Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Doing Qualitative Research

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)

In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.

Time and Narrative

This is a study in industrial sociology; it a partial report, to be followed by another, of an investigation of singel factory seen in the light of Max Weber's theory of bureacracy.

Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy.

Industry and academia in convergence: Micro-institutional dimensions of R&D collaboration

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the collaboration strategies employed by collaborating small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and university researchers for initiating and optimizing the process and outcome of R&D collaboration.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based upon a qualitative study of the total population of university departments and SMEs involved in collaborative research projects sponsored by a new governmental programme in Denmark, the aim of which was to build new R&D alliances between industry and universities.Findings – The findings show how partners choose to pursue difference short‐ or long‐term strategies to optimize the process and outcome of university‐industry (UI) collaboration. Some collaborations were thus informed by a short‐term strategy aimed at achieving immediate R&D results. However, to a high extent, many SME partners relied upon a long‐term strategy aiming at developing UI relations beyond the immediate project and practical learning. A vari...

Universities‐industry collaboration strategies: a micro‐level perspective

An institution is often considered to be a stable, taken-for-granted ‘being’. The consequence is that agency is primarily associated with the rather exceptional creation or disruption of a relatively stable structure. In this article, we suggest an alternative ontology for understanding an institution as something unstable and always ‘becoming’. This opens a range of new and distinct opportunities for theorizing and researching institutional work involved in the everyday practice of managing institutional complexity. It allows us, in this study, to contribute with a new form of agency in terms of the continuous, active work of managing novel contradictions. Further, it induces us to take a more fine-grained look at the accompanying dynamics of work, in addition to work itself, whereby we provide a novel way of accounting for whether work effort is amplifying or subsiding, and whether it is likely to result in greater or lesser volatility within – on the surface – an otherwise seemingly stable institution....

Managing Unstable Institutional Contradictions: The Work of Becoming:

– Functionalist models of intercultural interaction have serious limitations relying on static and decontextualized culture views. This paper sets out to outline newer developments in anthropological theory in order to provide inspirations to a more dynamic and contextual approach for understanding intercultural communication research in cross‐cultural management (CCM)., – The paper analyzes the established approaches to the cultural underpinnings of intercultural communication in CCM and examines how newer developments in anthropology may contribute to this research., – The standard frameworks for classifying cultures in CCM are based on a view of culture as static, formal mental codes and values abstracted from the context of valuation. However, this view, underwriting the dominating research stream, has been abandoned in the discipline of anthropology from which it originated. This theory gap between intercultural communication research in CCM and anthropology tends to exclude from CCM an understanding of how the context of social, organizational and power relationships shapes the role of culture in communication., – The paper proposes to substitute the view of culture as comprising of abstract values and codes as determinants of communication with concepts of culture as dynamically enfolded in practice and socially situated in specific contexts, in order to give new directions to theories on intercultural communication in CCM., – Scant research has compared intercultural communication research in CCM with new anthropological developments. New insights from anthropology are analyzed in order to open up analytical space in CCM.

A critical analysis of intercultural communication research in cross‐cultural management: Introducing newer developments in anthropology

This paper responds to calls to make more explicit linkages between institutional theory and entrepreneurship research through studies on how entrepreneurs navigate and work with institutions. The research examines the micro-strategies and activities through which small-scale entrepreneurs maneuver between and exploit the multiple, potentially contradictory institutional logics of the different spheres in which they operate. While much research has elucidated how institutional entrepreneurs effect change, this study illustrates how effective entrepreneurs managing and exploiting institutional contradictions engage simultaneously in practices of maintaining and changing institutions to establish a balance between the poles on which their ventures depend. We illustrate this by two cases of small-scale entrepreneurship bridging institutional contradictions from an ethnographic study conducted under the ongoing efforts to implement liberal democracy in Malawi. This transition comprises attempts to build stronger pillars for democratic governance such as the development of a market economy.

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Toke Bjerregaard

Papers

Industry and academia in convergence: Micro-institutional dimensions of R&D collaboration

Universities‐industry collaboration strategies: a micro‐level perspective

Managing Unstable Institutional Contradictions: The Work of Becoming:

A critical analysis of intercultural communication research in cross‐cultural management: Introducing newer developments in anthropology

Entrepreneurship as Institutional Change: Strategies of Bridging Institutional Contradictions