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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Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how and why stakeholder power and organizational learning interact, drawing on comparative case studies of the environmental management practices found in two major companies, and find that there is a complex relationship between the ambition of company goals, the structure of learning, and the influence of stakeholders on the process and outcomes of learning.
Abstract: The literatures on stakeholder engagement by companies and organizational learning give little consideration to the power (or influence) of stakeholders to affect the process or content of organizational learning. These literatures generally assume that common ground between companies and their stakeholders can be established as a prerequisite for learning, that learning is a quasi-autonomous process unaffected by the motives or power of stakeholders, and that actors have the power to fulfil roles that are critical in fostering learning. The paper seeks to address these omissions, examining how and why stakeholder power and organizational learning interact, drawing on comparative case studies of the environmental management practices found in two major companies. The evidence from these cases suggests a complex relationship between the ambition of company goals, the structure of learning, and the influence of stakeholders on the process and outcomes of learning. Exploitative learning routines were effecti...
22 citations
Dissertation•
28 Apr 2017
TL;DR: This study explores how public engagement and patient involvement are framed and enacted in UK medical education, in the context of evolving regulatory requirements and diversity of medical schools, and provides a framework for investigating and analysing their intended and untoward effects at individual, organisational and institutional levels.
Abstract: This practitioner research is the story of what happens when we take an important, but heterogeneous idea, and turn it into a mandatory standard. It explores how public engagement and patient involvement are framed and enacted in UK medical education, in the context of evolving regulatory requirements and diversity of medical schools. Four case studies are presented - three medical schools with different missions, and the regulator (the General Medical Council, GMC). Interview transcripts with school leaders and GMC officers were analysed applying two approaches, informed by symbolic interactionism and social epistemology: boundary object theory and frame analysis. The study shows that public engagement is a diffuse, plastic concept acting at organisational and individual levels with many features of a boundary object. This conclusion is further supported by its institutionalisation as a regulatory standard (in Tomorrow's Doctors 2009). The study sheds light on ideas of professional and organisational identity formation and on boundary agents - those working across intra, and extra organisational boundaries. Through frame analysis, the case studies provide an insight into the socio-political, moral and pedagogical dimensions of involving patients and the public in medical education as viewed by educators and regulators, and how these ideas are affected by the use of knowledge, values and authority on one hand, and regulation on the other. Medical school leaders frame public engagement and patient involvement with reference to their local higher education and healthcare context, and their knowledge community. Variations in framing encompass individual, person-centred, and collective, socially-oriented dimensions. New regulatory standards for medical education and training were published in January 2016 - a re-framing of professional and regulatory priorities. This study helps us understand how such standards in professional education evolve and provides a framework for investigating and analysing their intended and untoward effects at individual, organisational and institutional levels.
22 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this paper Bruquetas Callejo onderzocht hoe middelbare scholen omgaan met het bestaande beleid voor de eerste opvang van allochtone studenten.
Abstract: Maria Bruquetas Callejo onderzocht hoe middelbare scholen omgaan met het bestaande beleid voor de eerste opvang van allochtone studenten. Ze bekeek in welke mate de schoolpraktijken samenvallen met het beleid en in hoeverre zij afwijken van de basisbeginselen. Bruquetas Callejo vergeleek de situatie in Nederland (Rotterdam) en Spanje (Barcelona), twee landen die sterk verschillen op het gebied van nationaal integratiebeleid, onderwijssysteem en specifieke opvangprogramma’s. Ze laat zien dat er in beide gevallen een policy gap bestaat: de scholen in beide landen hebben opvangpraktijken die afwijken van het officiele integratiebeleid en van de opvangprogramma’s. In Barcelona is de kloof groter; men reageert vooral op de onmiddellijke pragmatische eisen van de situatie. In Rotterdam voldoen schoolpraktijken in het algemeen wel aan het ontvangstprogramma, maar maken scholen van eigen bevoegdheden gebruik om onderwijskansen van leerlingen te verbeteren. Bruquetas Callejo toont de relevantie van de lokale praktijk voor de beleidsuitvoering. Institutionele regelingen beinvloeden de praktijk in verschillende mate in verschillende lokale omstandigheden; het is dan ook belangrijk te onderzoeken welke contextuele elementen de naleving of de niet-naleving ondersteunen.
22 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2017
22 citations
Dissertation•
04 Dec 2013
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed an observation method to identify the trajectory of appropriation of control arrangements within an organization, and applied it to the control arrangement of research in a university, revealing the decoupling of form and sense between laboratories' control arrangements and those of central administration.
Abstract: Often designed outside organizations, questions on the appropriation of management tools within organizations emerge. Understanding the appropriation of a management tool goes beyond observing its use. The stages prior to its use – which have led to the adoption of a tool – must be addressed. To avoid obscuring the interaction between the tool(s) and the stakeholder(s), it is essential to consider the tool as embedded in an arrangement, a configuration of objects, rules and stakeholders. Finally, analyzing the past and the present without looking to the future conflicts with the concept that an organization is constantly evolving.
To take account of all these aspects, this PhD thesis develops an observation method to identify the trajectory of appropriation of control arrangements within an organization. There are three essential phases: the characterization of the arrangements, an ex ante analysis of what led to the situation, and the identification of the organization’s capacity as regards appropriation. Combining these three analyses makes it possible to envisage a trajectory of appropriation relative to the arrangement studied.
Applied to the control arrangement of research in a university, this method reveals the decoupling of form and sense between laboratories’ control arrangements and those of central administration. This decoupling is undoubtedly inevitable considering the institutional and organizational perspectives. It is also useful for the appropriation process; it is a latency period which enables the construction of sense and form. To extend the appropriation process, the university must develop its appropriation capacities by promoting interactions. Indeed, without loosely re-coupling management control arrangements relative to research, a process of deconstruction of sense could be triggered.
22 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