The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)
01 Jan 2008-
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•
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: In this paper, a qualitative study of three private sector organisations from different sectors in Mauritius: the banking sector, the hotel industry and a privatised state-owned enterprise was conducted in a modified grounded theory study to establish the key dimensions of organisational change.
Abstract: This dissertation examines change management practices in private sector organisations in Mauritius. It presents the findings from a qualitative study of three private sector organisations from different sectors in Mauritius: the banking sector, the hotel industry and a privatised state-owned enterprise.
Thirty eight in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted in a modified grounded theory study to establish the key dimensions of organisational change. Themes from participant responses were coded and synthesised to provide insights into the process of change in the organisations under study. The emergent theory suggests that organisational change is a multi-dimensional, multi-directional and evolutionary process and this study has identified that organisational change is influenced by the contextual and historical aspects of the country. The emerging key dimensions of change served to confirm six dimensions evident in the extant literature on organisational change:
o Organisational structure.
o Organisational culture.
o Leadership processes.
o Individuals.
o Knowledge management.
o Resistance to change.
A seventh dimension, and therefore largely unacknowledged factor, considered to be central to the change process in Mauritian organisations was also identified:
Partisanship.
Partisanship was found to be present in all the case study organisations, and to be a pervasive influence on the change process. History, culture and context have served to embed this dimension in the change processes.
A model is presented which illustrates how the process of organisational change is undertaken in Mauritius, which clearly defines the role of partisanship. It is proposed that this model may be applied to other small island economies with similar historical, cultural or contextual features as is the case with Mauritius.
27 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, an organisational sociology based approach supported by a comparative field research project identifies three types of social, cultural and cognitive processes that play a decisive role in building and implementing local capabilities required to mobilise a strategic capacity.
Abstract: Are universities able to operate as strategic actors? An organisational sociology based approach supported by a comparative field research project identifies three types of social, cultural and cognitive processes that play a decisive role in building and implementing local capabilities required to mobilise a strategic capacity. The paper identifies how much these processes are present in the four ideal-types of universities defined by crossing their reputation and their metrics-based performance. Such a meso deterministic perspective suggests that universities may position themselves as proactive actors or principals, and not just as agents of national reforms and political demands. Nevertheless, their ability to do it varies according to their type. The paper also explores the implications of such findings for institutional leadership and steering policymakers.
27 citations
01 Jun 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, Nguyen et al. investigated the relationship between HRM practices and enterprise performance in developing countries like Vietnam, focusing on employee outcomes rather than organisational level outcomes, and used a theoretical framework (RBV) to gain a deeper understanding of the various patterns of enterprise practices observed.
Abstract: Human resource management is important for improving enterprises’ competitiveness. Consequently, many enterprises have paid much attention to managing and developing their human resources and a great number of professional and academic studies have been produced in this field. However, the literature on the human resource management (HRM) practices of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and their performance in developing countries like Vietnam is considerably less voluminous.
This research is motivated by two main research questions:
RQ1. How do differing ownership types affect the adoption of HRM practices in Vietnam?
RQ2. To what extent do differing HRM practices in Vietnam affect employee job satisfaction and employee performance?
The research contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, it adds to the literature on HRM in Vietnam, a topic which remains under-researched, despite the country’s increasing significance in economic and geopolitical terms, and the very large and growing literature on HRM in developed countries. Specifically, the study focuses on comparisons of four main types of enterprise ownership: enterprises considered as state-owned (SOEs where the state is the sole shareholder); equitised state-owned (ESOEs where part of the ownership is sold to other sectors); privately owned (POEs, with 100% domestic private ownership); and multinational (MNEs, with majority or 100% foreign investment).
Second, the current study contributes to the broader international literature with regard to the possible relationship between HRM practices and employee outcomes. Although some previous research (e.g., Gardner, Moynihan, Park & Wright, 2001) has shown that employee outcomes play a crucial mediating role between HRM practices and enterprise performance, to date such a mediating role has been overlooked by most empirical HRM studies, which tend to focus on the direct relationship between HRM practices and enterprises outcomes (e.g., Arthur, 1994; Huselid, 1995; Macduffie, 1995, Wright et al., 2005). However, the relationship between employee outcomes and enterprise performance is beyond the scope of this research. This current research focuses on employee outcomes rather than organisational level outcomes. The current research covers HRM practices in four key areas: recruitment & selection (R&S), training and development (T&D), performance management (PM), and reward systems (RS). It considers two types of employee outcomes: employee performance and job satisfaction.
Third, this research uses a theoretical framework (RBV) to gain a deeper understanding of the various patterns of enterprise practices observed. This helps to address a weakness in the current literature, as most previous studies in this particular area have tended to give little consideration to the theoretical underpinnings of their findings.
This research adopts a qualitative method and involves two studies of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, both of which were carried out in the Northern region of Vietnam. In Study 1, 18 managers were interviewed; in Study 2, interviews were conducted with 49 employees. Qualitative content analysis was utilised first (Flick, 2014), followed by thematic analysis, to compare and synthesise findings from the two groups of interviews.
The main findings from the analysis are as follows. First, the perceptions of managers and employees regarding HRM philosophy and practices at the various types of enterprises are somewhat similar, although there are a number of instances where the employees provide the differences. The similar perspectives between managers and employees could be due to the fact that employees did not want to be seen differ from their managers’. Some employees had different perspectives from their managers because they may see things at their personal view while the managers had a broader view on the interviewed issues.
Second, it appears that participating MNEs were more inclined (than the participating domestic enterprises) to see human resource as a critically important resource, to treat HRM as a key part of efforts to achieve strategic goals, and to implement HRM systems and practices that are in line with international standards (and that evidence a RBV approach). By contrast, the relevant SOEs were least likely to do so, while the large POEs were often quite close to the position of MNEs, and ESOEs tended to take intermediate paths between these two approaches. It should be emphasised that ownership was not the only influence on the adoption of HRM practices. Other factors also play important roles, including national culture (e.g., collectivism, respect for seniority, and the importance of “face”). Third, while differences across the participating enterprises regarding employee outcomes are not as clear-cut as differences in terms of HRM practices, there are indications that employee outcomes at MNEs and large POEs are more favourable than at SOEs, especially for younger employees.
The findings suggest a number of practical implications for HR managers as well as for the government of Vietnam. The government should encourage and assist universities to provide prospective graduates with more up-to-date training, including more hands-on experience. Managers at domestic enterprises need to be familiar with the HRM practices of MNEs and should make an effort to select and adopt those practices that, on balance, are likely to enhance their own enterprise’s overall performance and competitiveness. Managers at MNEs could do more to ensure that their HRM practices do not conflict with the local business culture.
27 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the XV chapter of their book, "Voxel XV Chapter 7.1.1" and discuss the relationship between the authorship of authorship.
Abstract: ............................................................................................................ XV Chapter
27 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2016
27 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
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
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
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
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