Building Theories From Case Study Research - This paper describes the process of inducting theory using case studies from specifying the research questions to reaching closure. Some features of the process, such as problem definition and construct validation, are similar to hypothesis-testing research. Others, such as within-case analysis and replication logic, are unique to the inductive, case-oriented process. Overall, the process described here is highly iterative and tightly linked to data. This research approach is especially appropriate in new topic areas. The resultant theory is often novel, testable, and empirically valid. Finally, framebreaking insights, the tests of good theory (e.g., parsimony, logical coherence), and convincing grounding in the evidence are the key criteria for evaluating this type of research.

Building theories from case study research

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.

/pdf/the-iron-cage-revisited-institutional-isomorphism-and-xas5qn5nhy.pdf

The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields

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

�Traditional, hierarchical views of leadership are less and less useful given the complexities of our modern world. Leadership theory must transition to new perspectives that account for the complex adaptive needs of organizations. In this paper, we propose that leadership (as opposed to leaders) can be seen as a complex dynamic process that emerges in the interactive “spaces between” people and ideas. That is, leadership is a dynamic that transcends the capabilities of individuals alone; it is the product of interaction, tension, and exchange rules governing changes in perceptions and understanding. We label this a dynamic of adaptive leadership, and we show how this dynamic provides important insights about the nature of leadership and its outcomes in organizational fields. We define a leadership event as a perceived segment of action whose meaning is created by the interactions of actors involved in producing it, and we present a set of innovative methods for capturing and analyzing these contextually driven processes. We provide theoretical and practical implications of these ideas for organizational behavior and organization and management theory.

/pdf/building-theories-from-case-study-research-3wynzi9b0d.pdf

Building theories from case study research.

This paper proposes a paradigm for managing the dynamic aspects of organizational knowledge creating processes. Its central theme is that organizational knowledge is created through a continuous dialogue between tacit and explicit knowledge. The nature of this dialogue is examined and four patterns of interaction involving tacit and explicit knowledge are identified. It is argued that while new knowledge is developed by individuals, organizations play a critical role in articulating and amplifying that knowledge. A theoretical framework is developed which provides an analytical perspective on the constituent dimensions of knowledge creation. This framework is then applied in two operational models for facilitating the dynamic creation of appropriate organizational knowledge.

/pdf/a-dynamic-theory-of-organizational-knowledge-creation-22t9dxu55o.pdf

A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation

Organized anarchies are organizations characterized by problematic preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation. Recent studies of universities, a familiar form of organized anarchy, suggest that such organizations can be viewed for some purposes as collections of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be an answer, and decision makers looking for work. These ideas are translated into an explicit computer simulation model of a garbage can decision process. The general implications of such a model are described in terms of five major measures on the process. Possible applications of the model to more narrow predictions are illustrated by an examination of the model's predictions with respect to the effect of adversity on university decision making.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2392088.pdf

A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice.

The state has lost its position of centrality in contemporary political theory ideas of moral individualism and an emphasis on bargaining among conflicting interest have usurped ideas that embedded morality in institutions, such as the legal system and the corporation, as foundations for political identity. The authors propose a new theory of political behavior that re-invigorates the role of institutions - from laws and bureaucracy to rituals, symbols and ceremonies - as essential to understanding the modern political and economic systems that guide contemporary life.

Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics

Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.

/pdf/the-new-institutionalism-organizational-factors-in-political-1ys1jt7ihf.pdf

The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life

Ambiguity and choice in organizations

The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

/pdf/the-institutional-dynamics-of-international-political-orders-4v1onuni6t.pdf

Johan P. Olsen

Papers

A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice.

Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics

The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life

Ambiguity and choice in organizations

The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders