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 paper, the authors examined the role of third-sector housing for social cohesion in Vienna and applied an interdisciplinary, multi-level research approach to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of social cohesion as a contextualised phenomenon which requires place-based as well as structural (multi-level) solutions.
Abstract: Drawing on the case of Vienna, the article examines the role of third sector housing for social
cohesion in the city. With the joint examination of an organisational and an institutional level
of housing governance, the authors apply an interdisciplinary, multi-level research approach
which aims at contributing to a comprehensive understanding of social cohesion as a
contextualised phenomenon which requires place-based as well as structural (multi-level)
solutions. Using a large-scale household survey and interviews with key informants, the
analysis shows an ambiguous role housing cooperatives play for social cohesion:
With the practice of "heme-oriented housing estates", non-profit housing returns to the
traditional cooperative principle of Gemeinschaft. However, community cooperatives rather
promote homogenous membership and thus, encompass the danger to establish cohesive
islands that are cut off from the rest of the city. Furthermore, given the solidarity-based
housing regime of Vienna, fostering bonding social capital on the neighbourhood level, might
anyway just be an additional safeguarding mechanism for social cohesion.
More important is the direct link between the micro-level of residents and the macro-level of
urban housing policy. In this respect, cooperative housing represents a crucial intermediate
level that strengthens the linking social capital of residents and provides opportunity
structures for citizen participation. However, the increasing adoption of a corporate
management orientation leads to a hollowing out of the cooperative principle of democratic
member participation, reducing it to an informal and non-binding substitute.
Thus, it is in the responsibility of both managements and residents to revitalise the existing
democratic governance structures of cooperative housing before they will be completely
dismantled by market liberalization and privatization. In contrast to other European cities,
third sector housing in Vienna has the potential to give residents a voice beyond the
neighbourhood and the field of housing.
11 citations
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: Cole et al. as discussed by the authors examined the role of pro-choice and pro-life opposing movements in adoption agencies' growth and found that these movements can contribute to environmental opportunity structures for market growth.
Abstract: Open (Adoption) for Business: The Rise of the Pro-life Countermovement and Entrepreneurial Opportunity in the Adoption Organizational Field Krista Marie Cole Frederico Department of Sociology, BYU Master of Science Recent directions in organizational studies have demonstrated progressive social movements’ ability to generate rewarding enterprises or environmental opportunity structures (EOS) in receptive markets. However, more nuanced opposing movements (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996), such as the pro-choice and pro-life movements, receive far less attention, leaving scholars to postulate that there is much yet to know about the about the impact of movements other than those with strict progressive orientations (Zald, Morrill, and Rao 2005). To better understand how opposing movements contribute to environmental opportunity structures, this thesis examines dramatic growth in the number of adoption agencies advertising services in the Yellow Pages during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Some suggest the growth may be due to changing attitudes and laws regulating interracial adoption, the growing acceptance of international adoption as a family formation strategy, and the success of the adoptee rights movement. However, I argue that at least some of this growth is related to changes in abortion laws associated with the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and associated pro-choice and pro-life opposing movements that dominated public debate during the same period. Applying cultural entrepreneurship and competitive framing, I demonstrate that pro-choice language is adopted by adoption agencies that compete with abortion clinics as they offer services to birth mothers. Opposing movement features are evident in organization growth patterns, the services offered, and the slogans used. Dissecting the adoption services field into generalist and specialist organizational forms, I find that specialists experienced precipitous growth and were more likely to make use of certain “choice” frames, co-opted from the prochoice movement and redirected to support pro-life ideologies. Further, I find that “open adoption” services, championed by the adoptee advocacy community for their identity-affirming and sustained relationship-allowing practices, are most often marketed by the adoption provider as a choice-granting process, giving adoption providers further opportunity to mirror the prochoice movement’s choice-centric practices. Because adoption agencies’ growth, slogans, and services are largely bound up in tactics specific to the pro-choice and pro-life opposing movement dynamics, I conclude that opposing movements can indeed contribute to environmental opportunity structures for market growth.
11 citations
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this article, a study of library use in a poor neighborhood in Windhoek, Namibia, to understand the diffusion of public libraries around the world was conducted. But the authors did not consider the relationship between the library use and the local and international notions of the library, and they concluded that the libraries are ultimately an amalgamation of local and global notions, reflecting the needs of the community for education and self-development.
Abstract: This dissertation is a study of library use in a poor neighborhood in Windhoek, Namibia, to understand the diffusion of public libraries around the world. I used a sociological approach and the Extended Case Method (Burawoy, 1991; 1998). Two theories framed the research: World Society Theory (Meyer et al. 1997) and New Institutional Theory (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991). World Society Theory was developed from evidence of similarities in governmental, health and educational organizations globally that demonstrates the growth of a world culture based on a rationalistic and scientific approach to knowledge. The findings show that international notions of public libraries do influence national and local notions of them. Local and national notions of the library also have influence, however, and the libraries are ultimately an amalgamation of local and international notions, reflecting in part the needs of the community for education and self-development.
11 citations
13 Mar 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify the information that influences managers' decisions about subordinates' requests for work-life benefits, including gender and performance of the subordinate submitting the request, along with whether a career break or working from home was requested.
Abstract: Work-life policies and programs, such as flextime and working from home, are intended to assist employees with balancing work and personal commitments. Employee uptake of these arrangements, however, has been constrained, with managers at times reluctant to facilitate employees’ access. The focus of this thesis was understanding the decision-making role assumed by managers when they evaluate a request from an employee to utilise a work-life benefit.The research sought to firstly identify the information that influences managers’ decisions about subordinates’ requests for work-life benefits. Three information cues were examined: the gender and performance of the subordinate submitting the request, along with whether a career break or working from home was requested. The research also sought to identify the motivational and interpersonal orientations of managers that influence their use of these information cues and ultimately their decisions about subordinates’ requests. Five orientations were hypothesised to affect managers’ decisions: regulatory focus, affective commitment, self-construals, implicit theories and interpersonal trust. The selection of these variables, along with the formulation of the hypotheses, were guided by four theoretical frameworks: work disruption theory, dependency theory, institutional theory and helping behaviour.Judgment analysis was applied to evaluate the decisions reached by 121 participants with managerial experience. The managers responded to 16 vignettes, indicating whether the subordinate’s request for a work-life benefit would be approved or denied. Managers were found to be more likely to approve requests for career breaks than working from home. They were also more inclined to approve requests from high performers than average performers. The gender of subordinates did not significantly affect whether requests were approved, however. Furthermore, managers’ use of these information cues, and their overall tendency to approve requests for work-life benefits, were influenced by their regulatory focus, self-construal, implicit theory and interpersonal trust. To illustrate, prevention focused managers – managers that prioritise immediate duties over future aspirations – were more likely to approve requests for career breaks than requests for working from home.The results align to the proposition that managers reach decisions that are intended both to reduce disruption to the organisation but also to retain employees upon whom they are dependent. Managers are also influenced by institutional pressures to offer work-life benefits to particular employees and by the desire to help subordinates by approving requests for work-life benefits. Thus, the research confirms the relevance of work disruption theory, dependency theory, institutional theory and helping behaviour for explaining managerial decision making on work-life benefits.The findings also provide practical insights about practices organisations need to implement to promote more consistent and equitable decisions by managers. In particular, organisations should address the incentives bestowed on managers for approving work-life benefit requests and the training undertaken by managers, along with the guidelines established for decision making that detail the criteria for evaluating requests. The mindset with which managers approach the decision-making task of reviewing requests should also be considered.
11 citations
Dissertation•
11 Dec 2019
TL;DR: In this article, a partir de l'etude approfondie du cas du groupe Accor, l'objet de ce travail de recherche est de comprendre quels facteurs peuvent influencer la prise en compte, par les hotels affiles a un groupe multinational, de la politique environnementale globale definie par leur maison-mere.
Abstract: A partir de l’etude approfondie du cas du groupe Accor, l’objet de ce travail de recherche est de comprendre quels facteurs peuvent influencer la prise en compte, par les hotels affiles a un groupe multinational, de la politique environnementale globale definie par leur maison-mere.La maison-mere deploie une politique environnementale identique dans le monde entier, mais les hotels affilies ne repondent pas tous de la meme facon a ses directives ; les comportements environnementaux different non seulement entre les differents pays ou ces etablissements se situent, mais egalement dans le meme pays. Les particularites du contexte local dans lequel s’implantent les hotels affilies peuvent partiellement expliquer cette heterogeneite. En outre, parallelement aux facteurs institutionnels – qu'ils soient corporatifs ou issus du contexte local–, les caracteristiques specifiques a chaque hotel sont egalement susceptibles d’influencer son comportement environnemental.
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