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)

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

Brand Personality Structures in the United States and Korea: Common and Culture-Specific Factors

Understanding differences in past year psychiatric disorders for Latinos living in the US

Social capital, socio-economic status and psychological distress among Australian adults

The “economic miracle” of South Korea has been well documented by many scholars, but most studies have focused on the cooperative relations between the state and entrepreneurial elites, with little attention being given to the accomplishments and contribution of Korean labor to industrial development. To date there has been no comprehensive sociological study as to how workers in South Korea were “ideologically” mobilized and motivated to commit their labor power to the process of industrialization. In an attempt to redress this imbalance, this article offers an analysis of the role of Confucianism and nationalism in the state-sponsored ideology of work in South Korea during its economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued here that both the workers' voluntary participation in industrial work and the harmony in the workplace, which were two of the most essential factors in the nation's remarkable economic success during the 1960s and 1970s, were intimately linked to a new ideology of work a...

Nationalism, Confucianism, work ethic and industrialization in South Korea

Over the last two decades, enumeration has become a critical force in crafting the governmentalities of globalizing higher education. Whether in the glossy Web sites and documentation of the world’s ‘top universities’ or in more fine-tuned regional and subject guides, accreditation schemes, journal metrics or h-indexes, technologies for measuring and ranking academic performance have not only created new imaginaries of reputation but also started to reshape institutional behavior in the pursuit of enhanced performance. In this paper, we critically explore these governmentalities of globalizing higher education through a discussion of the competing logics and landscapes of reputation and ranking in two leading universities in South Korea. Our analysis draws attention to the ways in which university rankings have generated a new multi-scalar geography of institutional reputation, the mismatch between quality, reputation and ranking, and the new kinds of institutional behaviors that are emerging to respond to the proliferation of ranking systems. Through this analysis, our paper offers two critical contributions to the current literature on university reputation. Firstly, we offer a critique of the high-level metrics used in university ranking and their implications for the quality of institutions. Secondly, we also argue for more nuanced accounts of ranking and reputation by scholars of higher education and in particular a greater emphasis on their successes and failures, the competing logics and unexpected outcomes of ranking and their implications for the future of universities.

Ranking and the multiplication of reputation: reflections from the frontier of globalizing higher education

Perceived neighborhood characteristics and the health of adult Koreans

The global and local are not a dichotomous classification and the interplay between them becomes more and more complex. This article seeks to provide an account that makes sense of the simultaneous coexistence of these two seemingly contradictory trends. In this article, we attempt to compile a theoretical combination of `globalness' and `localness' while presenting the case of Korea's globalization. We explore, as an example of the dynamics between strong globalness and weak localness, how the Korean government has submissively managed the national restructuring under the 1997 financial crisis. We argue that the Korean government was a relative weak local actor to passively accept the strong global requirements when the crisis hit Korea. In contrast, the strong local resistance and acceptance were simultaneously found in the reformation process of Korean national identity when the strong global pressure of changing traditional social values was introduced by the economic crisis. We, therefore, observe th...

The Interplay between Globalness and Localness: Korea's Globalization Revisited:

The 1997 financial crisis created major ripples all across Korean society. The crisis has meant not only a halt to Korea’s decades-long phenomenal economic growth, but also its subjection to comprehensive restructuring processes. Controversies and debates over the cause of the crisis notwithstanding, Korea has undergone profound transformations, swallowing a bitter pill prescribed by global capitalism in general, and the IMF in particular. This paper examines the nature of prescription by the IMF and the characteristics of Korean governments in conjunction with the financial crisis. The paper criticizes the IMF’s imposition of the same ready-made policies to Korea, and characterizes the Korean governments as ‘a reckless knight to the world’ and ‘a docile student of the IMF school’. Although much has been written about the financial crisis, especially on the causes of the crisis and preventive measures, little attention has been paid to its social and cultural impact. In view of this, this paper discusses how the financial crisis, ill-suited IMF measures and misguided economic policies of the Korean government have had far-reaching consequences on Koreans’ worldview and identity, as well as on social problems, such as the weakening of the weak and destabilizing middle class.

/pdf/economic-restructuring-and-social-reformulating-the-1997-mjq0nxaikx.pdf

Gil-Sung Park

Papers

Nationalism, Confucianism, work ethic and industrialization in South Korea

Ranking and the multiplication of reputation: reflections from the frontier of globalizing higher education

Perceived neighborhood characteristics and the health of adult Koreans

The Interplay between Globalness and Localness: Korea's Globalization Revisited:

Economic restructuring and social reformulating: the 1997 financial crisis and its impact on south korea