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)

Economists have long puzzled over the astounding differences in productivity between firms and countries. For example, looking at disaggregated data on U.S. manufacturing industries, Syverson (2004a) found that plants at the 90th percentile produced four times as much as the plant in the 10th percentile on a per-employee basis. Only half of this difference in labor productivity could be accounted for by differential inputs, such as capital intensity. Syverson looked at industries defined at the four-digit level in the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system (now the North American Industry Classification System or NAICS) like 'Bakeries and Tortilla Manufacturing' or 'Plastics Product Manufacturing.' Foster, Haltiwanger, and Syverson (2008) show large differences in total factor productivity even within very homogeneous goods industries such as boxes and block ice. Some of these productivity differences across firms and plants are temporary, but in large part they persist over time. At the country level, Hall and Jones (1999) and Jones and Romer (2009) show how the stark differences in productivity across countries account for a substantial fraction of the differences in average per capita income. Both at the plant level and at the national level, differences in productivity are typically calculated as a residual-that is, productivity is inferred as the gap between output and inputs that cannot be accounted for by conventionally measured inputs.

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Why Do Management Practices Differ across Firms and Countries

This paper presents a framework for studying the concepts of fit and flexibility in the field of Strategic Human Resource Management (Strategic HRM) focusing on HRM practices, employee skills, and employee behaviors and reviews past conceptual and empirical work within that framework. A model of Strategic HRM is presented and this model is used to explore the concepts of fit and flexibility as they apply to Strategic HRM. The concepts of resource and coordination flexibility are applied to Strategic HRM, and the implications of the framework for both the practice of and research on Strategic HRM are discussed.

Toward a Unifying Framework for Exploring Fit and Flexibility in Strategic Human Resource Management

The authors present an empirical review of the literature concerning trait and state goal orientation (GO). Three dimensions of GO were examined: learning, prove performance, and avoid performance along with presumed antecedents and proximal and distal consequences of these dimensions. Antecedent variables included cognitive ability, implicit theory of intelligence, need for achievement, self-esteem, general self-efficacy, and the Big Five personality characteristics. Proximal consequences included state GO, task-specific self-efficacy, self-set goal level, learning strategies, feedback seeking, and state anxiety. Distal consequences included learning, academic performance, task performance, and job performance. Generally speaking, learning GO was positively correlated, avoid performance GO was negatively correlated, and prove performance GO was uncorrelated with these variables. Consistent with theory, state GO tended to have stronger relationships with the distal consequences than did trait GO. Finally, using a meta-correlation matrix, the authors found that trait GO predicted job performance above and beyond cognitive ability and personality. These results demonstrate the value of GO to organizational researchers.

A meta-analytic examination of the goal orientation nomological net.

Using data from 598 studies representing over 200,000 individuals, we meta-analyzed the relationship between G. Hofstede's (1980a) original 4 cultural value dimensions and a variety of organizationally relevant outcomes. First, values predict outcomes with similar strength (with an overall absolute weighted effect size of rho = 0.18) at the individual level of analysis. Second, the predictive power of the cultural values was significantly lower than that of personality traits and demographics for certain outcomes (e.g., job performance, absenteeism, turnover) but was significantly higher for others (e.g., organizational commitment, identification, citizenship behavior, team-related attitudes, feedback seeking). Third, cultural values were most strongly related to emotions, followed by attitudes, then behaviors, and finally job performance. Fourth, cultural values were more strongly related to outcomes for managers (rather than students) and for older, male, and more educated respondents. Fifth, findings were stronger for primary, rather than secondary, data. Finally, we provide support for M. Gelfand, L. H. Nishii, and J. L. Raver's (2006) conceptualization of societal tightness-looseness, finding significantly stronger effects in culturally tighter, rather than looser, countries.

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Examining the impact of Culture's consequences: a three-decade, multilevel, meta-analytic review of Hofstede's cultural value dimensions.

Global talent management: Literature review, integrative framework, and suggestions for further research

Global talent management and global talent challenges: Strategic opportunities for IHRM

This study will test two hypotheses to determine whether the formation of expectations (prior to the global assignment) affects expatriates' adjustment. This study utilized a sample of seventy-three expatriates who completed questionnaires approximately ten months after arriving in their host countries. All the expatriates had predeparture cross-cultural training, but the training varied in perceived relevance. The expatriates were assigned either to countries where their native language was spoken (e.g. Americans in the UK) or to countries where their native language was not spoken (e.g. Americans in France). The results of the mediated regression analysis suggest that the more tailored and relevant the pre-departure cross-cultural training, the more expectations were either met or positively exceeded. Analyses suggest that both cross-cultural training and the language spoken in the host country affect the accuracy of expatriates' expectations prior to the assignment - and that having accurate expectatio...

Ibraiz Tarique

Papers

Global talent management: Literature review, integrative framework, and suggestions for further research

Global talent management and global talent challenges: Strategic opportunities for IHRM

The theory of met expectations applied to expatriate adjustment: the role of crosscultural training

Dynamic cross-cultural competencies and global leadership effectiveness.

Knowledge transfer upon repatriation