Many formal organizational structures arise as reflections of rationalized institutional rules. The elaboration of such rules in modern states and societies accounts in part for the expansion and i...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2778293.pdf

Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony

This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval: and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/258788.pdf

Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

/pdf/international-norm-dynamics-and-political-change-37ig9r9dlq.pdf

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

The External Control of Organizations.

This paper critically examines available theoretical models which have been derived from statistically established patterns of association between contextual and organizational variables. These models offer an interpretation of organizational structure as a product of primarily economic constraints which contextual variables are assumed to impose. It is argued that available models in fact attempt to explain organization at one remove by ignoring the essentially political process, whereby power-holders within organizations decide upon courses of strategic action. This `strategic choice' typically includes not only the establishment of structural forms but also the manipulation of environmental features and the choice of relevant performance standards. A theoretical re-orientation of this kind away from functional imperatives and towards a recognition of political action is developed and illustrated in the main body of the paper.

Organizational Structure, Environment and Performance: The Role of Strategic Choice

A main problem in the study of organizational change is that the environmental contexts in which organizations exist are themselves changing, at an increasing rate, and towards increasing complexity. This point, in itself, scarcely needs laboring. Nevertheless, the characteristics of organizational environments demand consideration for their own sake, if there is to be an advancement of understanding in the behavioral sciences of a great deal that is taking place under the impact of technological change, especially at the present time. This chapter is offered as a brief attempt to open up some of the problems; it stems from a belief that progress will be quicker if a certain extension can be made to current thinking about systems.

The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

On purposeful systems

ing the phenomena to be studied from their natural contexts and submitting them to basic research through experimental manipulation in a laboratory. It is only some time later that possible applications may be thought of, and it is only then that a second process of applied research is set under way. The social scientist can use these methods only to a limited extent. On the whole he has to reach his fundamental data (people, institutions, etc.) in their natural state, and his problem is how to reach them in that state. His means of gaining access is through a professional relationship which gives him privileged conditions. The professional relationship is a first analogue of the laboratory for social sciences. Unless he wins conditions privileged in this way, the social scientist cannot find out anything that the layman cannot find out equally well, and he can earn these privileges only by proving his competence in supplying some kind of service. In a sense, therefore, the social scientist begins in practice, however imperfect scientifically, and works back to theory and the more systematic research which may test this, and then back again to improved practice. Though this way of working is well understood in the case of medicine, it is not so well understood that the same type of model applies to a very wide range of social science activities. The model may be called the 'professional model'. Yet it is often contended that the social sciences should first proceed in isolation, and then one day, when they have advanced far enough in their basic work, they will become capable of developing practical applications. It is further contended that this first stage will be carried through by a few brilliant minds (as it was in the natural sciences) and that, until this stage is over and practical utilization of firmly established knowledge becomes possible, little is to be expected. It follows that for the time being light support only is warranted_ Nothing could be more misleading than this viewpoint, which treats the relation between the pure and the applied in the social sciences as comparable with that in the natural sciences, ignores the 112 TOWARDS A SOCIAL ECOLOGY distinctiveness of the professional model, and fails to see its special relevance to the social sciences. Another advantage of following the professional as compared with the pure-applied model is that it allows the problems studied to be determined to a greater extent by the needs of the individuals, groups, or communities concerned than by the social scientist himself. This is not, of course, to say that presenting symptoms are accepted at their face value or that the client's prescription is obediently followed. The professional role implies interpretation and redefinition. It does, however, imply a considerable degree of 'field determination'. Such an approach is proper when a science (and this is the case in many areas of the social sciences) has not yet advanced to the point where there is a large body of fully attested empirical knowledge related to generally accepted theories. For if at this stage the problem is determined too exclusively by the scientist himself, the hypotheses to be tested will tend to be doctrines rather than true theories, or, as a reaction against this, investigation will become artificially restricted to what can be measured exactly. One may expect both too much formal conceptualization of a shallow kind and too much secondary manipulation of meagre primary data. There is a great difference between simply acting as a consultant and acting as a researcher in a role where professional as well as scientific responsibility is accepted. In the first case there is no commitment to the advancement of scientific knowledge, either on the part of the consultant or on the part of those for whom the inquiry is being made. In the second case this commitment is fundamental and must be explicitly accepted by both sides. It is this that makes the relationship truly collaborative. Though far from all social science research needs to follow such an approach it is unlikely that the study of change processes, and of dynamic problems more generally, can be extended without it. First attempts to provide a rationale for a professional type of research strategy in the social sciences relied rather heavily on clinical precedents. Recently, fomulations have been proposed, such as that by Churchman and Emery (1966), which are in general terms. After considering the advantages and limitations of traditional 'pure' and 'applied' models, they continue: COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL INNOVATION 113 A third approach to the study of organizations is to regard the researcher as a member pro tern of a third organization sufficiently greater than the organization under study to encompass the conflicting interests and yet sufficiently close to it to permit its values to be related to the concrete issues of conflict. Ideally this third organization would be sufficiently broad to encompass also the interests and values of the research community. However, this implies such a general level of human organization-almost certainly supra-national-that it is difficult to understand how one would work back to agreed-upon objectives in concrete conflict situations. It might be that there are not enough in-between levels at which sufficient community of interests and values exists to justify search for agreed research objectives and criteria. This seems unlikely. Societies as admittedly full of conflict as ours, could hardly hang together unless there were very pervasive strands of common interest. Our own experience is that community of interest can usually be found at the next higher level of social organization. The practical difficulty is more likely to be that the researcher pursuing this third approach will have to engage in institution-building so that agreement about his research concerns can be actively pursued and powerfully sanctioned. It should be noted that when in this approach the researcher obtains his value standards from the next higher level he does not have a privileged objective standing as a member of this level. He can claim neither special knowledge of the value structure of this level nor special power to sanction things on its behalf. From Project to Programme This approach has particular relevance to situations in which the research team has to engage with large social systems involving sets of organizations rather than a single organization (cf. Evan, 1966). These inter-relations comprise systems of organizational ecology. During the decade of the 'fifties' this broader contextual element was absent in the action researches in which the writer and his colleagues had opportunities to participate, as was the deeper psychological resonance earlier evident (Bion, 1943, 1'947-51). Collaborative studies, in response to the changed character of client demand, focussed rather sharply on the single organization and those parts of society and people which this renders visible. An animated search took place for a 'new learning' about 'organizational-life', which produced a fundamental revision of the concept of bureaucracy. This was the needed outcome for increasingly complex organizations facing increasingly complex environments. While the advances made will be carried forward, the path-finding projects of the next few years are likely to be characterized both by a gr~ater 114 TOWARDS A SOCIAL ECOLOGY social extensiveness and a greater psychological intensiveness than the major collaborative studies of the 'fifties'. It is scarcely accidental that an ecological re-appraisal of organization theory by Vickers (1959, 1965, 1968) and a 'socio-experiential' re-appraisal of personality theory by Laing (1960, 1961, 1964, 1967) should have been proceeding contemporaneously. In endeavouring to understand and respond to the changing social environment of the decade of the 'sixties' workers at the Tavistock have found themselves undertaking projects with the following characteristics: the domain of concern is with multi-organizational clusters rather than with single organizations; this has had the effect of directing attention both to the wider society and to the individual as a member of the social aggregate. Such projects have a future orientation. They increase the time-scale over which social science resources must be committed and extend the nature of the inter-disciplinary mix. The international ramifications also become greater, both as regards the countries offering suitable fields of study and the composition of research teams. If the need is for the social scientist to become directively correlated with the meta-problems that permeate Type 4 environments, collaborative research must be developed at the programmatic rather than the project level. Projects relate the research worker to specific rather than generic problems. These problems are experienced as the client's rather than his, whereas a meta-problem is experienced as his also; it belongs to both as members of the wider society which it permeates. It is for this reason that the collaborative researches of the next few years are likely to be characterized by a greater psychological intensiveness as well as by a greater social extensiveness. If the latter makes the single organization no longer appropriate as the unit of analysis, the former imparts an existential quality to the work undertaken. To the writer it feels as though he 'has been here before'. This feeling of deja vu made him recall the type of work in which he participated during World War II. At the present time he experiences those with whom he works as travellers on a common journey rather than as clients who have requested his professional help (d. Laing, 1967). The identification of themes for programmes cannot in the case of collaborative research be made in the abstract. These COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL INNOVATION

Towards A Social Ecology

Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems

Sir Geoffrey Vickers This book is described as a contribution 'towards a social ecology'. As such it is timely and welcome. The phrase is not yet familiar, the concept still imprecise; we need urgently to move toward a better understanding of it. The word 'ecology' began to become familiar outside scientific circles when human intervention in natural processes began to have effects so unforeseen, so dramatic and so disastrous as to make headline news. It might be infestation by an unfamiliar pest, like the rabbit in Australia; or soil erosion, from ill-controlled clearing and cropping; or pollution from fertilizers or industrial wastes; or urban proliferation; or toxic accumulation of pesticides. From the crescendo of such warnings, industrial man began to learn again what agricultural man learned long ago-that he is only one among many species, whose continued existence depends not only or primarily on competitive struggle but on most complex systems of mutual support, not less effective for being unconscious and unplanned. These are the kind of systems that ecologists study; so we look to ecology for light upon them.

Fred Emery

Papers

The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

On purposeful systems

Towards A Social Ecology

Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems

Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation of the Future in the Present