Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data

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)

In recent decades, struggles for recognition have increasingly dominated the political landscape.1 Recognition theorists such as Charles Taylor (1994) and Axel Honneth (1995) seek to interpret and justify these struggles through the idea that our identity is shaped, at least partly, by our relations with other people. Because our identity is shaped in this way, it is alleged that feelings of self-worth, self-respect and self-esteem are possible only if we are positively recognised for who we are. Consequently, for many political theorists, recognition is an integral component of a satisfactory modern theory of justice, as well as the means by which both historical and contemporary political struggles can be understood and justified.

The Politics of Recognition

This article presents a review of the book “Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems,” by W.R. Scott.

Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems

This special issue offers a first systematic qualitative cross-national exploration of how diverse minority groups respond to stigmatization in a wide variety of contexts. This research is the culmination of a coordinated study of stigmatized groups in Brazil, Israel and the USA, as well as of connected research projects conducted in Canada, France, South Africa and Sweden. The issue sheds light on the range of destigmatization strategies ordinary people adopt in the course of their daily life. Articles analyse the cultural frames they mobilize to make sense of their experiences and to determine how to respond; how they negotiate and transform social and symbolic boundaries; and how responses are enabled and constrained by institutions, national ideologies, cultural repertoires and contexts. The similarities and differences across sites provide points of departure for further systematic research, which is particularly needed in light of the challenges for liberal democracy raised by multiculturalism.

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Ordinary people doing extraordinary things: responses to stigmatization in comparative perspective

Introduction: Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things: Responses to Stigmatization in Comparative Perspective

The study explores the process of boundary demarcation within hospital settings by examining a new phenomenon in modern medicine: collaboration between alternative and biomedical practitioners (primarily physicians) working together in biomedical settings. The study uses qualitative methods to examine the nature of this collaboration by calling attention to the ways in which the biomedical profession manages to secure its boundaries and to protect its hard-core professional knowledge. It identifies the processes of exclusion and marginalization as the main mechanisms by which symbolic boundaries are marked daily in the professional field. These processes enable the biomedical profession to contain its competitors and at the same time to avoid overt confrontations and mitigate potential tensions between the two medical systems.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00430.x

Boundary at work: alternative medicine in biomedical settings

This study examines how members of minority groups in Israel cope with stigmatization in everyday life. It focuses on working-class members of three minority groups: Palestinian Arabs or Palestinian citizens of Israel, Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin) and Ethiopian Jews. It reveals the use of racial, ethnic and national markers in daily processes of social inclusion and exclusion in one sociopolitical context. Palestinians, a group with a fixed external identity and a limited sphere of participation, were found to use the language of race and racism when describing stigmatizing encounters. Ethiopian Jews, the most phenotypically marked group, strictly avoided this language. For their part, Mizrahi Jews perceived the very discussion of stigmatization as stigmatizing, while often using ‘contingent detachment’ to distance themselves from negative group identities. Despite differences between the communities and the powerful role of the state in establishing symbolic and soc...

Nissim Mizrachi

Papers

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things: responses to stigmatization in comparative perspective

Introduction: Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things: Responses to Stigmatization in Comparative Perspective

Boundary at work: alternative medicine in biomedical settings

Participatory destigmatization strategies among Palestinian citizens, Ethiopian Jews and Mizrahi Jews in Israel

Entering the well-guarded fortress: alternative practitioners in hospital settings.