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)

textPrior studies have emphasized that structural attributes are crucial to simultaneously pursuing exploration and exploitation, yet our understanding of antecedents of ambidexterity is still limited. Structural differentiation can help ambidextrous organizations to maintain multiple inconsistent and conflicting demands; however, differentiated exploratory and exploitative activities need to mobilized, coordinated, integrated, and applied. Based on this idea, we delineate formal and informal senior team integration mechanisms (i.e. contingency rewards and social integration) and formal and informal organizational integration mechanisms (i.e. cross-functional interfaces and connectedness) and examine how they mediate the relationship between structural differentiation and ambidexterity. Overall, our findings suggest that the previously asserted direct effect of structural differentiation on ambidexterity operates through informal senior team (i.e. senior team social integration) and formal organizational (i.e. cross-functional interfaces) integration mechanisms. Through this richer explanation and empirical assessment, we contribute to a greater clarity and better understanding of how organizations may effectively pursue exploration and exploitation simultaneously to achieve ambidexterity.

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Structural Differentiation and Ambidexterity: The Mediating Role of Integration Mechanisms

Intersecting the boundaries of public and private economic activity, public-private ties carry important organizational strategy, management, and policy implications. We identify the value creation and capture mechanisms embedded in these ties through a theoretical framework of two conceptual public-private structural alternatives, each associated with different value-creating capacities, rationales, and outcomes. Two important restraints on private value capture--public partner opportunism and external stakeholder activism--arise asymmetrically under each form, carrying a critical effect on partnership outcomes.

Creating and Capturing Value in Public-Private Ties: A Private Actor's Perspective

I begin not with the need for business ethics, but at the other end—the idea many people have that there is no need for such ethics. That conviction is quite widespread among practitioners of economics, though it is more often taken for granted implicitly rather than asserted explicitly. We must understand better what the conviction rests on and why it may be mistaken.

Does Business Ethics Make Economic Sense

This survey explores the important connection between institutions and entrepreneurship. Institutions consist of the formal and informal “rules of the game.” Entrepreneurs act within a context determined by these rules. The rules of the game create payoffs that make certain entrepreneurial opportunities more attractive than others. We explore the relevant literature from institutional economics and entrepreneurial studies, focusing on the important link between the two. Particular emphasis is placed on entrepreneurship within several different institutional settings — private for-profit, private nonprofit, and political — as well as the impact of entrepreneurship on institutions. We conclude by discussing the implications for future research on the topic. * We would like to thank the editors and an anonymous referee for detailed comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Zac Rolnik for his patience and assistance throughout the process of preparing and revising this survey. Earlier versions of this survey were presented at the Mason Entrepreneurship Research Conference (MERC) Annual Conference, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, March 28, 2008 and at the IHS Social Change Workshop, Brown University, Providence, RI, June 23, 2008. We would like to thank the participants for their comments and suggestions. Full text available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/0300000018

Context Matters: Institutions and Entrepreneurship

Despite numerous failure stories the interest in Public-private Partnerships (PPPs) is growing the world over, giving rise to a “PPP Paradox”. Taking a definitional perspective and leveraging learnings from the management literature on strategic alliances, the need for a fundamental rethink of the PPP world view is emphasized to explain this paradox. It is argued that in PPPs, where risk and uncertainty loom large, there is a need to consciously move away from long term, rigid, monolithic, and complex contracts and adopt short term, flexible, modular and simple arrangements that allow for effective management. We view this as an unbundling approach. The PPI World Bank database and experiences from the Indian highway sector are leveraged to contextualize the arguments made.

Rethinking Public-private Partnerships: An Unbundling Approach

Disparate attempts exist to identify the key components that make an ethics pedagogy more effective and efficient. To integrate these attempts, a review of 408 articles published in leading journals is conducted. The key foci of extant literature are categorized into three domains labeled as approach (A), content (C), and delivery (D), and a comprehensive framework (ACD) for ethics pedagogy developed. Within each of these domains, binaries that reflect two alternatives are identified. Approach, the philosophical standpoint, can be theory-laden or real-world connected. Content, the constituencies addressed, can have a focus on breadth or depth. Delivery, the execution of the adopted pedagogy, can be traditional or innovative. The review of articles also identifies the lack of pedagogies that comprehensively focus on all the binaries across domains. The other substantive contribution of this article addresses this gap by developing a generic pedagogy—Integrative Live Case—based on the ACD framework. Based on an incident that is currently unfolding, this pedagogy allows integration of binaries across the three domains. It also allows for a modular course plan that can accommodate varied pedagogical preferences. Volkswagen Dieselgate is presented as a stylized example to showcase the significant advantages of using this pedagogy.

Integrative Live Case: A Contemporary Business Ethics Pedagogy

Hybrid annuity model: Hamming risk allocations in Indian highway public–private partnerships

This study examines trait and context antecedents of entrepreneurial persistence in new venture creation. Two personality traits, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and tenacity, differently impact subsequent entrepreneurial persistence behavior in different industry contexts. These relationships are tested using logistic regression in a sample of entrepreneurs from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED-II; Curtin & Reynolds, 2018). In developing the PSED-II dataset, 31,845 individuals were screened using phone interviews in order to identify a sample of 1,214 nascent entrepreneurs. Results of the current study identify significant relationships between entrepreneurial persistence in efforts to launch a new business and entrepreneurial self-efficacy and tenacity. However, the relationships have diminishing returns and vary with the industry context of the business (manufacturing, retail, services). In the retail industry sector, neither trait was significant; however, in manufacturing industry contexts, tenacity seems to matter more for continuing to pursue new ventures than self-efficacy, while in services industries, self-efficacy seems to matter more than tenacity.

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Swapnil Garg

Papers

Rethinking Public-private Partnerships: An Unbundling Approach

Integrative Live Case: A Contemporary Business Ethics Pedagogy

Hybrid annuity model: Hamming risk allocations in Indian highway public–private partnerships

Entrepreneurial tenacity and self-efficacy effects on persisting across industry contexts

Decoding digital transformational outsourcing: The role of service providers’ capabilities