According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

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)

We extend research on the diffusion of corporate practices by providing a framework for studying practice variation during diffusion processes. Specifically, we theorize about how population-level mechanisms of diffusion link with organization-level mechanisms of implementation that lead to the adaptation of practices. We also identify technical, cultural, and political elements of fit (or misfit) between diffusing practices and adopters and analyze how the process of attaining fit across these elements can trigger different patterns of adaptation.

/pdf/made-to-fit-how-practices-vary-as-they-diffuse-4ow7ru8y9a.pdf

Made to Fit: How Practices Vary As They Diffuse

The distinction of macro- and microfoundations of institutions implies a multilevel conceptualization of institutional processes. We adopt the evaluators' perspective on legitimacy to develop a mul...

/pdf/the-macro-and-the-micro-of-legitimacy-toward-a-multilevel-1wl9y84iti.pdf

The “Macro” and the “Micro” of Legitimacy: Toward a Multilevel Theory of the Legitimacy Process

How institutions think

This article employs rhetorical theory to reconceptualize institutionalization as change in argument structure. As a state, institutionalization is embodied in the structure of argument used to jus...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40390274.pdf

Suspended in Self-Spun Webs of Significance: A Rhetorical Model of Institutionalization and Institutionally Embedded Agency

In 1993, Mats Alvesson published ‘Organizations as Rhetoric’. In his paper, Alvesson proposed that knowledge was ambiguous and that rhetoric was therefore critical to the construction and operation of institutions and organizations. Moreover, he argued that in such an ambiguous and thus rhetorical world, knowledge operated as an institutionalized myth and rationality surrogate. Alvesson's insights helped inspire and initiate one of the most promising and growing areas of institutional research: rhetorical institutionalism. Rhetorical institutionalism is the deployment of linguistic approaches in general and rhetorical insights in particular to explain how institutions both constrain and enable agency. In this paper, we trace these original insights and discuss the benefits of continuing the integration of rhetorical ideas in institutional research. In addition, we propose and develop a rhetorical model of institutionalism that can spearhead research and conclude with some direct suggestions for future research.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2011.01022.x

Rhetorical Institutionalism: Language, Agency, and Structure in Institutional Theory since Alvesson 1993

In the last few years, Web-based surveys have received increased attention given their potentialto cut the costs and time associated with paper-based surveys. In this exploratory study, weconsider the feasibility of using the Web as a data collection medium in China, which has acurrent Internet population of 103 million. Following a review of the literature regarding thedesign, implementation, and application of Web surveys, and the current state of data collectionin developing countries in general and China in particular, we describe how we developed aWeb-based survey instrument focusing on the ethical values of IT professionals. We e-mailed5,000 IT professionals in China, inviting them to participate in the survey. Thirty-seven percentof those contacted visited the Web site and 5.8% submitted the survey. The survey data, bothqualitative and quantitative, is analysed and discussed with a view to drawing up instructiveguidance for researchers interested to use the Web as a data collection tool in China, as well asdeveloping countries more generally. The Web-based survey has great potential in these contexts,if sensitively designed and implemented. We consider the implications of this research andidentify areas where future research is necessary.Keywords: China; IT professionals; Web surveys

Web-Based Data Collection in China

Robert M. Davison City University of Hong Kong isrobert@cityu.edu.hk

The ethics of IT professionals in Japan and China

In management theory scholars emphasize that what actors do is often not what they say, but they tend to assume that what actors do is what they mean or that what they mean is what they say. These assumptions are problematic when studying the institutionalization process, where doing, saying, and meaning move from the micro level to the macro level. I argue that the three are distinct correlates of social reality corresponding to the semiotic triangle composed of referent, signifier, and signified, which is key to understanding institutionalization. I combine the semiotic triangle and the chain of signification to conceptualize the process of institutionalization as the coevolution of the three correlates of the sign. Specifically, I identify two kinds of institutionalization: denotational and connotational. Whereas denotational institutionalization entails the coupling of the referent, signifier, and signified, connotational institutionalization involves decoupling among the three. Furthermore, decouplin...

Yuan Li

Papers

Suspended in Self-Spun Webs of Significance: A Rhetorical Model of Institutionalization and Institutionally Embedded Agency

Rhetorical Institutionalism: Language, Agency, and Structure in Institutional Theory since Alvesson 1993

Web-Based Data Collection in China

The ethics of IT professionals in Japan and China

A semiotic theory of institutionalization