der Prozesse nicht gestatten, eine gultige Unterscheidung der formalisierten Organisationen von weniger klaren Handlungskontexten durchzufuhren. Auf dieser Grundlage wird vorgeschlagen, die Organisation der Handlungsfelder entsprechend vier Dimensionen zu betrachten (dem Formalisierungsgrad der Regulierung, dem Bewusstseinsgrad der Handlungsteilnehmer, dem Finalisierungsgrad der Regulierung und schliesslich dem ausdrucklichen Delegierungsgrad der Regulierung), die gemeinsam die Dimensionen einer genetischen Folge von mehr und mehr Handlungskontexten darstellen. Der Artikel endet mit der Analyse der Folgerungen dieser Betrachtungsweise fur die Untersuchung der Markte und wirtschaftlichen Fakten.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3322225.pdf

Les quatre dimensions de l'action organisée

A good deal of strategic choice has been given back to organizations, which have become actors of their (only partial) compliance with institutional demands that they in turn contribute to shaping. The reported case of the successful modernization of the French cancer centers and their reinstatement as the leaders in their field contributes to a better understanding of the role of leadership in institutional change because it demonstrates a positional approach to institutional leadership. Cancer centers' reformers were both central, because they were placed at the intersection of several potentially interdependent organizational fields or institutional spheres, and marginal to most but not all of them. This particular position of the change-entrepreneurs, with its relational constraints and also its resources, enabled them to initiate a successful drive for the transformation of the field of cancer care and also greatly explains the particular form it took. Our analysis underscores the interactive nature of institutional change, where the motor of change simultaneously structures and is structured by the process it is driving and where the initiators of reform have to create their proper and specific combination of old and new in order to build an innovative dynamic.

Erhard Friedberg

Papers

L' acteur et le systeme

L'acteur et le système : les contraintes de l'action collective

Actors and systems : the politics of collective action

Les quatre dimensions de l'action organisée

Institutional Change as an Interactive Process: The Case of the Modernization of the French Cancer Centers