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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TL;DR: The authors propose a theory to manage the uneasy relation between strategic choice, chance, and determinism (or inevitability) and locate arguments in intellectual history that have a clear bearing on this relation, and introduce and defend four conjectures that outline the relationship between each of them and their comparative significance.
Abstract: We propose a theory to manage the uneasy relation between strategic choice, chance, and determinism (or inevitability). To do so, we locate arguments in intellectual history that have a clear bearing on this relation. We introduce and defend four conjectures that outline the relationship between each of them and their comparative significance. The paper thus aims at achieving three objectives: (a) to articulate a philosophically sustainable theory of strategic choice that corroborates experience (without being induced by it); (b) to synthesize what remains one of the most sustained debates in strategy, namely the nature, role, and relation of choice, chance and determinism; and (c) to contribute to developing a foundation for multilevel research.
24 citations
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address the question: how has the contemporary art market been emerging in China and contribute to the understanding of this process by looking at the previously little-studied field of the contemporary market in China.
Abstract: The Chinese contemporary art market is one of the world’s largest. Hundreds of art galleries, auction houses, artists, critics, and collectors engage in a flourishing art commerce in mainland China. Yet, as recently as the early 1990s, there were no intermediary organisations or stable market practices and conventions, nor were there shared understandings about how the art trade should unfold. In other words, there was no market for contemporary art. This dissertation addresses the question: how has the contemporary art market been emerging in China? Market emergence is a central concern of economic sociology. This study contributes to the understanding of this process by looking at the previously little-studied field of the contemporary art market in China.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the use of audit data analytics (ADA) in current audit practice is explored and a questionnaire is administered to 216 engagement partners and managers about their perceptions of ADA as well as their actual ADA use on 109 audit engagements.
Abstract: This study explores the use of audit data analytics (ADA) in current audit practice. First, we
interviewed the heads of professional practice of five international public accounting firms in
Norway. We find that they differ in strategies on how to implement ADA and the heads report
significant uncertainty about the supervisory inspection authorities’ response to the use of ADA.
Second, we administered a questionnaire to 216 engagement partners and managers about their
perceptions of ADA as well as their actual ADA use on 109 audit engagements. Overall, the
attitudes towards ADA usefulness are positive. Analysis of the audit engagements suggests use
of ADA is relatively limited and use of more “advanced” ADA is rare. More ADA are used for
clients with integrated ERP/IT systems and for newly tendered audit engagements. We also
provide details of actual ADA use on each phase of the audit. We discuss our findings from an
institutional theory perspective.
24 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the obstacles that communities have to confront, and the solutions they have made use of to organize and sustain community participation for service provision, and argue that successful community participation is directly related to communities' capacity to use institutional arrangements to deal with the costs of cooperation and specially to reconcile private and collective interests.
Abstract: This thesis examines the obstacles that communities have to confront, and the solutions they have made use of to organise and sustain community participation for service provision. Orthodox participatory theory assumes that communities have the knowledge and the appropriate attitudes to manage participatory projects effectively. This thesis questions these assumptions by using Transaction Cost Theory to understand the failures and successes of Community Participatory Development (CPD). Participant observation in three traditional rural Mexican communities demonstrated that the assumptions of self-reliant participatory development theory overlook important problems, such as unequally distributed and limited information, limited resources and skills, opportunistic attitudes and conflicts of interest. These problems generate cooperation costs in terms of time, effort and other material and intangible resources. We argue that the larger these costs, the less likely it is that community participation will succeed unless effective incentives are created to overcome them. This is so, because rural people intend to be rational and self-interested individuals, who will only involve themselves in collective action if they expect the benefits to exceed the costs. However, we argue, that rationality is institutionally bounded, and that local institutions play a central role in determining choices and behaviour. Therefore, successful community participation is directly related to communities' capacity to use institutional arrangements to deal with the costs of cooperation and specially to reconcile private and collective interests. This thesis shows that institutional arrangements that sanction opportunism, and shape individual behaviour in favour of the collective interest are needed for collective action to arise. These institutional solutions involve sanctions and hierarchies to ensure successful projects, problems ignored by populist participatory theories. By so doing, this thesis builds an alternative and more critical model for the analysis of participation theory, and presents a new perspective on the possibilities and limitations of Transaction Costs Economics.
24 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that professionalisation in its current form perpetuates injustice and proposes innovation across clinical practice, education and research as leverage points for imagining new practices.
Abstract: As a profession, speech-language pathology (SLP) continues to struggle with equitable service delivery to both people with communication challenges and disabilities. SLP clinical practice in its traditional form has an individual focus and therefore cannot adequately serve the large population in need, which, in South Africa is the majority population. Using the concept of social embeddedness of professions as a guiding frame, the article explores the history of the profession and the influence of the medical model and coloniality in shaping SLP profession’s knowledge and practices. As such, we argue that professionalisation in its current form perpetuates injustice. The article proposes innovation across clinical practice, education and research as leverage points for imagining new practices.
23 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