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)

Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis

The "new public management" (NPM) wave in public sector organizational change was founded on themes of disaggregation, competition, and incentivization. Although its effects are still working through in countries new to NPM, this wave has now largely stalled or been reversed in some key "leading-edge" countries. This ebbing chiefly reflects the cumulation of adverse indirect effects on citizens' capacities for solving social problems because NPM has radically increased institutional and policy complexity. The character of the post-NPM regime is currently being formed. We set out the case that a range of connected and information technology-centered changes will be critical for the current and next wave of change, and we focus on themes of reintegration, needs-based holism, and digitization changes. The overall movement incorporating these new shifts is toward "digital-era governance" (DEG), which involves reintegrating functions into the governmental sphere, adopting holistic and needs-oriented structures, and progressing digitalization of administrative processes. DEG offers a perhaps unique opportunity to create self-sustaining change, in a broad range of closely connected technological, organizational, cultural, and social effects. But there are alternative scenarios as to how far DEG will be recognized as a coherent phenomenon and implemented successfully.

New public management is dead. Long live digital-era governance

We review two important schools within business and society research, which we label positivist and post-positivist corporate social responsibility (CSR). The former is criticized because of its instrumentalism and normative vacuity, and the latter because of its relativism, foundationalism, and utopianism. We propose a new approach, based on J?rgen Habermas's theory of democracy, and define the new role of the business firm as a political actor in a globalizing society.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1339868_code721161.pdf?abstractid=952013&mirid=1

Toward a Political Conception of Corporate Responsibility - Business and Society Seen from a Habermasian Perspective

Critical realism in case study research

Though perspectives underpinning research may have differed sharply, industrial sociology at its best has been able to uncover die variety of workplace resistance and misbehaviour that lies beneath the surface of the formal and consensual. The paper argues that this legacy is in danger of being lost as labour is taken out of the process and replaced by management as the active and successful agency. While there are a number of practical and theoretical forces shaping this trend, the paper identifies the growing influence of Foucauldian perspectives. It goes on to develop a critique of the way in which such theory and research overstates the extent and effectiveness of new management practices, while marginalising the potential for resistance. Industrial sociology, as well as organisation theory and industrial relations, continues to see the workplace as a focus of change. Organisations are restructured, new management practices revolutionise the employment relationship, new issues such as sexuality appear on the agenda. But it is 'all quiet' in one respect - the virtual removal of labour as an active agency of resistance in a considerable portion of theory and research. The prime purpose of this article is to explore the reasons for, and challenge the consequences of, that trend. On the surface this is a strange development, because the recalcitrant worker has been one of the most persistent motifs of British, and to a lesser extent, American sociology, aided by a long and largely honourable tradition of seeing beneath the surface of formal organisation and the apparent consent of employees in the capitalist employment relationship.

All quiet on the workplace front? a critique of recent trends in british

Though perspectives underpinning research may have differed sharply, industrial sociology at its best has been able to uncover the variety of workplace resistance and misbehaviour that lies beneath the surface of the formal and consensual. The paper argues that this legacy is in danger of being lost as labour is taken out of the process and replaced by management as the active and successful agency. While there are a number of practical and theoretical forces shaping this trend, the paper identifies the growing influence of Foucauldian perspectives. It goes on to develop a critique of the way in which such theory and research overstates the extent and effectiveness of new management practices, while marginalising the potential for resistance.

All Quiet on the Workplace Front? A Critique of Recent Trends in British Industrial Sociology

Theory, method and data research practice, theory, methods and data variable analysis and social measurement social surveys interviewing observational methods recent developments conclusion.

Data collection in context

It is often assumed in the literature on public management reforms that radical changes in values, work and organization have occurred or are under way. In this paper our aim is to raise questions about this account. Focusing on three services in the UK, each dominated by organized professions – health care, housing, and social services – significant variations in the effectiveness of reforms are noted. The available research also suggests that these outcomes have been inversely proportional to the efforts expended on introducing new management practices. The most radical changes have been in housing, where, paradoxically, successive UK governments focused least attention. By contrast, in health and social services, management restructuring has been less effective, despite the greater resources devoted to it. This variation is attributed to professional values and institutions, against which reforms were directed, and the extent to which different groups became locked either into strategies of resistance or accommodation.

Public management reform in the uk and its consequences for professional organization: a comparative analysis

Part 1: Meta-Theory: Critique and Development 1. An Ontology for Organisation and Management Studies 2. Brands, Boundaries and Bandwagons: A Critical Reflection on Critical Management Studies 3. Idealism and Ideology: The Caterpillar Controversy in Critical Accounting Research 4. The Ontology Of Work: Social Relations and Doing in the Sphere of Necessity 5. Human Resource Management and Realism: A Morphogenetic Approach Part 2: Methodology: Critique and development 6. Methodology for Management and Organisation Studies: Some Implications of Critical Realism 7. Future Directions in Operations Research Modelling: Critical Realism and Multimethodology 8. Temporally Embedded Case Comparison In Industrial Marketing Research 9. Theorizing Networks From A Critical Realist Standpoint: The Discovery of Power and Contextual Issues Within and Outside 'Networks' 10. Competence Theories and their Methodological Implications Part 3: Substantive Contributions 11. Working in Teams: Ethnographic Evidence on the High Commitment Workplace 12. Humour and Subversion in Two Call Centres 13. Tracing the Effects of a Hospital Merger 14. The Moral Management of Nursing Labour Power: Conceptualising Control and Resistance 15. I Say Tomato, You Say Tamato: Putting Critical Realism to Work in Labour Market Recruitment Processes

Stephen Ackroyd

Papers

All quiet on the workplace front? a critique of recent trends in british

All Quiet on the Workplace Front? A Critique of Recent Trends in British Industrial Sociology

Data collection in context

Public management reform in the uk and its consequences for professional organization: a comparative analysis

Critical Realist Applications in Organisation and Management Studies