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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.
Citations
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Dissertation
06 Jun 2013
TL;DR: The construction des indicateurs dans les evaluations des politiques publiques en matiere d'aide au developpement est revelatrice des liens et d'echange que les pays occidentaux et africains entretiennent.
Abstract: La construction des indicateurs dans les evaluations des politiques publiques en matiere d’aide au developpement est revelatrice des liens et d’echange que les pays occidentaux et africains entretiennent. De la diversite des methodes aux negociations des normes requises, la construction des indicateurs devient un enjeu pour defendre les visions politiques des types de developpement et de l'Etat. Il parait, du point de vue de la science politique necessaire de deconstruire les systemes de domination, d’entrer pleinement la construction des indicateurs dans le champ de la negociation et dans celui du pouvoir. Cette these interroge le contenu politique des indicateurs, leur abscence de neutralite vis-a-vis d’un projet politique, d’un rapport a l’Etat et a la politique en general.

32 citations

MonographDOI
10 Jul 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a new approach that adopts a global perspective, engaging with very different experiences of marginality across the global north and south, and draws on "Northern" understandings of change and improvement as well as "Southern" theory concerns for epistemological diversity and meaning-making.
Abstract: pathway of knowledge and practice that aims to understand and address contemporary complexities and multidimensional social realities. However, though Social Innovation is a widely-used term; its conceptual understanding and the specific relation to social change remains under explored. People-Centered Social Innovation: Global Perspectives on an Emerging Paradigm attempts to revisit and extend the existing understanding of Social Innovation in practice by focusing on the lived realities of marginalized groups and communities. The emerging field of people-centered development is placed in dialogue with theory and concepts from the more established field of social innovation to create a new approach; one that adopts a global perspective, engaging with very different experiences of marginality across the global north and south. Theoretically, People-Centered Social Innovation: Global Perspectives on an Emerging Paradigm draws on “Northern” understandings of change and improvement as well as ‘Southern’ theory concerns for epistemological diversity and meaning-making. The result is an experiment aimed at reimagining research and practice that seriously needs to center the actor in processes of social transformation.

32 citations

Dissertation
01 Sep 2014
TL;DR: The authors explored all levels of the hierarchy in a Japanese university and found that Japanese-specific practices,consensus decision-making and the emphasis on harmony in the workplace might intuitively suggest a tempering of discrimination, reinforced gendered normativity, hindering change.
Abstract: Japan’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985 heralded improvements in gender equality, yet Japan still has one of the lowest rates of women in management (108 out of 135 countries), fewer than 10% women in all management levels, and one of the lowest percentages (11.9%) of female academics. CEDAW has been the basis for promoting gender equality in Japan in top-down implementation of policies and through bottom-up, civil society initiatives. However, CEDAW’s application in the institutions where gender employment discrimination occurs has been under-utilised. This thesis employs CEDAW’s directives of broad education, equality of opportunity/outcome, and positive action to interrogate women’s low numerical representation in Japanese universities. A feminist institutionalist analytic of the gender regimes was used to explicate change and continuity. This case study, involving women and men, explored all levels of the hierarchy in a Japanese university and found that Japanese-specific practices—consensus decision-making and the emphasis on harmony in the workplace—that might intuitively suggest a tempering of discrimination, reinforced gendered normativity, hindering change. Change occurred in university praxis, in the form of layering and conversion, which had promise regarding improvements in gender equality. However, ‘logics of gender appropriateness’ were recursively enforced through normative and cultural-cognitive institutions, mitigating the potential for change. Despite some discursive attention to the egalitarian ideals that CEDAW promotes, egalitarian norms had not substantively diffused and the corporate culture precluded challenges to gender discrimination. The entrenched power nexus found around the world within male-dominated academia was found to be overt in the Japanese context, which embraced a gender ideology of difference that explicitly ‘Othered’ women and underemphasised gender commonalities. This thesis makes a contribution through a unique utilisation of CEDAW and institutionalist analytics, contributing to the expanding regional research on employment inequalities. This is dedicated to Salem K. Hicks In the limitedness of time and the limitlessness of space, I am deeply thankful to share everything with you. Salem, My deepest thanks are for you: You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, “Why don’t you make something for me? I asked you what you wanted, and you said, “A box.” “What for?” “To put things in.” “What kind of things?” “Whatever you have,” you said. Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughtsthe pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation. And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you. And still the box is not full (modified Steinbeck, with champagne glasses full, toasting our life journey together)

32 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this article, the authors illustrate how the public sector might fail in narrowing spatial inequalities, and how both underdeveloped markets and urgent territorial needs create in peripheral areas robust individual incentives to turn into non-profit activities or even household production.
Abstract: In this chapter we illustrate how the public sector might fail in narrowing spatial inequalities, and how both underdeveloped markets and urgent territorial needs create in peripheral areas robust individual incentives to turn into non-profit activities or even household production. In all those situations, a well-developed non-profit sector can offer marginalized or excluded social groups a legal and ethical opportunity to obtain a decent income by offering rewards (monetary or nonmonetary) in exchange for volunteering, allowing households to afford the cost of living. Laying on the results of the analysis, we discuss four cases of successful cooperation among SSE institutions by one side, and the private and the public sector on the other. In all those cases, the private and the public sector decided to facilitate the development of the non-profit sector by contracting out part of the production process to reduce costs and achieve a higher level of effectiveness. The result was successful because the non-profit sector did not incur in the opportunistic behaviors that might affect profit-oriented activities. Therefore, we suggest how local inter-institutional cooperation among the SSE, the private and the public sector should become the norm rather than the exception, in order to achieve at the same time a higher level of equitable and sustainable development and well-being.

31 citations

Dissertation
01 Jun 2009
TL;DR: In this paper, Schön describes reflection as intuition; instinctive motor skills; and reflection/reflexivity taken on the immediate past (bounded by the action present) without interrupting our activities.
Abstract: mind. Not accepting realities that are not immediately relevant. Faith in divine revelation and social tradition. Experiences based on spiritual techniques. Intuitive speculation on perception or “hidden knowledge”. Psycho-physical techniques to assess hidden realities. Innate wisdom and understanding. “Reflective Practice” What Schön describes as “intuition”; instinctive “motor skills”. Knowing as you are doing, (e.g. riding a bicycle). Reflection/Reflexivity taken on the immediate past. (Bounded by the action present). What occurs during, but without interrupting our activities. (Bounded by the action past). Looking back at the immediate past.

31 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

Journal ArticleDOI
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.

7,595 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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