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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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29 Jun 2010
TL;DR: In this article, a field study was employed to investigate how organizations respond to environmental issues from the perspectives of a resource-based view and institutional theory, and a web-based survey was used to investigate the phenomenon of corporate environmentalism within firms.
Abstract: While previous research on organizations and the natural environment provides a rationale for general corporate environmental responses, questions remain regarding why firms facing similar institutional pressures respond differently to environmental issues. On one hand, organizations have control over their corporate strategies. Firms can utilize their resources and capabilities to gain a competitive advantage. On the other hand, firms' flexibility of action is limited by external forces. I argue that the differences in firms' resources and capabilities affect the extent to which firms integrate environmental issues into their planning processes and strategies. The awareness, sense-making, and perceptions of social phenomena, in this case the green building movement, also create social framing that influences how firms respond and react to environmental issues. In sum, this research offers a more comprehensive examination of the resource-based view (RBV) and institutional perspectives in the context of business and the environment. A field study was employed to investigate how organizations respond to environmental issues from the perspectives of a resource-based view and institutional theory. A quantitative research method was employed in this study. A web-based survey was used to investigate the phenomenon of corporate environmentalism within firms. Knowing more about the resources and capabilities of firms and about the institutional pressures relative to corporate environmentalism could help firms formulate and integrate environmental initiatives into their strategies. This study can also benefit the broader research domain of business and the natural environment by providing insight into what factors contribute to perceptions surrounding corporate environmentalism in organizations.

5 citations

11 Sep 2014
TL;DR: In this paper, a directed content analysis of 20 semistructured interviews with court professionals was conducted to investigate what kinds of logics co-exist with regard to the administration of courts and how they can be typified.
Abstract: Given courts' pluralistic institutional embeddedness and the need to assure legitimacy, they are confronted with a growing amount and variety of external expectations, e.g., from politics or the media who refer to distinct institutional logics. In parallel, courts' working conditions have significantly changed, leading to an increased involvement of non-judicial actors who are - due to their professional backgrounds - assumed to be "carriers of extraneous logics". This paper hypothesizes that courts are pluralistic due to changes in external demands. Drawing upon a directed content analysis of 20 semistructured interviews with court professionals, this paper investigates what kinds of logics co-exist with regard to the administration of courts and how they can be typified. In addition, the paper also analyzes how court employees deal with this institutional pluralism. Findings indicate that institutional pluralism occurs not only at the intersection with their institutional environment but also within the courts, whereby boundary spanners seem to play an important role in buffering the challenges associated therewith. Furthermore, non-judicial actors seem to get accustomed to a dominating professional legal logic, implying that there exists some kind of a primacy of the judicial logic in intraorganizational matters. This paper advances the understanding of how court actors deal with competing logics and how institutional logics unfold at the micro-level of individuals' daily work activities.

5 citations

Dissertation
17 Apr 2012
Abstract: ................................................................................................................... 3 Preface .................................................................................................................... 4

5 citations

17 Jun 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the role of collective bricolage and material artefacts in the maintenance of an institution and investigated the selection criteria that guide actors in their collective choice of resources.
Abstract: The paper studies the role of collective bricolage and material artefacts in the maintenance of an institution. It investigates the selection criteria that guide actors in their collective choice of resources, which they combine through bricolage in order to shape or reshape a material instantiation of an institution. The present case study concerns the Institution of Listed-Buildings, i.e. buildings protected as national patrimony. Through a Grounded-Theory Methodology, I analyse how actors and different stakeholders of construction works maintain the legitimacy of a listed building while modernizing it without distorting its embodied cultural heritage. Based on six selected listed buildings – three in Denmark and three in France – I identify a key dynamic of collective bricolage, notably how actors select material resources they have at hand. The findings point to their use of 1) a meta-resource that captures the essence of an institution, and 2) six different criteria that enable the selection of material resources complying with this meta-resource: individual preference, collective and field alignment, technical features, economics, time and space. These selection criteria facilitate collective decision-making among actors who seek to instantiate an institution through a shared meta-resource. In my empirical case, the actors instantiated the Listed-Buildings Institution through the meta-resource of authenticity, whose leitmotiv is " keeping the heritage above all ". The notions of meta-resource and selection criteria help us comprehend how actors collectively maintain an institution by instantiating it.

5 citations

Dissertation
28 Jan 2013
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethnographic account of a growing quick-service restaurant group is presented, where the authors witness the implementation of an integrated production strategy on the part of the organization, in an effort to achieve efficiency and mission-based goals that were established during their founding.
Abstract: This is an ethnographic account of a growing quick-service restaurant group. In the case study presented here, one is able to witness the implementation of an integrated production strategy on the part of the organization, in an effort to achieve efficiency and mission-based goals that were established during their founding. The mission-based goal of connecting staff members through an integrated production model, through techniques similar to increased skill variety, task significance, task identity, autonomy, and feedback can qualify as a new form of efficient fast-food production. However, conflicting perceptions about natural hierarchy, the criteria for promotion, and hiring strategies can run counter to the productive efficiency benefits that come from the methods of work redesign that are showcased in this thesis.

5 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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