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)

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

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

This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

Since the early 2000s, scholars from a variety of disciplines have used the concept of financialization to describe a host of structural changes in the advanced political economies. Studies of financialization interrogate how an increasingly autonomous realm of global finance has altered the underlying logics of the industrial economy and the inner workings of democratic society. This paper evaluates the insights of more than a decade of scholarship on financialization. Three approaches will be discussed: the emergence of a new regime of accumulation, the ascendency of the shareholder value orientation and the financialization of everyday life. It is argued that a deeper understanding of financialization will lead to a better understanding of organized interests, the politics of the welfare state, and processes of institutional change.

Making sense of financialization

Comparative and international political economy (CPE and IPE) are justifiably obsessed with finance as a source of power and as a key causal force for domestic and international economic outcomes. Yet both CPE and IPE ignore the single largest asset in people's everyday lives and one of the biggest financial assets in most economies: residential property and its associated mortgage debt. This special issue argues that residential housing and housing finance systems have important causal consequences for political behavior, social stability, the structure of welfare states, and macro-economic outcomes. The articles examine specific instances across a range of countries. This introduction has broader aims. First, it shows that housing finance systems are not politically neutral. We argue that the kind of housing people occupy and the property rights surrounding housing can constitute political subjectivities and objective preferences not only about the level of public spending, but also the level and nature of inflation and taxation. Second, like the varieties of capitalism literature, we show that housing finance systems also have important complementarities with the larger economy. But we diverge from the varieties literature, suggesting that ‘varieties of residential capitalism’ are not explained by domestic institutional complementarities alone. Rather, what we refer to as financially repressed and financially liberal systems are globally interdependent. While welfare and taxation systems show high degrees of path dependence, transnational trends in the deregulation of housing finance have altered incentives and preferences for financial institutions, home owners, and would-be home owners. Finally, the introduction offers some speculation about how pocketbooks will drive politics as the global housing busts tightens mortgage belts around the waists of average Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development home owners.

Varieties of residential capitalism in the international political economy : old welfare states and the new politics of housing

This symposium addresses the role of wars and crises as mechanisms of international change. Over the past two decades, the international system has undergone a number of remarkable transformations, from the end of the Cold War to the emergence of an ongoing ‘‘War on Terror,’’ and from the collapse of statist development models to the emergence of a contested—if evolving—neoliberal ‘‘Washington Consensus.’’ This volatility exceeds any underlying shifts in economic structures or the distribution of capabilities, and raises important questions regarding the roles of agency, uncertainty, and ideas in advancing change. In this introduction we examine the role of wars and economic crises as socially constructed openings for change. We attempt three things: to critique materialist approaches in the security and political economy issue areas, to outline the distinctive contribution that an agent-centered constructivist understanding of such events offers, and to offer a framework for the study of such events, one which highlights an expanded range of elite-mass interactions. 1929. 1945. 1973. 1989. 2001. One scarcely need identify the events to which these dates refer. One ‘‘knows them when one sees them’’ as ‘‘turning points’’ when old orders ended and new ones began to emerge. Over the past several years, the importance of such events has been examined by a range of international relations scholars offering either materialist analyses of international relations ‘‘after victory’’ and in the context of ‘‘hard times,’’ or more constructivist analyses of ‘‘constitutive wars’’ and the importance of ‘‘socialpolitik.’’ 1 Such Author’s note: For their comments and criticisms of this effort, we thank Lisa Baglione, Jacqueline Best, Bruce Cronin, Colin Hay, Ronald Krebs, Jennifer Lobasz, the late Steve Poe, and Alexander Wendt. The usual disclaimers apply. 1

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/4621740

Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises

A state's financial power is built on the effect its credit, property, and tax policies have on ordinary people: this is the key message of Leonard Seabrooke's comparative historical investigation, which turns the spotlight away from elite financial actors and toward institutions that matter for the majority of citizens. Seabrooke suggests that everyday contests between social groups and the state over how the economy should work determine the legitimacy of a state's financial and fiscal system. Ideally, he believes, such contests compel a state to intervene on behalf of people below the median income level, leading the state to broaden and deepen its domestic pool of capital while increasing its influence on international finance. But to do so, Seabrooke asserts, a state must first challenge powerful interests that benefit from the concentration of financial wealth. Seabrooke's novel constructivist approach is informed by economic sociology and the work of Max Weber. This book demonstrates how domestic legitimacy influences the character of international financial orders. It will interest all readers concerned with how best to transform state intervention in the economy for the good of the majority.

The social sources of financial power : domestic legitimacy and international financial orders

International organisations (IOs) often serve as the ‘engine room’ of ideas for structural reforms at the national level, but how do IOs construct cognitive authority over the forms, processes and prescriptions for institutional change in their member states? Exploring the analytic institutions created by IOs provides insights into how they make their member states ‘legible’ and how greater legibility enables them to construct cognitive authority in specific policy areas, which, in turn, enhances their capacity to influence changes in national frameworks for economic and social governance. Studying the indirect influence that IOs can exert over the design of national policies has, until recently, often been neglected in accounts of the contemporary roles that IOs play and the evolution of global economic governance. By ‘seeing like an IO’, we can increase our understanding of the cognitive and organisational environment that guides an IO's actions and informs its policy advice to states, which enables a m...

Seeing like an International Organisation

This article discusses transnational professional knowledge in action and puts forward a conception of how professionals play off different forms of knowledge to provide policy solutions and, in doing so, generate markets for their services. The key concept is ‘epistemic arbitrage’—when professionals exploit opportunities between bodies of professional knowledge. Professionals mediate between knowledge pools for strategic advantage and, if successful, they can become the ‘arbiters’ on what knowledge and practices are most influential in their area of transnational governance. Organizations also have a demand for epistemic arbitrage, as it permits managers to have more influence over what knowledge is dominant and allows greater control of staff. The concept of epistemic arbitrage is situated in the relevant literature from International Relations, Organization Studies, and Sociology, and this interdisciplinary article brings them together to advance the new transnational sociology of professions. I suggest that transnationality matters for how professionals behave and one can draw a distinction between ‘thin’ transnational environments that are especially permissive of epistemic arbitrage and professional mobilization, and ‘thick’ domestic environments where professional jurisdictions can dampen epistemic arbitrage. The article outlines how transnational professionals can be understood as unique groups that have careers and operate in networks where there is a supply of, and demand for, epistemic arbitrage. It also establishes why ‘knowing well’ is crucial to those who have power in shaping how transnational issues are governed.

Leonard Seabrooke

Papers

Varieties of residential capitalism in the international political economy : old welfare states and the new politics of housing

Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises

The social sources of financial power : domestic legitimacy and international financial orders

Seeing like an International Organisation

Epistemic arbitrage: Transnational professional knowledge in action