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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
01 Sep 2019
TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors explored how Chinese environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) intervened with environmental crises in an authoritarian context, drawing on the data from ten-month ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing.
Abstract: This research explored how Chinese environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) intervene with environmental crises in an authoritarian context, drawing on the data from ten-month ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing. To examine the organisations’ practices and real functioning, I analysed Chinese ENGOs’ behavioural patterns with a field theory approach, especially the branches of neo-institutionalism and Bourdieusian field theory. My thesis revealed different Chinese ENGOs’ creativities to bring diverse material and intellectual resources into the problem area, and their capacities to expand their space in China. Meanwhile, I also found that different ENGOs have narrowed the theme of environmental protection into fragmented ideals in their daily work. This fragmentation weakens the group’s potentials to provide serious and collective responses to the systematic crises. The discussions on ENGOs’ practices further invite us to rethink the concepts of NGOs, civil society, environmental protection and global civil society in different contexts. By reviewing the field history, I showed that the emergence and developments of Chinese ENGOs in the past three decades have been embedded in multiple overlapping historical processes in China. While there exist various institutional constraints, ENGOs have skilfully expanded their space, which suggests complex pluralising implications in China. Different organisations have converted the broad ideal of environmental protection into diverse manageable project designs, including small community activities, scientific investigations and struggles for social justice. Using the examples of their community activities and policy advocacies, I studied ENGOs’ daily practices and stressed their practical logics, which are not reducible to their original ideals or the external constraints. Another focus of my work is the intra-field dynamics. I especially discussed how different actors compete to gain more capital and collectively create the field rules. While there exist diversities in the field, there are also fierce power struggles. The field is currently witnessing the increasingly dominant technocratic trends, the diminishment of pluralism values, the loss of connections with political and contentious discourses, and the resistances to the bureaucratisation trends. In this thesis, I presented the field’s growths, diversities, fragmentation and polarisation. Over the years, there have been growing quantities of ENGOs, increasing funding pools, and specialised management standards in this circle. It is worthwhile to discuss to what extent ENGOs can organise different sectors together and respond to environmental issues effectively.

20 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: This chapter discusses the role of culture and identity inorganization at work in the context of a large-scale data collection and analysis.
Abstract: ............................................................................................................. ii PREFACE ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES.............................................................................................. vi LIST OF TABLES.................................................................................................. vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER TWO: CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN ORGANIZATIONS ...................................... 6 CHAPTER THREE: LINKING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY...................... 38 CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND STRATEGY ........................................ 61 CHAPTER FIVE: RESEARH METHODS AND DATA COLLECTION........................................ 79 CHAPTER SIX: ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT ..................................................................... 104 CHAPTER SEVEN: EXPERIENCING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY AT WORK -THE ROLE OF CORE VALUES ...................................................................... 122 CHAPTER EIGHT: THEORISING THE ORGANIZATION ............................................................ 156 CHAPTER NINE: DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSION .............................................................. 191 APPENDIX 1 INTERVIEW SCHEDULE ................................................................................ 219 APPENDIX 2 INTERVIEW RESPONDENT DISTRIBUTION .......................................... 223

19 citations

Dissertation
10 Dec 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify four modes of interactions between scholars and practitioners and discover a developmental process that is specific to the management innovations that are developed between research and practice, and study how the strategic concept of "Blue Ocean Strategy" is performed.
Abstract: Since the early days of management research, its relevance to practice has been the subject of vigorous debate. Understanding the relationship between research and practice implies studying how management knowledge is produced. We first aim at understanding the controversy surrounding the relevance of management research. We develop four complementary approaches on how academics apprehend the relationship between research and practice. Then, we develop a framework that allows the identification of four modes of interactions between scholars and practitioners and discover a developmental process that is specific to the management innovations that are developed between research and practice. Then, we study how the strategic concept of “Blue Ocean Strategy” is performed. We show how its innovators have performed the concept by applying its own principles. Finally, we are interested in scholar-practitioners given they straddle the worlds of research and practice to produce management knowledge. We seek to understand how they overcome role conflicts related to their activities in both research and practice. These four studies shed light on how management knowledge is produced.

19 citations

Dissertation
01 Sep 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the role of cash flow forecasting process in capital budgeting decisions is highlighted, where the forecasting process starts with identifying the procedures and methods used in forecasting, and ends by estimating future cash flow required by managers for decision-making.
Abstract: This study highlights the role of cash flow forecasting process in capital budgeting decisions, where the forecasting process starts with identifying the procedures and methods used in forecasting, and ends by estimating future cash flow required by managers for decision-making. This study utilised questionnaire survey to collect data from 69 manufacturing and oil companies operating in Libya within contingency and new institutional sociology theories, which are commonly used in capital budgeting research. Further, this study seeks to ascertain the key variables associated with the forecasting process in capital budgeting decisions. In this regard, this study examined the contingent and institutional variables influencing the use of forecasting procedures and methods associated with the adoption of different capital budgeting processes. Consequently, the results of this study explored the forecasting procedures, methods and the capital budgeting techniques used in manufacturing and oil companies operating in Libya. The researcher found that most manufacturing and oil companies depend on personal and management's subjective estimates in forecasting their future cash flows. In terms of the extent of use of capital budgeting techniques, the findings indicate that most Libyan manufacturing and oil companies use the payback period (PB) and accounting rate of return (ARR) to evaluate and select the investment opportunities, as well as rely upon subjective assessments in evaluating the project risk inherent within capital budgeting decisions. In addition, this study applied the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique to test the research hypotheses. Using the same sample of Libyan manufacturing and oil companies, the findings are as follows. First, the use of forecasting procedures/methods and components of cash flow are positively associated with the extent of use of capital budgeting techniques. Second, the forecasting horizon and the use of multiple data sources in forecasting are significantly associated with the use of forecasting procedures and methods. Third, the presence of qualified persons responsible for estimating future cash flow is positively associated with the use of forecasting procedures and methods. Fourth, the findings suggest that the influence of contingent variables differs from public to private companies. Fifth, the study findings also suggest that coercive, mimetic and normative pressures are significantly associated with the use of forecasting procedures and methods. Finally, the research findings revealed that there is a significant relationship between the procedures and methods used in forecasting (PMUF) and the firms’ financial performance (PERF), whilst the study does not find any evidence that the extent of use of capital budgeting techniques improves the firms’ financial performance. The findings of this study offer new important insights and contributions to the existing literature, as well as have useful implications for practitioners and researchers.

19 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