Walter W. Powell

Bio: Walter W. Powell is an academic researcher from Stanford University. The author has contributed to research in topics: New institutionalism & Organizational analysis. The author has an hindex of 56, co-authored 120 publications receiving 82637 citations. Previous affiliations of Walter W. Powell include University of Michigan & University of Arizona.

Capturing the Civic Lives of Cities: An Organizational, Place-Based Perspective on Civil Society in Global Cities

Abstract: In a wired world, how do social interactions among organizations and people continue to define civil society? Our co-produced approach to studying civil societies through a place-based, organizational lens provides fresh answers to perennial questions about voice, accountability, and embeddedness. The six articles in this collection on the civic life of cities draw on more than 1,400 interviews with organizational leaders in San Francisco, Seattle, Shenzhen, Singapore, Sydney, and Vienna. Moving beyond the “big theories” of civil society, the articles illustrate the value of our dual emphasis on place and organizations by showing how comparisons of the people, practices, and partnerships of civil society organizations enable new middle-range theories of civil society. This approach promises to offer rich comparative insights into similarities and differences among organizations around the globe.

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.

Amphibious Entrepreneurs and the Origins of Invention

Abstract: This chapter examines entrepreneurs who carry ideas, technologies, values, and assumptions between previously unrelated spheres of economic or cultural activity and, in the process, change the existing order of things. The chapter labels such individuals amphibious entrepreneurs and explores their characteristics via four case studies. Their stories suggest a distinct species within the genus of entrepreneur: more pragmatic than heroic, and as likely to invent by not knowing any better as by calculative creation. The chapter discusses their role in creating interstitial spaces, contrasts them with other boundary-spanning actors, and identifies directions for future research at the intersection of social history and entrepreneurship.

Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches

Abstract: 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.

Dynamic capabilities, what are they?

Abstract: This paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and, more generally, the resource-based view of the firm. We argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development, strategic decision making, and alliancing. They are neither vague nor tautological. Although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence, they have significant commonalities across firms (popularly termed ‘best practice’). This suggests that they are more homogeneous, fungible, equifinal, and substitutable than is usually assumed. In moderately dynamic markets, dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines. They are detailed, analytic, stable processes with predictable outcomes. In contrast, in high-velocity markets, they are simple, highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes. Finally, well-known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities. In moderately dynamic markets, the evolutionary emphasis is on variation. In high-velocity markets, it is on selection. At the level of RBV, we conclude that traditional RBV misidentifies the locus of long-term competitive advantage in dynamic markets, overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage, and reaches a boundary condition in high-velocity markets. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

Abstract: In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advantage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interorganizational competitive advantage: (1) relation-specific assets, (2) knowledge-sharing routines, (3) complementary resources/capabilities, and (4) effective governance. We examine each of these potential sources of rent in detail, identifying key subprocesses, and also discuss the isolating mechanisms that serve to preserve relational rents. Finally, we discuss how the relational view may offer normative prescriptions for firm-level strategies that contradict the prescriptions offered by those with a resource-based view or industry structure view.

“Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital”

Abstract: After briefly explaining why social capital (civil society) is important to democracy, Putnam devotes the bulk of this chapter to demonstrating social capital’s decline in the United States across the last quarter century. (See Putnam 1995 for a similar but more detailed argument.) While he acknowledges that the significance of a few countertrends is difficult to assess without further study, Putnam concludes that crucial factors such as social trust are eroding rapidly in the United States. He offers some possible explanations for this erosion and concludes by outlining the work needed to consider these possibilities more fully.

Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of who and What Really Counts

Abstract: Stakeholder theory has been a popular heuristic for describing the management environment for years, but it has not attained full theoretical status. Our aim in this article is to contribute to a theory of stakeholder identification and salience based on stakeholders possessing one or more of three relationship attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. By combining these attributes, we generate a typology of stakeholders, propositions concerning their salience to managers of the firm, and research and management implications.