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)

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Cognition In The Wild

What is Organizational Identity

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Jackson, TN: PublicAffairs, 2011. 320 pp. ISBN: 978-1-58648-798-0 (hbk.). US$26.99. Po...

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

Philanthropic foundations have long played important roles in American society. Scholars have explored institutional philanthropy from a variety of perspectives but have not yet generated a robust theory of foundation behavior. This study explores one specific aspect of foundation behavior, grant assessment. Here, “grant assessment” refers to the full range of post-award reflections on a given grant, from formal evaluations to informal, retrospective judgments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the variations in motivations and practices of assessing grants, the plausible sources of these variations, and the relationship between grant assessment motivations and practices. Since there is little theoretically-grounded, empirical research in this domain, this study is exploratory with the aim of developing theory rather than testing hypotheses. The research design is inductive and primarily qualitative. Data gathering included key informant interviews with 27 grant-making professionals from 17 private foundations in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA) area. Content analyses of these foundations’ websites and public documents complemented the interview data. 
The findings from this study suggest that grant assessment motivations and practices are triggered by two mechanisms: one agent-based, derived from the foundation’s organizational identity and the other grant-based, determined by grant type. Informants demonstrated high fidelity to organizational identity as expressed in their foundations’ mission statements and signaled by other organizational messaging devices, including website design and content. The organizational identity typology which emerged provides support for moving beyond the conventional conceptualization of foundation behavior along a continuum of “active” to “passive” to one that acknowledges the role of identity. 
These findings contest that conventional perspective and offer an alternative interpretation of foundation behavior, through the lens of organizational identity, defined here as organizational values, aspirations, and competencies (Camillus, 2008). That is, these findings suggest that organizational identity is the central determinant of foundation practices, with implications for the types of grants they make and their grant assessment motivations and practices. This study concludes with suggestions for further research to refine this typology and to test the extent to which organizational identity explains foundation grant-making practices.

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Grant evaluation: What private foundations do and why they do it: An examination of grant assessment motivations and practices

This paper examines the factors that influence the evaluation practices of American philanthropic foundations, using an institutional theory framework. To this end, it explores the literature, contributed by both the academic community and esteemed philanthropic practitioners, that informs understanding of organizational dynamics in general and evaluation practices in particular. From this literature emerged several propositions regarding the factors that influence evaluation practices. As part of this study, these propositions were explored through key informant interviews with representatives from eight foundations headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Through this approach, this paper contributes to the field by integrating the views of academic theorists, philanthropic thought leaders, and current practitioners. Relative to evaluation practices, the most striking findings were the importance of the grantee-funder relationship, the influence of grantees, and the impact of organizational lifecycle. These insights have several implications for policy-makers and point to opportunities for further research.

Do Foundations Assess Social Impact? An Investigation of the Forces that Motivate Foundations to Evaluate Grants and Measure Organizational Performance

Shelley Christine Scherer

Papers

Grant evaluation: What private foundations do and why they do it: An examination of grant assessment motivations and practices

Do Foundations Assess Social Impact? An Investigation of the Forces that Motivate Foundations to Evaluate Grants and Measure Organizational Performance