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 this article, the authors examine two distinct but closely related fields, research on teaching and research on teacher education. Despite its roots in research on teaching, research in teacher education has developed in isolation both from mainstream research on teaching and from research on higher education and professional education. A stronger connection to research on teaching could inform the content of teacher education, while a stronger relationship to research on organizations and policy implementation could focus attention on the organizational contexts in which the work takes shape. The authors argue that for research in teacher education to move forward, it must reconnect with these fields to address the complexity of both teaching as a practice and the preparation of teachers.

Back to the Future: Directions for Research in Teaching and Teacher Education

The authors present an overview of the academic literature on charitable giving based on a literature review of more than 500 articles. They structure their review around the central question of why people donate money to charitable organizations. They identify eight mechanisms as the most important forces that drive charitable giving: (a) awareness of need; (b) solicitation; (c) costs and benefits; (d) altruism; (e) reputation; (f) psychological benefits; (g) values; (h) efficacy. These mechanisms can provide a basic theoretical framework for future research explaining charitable giving.

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A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms That Drive Charitable Giving

Altruism, Nonprofits, and Economic Theory

In 1999, Ball and Cohen proposed a practice-based theory of professional education, which would end inadequate professional development efforts with a more comprehensive approach. Their work has been referenced over the past decade, yet there have been limited attempts to actualize their ideals and research their implications. In this article, I describe Teach For America’s Teaching as Leadership framework and professional development model as a practice-based curriculum and pedagogy of teacher education that could be used as a model for a variety of stakeholders. I include a discussion of directions for future research on frameworks for teaching.

A Practice-Based Theory of Professional Education: Teach For America's Professional Development Model

In this article, the authors describe the state of teacher education in and around the large and diverse school district of New York City. Using multiple data sources, including program documents, interviews, and surveys of teachers, this study attempts to explore the characteristics of programs that prepare elementary teachers of New York City public schools, including the kinds of programs that exist, who enters these different programs, who teaches in the programs, and what characterizes the core curriculum. A central question concerns the amount of variation that exists in the preparation of elementary teachers for a single, large school district. Despite the number and variety of programs that exist to prepare elementary teachers, the authors found the overall curriculum and structure of teacher education to be more similar than different. To understand this lack of variation, the authors draw on organizational theory, particularly, the concept of institutional isomorphism, to examine the case of tea...

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Surveying the Landscape of Teacher Education in New York City: Constrained Variation and the Challenge of Innovation

There is a large literature investigating the determinants of charitable giving, in particular, price and income elasticities. We find that many of the most often reported results from this literature rely on a model specification that is inappropriate when applied to recent Federal Tax File data. We develop a standard Tobit model with a Box-Cox transformation parameter that nests a number of other specifications. The Box-Cox model yields estimates of price elasticities and expected charitable contributions that differ from those obtained using the typical specification. Additionally, we find that the use of sample weights provides potentially important policy insights. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

Modeling Charitable Giving Using a Box-Cox Standard Tobit Model

The paper focuses on the benefits derived from public elementary and secondary education; monetary values of households' perceived benefits from operating expenditures are estimated. Information concerning the preference mappings of citizens is obtained using a random utility model to analyze micro voting data. The estimated model in turn provides information concerning the efficiency and distributional consequences of public education expenditures. The conclusion is that operating expenditures exceed the estimated efficient level. Furthermore, it may be difficult to justify the inefficiently large expenditures on equity grounds since the estimated distribution of households' perceived benefits, net of local taxes, is pro-rich. G~ OVERNMENT provision of goods and I J~ services has the potential of greatly affecting the welfare of citizens. This paper focuses on the benefits derived from one such service, public elementary and secondary education; monetary values of households' perceived benefits from public education expenditures are estimated. Information concerning the preference mappings of citizens is obtained using a multinomial probit, random utility model to analyze micro voting data. The estimated model in turn provides information concerning the efficiency and distributional consequences of public education expenditures. The conclusion is that operating expenditures exceed the estimated efficient level. Furthermore, it may be difficult to justify the inefficiently large expenditures on equity grounds since the estimated distribution of households' perceived benefits, net of local taxes, is pro-rich. In contrast to this study, a number of studies employ ad hoc rules to measure citizens' benefits from public elementary and secondary education. Initially total benefits are assumed to equal the cost of educational services; this input cost measure of benefits is then allocated to households using some unproven rule of thumb.' When an ad hoc rule is used to allocate a questionable measure of total benefits, the results are even more suspect. Conceptually, it is quite odd to determine (assume) total benefits and then allocate the total to individuals or households. The correct method is first to obtain estimates of individuals' or households' benefits. These estimates can then be used to determine the magnitude of total benefits and analyze how the benefits are distributed across the population. Aaron and McGuire (1970) criticize ad hoc benefit measures and propose the income value measure. For X' units of the politically allocated good X this measure is IV = MRSj X' where MRSj is the marginal rate of substitution of X for a composite commodity evaluated at X' and one's aftertax income. This measure is comparable to measures of the income values of goods purchased in private markets. While Aaron and McGuire argue for preferencebased benefit measures, the lack of information concerning preference mappings necessitates that they assume the shape of the utility function. Even though the results by Maital (1973), based on a similar method, are slightly less restrictive, a number of restrictive assumptions are common to both studies. Not only are households assumed to have identical, separable utility functions, but the existing levels of politically allocated goods are assumed to be efficient, implying the total income value equals the input cost. Also, the allocation of benefits from mixed goods (e.g., public education) between public and private components is based on ad hoc rules. The major contribution of the current study is that the benefit estimates are based on information concerning the preference mappings of individuals as revealed through referenda voting.2 The estiReceived for publication March 9, 1983. Revision accepted for publication June 4, 1984. *State University of New York-Albany. This paper was improved as a result of the advice and encouragement of Kenneth Wertz, John Akin, David Guilkey and James Wilde, as well as the helpful comments of two referees. Financial support for this research was, in part, provided by a Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Brookings Institution. 1 An example is the 1967 Tax Foundation Study. 2NMicro voting data are also used by Rubinfeld (1977) to obtain information about citizens' preferences for public school expenditures; he uniquely estimates the parameters of a demand function up to an unknown multiplicative constant. A micro demand function for education is uniquely estimated by Bergstrom, Rubinfeld, and Shapiro (1982), using a different type of survey data. While the method used here is to directly estimate preference mappings, the information concerning such mappings embedded in such a demand function provides an

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1928436

R. Hamilton Lankford

Papers

Surveying the Landscape of Teacher Education in New York City: Constrained Variation and the Challenge of Innovation

Modeling Charitable Giving Using a Box-Cox Standard Tobit Model

Efficiency and equity in the provision of public education