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The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
Abstract: 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.
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Dissertation
12 Jul 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the strategies d'entree sur le marche and d'exploitation des FPI sont influencees par l'environnement institutionnel sous-jacent.
Abstract: La these demontre que l'environnement protectionniste en Inde a contribue a bâtir une industrie pharmaceutique solide. L'arrivee simultanee de l'Accord ADPIC et de la liberalisation economique a cree des « push factors » a la fois competitifs et favorables, obligeant les firmes pharmaceutiques indiennes (FPI) a chercher de nouvelles voies de croissance a l’etranger. Les politiques des pays africains en faveur des generiques, l’action des organisations internationales et la nouvelle gouvernance des marches finances par les bailleurs de fonds ont aussi induits des « pull factors » permettant aux FPI de s'engager davantage sur ces marches. Cette these montre a travers le cas du Mali que le marche en Afrique de l’Ouest francophone est divise en quatre segments – le marche public finance par l'Etat et par des donateurs et le marche prive formel et informel – avec des reglementations differentes. Les FPI n'utilisent que l'exportation dans ces pays, mais leurs organisations varient selon le segment dans lequel elles souhaitent operer. Enfin, ce travail utilise l’etude du Synriam, un nouvel antipaludeen pour montrer que Ranbaxy a utilise le partenariat avec Medicines for Malaria Venture pour developper ses capacites, acceder a de nouveaux marches et gagner en legitimite. Cette etude met en evidence que les organisations internationales peuvent creer des barrieres institutionnelles et influencer les strategies d'entree des firmes. En conclusion, cette these illustre la richesse et la complexite du marche pharmaceutique africain et demontre egalement que les strategies d'entree sur le marche et d'exploitation des FPI sont influencees par l'environnement institutionnel sous-jacent.

9 citations

01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: In this article, a comprehensive normative contestation map is drawn with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), formally signaling the birth of global regime on climate change, took regulatory ascendance ladder by the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) in 1997.
Abstract: The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), formally signaling the birth of global regime on climate change, took regulatory ascendance ladder by the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) in 1997. About two decades later, climate change issue area is now co-governed by multiple climate change institutions besides the once dominantly governing UN-based institutions of the UNFCCC/KP. This phenomenon, called institutional fragmentation in a given issue area, has recently aroused scholarly interests in the degree, the consequence, and the management of institutional fragmentation. In the midst of these concerns arose a new question: the genesis of institutional fragmentation. Saliently, Asian region has been a breeding ground of numerous overlapping climate change institutions. This research will venture to unveil the genesis of institutional fragmentation with Asian regional climate change institutions. The genesis of institutional fragmentation questions why a competing or overlapping institution is created besides or outside a dominantly existent institution in the given issue area of climate change. Previous studies have explored the appearance of the Asia-pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP) on the grounds of international relation theories. The rational approaches of neo-realism and neo-liberal institutionalism have explanatory strength in the creation of the APP besides the UNFCCC/KP by bringing forward strategic and interest-oriented actors in dissatisfaction with the rules and functions of the UNFCCC/KP. Yet, limitations reside in the explanation on the creation of conflictual institution in cognitive dimension. Meanwhile, constructivism explicates well the normatively and discursively conflictive aspect of the APP in relation with the UNFCCC/KP, but causal relation between the normative contestation and the establishment of a normatively contestant institution remains as a black box. Cognizant of theoretical promises and limitations, this research takes the theoretical side of constructivism and explicates the genesis of institutional fragmentation with the logic of normative contestation for strategic social construction on two norms of common-but-differentiated responsibility (CBDR) and precautionary approach that undergird the UNFCCC. Along this line, three posing questions with the Asian climate change institutions are as follows; 1) Normative contestation in spectrum as the logic of institutional fragmentation: In what degree does a competing institution form normative contestation against a dominantly existent institution? The fragmenting institutions as an embodiment of normative contestation will be analyzed to reveal the level and the range of current normative contestation. 2) Genesis of institutional fragmentation with normative contestation in action: Why does a normatively competing institution emerge besides (outside) a dominantly pre-existing institution? The genesis of institutional fragmentation will be analyzed on the ground of norm 5>DB5@B5>5EBLC > ?B=1D9F5 3 ?>D5CD1D9?> for strategic social construction. 3) Evolution of institutional fragmentation in the face of normative contestation: Which normative positions do agents take and reveal through the institutional establishment in the face of normative contestation? The direction of institutional fragmentation will be analyzed by the relevant 175>DCL > ?B=1D9F5 @?C9D9?> -setting and position-propelling practices in the face of normative contestation on two global norms on climate change. The first empirical study hypothesizes that the Asian climate change institution is an embodiment of regional interpretation on the transnational norms of the UNFCCC/KP. In this study, a comprehensive normative contestation map is drawn with the KP and the APP, as two extremes that normatively go against each other. Each normative dimension has spectrum of contestation by the existing and the competing normative interpretations. Then, the normative position of the Asian regional institution is tested with the Japan-led institution, the East Asia Low Carbon Growth Partnership (LCGP). The normative position of the LCGP is skewed toward the APP, which ascertains the normative contestation against the UNFCCC/KP. The second empirical study analyzes why a series of nation state-led overlapping institutions of the APP, the LCGP, and the East Asia Climate Partnership (EACP) are created in Asian region besides the UNFCCC/KP. From this study, the APP is explicated as an organizational platform to diffuse competing normative interpretations by the US which played the role of a strategic norm entrepreneur. Then, the EACP and the LCGP are the emulative behaviors of Japan and South Korea who became norm leaders that followed the footsteps of the norm entrepreneur. Thus, the genesis of institutional fragmentation is explained to be derived from normative contestation by the nation states working as strategic agents in Asian region. The third study analyzes the climate change institutions created by Asian regional cooperative organizations for normative position-setting and -propelling in the face of normative contestation in the climate change issue area in 2007. The cases to be studied are formal declarations made by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The normative position-setting and position-propelling practices of three organizations are found to be divergent but directional in overall toward the contestant position against those of the UNFCCC/KP. The Asian region as a site of normative resistance fragments the UN-based climate change regime. In conclusion, this research explores the genesis of institutional fragmentation on the basis of normative contestation with Asian climate change institutions and engendered some implications: i) climate change norms has experienced normative contestation with the newly defined range of policy options, ii) Asian climate change institutions have emerged as organizational platforms to embody and diffuse the Asian agentsh contestant normative position, iii) institutional fragmentation can work as a challenge to the UN-based logic of appropriateness, and iv) the evolution of institutional fragmentation is still open-ended. Clearly, the genesis of institutional fragmentation in the issue area of climate change is what strategic states make of it.

9 citations

01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: Cynthia Coburn, in her 2016 article in the American Journal of Education, "What's Policy Got to Do with It?" as discussed by the authors, states that the field of policy implementation suffers from the propensity to learn the s...
Abstract: Cynthia Coburn, in her 2016 article in the American Journal of Education—“What’s Policy Got to Do With It?”—states that the field of policy implementation suffers from the propensity to learn the s...

9 citations

31 May 2013
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors tente de fournir des elements de reponse a ces interrogations en proposant une approche centree sur la legitimite individuelle des controleurs and sur les comportements that ces derniers adoptent afin de rendre leur action legitime.
Abstract: Depuis plus de dix ans, l'emergence des pratiques de controle de gestion en environnement public ont donne lieu a de nombreuses contributions dont certaines abordent le role des controleurs dans cette dynamique de changement. Mais le developpement recent, sous l'impulsion de la LOLF, de ces pratiques pose egalement la question de la legitimite de ces controleurs. Cet article tente de fournir des elements de reponse a ces interrogations en proposant une approche centree sur la legitimite individuelle des controleurs et sur les comportements que ces derniers adoptent afin de rendre leur action legitime. A partir d'un cadre conceptuel etendu et d'une etude de cas realisee au CEA, nous avons tente d'identifier les leviers que les controleurs pouvaient mobiliser afin de bâtir, renforcer et perenniser cette legitimite.

9 citations

01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: Acknowledgements and Declaration by Candidate:................................................................................................................... 4 Originality Declaration................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Table of Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 as mentioned in this paper
Abstract: ................................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ 3 Declaration by Candidate: ...................................................................................................................... 4 Originality Declaration ...................................................................................................................... 4 Table of

9 citations

References
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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: 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

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Christine Oliver1
TL;DR: The authors applied the convergent insights of institutional and resource dependence perspectives to the prediction of strategic responses to institutional processes, and proposed a typology of strategies that vary in active organizational resistance from passive conformity to proactive manipulation.
Abstract: This article applies the convergent insights of institutional and resource dependence perspectives to the prediction of strategic responses to institutional processes. The article offers a typology of strategic responses that vary in active organizational resistance from passive conformity to proactive manipulation. Ten institutional factors are hypothesized to predict the occurrence of the alternative proposed strategies and the degree of organizational conformity or resistance to institutional pressures.

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TL;DR: This article conducted a meta-analysis of 52 studies and found that corporate virtue in the form of social responsibility and, to a lesser extent, environmental responsibility is likely to pay off, although the operationalizations of CSP and CFP also moderate the positive association.
Abstract: Most theorizing on the relationship between corporate social/environmental performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) assumes that the current evidence is too fractured or too variable to draw any generalizable conclusions. With this integrative, quantitative study, we intend to show that the mainstream claim that we have little generalizable knowledge about CSP and CFP is built on shaky grounds. Providing a methodologically more rigorous review than previous efforts, we conduct a meta-analysis of 52 studies (which represent the population of prior quantitative inquiry) yielding a total sample size of 33,878 observations. The meta-analytic findings suggest that corporate virtue in the form of social responsibility and, to a lesser extent, environmental responsibility is likely to pay off, although the operationalizations of CSP and CFP also moderate the positive association. For example, CSP appears to be more highly correlated with accounting-based measures of CFP than with market-based ...

6,493 citations

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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider structural inertia in organizational populations as an outcome of an ecological-evolutionary process and define structural inertia as a correspondence between a class of organizations and their environments.
Abstract: Considers structural inertia in organizational populations as an outcome of an ecological-evolutionary process. Structural inertia is considered to be a consequence of selection as opposed to a precondition. The focus of this analysis is on the timing of organizational change. Structural inertia is defined to be a correspondence between a class of organizations and their environments. Reliably producing collective action and accounting rationally for their activities are identified as important organizational competencies. This reliability and accountability are achieved when the organization has the capacity to reproduce structure with high fidelity. Organizations are composed of various hierarchical layers that vary in their ability to respond and change. Organizational goals, forms of authority, core technology, and marketing strategy are the four organizational properties used to classify organizations in the proposed theory. Older organizations are found to have more inertia than younger ones. The effect of size on inertia is more difficult to determine. The variance in inertia with respect to the complexity of organizational arrangements is also explored. (SRD)

6,425 citations