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 Jan 2017
TL;DR: This paper explored the relationships among capacity, roles, and specific program objectives of community-based nonprofit organizations in an emergency food service network to explore the relationship between capacity, role, and program objectives.
Abstract: Many essential public services are provided through networks of community-based nonprofit organizations. Previous research has demonstrated that simply providing additional resources to these organizations is insufficient to better address demands for public services. We also know little about how and why these organizations adopt network-level objectives related to service provision. In this analysis, we expand the focus of service provision beyond capacity to incorporate the unique roles that define the very existence of nonprofit organizations, and how these roles affect organizational behavior with respect to service network objectives. We use focus group, survey, and administrative data from one hundred community-based nonprofit organizations in an emergency food service network to explore the relationships among capacity, roles, and specific program objectives.
11 citations
Dissertation•
18 Jul 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of GP commissioning in the English National Health service is presented, which includes theoretical contributions to organisational studies and medical sociology, drawn from a three-leveled ethnographic case study.
Abstract: This thesis includes theoretical contributions to organisational studies and medical sociology, drawn from a three levelled ethnographic case study of commissioning by General Medical Practitioners in the setting of the English National Health service. In order to locate these levels as interrelated structures, the concept of “field” (Bourdieu, 2005, Fligstein, 2001, Fligstein and McAdam, 2012, Lewin, 1997 [1951]) is used. Jens Beckert (2010) has developed a framework in which cognitive frames, networks, and rules are in a relationship of irreducible interdependency. The definitions of analytic categories in the extant framework are under-developed. In this thesis, the framework is empirically applied to add definition to the analytic category “cognitive frame”. Beckert’s Framework and Weick’s (Weick, 1995, Weick, 2000, Weick et al., 2005) Sensemaking Perspective are intersected to develop a reciprocal relationship between the two theories. By conceptualising cognitive frame as a sensemaking process, insight is gained in three different but overlapping facets: wider contexts, temporality, and distributed sensemaking. At the level of an industry a cognitive frame can be described as a sensemaking type, which will have constituent sensemaking styles associated with that industries internal networks. When rules require organisations from separate industries or sectors to form partnerships then actors with different sensemaking types will be required to interact within one network. Organisational development techniques can be used to support and align sensemaking in both of these circumstances. Sensegivers may have an important role in pacing, including suspending, sensemaking. The thesis also contains insights for medical sociology in respect of how and why GPs commission as they do. These relate to the impact of belonging to the NHS family; differing permutations of changes to the profession (hybridisation, restratification, and the delimitation of autonomy) in GP networks; GP compliance with rules; and the characteristics of an inner-city GP workforce.
11 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors applied a gravity model to analyze relationships between pairs of news outlets and produced a novel spatial network visualization, finding that emergent media rely more heavily on legacy media as they become institutionalized.
Abstract: Although concerns over the sustainability of news outlets online have prevailed for the past decade, niche media—with partisan news outlets as a notable example—have been gaining more influence on public discourse. This study suggests information outsourcing via hyperlinks to other outlets as a sociotechnical factor that explains how online emergent media sustain themselves during the contemporary “period of disruption.” Using computational data collected from 89 U.S.-based news outlets, we applied a gravity model to analyze relationships between pairs of outlets and produced a novel spatial network visualization. We found that emergent media rely more heavily on legacy media as they become institutionalized. Further, we find that “antagonistic” linking across ideology is exclusively a conservative phenomenon. We argue that these patterns have been provided by the new technological affordances that have transformed journalism.
11 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: This research analyzes how state and local fusion centers use collaboration to build and maintain information sharing networks supporting national, regional, and local area counterterrorism efforts.
Abstract: In the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the 9/11 Commission concluded that the nation’s Intelligence Community and the domestic counterterrorism model of information gathering and intelligence failed to “connect the dots.” As a result the federal government initiated several new initiatives designed to break down the barriers and “silos” inhibiting information and intelligence sharing. One such initiative was the establishment of information sharing fusion centers. Fusion centers are state and local government operated information collection and analysis centers that serve state and local law enforcement with the prevention, detection, and deterrence of criminal and terrorism activity. Fusion centers are also part of a national network of fusion centers which provide important suspicious activity reports and other information to the federal government in support of the national counterterrorism mission. A key feature of fusion centers is the need to collaborate with state, local and federal public agencies and disciplines, and the private sector in order to collect information, process this information into useable and actionable intelligence, and disseminate this intelligence to customers, partners and stakeholders. Fusion centers are placed in a context of dealing with terrorism as a complex “wicked problem,” which generally requires using interorganizational collaboration and networks to successfully address such problems. This research analyzes how state and local fusion centers use collaboration to build and maintain information sharing networks supporting national, regional, and local area counterterrorism efforts.
11 citations
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed a theory of business relations that explained why and how ethnic Chinese businesses enter into long-term business relationships and investigated the tangible and intangible outcomes of these relationships.
Abstract: The ethnic Chinese are important players in the Philippine economy. Many believe that networking plays a role in their business success. This research aimed to develop a theory of business relations that explained why and how ethnic Chinese businesses enter into long-term business relationships. It sought to identify the antecedents to long-term business relationships and to discover how businesses chose their partners and structured their relationships. The research also investigated the tangible and intangible outcomes of these relationships. Eight in-depth case studies of ethnic Chinese firms were constructed using data from ethnographic-type interviews, observation, documents and literature. Using modified grounded theory, the core motivation for entering into longterm relations was identified as accessing scarce resources. Resources were defined widely and included finance, technology, raw materials and skills. A framework termed 'essential network' was developed. This network was composed of each firm's most valuable set of partners. In some cases, these partners could be its key customers or major suppliers or both and in others, its technology partners. The findings revealed that contextual variables ( economic, social and political conditions) and the firms' strategies influenced the nature of their business relationships. Goodwill trust was not necessarily a precondition of cooperation. The preconditions lay partly in the objective circumstances, and partly in the accumulation of knowledge with reference to mutual interests and the potential satisfaction of those interests through cooperative behaviour. The four conditions
11 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