Journal of Management Inquiry 

About: Journal of Management Inquiry is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Organizational learning & Institutional theory. It has an ISSN identifier of 1056-4926. Over the lifetime, 1199 publications have been published receiving 43134 citations.

Culture and Organizational Learning

Abstract: Traditionally, theories of organizational learning have taken one of two approaches that share a common characterization of learning but differ in focus. One approach focuses on learning by individuals in organizational contexts; the other, on individual learning as a model for organizational action. Both base their understanding of organizational learning on the cognitive activity of individual learning. However, there is something organizations do that may be called organizational learning, that is neither individuals learning in organizations nor organizations employing processes akin to learning by individuals. This form of organizational learning can be seen in the case of three small workshops that make "the finest flutes in the world." This essay proposes a perspective on organizational learning, drawing on the concept of organizational culture, that can be useful in understanding the case. This perspective provides a fruitful basis for exploring the above distinctions in both theory and practice.

Institutional Work: Refocusing Institutional Studies of Organization

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss an alternative focus for institutional studies of organization - the study of institutional work. Research on institutional work examines the practices of individual and collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. Our focus in this paper is on the distinctiveness of institutional work as a field of study and the potential it provides for the examination of new questions. We argue that research on institutional work can contribute to bringing the individual back into institutional theory, help to re-examine the relationship between agency and institutions, and provide a bridge between critical and institutional views of organization.

Albert and Whetten Revisited: Strengthening the Concept of Organizational Identity:

Abstract: The objective of this article is to formulate the concept of organizational identity in such a way that it can be distinguished analytically from related concepts, such as organizational culture and image, and can be used operationally to identify bona fide organizational identity claims referents and associated identity-referencing discourse. The proposal amounts to a stronger version of Albert and Whetten (1985), in that the implicit links between the elements of their composite, tripartite, formulation are made explicit and their treatment of organizational identity as a defined construct is emphasized. Although the proposal eschews conceptions of organizational identity formulated from the perspective of individuals, it treats organizational identity as an analogue of individual identity, drawing attention to the parallel functions identity plays for both individual and collective social actors, as well as the parallel distinguishing structural features of individual and organizational identity refere...

Challenges for Institutional Theory

Abstract: This essay offers a critical summation of the use of neo-institutionalism to study organizations. While institutionalism has succeeded in becoming the dominant theory to study macro-organizational phenomena, there is a danger that the theory has been stretched far beyond its core purpose—to understand how organizational structures and processes acquire meaning and continuity beyond their technical goals. I discuss some possible reasons for this displacement and identify four nascent threads of research that hold strong potential for bringing institutional theory back to its core assumptions and objectives; categories, language, work, and aesthetics.