Recent conceptualizations of trends in the structure of U.S. industry have focused on the relative importance of markets, hierarchies, and hybrid intermediate forms. This paper advances the discussion by distinguishing three ideal-typical forms of organization and their corresponding coordination mechanisms: market/price, hierarchy/authority, and community/trust. Different institutions combine the three forms/mechanisms in different proportions. Economic and organizational theory have shown that, compared to trust, price and authority are relatively ineffective means of dealing with knowledge-based assets. Therefore, as knowledge becomes increasingly important in our economy, we should expect high-trust institutional forms to proliferate.A review of trends in employment relations, interdivisional relations, and interfirm relations finds evidence suggesting that the effect of growing knowledge-intensity may indeed be a trend toward greater reliance on trust. There is also reason to believe that the form of trust most effective in this context is a distinctively modern kind--"reflective trust"--as opposed to traditionalistic, "blind" trust. Such a trend to reflective trust appears to threaten the privileges of currently dominant social actors, and these actors' resistance, in combination with the complex interdependencies between price, authority, and trust mechanisms, imparts a halting character to the trend. But the momentum of this trend nevertheless appears to be self-reinforcing, which suggests that it may ultimately challenge the foundations of our capitalist form of society while simultaneously creating the foundations of a new, postcapitalist form.

/pdf/market-hierarchy-and-trust-the-knowledge-economy-and-the-1g2hgcqmqd.pdf

Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism

This paper traces the main lines of evolution of the organization of professional work. The argument is illustrated with material on the case of doctors and hospitals. While market and hierarchy principles have become progressively more salient in professional work, we argue that, in parallel, the community principle has been growing more influential, too. We further argue that professional community is mutating from a Gemeinschaft, craft guild form, via Gesellschaft forms, toward a new, collaborative form. This evolution, however, is a difficult one, and the outcome is uncertain. We identify some implications for future research.

/pdf/perspective-professional-work-the-emergence-of-collaborative-5a339w87ef.pdf

Perspective---Professional Work: The Emergence of Collaborative Community

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1329137_code190070.pdf?abstractid=1329137&mirid=1

Professional Work: The Emergence of Collaborative Community

We take historical stock of charisma, tracing its origins and how it has been conceptualized in the sociological and organizational sciences literatures. Although charisma has been intensely studied, the concept is still not well understood and much of the research undertaken cannot inform policy. We show that the major obstacles to advancing our understanding of charisma have included issues with its definition, its confusion with transformational leadership, the use of questionnaire measures, and that it has not been studied using correctly specified causal models. To help spawn a new genre of research on charisma, we use signaling theory to provide a general definition of charisma, and make suggestions about how charisma should be conceptualized, operationalized, and modeled. We also describe trends and patterns in articles we reviewed, using cocitation as well as bibliometric analyses, and discuss the practical implications of our findings.

/pdf/charisma-an-ill-defined-and-ill-measured-gift-4guzituy90.pdf

Charisma: An Ill-Defined and Ill-Measured Gift

Recent conceptualizations of trends in the structure of U.S. industry have focused on the relative importance of markets, hierarchies, and hybrid intermediate forms. This paper seeks to advance the discussion by distinguishing three ideal-typical forms of organization and their corresponding key coordination mechanism: market/price, hierarchy/authority, and community/trust. Different institutions combine the three forms/mechanisms in different proportions. Economic and organizational theory have shown that compared to trust, price and authority are relatively ineffective mechanisms for dealing with assets that are based on knowledge. As knowledge becomes increasingly important in our economy, we should therefore expect high-trust institutional forms to proliferate. A review of trends in employment relations, interdivisional relations, and inter-firm relations finds evidence suggesting that the effect of growing knowledge-intensity may indeed be such a trend towards greater reliance on trust. There is also reason to believe that the form of trust most effective in this context is of a distinctively modern kind - "reflective trust" - as opposed to a traditionalistic, blind trust. Such a trend to reflective trust appears to threaten the privileges of currently dominant social actors, and these actors' resistance, in combination with the complex interdependencies between price, authority, and trust mechanisms, imparts a halting character to the trend. But the momentum of this trend nevertheless appears to be self-reinforcing, which suggests that it may ultimately come to challenge the foundations of our capitalist form of society while simultaneously creating the foundations of a new, post-capitalist form.

Martin E. Spencer

Papers

Weber on legitimate norms and authority.

What is charisma