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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.


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TL;DR: In this article, a review and critique of existing decoupling research is presented, arguing that the common understanding of decoupled as a gap between policy and practice obscures the rise of a more prevalent and consequential form of Decoupling -a gap between means and ends.
Abstract: The pervasive spread of rationalizing trends in society, such as the growing influence of managerial sciences and increasing emphases on accountability and transparency, has created significant changes in organizations’ external environments. As a result, there is growing pressure on organizations to align their policies and practices, and to conform to pressures in an expanding array of domains, from protecting the natural world to promoting employee morale. In this context, we reconsider the concept of decoupling as it applies to organizations. Through a review and critique of existing research, we argue that the common understanding of decoupling—as a gap between policy and practice—obscures the rise of a more prevalent and consequential form of decoupling—a gap between means and ends. We describe when to expect both policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, and we indicate promising areas for research. The major consequences of this overlooked form of decoupling are that in an effort to monitor and e...

730 citations

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TL;DR: This article analyzed how professional values and practices influence the character of nonprofit organizations, with data from a random sample of 501 (c)(3) operating charities in the San Francisco Bay Area collected between 2003 and 2004.
Abstract: This paper analyzes how professional values and practices influence the character of nonprofit organizations, with data from a random sample of 501 (c)(3) operating charities in the San Francisco Bay Area collected between 2003 and 2004. Expanded professionalism in the nonprofit world involves not only paid, full-time careers and credentialed expertise but also the integration of professional ideals into the everyday world of charitable work. We develop key indicators of professionalism and measure organizational rationalization as expressed in the use of strategic planning, independent financial audits, quantitative program evaluation, and consultants. As hypothesized, charities operated by paid personnel and full-time management show higher levels of rationalization. While traditional professionals (doctors, lawyers, and the clergy) do not differ significantly from executives with no credentialed background in eschewing business-like practices, managerial professionals champion such efforts actively, as...

708 citations

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TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the rationale for various kinds of hybrid forms such as craft-based producer networks, strategic partnerships in high-technology, extended trading groups, and vertically disaggregated large firms.
Abstract: Nonmarket, nonbureaucratic organizational arrangements—"hybrids"—are significant features in today's fast-changing business world. This article describes the rationale for various kinds of hybrid forms such as craft-based producer networks, strategic partnerships in high-technology, extended trading groups, and vertically disaggregated large firms. It argues that these hybrids are a response to recent structural changes in the economy. Hybrids capture some of the powerful incentives associated with small firms, are better able to access know-how located outside of organizational boundaries, and provide for more rapid and reliable information flow. Finally, this article discusses the limitations of hybrid forms and speculates as to whether they represent a fundamental or transitional change.

640 citations

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TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the spatial concentration of two essential factors of production in the commercial field of biotechnology: ideas and money, and find that the location of both research-intensive biotech firms and the venture capital firms that fund them is highly clustered in a handful of key US regions.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the spatial concentration of two essential factors of production in the commercial field of biotechnology: ideas and money. The location of both research-intensive biotech firms and the venture capital firms that fund biotech is highly clustered in a handful of key US regions. The commercialization of a new medicine and the financing of a high-risk start-up firm are both activities that have an identifiable timeline, and often involve collaboration with multiple participants. The importance of tacit knowledge, face-to-face contact, and the ability to learn and manage across multiple projects are critical reasons for the continuing importance of geographic propinquity in biotech. Over the period 1988-99, more than half of the US biotech firms received locally-based venture funding. Those firms receiving non-local support were older, larger and had moved research projects further along the commercialization process. Similarly, as venture capital firms grow older and bigger, they invest...

529 citations

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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on qualitative data derived from field work on two university campuses to develop an explanation for widely disparate rates of new invention disclosure, arguing that faculty decisions to disclose are shaped by their perceptions of the benefits of patent protection.
Abstract: We draw on qualitative data derived from field work on two university campuses to develop an explanation for widely disparate rates of new invention disclosure. We argue that faculty decisions to disclose are shaped by their perceptions of the benefits of patent protection. These incentives to disclose are magnified or minimized by the perceived costs of interacting with technology transfer offices and licensing professionals. Finally, faculty considerations of the costs and benefits of disclosure are colored by institutional environments that are supportive or oppositional to the simultaneous pursuit of academic and commercial endeavors.

527 citations


Cited by
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TL;DR: This article synthesize the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches, and identify three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based upon normative approval; and cognitive, according to comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness.
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.

13,229 citations

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TL;DR: Seeks to present a better understanding of dynamic capabilities and the resource-based view of the firm to help managers build using these dynamic capabilities.
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.

13,128 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors 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: relation-specific assets, knowledge-sharing routines, complementary resources/capabilities, and effective governance.
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.

11,355 citations

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TL;DR: Putnam as discussed by the authors showed that crucial factors such as social trust are eroding rapidly in the United States and offered some possible explanations for this erosion and concluded that the work needed to consider these possibilities more fully.
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.

11,187 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a theory of stakeholder identification and saliency based on stakeholders possessing one or more of three relationship attributes (power, legitimacy, and urgency) is proposed, and a typology of stakeholders, propositions concerning their saliency to managers of the firm, and research and management implications.
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.

10,630 citations