How we Think

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

One dimensional man

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)

Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature
of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined
community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one
can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer,
in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring
the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the
notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind
of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by
definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us
describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

On Imagined Communities

(2011). Social Media and Public Administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis: Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 325-340.

Social Media and Public Administration

A critical examination of social media adoption in government: Introducing omnipresence

A sentiment analysis of U.S. local government tweets: The connection between tone and citizen involvement

Assessing managerial methods for evaluating place brand equity: A qualitative investigation

Since the New Public Management movement began, public and nonprofit organizations have been adopting and adapting businesslike practices, including branding and marketing. There remains a knowledge gap in understanding why organizational actors choose to allocate resources to adopt branding and marketing policies. This article explores organizational branding initiatives within the context of research extensive (N = 109) higher education institutions in the United States from 2006 to 2013. Seventy-two universities (66 percent) have introduced branding initiatives since 2006. Findings suggest that the publicness of organizations influences branding and marketing isomorphism in nuanced ways and that organizations are more likely to adopt new branding initiatives to promote higher general performance. Organizations adopt branding strategies in response to national trends and efforts to capitalize on their own strong performance rather than mimicking stronger-performing peers.

Staci M. Zavattaro

Papers

Social Media and Public Administration

A critical examination of social media adoption in government: Introducing omnipresence

A sentiment analysis of U.S. local government tweets: The connection between tone and citizen involvement

Assessing managerial methods for evaluating place brand equity: A qualitative investigation

Branding and Isomorphism: The Case of Higher Education