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)

Performances have only recently been addressed in business history research, partly because of problems concerning data quality and availability. As a consequence, performance measurement in family firms has been a neglected area in historical studies. Family business historians are thus increasingly interested in this topic. However, the longitudinal perspective adopted requires a problematical approach to the concept of performance. This article provides a critical assessment of the relationship between family firms and performance measurement from the perspective of business history and, at the same time, suggests the potential contribution of historical analysis to theory building in this field.

Contextualizing Performances of Family Firms The Perspective of Business History

This paper presents a framework for studying the concepts of fit and flexibility in the field of Strategic Human Resource Management (Strategic HRM) focusing on HRM practices, employee skills, and employee behaviors and reviews past conceptual and empirical work within that framework. A model of Strategic HRM is presented and this model is used to explore the concepts of fit and flexibility as they apply to Strategic HRM. The concepts of resource and coordination flexibility are applied to Strategic HRM, and the implications of the framework for both the practice of and research on Strategic HRM are discussed.

Toward a Unifying Framework for Exploring Fit and Flexibility in Strategic Human Resource Management

This paper presents a geometric-variational approach to continuous and discrete mechanics and field theories Using multisymplectic geometry, we show that the existence of the fundamental geometric structures as well as their preservation along solutions can be obtained directly from the variational principle In particular, we prove that a unique multisymplectic structure is obtained by taking the derivative of an action function, and use this structure to prove covariant generalizations of conservation of symplecticity and Noether' s theorem Natural discretization schemes for PDEs, which have these important preservation properties, then follow by choosing a discrete action functional In the case of mechanics, we recover the variational symplectic integrators of Veselov type, while for PDEs we obtain covariant spacetime integrators which conserve the corresponding discrete multisymplectic form as well as the discrete momentum mappings corresponding to symmetries We show that the usual notion of symplecticity along an infinite-dimensional space of fields can be naturally obtained by making a spacetime split All of the aspects of our method are demonstrated with a nonlinear sine-Gordon equation, including computational results and a comparison with other discretization schemes

https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~shkoller/mps.pdf

Multisymplectic Geometry, Variational Integrators, and Nonlinear PDEs

Whereas existing research on the longevity of family firms has focused on the survival of firms, this article investigates transgenerational entrepreneurship of families. By building on the transgenerational entrepreneurship research framework, the authors argue that by shifting from firm to family level of analysis, one gains a deeper understanding of family firms’ ability to create value across generations. The authors find evidence for their argument in that such a level shift reveals extended entrepreneurial activity, which is missed when focusing exclusively on the firm level. The study introduces and empirically explores the construct of family entrepreneurial orientation, which may serve as an antecedent to transgenerational value creation by families.

From Longevity of Firms to Transgenerational Entrepreneurship of Families: Introducing Family Entrepreneurial Orientation

This research contributes to the family business literature by empirically demonstrating that family enterprises that give more emphasis to family and business as a whole have better family results and similar business results when compared to those enterprises that limit governance to only the business. The article includes a review of the literature, and it identifies a set of four basic dimensions that focus on different aspects of family enterprise. The study then combines measures of these dimensions to describe both the governance and the nature of the family and the business. A representative sample of 732 Spanish family enterprises enabled the research to reveal empirical support for the theory positing that balanced attention to governing the subsystems is an effective route to family enterprise management.

Studying the Family Enterprise Holistically Evidence for Integrated Family and Business Systems

Numerical solution of the sine-Gordon equation

Ideal types of family business management: Horizontal fit between family and business decisions and the relationship with family business performance

This article analyzes cognitive legitimacy in family business field and makes three main contributions to the literature: First, the authors move the debate claiming legitimacy for the field one st...

The Cognitive Legitimacy of the Family Business Field

Aunque el exito organizativo puede ser estudiado desde perspectivas variadas, la literatura en el campo de Direccion de Empresas establece vinculaciones muy significativas entre este concepto y el de eficacia. Precisamente, una de las razones que justifican el estudio de la eficacia se deriva de la necesidad que la organizacion tiene de identificar criterios que le permitan juzgar y evaluar el exito organizativo. Este es el cometido esencial del trabajo que aqui se presenta.

/pdf/el-exito-empresarial-sus-niveles-de-analisis-y-formas-3afnhax8pf.pdf

María José Pérez Rodríguez

Papers

Studying the Family Enterprise Holistically Evidence for Integrated Family and Business Systems

Numerical solution of the sine-Gordon equation

Ideal types of family business management: Horizontal fit between family and business decisions and the relationship with family business performance

The Cognitive Legitimacy of the Family Business Field

El éxito empresarial. Sus niveles de análisis y formas alternativas para su evaluación