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)

https://iranakhlagh.nipc.ir/uploads/m099_12051.pdf

Behavioral Ethics in Organizations: A Review:

Social identity theory and the organization

In contrast to content-based models of corporate social responsibility (CSR), we propose a process model of organizational sensemaking explaining how managers think, discuss, and act with respect to their key stakeholders and the world at large. We also propose a set of cognitive, linguistic, and conative dimensions to identify such an intrinsic orientation that guides CSR-related activities. Recognizing patterns of interrelationships among these dimensions might lead to a better understanding of a firm's CSR impact and generate a rich research agenda that links key organizational features to CSR character.

/pdf/corporate-social-responsibility-a-process-model-of-4ws8ux58k3.pdf

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Process Model of Sensemaking

This article advances understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of moral disengagement by testing hypotheses with 3 waves of survey data from 307 business and education undergraduate students. The authors theorize that 6 individual differences will either increase or decrease moral disengagement, defined as a set of cognitive mechanisms that deactivate moral self-regulatory processes and thereby help to explain why individuals often make unethical decisions without apparent guilt or self-censure (Bandura, 1986). Results support 4 individual difference hypotheses, specifically, that empathy and moral identity are negatively related to moral disengagement, while trait cynicism and chance locus of control orientation are positively related to moral disengagement. Two additional locus of control orientations are not significantly related to moral disengagement. The authors also hypothesize and find that moral disengagement is positively related to unethical decision making. Finally, the authors hypothesize that moral disengagement plays a mediating role between the individual differences they studied and unethical decisions. Their results offer partial support for these mediating hypotheses. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research and for practice.

Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: A study of antecedents and outcomes.

Executive Summary Many of the recent corruption scandals at formerly venerated organizations such as Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat have some noteworthy features in common. In most instances, the fraudulent acts involved knowing cooperation among numerous employees who were upstanding community members, givers to charity, and caring parents—far removed from the prototypical image of a criminal. The involvement of such individuals in corrupt acts, and the persistence of the acts over time, is both disturbing and puzzling. We argue that the above phenomenon can be explained in part by the rationalization tactics used by individuals committing unethical or fraudulent acts. Rationalizations are mental strategies that allow employees (and others around them) to view their corrupt acts as justified. Employees may collectively use rationalizations to neutralize any regrets or negative feelings that emanate from their participation in unethical acts. Further, rationalizations are often accompanied by socialization...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4166202.pdf

Business as usual: The acceptance and perpetuation of corruption in organizations

The recent mini scandal surrounding questionable on-line postings of John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., raises once again ethical challenges related to contemporary business leadership. Given his visible commitment to environmentally sound strategies and other responsible business practices, Mackey’s actions epitomize the irony and paradox that can surround executive leadership ethics. While this essay acknowledges the potential role of stricter legal constraints, punishments for offenders, decentralized governance systems, and rationalized structures that help prohibit power abuse, it views such rationalistic considerations alone to be inadequate. Rather, the authors suggest that the promotion of authentic virtuousness is an often overlooked yet indispensable part of any meaningful long term ethical leadership process.

Emerging paradoxes in executive leadership: A theoretical interpretation of the tensions between corruption and virtuous values

We extend Kreiner and Ashforth’s (2004) research on the expanded model of organizational identification to the occupational level of self. A survey of 251 customer service representatives from an Indian call center indicates that occupational identification, occupational disidentification, ambivalent occupational identification, and neutral occupational identification are empirically differentiable. Further, each form of identification in the expanded model was related to certain predictors from a set of ten situational and individual difference variables, and to certain outcomes from a set of five adjustment variables. The differing patterns of antecedents and outcomes for each form of occupational identification suggest that each form constitutes a relatively unique phenomenon.

Extending the expanded model of organizational identification to occupations

We argue that a firm forms three distinct relationships with strategic groups-identification, disidentification, and ambivalent identification. Firms can form any of these relationships with multiple strategic groups, and the set of these relationships comprises a firm's strategic group configuration SGC. We propose that the nature of a firm's identity influences the characteristics of its SGC. We demonstrate the implications of our model by exploring how a firm's strategic group configuration affects its information-seeking behaviors. Finally, we describe how the SGC framework offers several key implications for this field of research.

An Organizational Identity Approach to Strategic Groups

Summary
Applicant attraction is a critical objective of recruitment. Common predictor variables of applicant attraction are limited in that they do not provide a comprehensive understanding of the process that shapes the perceptions and beliefs of job applicants about the firms for which they aspire to work for. Because individuals have the inherent desire to expand and enhance their social identities (e.g., personal, relational, and collective identities), they are likely to be attracted to organizations that allow them to do so. Building on recent work on levels of self, our paper suggests that social identities mediate the relation between currently established predictor variables of applicant attraction (e.g., compensation, type of work, and organizational image) and important applicant attraction outcomes. Common predictor variables of applicant attraction can lead to the activation, evaluation, and identification processes described by social identity theory. A theoretical framework is presented that illustrates the mediating influence of social identity on the relations between common predictor variables and applicant attraction outcomes. This framework may lead to more effective recruitment strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mahendra Joshi

Papers

Business as usual: The acceptance and perpetuation of corruption in organizations

Emerging paradoxes in executive leadership: A theoretical interpretation of the tensions between corruption and virtuous values

Extending the expanded model of organizational identification to occupations

An Organizational Identity Approach to Strategic Groups

Social identity and applicant attraction: Exploring the role of multiple levels of self