'Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony', American Journal of Sociology, 83, pp. 340-63.
Citations
584 citations
Cites background from "'Institutionalized Organizations: F..."
...Decoupling is a useful strategy for firms because it “enables organizations to maintain standardized, legitimating, formal structures, while their activities vary in response to practical considerations” (Meyer and Rowan, 1977: 357)....
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...One common response is decoupling (Meyer and Rowan, 1977); that is, symbolically complying with a stakeholder demand without making substantive changes....
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...One common response is decoupling (Meyer and Rowan 1977)—the symbolic compliance with a stakeholder demand without making substantive changes....
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...However, research has also found that such legitimacy pressure can result in decoupling processes whereby corporate responses to external demands vary in the extent to which they are symbolic or substantive (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Okhmatovskiy and David, 2012; Oliver, 1991)....
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422 citations
Cites background from "'Institutionalized Organizations: F..."
...Social capital generated by trust and loyalty reduces uncertainty faced by firms as it increases preferential treatment by social actors within the community or government (Oliver, 1991) and deflects adverse attention from constituents that could impair opportunities (Meyer & Rowan, 1977)....
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399 citations
Cites background from "'Institutionalized Organizations: F..."
...Decoupling Disconnect between the structures and the activities of an organization Meyer and Rowan (1977) Ineffectual Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) departments...
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...Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) foundational work warns that the very fact that conformity to social norms holds advantages for firms may incite misbehavior, and that organizations may manage outside impressions by “decoupling” their internal activities from the structural facade they present to the outside world. In the environmental sphere, decoupling is referred to as a variety of greenwash. Decoupling is commonly used to refer to structural features of an organization, such as the creation of a Sustainability Department, which can be meaningless if the department is understaffed and has little sway within the organization. However, decoupling is also used to refer to promises or policies that are not backed up by corresponding actions, a practice often referred to as “symbolic management” (Westphal & Zajac, 1994). Making and breaking implied environmental promises is clearly deceptive (Bansal & Clelland, 2004; Delmas & Montes-Sancho, 2010; Ramus & Montiel, 2005), and hence a form of greenwash, but it is not the same as selectively disclosing hard evidence. Emerging literature suggests that the familiar decoupling of structure and activity is retreating in the face of information technology, but that a decoupling of means and ends may be emerging in its place (Bromley & Powell, 2012). Wijen (2014) applies this line of reasoning to sustainability, an “opaque” field where causal connections are complex, and argues that if external stakeholders enforce compliance with specific practices they may inadvertently exacerbate means/ ends decoupling if the practices are not sufficient to achieve the desired ends....
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...This work begins from the idea that organizations must conform to the demands of external constituencies in order to avoid censure from stakeholders and to achieve and maintain “legitimacy” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977)....
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...Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) foundational work warns that the very fact that conformity to social norms holds advantages for firms may incite misbehavior, and that organizations may manage outside impressions by “decoupling” their internal activities from the structural facade they present to the outside world....
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330 citations
322 citations
Cites background from "'Institutionalized Organizations: F..."
...The strength of Institutional Theory is that it offers explanations of why certain practices are chosenwithout an obvious economic return (Berrone et al., 2010; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983)....
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References
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