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)

Critical management studies (CMS) offers a range of alternatives to mainstream management theory with a view to radically transforming management practice. The common core is deep skepticism regarding the moral defensibility and the social and ecological sustainability of prevailing conceptions and forms of management and organization. CMS’s motivating concern is neither the personal failures of individual managers nor the poor management of specific firms, but the social injustice and environmental destructiveness of the broader social and economic systems that these managers and firms serve and reproduce. This paper reviews CMS’s progress, main themes, theoretical and epistemological premises, and main projects; we also identify some problems Tight_G_UN#_Master.indd 1 8/1/07 10:02:33 AM 2 • LeftRunningHead © 2007 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC and make some proposals. Our aim is to provide an accessible overview of a growing movement in management studies.

Critical Management Studies

Recent studies of temporary organizing and project-based work explain how organizational actors establish and maintain clear role structures and harmonious relations in the face of precariousness by engaging in stabilizing work practices. This focus upon ‘order’ undervalues conflict-ridden negotiations and power struggles in temporary organizing. This paper demonstrates that in temporary organizing conflict and order may exist in tandem. Drawing close to the collaborative dynamics in a large-scale global project, we analyse the political struggles over role patterns and hierarchic positioning of client and agent in the temporary organization of the Panama Canal Expansion Program (PCEP). In such projects, the agent typically takes the position of project leader. In this case however, the client was formally in charge, while the agent was assigned the role of coach and mentor. The diffuse hierarchy triggered project partners to engage in both harmony-seeking social and discursive practices and to enter into conflict-ridden negotiations over authority relations in the everyday execution of the PCEP project. Our study contributes to existing literatures on temporal organizing by presenting a case of simultaneous practices of harmonization and contestation over mutual roles and hierarchic positions. We also show that studying collaboration between project partners involves, not merely analysing project governance structures, but also offering a context-sensitive account of everyday social and discursive practices. Finally, we reflect on a view of ‘permanence’ and ‘temporariness’ as themselves contested categories and symbolic sites for struggle.

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Clash of the Titans: Temporal organizing and collaborative dynamics in the Panama Canal Megaproject

This study examines how the joint use of integrators and contracts either enables or hampers coordination and, in turn, the performance of interorganizational project networks. Using extensive qualitative analyses and sociometric techniques, we investigated coordination among organizations during seven small- and medium-sized building projects. Our longitudinal study reveals how integrators develop connecting functions that, together with contracts’ steering functions, largely drive coordination dynamics. Further data analyses provide insight into how coordination hinges on the prevalence of connecting or steering, which may more or less fit with coordination needs in various project phases. Given these findings, we theorize the contingent nature of the interplay between the use of integrators and contracts throughout projects. Our findings are integrated into a process model of how coordination trajectories lead to different performance levels of interorganizational project networks. Our study has theore...

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How Coordination Trajectories Influence the Performance of Interorganizational Project Networks

Value-oriented stakeholder influence on infrastructure projects

https://research.vu.nl/ws/files/118939497/Teargas_taboo_and_transformation_A_neoinstitutional_study_of_community_resistance_and_the_struggle_to_legitimize_subway_projects_in_Amsterdam_19602018.pdf

Teargas, taboo and transformation : A neo-institutional study of community resistance and the struggle to legitimize subway projects in Amsterdam 1960–2018

The ritualization of transitions in the project life cycle: A study of transition rituals in construction projects

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between the spatial intervention of open-plan offices in a university, the consequential change in work practices of faculty members and how these practices appropriate the designed space.,The authors executed a two-year longitudinal ethnographic study following the case of the science faculty, which moved from a traditional office setting to open-plan offices. The authors studied the space and interviewed staff before, during and after the introduction of open-plan offices.,Findings show that the new spatial setting triggered staff members to attribute certain meanings and practices of adaptation which were, partly, unintended by the design of the open-plan offices.,This paper contributes empirically grounded insights into the (un)intended consequences of a spatial intervention in terms of how staff members, far from being passive, attribute meaning and alter their work practices leading to unprecedented organizational changes.,For change consultants, facility managers and university managers the outcomes of this paper are highly relevant.,Large budgets are spent on new office concepts at universities but the authors do know little about the relation between spatial (re)design and organizational change.,The introduction of new office concepts, spatial redesign and co-location is for many academics highly emotional.

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Changing academic work places: the introduction of open-plan offices in universities

https://research.vu.nl/ws/files/118941042/The_point_of_no_return_Ritual_performance_and_strategy_making_in_project_organizations.pdf

The point of no return: Ritual performance and strategy making in project organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of sociomateriality to exhibit how the social and material are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice in a particular organization of study. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct an ethnographic case study of the North-South metro line project in Amsterdam and use the methods of participant-observation, in-depth interviewing and a desk study. Findings – The authors showcase the process of sociomaterial entanglement by focussing on the history and context of the project, the agency and performativity of the material and sociomaterial (re)configuration via ritual performance. The authors found the notion of performativity not only concern the enactment of boundaries between the social and material, but also the blurring of such boundaries. Research limitations/implications – Sociomateriality theory remains difficult to grasp. The implication is the need to provide new lenses to engage this theory empirically. Practical im...

Leonore van den Ende

Papers

Teargas, taboo and transformation : A neo-institutional study of community resistance and the struggle to legitimize subway projects in Amsterdam 1960–2018

The ritualization of transitions in the project life cycle: A study of transition rituals in construction projects

Changing academic work places: the introduction of open-plan offices in universities

The point of no return: Ritual performance and strategy making in project organizations

Machine baptisms and heroes of the underground: Performing sociomateriality in an Amsterdam metro project