Knowledge Management

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)

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

In discussing the philosophical system put forward in PR, we need to point out that not only does Whitehead introduce a novel terminology, but the work itself is somewhat amorphous in character, and this despite his attempt to state a categoreal scheme — a general scheme of ideas in terms of which all our experience is to be described. There is also a considerable amount of overlap between the various parts of this book. It might have been a clearer and more effective work if Whitehead had engaged in some judicious pruning before publication.

Process and Reality

Empirical research was conducted to investigate retrenchment as an integral component of the overall turnaround process. An industry study provided an anchored operational definition of a turnaround situation, indications of its internal and external causes, and an application of an absolute measure of its severity. The research further produced an empirical discrimination between retrenchment as a stand-alone response to financial decline and retrenchment as an initial phase of a turnaround strategy, and an identification of activities that can be used to classify entrepreneurial vs. efficiency emphases in a turnaround firm's recovery response.

Turnaround: Retrenchment and recovery

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José Pla-Barber

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