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 article examines the intersection of two structural developments: the growth of surveillance and the rise of “big data.” Drawing on observations and interviews conducted within the Los Angeles...

Big Data Surveillance: The Case of Policing:

Beginning with the last review of gender and crime that appeared in the Annual Review of Sociology (1996), I examine the developments in the more traditional approaches to this subject (the gender ratio problem and the problem of theoretical generalization), life course research, and feminist research (gendered pathways, gendered crime, and gendered lives). This review highlights important insights that have emerged in this work on gender and crime, and it considers how this work might be further enriched by drawing on sociological theories that can address how gendered lives shape the impetus and opportunities for offending. This includes work on the context of offending, the learning and expression of emotions, and identity theory.

Gender and Crime

An examination of the influence of street stops on the legal socialization of young men showed an association between the number of police stops and a diminished sense of police legitimacy. This association however is not only a consequence of the number of street or car stops they experience or of the degree of police intrusion that occurs during those stops. Rather, the estimated impact of involuntary contact with the police is mediated by evaluations of the fairness of police actions and judgments about whether the police are acting lawfully. Whether the police are viewed as exercising their authority fairly and lawfully directly shapes respondent’s decision acceptance and the impact of stops on respondent’s general judgments about police legitimacy. Fairness and lawfulness judgments, in turn, are influenced by the number of stops or the degree of police intrusion during those stops. Similarly, judgments of justice and lawfulness mediate the estimated influence of judgments of the general character of police behavior in the community on general perceptions of police legitimacy. These results suggest that the widespread use of street stops undermines legitimacy. Lowered legitimacy has an influence on both law abidingness and the willingness to cooperate with legal authorities. However, the findings also show that it is not only police streets or police conduct during such stops that matters per se, but more importantly public perceptions of police injustice/illegality during those stops. The results suggest that police legitimacy is shaped by how fairly/legally the police are viewed as exercising their authority.

/pdf/street-stops-and-police-legitimacy-teachable-moments-in-1o7osec2vw.pdf

Street Stops and Police Legitimacy: Teachable Moments in Young Urban Men’s Legal Socialization

Using footage from body-worn cameras, we analyze the respectfulness of police officer language toward white and black community members during routine traffic stops. We develop computational linguistic methods that extract levels of respect automatically from transcripts, informed by a thin-slicing study of participant ratings of officer utterances. We find that officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop. Such disparities in common, everyday interactions between police and the communities they serve have important implications for procedural justice and the building of police-community trust.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/25/6521.full.pdf

Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect.

Embrick and his colleagues (p. 250) also realize this problem exists: ‘‘Yet, our sociological understanding of people and virtual technologies often lag far behind. Part of the reason is because we are just beginning to develop the methodological and theoretical tools needed to engage as researchers in this still new terrain.’’ Despite these organizational issues, the editors did a great job in assembling a colorful mixture of innovative research and very interesting, well-written articles. Highlights are the semiotic analysis of Elizabeth Erkenbrack (pp. 38ff.) in ‘‘Discursive Engagements in World of Warcraft,’’ in which the author explores ‘‘interactive realities, the multiple orientations of players, and the inter-frame effects’’ of the game ‘‘World of Warcraft,’’ as well as the chapter of J. Talmadge Wright (pp. 81ff.) on the production of place and play in virtual spaces, in which he makes the novel argument that the new technology of representation ‘‘amplifies already existing social relationships.’’ In conclusion, Embrick, Wright, and Lukács’s book is a very innovative collection of essays on virtual culture and online games. They succeed in filling the sociological research gap by issuing broader questions on power, exclusion, and inequalities in a digital and mediatized society. The chapters and authors present the state of the art in this research field. The topics are carefully selected, the chapters are well written, and readers especially benefit from the concise introduction and conclusion.

Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship:

This study examines the relationship between driver's social status characteristics, including race, and the likelihood of different types of traffic stops—warnings and tickets—by using self-report data from licensed drivers in North Carolina. Results suggest that Black drivers, driver age, and vehicle age are associated with warning stops by local police, while vehicle age and speeding are associated with state police warning stops. Furthermore, race and age along with traffic conviction history and typical speed are associated with local police ticket stops while age and a number of quasi-legal and legal factors predict state police ticket stops. Future profiling research should further examine the role of organization as an influence on the police use of traffic violations as pretext as well as the relationship between citizen race and police suspicion.

Police Stops, Pretext, and Racial Profiling: Explaining Warning and Ticket Stops Using Citizen Self-Reports

Survey reports of police stops and driving behavior are a potential methodology for examining the magnitude and prevalence of the “Driving While Black” phenomena. However, estimates of the magnitude or correlates of racial disparity in police stops from self-reported survey data are potentially compromised if the accuracy of self-reports of police stops and driving behavior differ by race. We report on the results of a reverse record check survey in which we directly assess the degree and consequences of differences by race in self-reports of police stops. In our sample of drivers who had been cited for speeding in the preceding year, we found that 77% of the White respondents and 71% of the African American respondents admitted to being stopped. While both groups underreport stops, African Americans do so at a higher rate. This finding is consistent with many past studies which report stronger social desirability effects on survey responses among African Americans. Thus, survey data will tend to underestimate the magnitude of the “Driving While Black” phenomena.

Self-Reports of Police Speeding Stops by Race: Results from the North Carolina Reverse Record Check Survey

Purpose
The study explores the use of video to document police interaction with citizens and its role in the renaissance of a contemporary crisis focused on police use-of-force, race relations, and legitimacy in the United States. The saturation of communication technologies and network access have ushered an era of citizens watching the police, consolidating the new visibility of policing and potentially reorganizing to some degree the power dynamics of traditional police/community relations.


Methodology/approach
The argument is supported through a triangulated analysis that draws on several data sources about video technology use by both citizens and police, media coverage of police shootings, and public opinion on trends in police excessive force.


Findings
The institution of policing is experiencing a legitimacy crisis that is fueled by high-profile police shootings of African Americans by white police officers captured by video technology. The public increasingly expects access to video of police/citizen encounters, which redefines the public’s role in police accountability matters as well as the consequences for police legitimacy.


Originality/value
The theory illuminates the ways in which video has become central to public and official discourse in police use-of-force cases and the problems its presence and absence presents in police/community relations. The ability of citizens to record and widely share video of police encounters is a new development in the ability of citizens and police reform advocates to frame the discourse on police/community relations, accountability, and legitimacy.

Kirk Miller

Papers

Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship:

Police Stops, Pretext, and Racial Profiling: Explaining Warning and Ticket Stops Using Citizen Self-Reports

Self-Reports of Police Speeding Stops by Race: Results from the North Carolina Reverse Record Check Survey

Watching the Watchers: Theorizing Cops, Cameras, and Police Legitimacy in the 21st Century

Race, driving, and police organization: Modeling moving and nonmoving traffic stops with citizen self-reports of driving practices