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)

Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies. The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.

An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions

'Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony', American Journal of Sociology, 83, pp. 340-63.

This paper provides an overview of the main perspectives and themes emerging in research on open innovation (OI). The paper is the result of a collaborative process among several OI scholars – having a common basis in the recurrent Professional Development Workshop on ‘Researching Open Innovation’ at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. In this paper, we present opportunities for future research on OI, organised at different levels of analysis. We discuss some of the contingencies at these different levels, and argue that future research needs to study OI – originally an organisational-level phenomenon – across multiple levels of analysis. While our integrative framework allows comparing, contrasting and integrating various perspectives at different levels of analysis, further theorising will be needed to advance OI research. On this basis, we propose some new research categories as well as questions for future research – particularly those that span across research domains that have so far developed in isolation.

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The open innovation research landscape: established perspectives and emerging themes across different levels of analysis

Rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emission are needed to avoid dangerous climate change. This will necessitate low-carbon transitions across electricity, transport, heat, industrial, forestry, and agricultural systems. But despite recent rapid growth in renewable electricity generation, the rate of progress toward this wider goal of deep decarbonization remains slow. Moreover, many policy-oriented energy and climate researchers and models remain wedded to disciplinary approaches that focus on a single piece of the low-carbon transition puzzle, yet avoid many crucial real-world elements for accelerated transitions ( 1 ). We present a “sociotechnical” framework to address the multidimensionality of the deep decarbonization challenge and show how coevolutionary interactions between technologies and societal groups can accelerate low-carbon transitions.

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Sociotechnical transitions for deep decarbonization.

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/59667/1/Geels%20et%20al%202016%20Enactment%20of%20sociotechnical%20transitions%20pathways.pdf

The enactment of socio-technical transition pathways: A reformulated typology and a comparative multi-level analysis of the German and UK low-carbon electricity transitions (1990–2014)

While the traditional form of electricity generation and supply is based on centralized structures with large-scale power plants, the objective of a strongly decentralized form of energy supply is increasingly becoming of importance. Sustainability-oriented energy transitions are relying on various sorts of renewable energies coupled with energy efficiency initiatives. In the current existing regulatory and market frameworks in Germany and elsewhere, important technical and institutional innovations for energy transitions were and are being developed, tested, and brought to application on regional and local levels. Regions, cities, and villages experimenting with socio-technical innovations and aiming to implement new concepts have to develop governance structures under high uncertainty. These governance structures mirror space-specific social, political, technological, and economic constellations. The present paper introduces an analytical approach for studying emergent forms of governance and uses four cases from Germany to apply the approach. Research is based on a comparative case study research design, using primarily expert interviews and document analysis as data sources. The cases demonstrate that sustainable energy transitions are driven forward by a variety of actors with different aims and interests, culminating in the development of space-specific technological mixes and situative governance structures. Sustainable energy transitions are not following a master plan or are coordinated on a national level. The upper political levels and external events pose severe constraints for the implementation of local transition initiatives. Future research should further aim to highlight and analyze the contentious character of local energy transitions.

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Situative governance and energy transitions in a spatial context: case studies from Germany

Edward J. Malecki & Bruno Moriset (eds), The Digital Economy, Business Organization, Production Processes and Regional Developments (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 274 pp., ISBN-10: 0415396964 (pbk), ...

The Digital Economy, Business Organization, Production Processes and Regional Developments

In the debate on Varieties of Capitalism (VoC), different types of capitalism are linked with distinctive economic strengths, specific modes of policy making and implementation. Observers in the 1980s and 1990s believed that the U.S. market possessed ideal characteristics to develop into a lead market for photovoltaics (PV), mimicking the country’s lead in other high tech areas. This chapter establishes linkages between the VoC debate and discussions in innovation research to propose a definition for radical innovations. An analysis of developments in PV indicates a clear German advantage. The bulk of the chapter identifies the mechanisms of concerted action that enabled rather than prevented (as VoC theory would predict) this radical innovation in the German case. The chapter closes with possible generalisations of the argument based on other sectors and countries.

Gerhard Fuchs

Papers

The enactment of socio-technical transition pathways: A reformulated typology and a comparative multi-level analysis of the German and UK low-carbon electricity transitions (1990–2014)

Situative governance and energy transitions in a spatial context: case studies from Germany

The Digital Economy, Business Organization, Production Processes and Regional Developments

From Niche to Mass Markets in High Technology: The Case of Photovoltaics in Germany

Towards a low carbon future: a phenomenology of local electricity experiments in Germany