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)

“Only middle-class academics could blithely assume that all the world is a text,” writes one of performance studies' leading figures. Conquergood argues for a hybrid discipline that celebrates experience and commingles the analytic and the artistic.

/pdf/performance-studies-interventions-and-radical-research-36i7tompqc.pdf

Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research

"Qualitative Research in Practice is a book we have all been waiting for. The authors have shared with us their stories about the qualitative research process while linking their experiences to theory and practice in human services. The difficulties, successes and new pathways created by their research findings shed new light on the complex journey qualitative researchers embark on with every new research project." - Professor Gay Edgecombe, Director of International Studies for Nursing and Public Health, RMIT University, Australia. "I would recommend this book to my students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I believe that after reading this book, students will no longer be frightened by qualitative research and will have an interest and enthusiasm in trying it out." - Professor Joyce L.C. Ma, Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Qualitative Research in Practice bridges the gap between theory and practice in research, and between the academic and practice contexts in the human services. The focus is on 'doing' research and 'being' a researcher, rather than on 'how to do' research. The authors provide an introduction to qualitative research through actual research projects that illustrate key stages in the research process. They draw on experiences of research undertaken in a variety of human service areas by researchers in Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Hong Kong. These 'stories from the field' are framed by broader discussions by the authors of the research process. The researchers' stories reveal the human face of research undertaken in often difficult contexts: with homeless people, with disabled people, in nursing homes, with victims of domestic violence, and with adopted children. We see how these researchers have dealt with the many obstacles they faced in their research projects, and how they developed innovative solutions. Qualitative Research in Practice is a collection of 'practice wisdom' that makes an ideal companion to conventional research methods texts for students and practitioners doing research in social work, welfare, community health, counselling and related fields.

http://blogs.unpad.ac.id/teddykw/files/2012/08/Qualitative-Research-In-Practice.pdf

Qualitative Research in Practice: Stories from the field

In the past decade, nonprofits scholars have given increased attention to the topic of vulnerability and organizational demise. An early contribution to this literature was Tuckman and Chang’s elab...

Financial Vulnerability among Arts Organizations: A Test of the Tuckman-Chang Measures

Those who use autobiographical perspectives in the practice of sociology and related disciplines have noted, with concern, the association of their work with self-indulgence (Devault, 1994; Jackson, 1990; Okely, 1992; Kreiger, 1991). This paper elaborates this concern by directing analytic attention to the nature of the charge of self-indulgence. The paper reads as an autobiographical defense of autobiographical sociology. It uses the naming of my own work as self-involved as a point of departure for explicating the implications of this regulatory practice. The device of irony is used to expose how self-indulgence, as a critique invoking highly insular relations of readership, authorship and subject/object distinction, relies on the conventions of a traditional masculine academic discourse.

Reconsidering table talk: Critical thoughts on the relationship between sociology, autobiography and self-indulgence

Chicago, San Francisco, and Minneapolis/St. Paul are major regional centers of theatrical activity in the United States. Like other viable theatre communities, they contain the resources theatres need to produce plays, including community traditions and theatrical cultures, work opportunities, and theatre spaces. We have presented our analysis of these communities and their resources in a dramatic format, which solves some problems of scientific communication but makes additional demands on the reader.

Theatres and Communities: Three Scenes

This project describes the data resources on arts organizations that are currently available to inform the efforts of policy makers, arts managers, and researchers working in the arts field. It assesses the adequacy of different data sources for identifying the population of arts and cultural organizations in a community. The report is based on a review of more than a dozen sources of information about arts and cultural organizations, interviews with researchers and data specialists, and an empirical study of arts organizations in three metropolitan areas - Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The report concludes with recommendations for improving data quality and for establishing an ongoing national database on the arts sector.

Data on Arts Organizations: A Review and Needs Assessment, with Design Implications

(1998). Comparing Sample Frames for Research on Arts Organizations: Results of a Study in Three Metropolitan Areas. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society: Vol. 28, Arts Management and Marketing Research, pp. 41-66.

Lori Morris

Papers

Theatres and Communities: Three Scenes

Data on Arts Organizations: A Review and Needs Assessment, with Design Implications

Comparing Sample Frames for Research on Arts Organizations: Results of a Study in Three Metropolitan Areas