Showing papers by "Walter W. Powell published in 2017"

Institutional analysis in a digital era: mechanisms and methods to understand emerging fields

Abstract: Walter Powell, Achim Oberg, Valeska Korff, Carrie Oelberger and Karina Kloos deal with the processes and mechanisms of organizational change and field transformation. On the one hand, this is a classical topic of neo-institutional theory and research, and the authors make use of an impressive array of knowledge from previous studies here. On the other hand, and based on that ‘intellectual history’ as the authors call it, they conduct a highly innovative study by focusing on new organizational forms and field transformation in the nonprofit sector. To underline innovativeness, the authors have developed a web crawler in order to determine change by analyzing organizations’ websites and their references to other organizations through hyperlinks. By doing so, they identify the diversity and dynamics of organizational fields whose boundaries are becoming increasingly porous.

A sociologist looks at crowds: Innovation or invention?

Abstract: Crowd-based organizational models are purported to be more open and participatory than traditional organizational forms. But are they novel inventions or permutations of forms that have existed previously? This essay examines the wide array of innovations pursued under the umbrella label of crowd phenomena and asks whether they have altered traditional ways of organizing. The ramifications of crowds for both workers and consumers are also discussed. Central features of crowd organizing include spot transactions, short-term relations, demand-based pricing, heterogeneous demand, and reputations established through feedback mechanisms. Security and formality appear to have been replaced by openness and precariousness. The essay concludes with a call for further study of the contents of crowd-generated products and services.

Culture and Connectivity Intertwined: Visualizing Organizational Fields as Relational Structures and Meaning Systems☆

Abstract: Organizational fields are shaped by both the relations that organizations forge and the language they express. The structure and discourse of organizational fields have been studied before, but seldom in combination. We offer a methodological approach that integrates relations and expressions into a comprehensive visualization. By mapping networks and discourse as co-constitutive, the method illuminates the mechanisms active in organizational fields. We utilize social impact evaluation as an issue field shaped by the presence of an interstitial community, and compare this structure with simulated alternative field configurations. The simulations reveal that variation in organizations’ openness to adopting concepts from adjacent meaning systems alters field configurations: differentiation manifests under conditions of low overall openness, whereas moderate receptivity produces hybridizations of discourses and sometimes the emergence of an interstitial community that bridges domains. If certain organizations are open while others remain focused on their original discourse, then we observe integration in the discursive domain of the invariant organizations. The observations from the simulations are represented by visualizing organizational fields as topographies of meaning, onto which interorganizational relations are layered. This representation localizes organizations and their interactions in a cultural space while emphasizing how meanings of relationships and organizational expressions vary with different field configurations. By adding meaning to network data, the resulting maps open new perspectives for institutional research on the adaptation, translation, and diffusion of concepts.

CRU, GLUE, and Status: How Wine Labels Helped Ennoble Bordeaux

Abstract: We analyze how institutional persistence unfolds. Building on an historical analysis of 3,307 bottle labels in the Bordeaux wine community, France, between 1924 and 2005, we find that the persistence of a chateau tradition requires considerable effort at maintenance. Instead of greater compression and taken-for-grantedness, we propose that expansion along multimodal carriers provides a marker of a deepening institutionalization. We underscore the role of community organizations in enabling a wine tradition to persist. The implications of our findings for institutional theory and multimodality research are discussed.

Governing the Crossroads: Interstitial Communities and the Fate of Nonprofit Evaluation

Abstract: Different strategies exist to exert influence in the context of networked social structures: brokers regulate flows of information; social movements create frames for mobilization; and high-tech clusters form linkages to advance innovation. This paper introduces interstitial communities as a fourth form of networked governance that brings together a composite of such strategies. As collectives of organizations that have access to multiple cultural repertoires, are internally integrated, and have an external reach into adjoining domains, interstitial communities can exert substantial influence over discourses and relational structures. A web-based empirical analysis of the debate on social impact evaluation illustrates how organizations at the interstice between science, management, and civil society reassemble cultural content and facilitate flows of ideas across domain boundaries.