This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval: and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/258788.pdf

Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches

In this article I describe and compare a number of alternative generic strategies for the analysis of process data, looking at the consequences of these strategies for emerging theories. I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies in terms of their capacity to generate theory that is accurate, parsimonious, general, and useful and suggest that method and theory are inextricably intertwined, that multiple strategies are often advisable, and that no analysis strategy will produce theory without an uncodifiable creative leap, however small. Finally, I argue that there is room in the organizational research literature for more openness within the academic community toward a variety of forms of coupling between theory and data.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259349.pdf

Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data

We develop and test a theoretical model to investigate the assimilation of enterprise systems in the post-implementation stage within organizations. Specifically, this model explains how top management mediates the impact of external institutional pressures on the degree of usage of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The hypotheses were tested using survey data from companies that have already implemented ERP systems. Results from partial least squares analyses suggest that mimetic pressures positively affect top management beliefs, which then positively affects top management participation in the ERP assimilation process. In turn, top management participation is confirmed to positively affect the degree of ERP usage. Results also suggest that coercive pressures positively affect top management participation without the mediation of top management beliefs. Surprisingly, we do not find support for our hypothesis that top management participation mediates the effect of normative pressures on ERP usage, but instead we find that normative pressures directly affect ERP usage. Our findings highlight the important role of top management in mediating the effect of institutional pressures on IT assimilation. We confirm that institutional pressures, which are known to be important for IT adoption and implementation, also contribute to post-implementation assimilation when the integration processes are prolonged and outcomes are dynamic and uncertain.

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Assimilation of enterprise systems: the effect of institutional pressures and the mediating role of top management

Social Structure and Alliance Formation Patterns: A Longitudinal Analysis

This article presents the results of a study conducted in two phases within a single industry context. The first phase involved comparative case studies to ground the applicability of the resource-based view of the firm within the domain of environmental responsiveness. The second phase involved testing the relationships observed during the case studies through a mail survey. It was found that strategies of proactive responsiveness to the uncertainties inherent at the interface between the business and ecological issues were associated with the emergence of unique organizational capabilities. These capabilities, in turn, were seen to have implications for firm competitiveness. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

/pdf/proactive-corporate-environmental-strategy-and-the-3akydurvl8.pdf

Proactive corporate environmental strategy and the development of competitively valuable organizational capabilities

Joel A. C. Baum and Stephen J. Mezias New York University This study examines the impact of localized competition on rates of failure in the Manhattan hotel industry from 1898 to 1990. The study investigates whether the organizations in a population with more similar resource requirements compete more intensely. This approach builds on existing density-based models of interorganizational competition by including variation at the organizational level directly in both the model and measures of competition. A dynamic analysis shows that hotels located in densely populated regions of the distributions of organizational size, geographic location, and price experienced significantly higher failure rates. The findings show how an ecological approach to competition that incorporates intrapopulation variation can provide a more detailed understanding of the competitive dynamics and evolution of organizational populations.'

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2393473.pdf

Localized Competition and Organizational Failure in the Manhattan Hotel Industry, 1898-1990

A critical challenge facing organizations is the dilemma of maintaining the capabilities of both efficiency and flexibility. Recent evolutionary perspectives have suggested that patterns of organizational stability and change can be characterized as punctuated equilibria Tushman and Romanelli 1985. This paper argues that a learning model of organizational change can account for a pattern of punctuated equilibria and uses a learning framework to model the tension between organizational stability and change. A simulation methodology is used to create a population of organizations whose activities are governed by a process of experiential learning. A set of propositions is examined that predict how patterns of organizational change are affected by environmental conditions, levels of ambiguity, organizational size, search rules, and organizational performance. Implications of this learning model of convergence and reorientation for theory and research are discussed.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2635298

An Organizational Learning Model of Convergence and Reorientation

This article addresses theoretical and research frontiers for learning research, a second theme of Professor Argyris essay---the lead article in the “Crossroads” section. We outline three key theoretical questions for further work. We call for more systematic empirical learning research, suggesting that the paucity of such research may have resulted less from defensiveness than from the demanding requirements of doing crisp, systematic learning research. The need for scholarly empirical work is enhanced, we believe, by the growing popularity of organizational learning models among practitioners. Concurring with Professor Argyris' broad concern with enhancing research fruitfulness, we suggest ways to supplement traditional organizational research methods. In particular, we argue that it makes sense to cast wider nets for models of learning and adaptation, to sustain qualitative investigation, to use simulation techniques, and to maintain stronger---and perhaps even experimental---linkages between applied and theoretical research.

Ugly Duckling No More: Pasts and Futures of Organizational Learning Research

This paper is based on work from my dissertation; I owe special thanks to Jim March, the chairman, and reading committee members, Jeff Pfeffer and Don Palmer. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Complex Organizations Seminar, sponsored by the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University; I owe many thanks to the participants at these workshops. I want to thank Theresa Lant, Dick Scott, and Frances Milliken for comments on earlier versions. The advice, guidance, and careful reading of Paul DiMaggio has contributed considerably to improving this paper on several occasions. In addition, the comments of five anonymous reviewers resulted in a much better paper; I thank them wholeheartedly. The helpful editorship of Marshall Meyer is acknowledged gratefully. As is customary, I take full responsibility for remaining errors, ambiguities, and problems. This paper compares applied economic models and an institutional model in an empirical study of financial reporting practice at the Fortune 200 between 1962 and 1984. The findings indicate that the institutional model adds significant explanatory power over and above the models that currently dominate the applied economics literature. Thus, the primacy of organizational level rationality implicit in existing models is shown to be overly narrow and inadequate. In discussing the conclusions of the study and their implication for future research, particular emphasis is placed on the question of how institutional environments change over time.-

An Institutional Model of Organizational Practice: Financial Reporting at the Fortune 200

In this paper we explore corporate change and renewal in large, established organizations by examining how different types of innovation strategies affect organizational outcomes. We start from one of the hallmarks of the management literature: a concern with the trade-off between the flexibility and efficiency of large bureaucratic organizations (March and Simon, 1958; March, 1991). In a classic discussion of this trade-off, Thompson (1967: 148–150) termed its management the paradox of administration. In almost all discussions of this paradox, there is virtual agreement that at least some innovation, change, and corporate renewal is vital; Kanter (1983: 23) argues that organizations cannot survive without innovating. Despite this often espoused critical need for innovation, analysts from March and Simon (1958) to the present (e.g., Tushman and Nelson, 1990; March, 1991) have observed that executing rapid, radical change in large organizations is more difficult and less frequent than executing routine, incremental change.

Stephen J. Mezias

Papers

Localized Competition and Organizational Failure in the Manhattan Hotel Industry, 1898-1990

An Organizational Learning Model of Convergence and Reorientation

Ugly Duckling No More: Pasts and Futures of Organizational Learning Research

An Institutional Model of Organizational Practice: Financial Reporting at the Fortune 200

The three faces of corporate renewal: institution, revolution, and evolution