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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01 Dec 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of the significant wave of reforms to financial regulation that followed the financial crisis in 2007-8, reforms which created a moment of great uncertainty and complexity for banking organizations was used to explore how regulated organizations respond to and manage regulatory change.
Abstract: This thesis explores how regulated organizations respond to and manage regulatory change. It uses a case study of the significant wave of reforms to financial regulation that followed the financial crisis in 2007-8, reforms which created a moment of great uncertainty and complexity for banking organizations.
Using a combination of discourse analysis on banks’ publicly available documents and semi-structured qualitative interviews with 22 members of banking organizations in the UK, this thesis examines how a sample of banks responded to and managed the changes in their regulatory environment.
This thesis found that the uncertainty associated with unclear regulatory rules, unspecified regulatory expectations and shifts in the cognitive underpinnings of financial regulation exacerbated existing tensions between market and regulatory objectives within banks. Managing these tensions required an ongoing process of negotiation and settlement between organizational actors who were ‘institutional agents’ of market and regulatory logic respectively.
This thesis found that that the balance in the use of these logics changed over time and argues that this is partly due to considerations of legitimacy relative to the external political and economic context, but is also related to the degree of uncertainty and the power and status afforded to the internal representatives of market or regulatory logic. Regulatory interactions between the banks and their supervisors were found to be a critical site where legitimacy criteria are communicated and regulatory professionals construct the bank’s regulatory identity.
Finally, this thesis argues that when regulation is in a continual state of flux, possibilities for meaningful behavioural changes are reduced. At the same time, however, continuous regulatory change demanded greater organizational attention, suggesting an acceptance on behalf of the banks that regulatory change had become part of ‘business as usual’.
17 citations
Dissertation•
01 Nov 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the main objectives and objectives of the study were discussed, as well as the main research questions and the main results of the studies, and the research results were presented.
Abstract: ........................................................................................... IV TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................... V LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................... XII LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................ XV LIST OF APPENDICES ................................................................... XVI DEFINITIONS ...................................................................................... XVII 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION .............................................. 1 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ......................................................... 1 1.2 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM AND JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY .................................................................................................... 4 1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY ............................................. 8 1.4 MAIN RESEARCH QUESTIONS ......................................................... 9 1.5 THE RESEARCH HYPOTHESES ....................................................... 10 1.6 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THIS STUDY ................................ 10 1.7 METHODOLOGY AND METHODS .................................................... 14 1.8 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ......................................................... 15 1.9 CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 17 2 CHAPTERTWO ANALYTICAL LITERATURE REVIEW: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR); CORPORATE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE (CSED) AND CORPORATE SOCIAL DISCLOSURE THEORIES (CSDT) ................................................................................................. 18 2.
17 citations
21 May 2019
17 citations
01 Sep 2015
TL;DR: It is suggested that any attempt to create more effective cooperation between the three groups needs to acknowledge and deal with the differences that exist between them rather than rely on the dominance of hybridized clinical and non-clinical roles.
Abstract: This study investigates the relations between doctors, nurses and managers in a primary care trust in South East England in an era of neoliberal reform since the 1980s. Using two concepts from the work of the cultural theorist Raymond Williams – ‘epochal’ analysis and ‘structures of feeling’ – the case study group is seen as an ‘occupational tripartite’ within a dynamic cultural totality. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, interview data is examined and reveals aspects of tradition being used by both doctors and nurses in ways that tend towards organisational inertia and support existing dominant structures. Residual elements are employed by managers in an attempt to maintain their influence in the face of organisational change. The three groups are highly differentiated in their views and feelings, only agreeing on the difficulty of working together. The study suggests that any attempt to create more effective cooperation between the three groups needs to acknowledge and deal with the differences that exist between them rather than rely on the dominance of hybridized clinical and non-clinical roles.
17 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, an identity-based account of malfeasance in consumer markets was developed and tested, and it was found that multi-brand organizational structures help predatory firms short-circuit reputational discipline by rendering their underlying identities opaque to consumers.
Abstract: This article develops and tests an identity-based account of malfeasance in consumer markets. We hypothesize that multi-brand organizational structures help predatory firms short-circuit reputational discipline by rendering their underlying identities opaque to consumer audiences. The analysis utilizes comprehensive administrative data on all U.S. for-profit colleges, an industry characterized by widespread fraud and poor (although variable) educational outcomes. Consistent with the hypothesis that brand multiplicity facilitates malfeasance by reducing ex ante reputational risks, colleges that are part of multi-brand companies invest less in instruction, have worse student outcomes, and are more likely to face legal and regulatory sanctions (relative to single-brand firms). Maintaining multiple outward-facing brand identities also mitigates reputational penalties in the wake of law enforcement actions, as measured by news coverage of legal actions, and by subsequent enrollment growth. The results suggest identity multiplicity plays a key role in allowing firms to furnish substandard products, even amid frequent scandals and media scrutiny. Predatory practices are facilitated not only by the inherent informational asymmetries in a given product, but also by firms’ efforts to make themselves less legible to audiences. The analysis contributes to research on higher education, organizational theory, and the sociology of markets.
17 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