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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Dissertation•
25 Mar 2020
11 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the quality lists compiles the quality rankings from 21 different academic institutions across the globe, while I focused on the listings of the Erasmus Research Institute of Management Journals Listing (EJL 2012) and the Australian Business Deans Council Journal Rankings List of November 2013 (ABDC 2013).
Abstract: or in the key terms. The journals were selected from the annually produced Journal Quality overview (Kostova & Roth, 2002, p. 216). This quality lists compiles the quality rankings from 21 different academic institutions across the globe, while I focused on the listings of the Erasmus Research Institute of Management Journals Listing (EJL 2012) and the Australian Business Deans Council Journal Rankings List of November 2013 (ABDC 2013). Journals were sampled from four different categories namely, ‘General & Strategy’, ‘IB’ and ‘Organisation Behaviour/Organisation Studies/HRM/Industrial Relations’. In order to be included it had to have a ranking of ‘S, PA, P or STAR’ or in the EJL 2012 or ‘B, A or A*’ in the ABCD 2013. Domain Journal Ranking EJL 2012 Ranking ABCD 2013 Results International Business (IB) International Business Review International Journal of Management and Organization Journal of International Business Studies Journal of International Management Journal of World Business (Colombia) Management International Review S S STAR S S S A B A* A A A 0 0 0 0 0 0 General Management Academy of Management Journal Academy of Management Review Administrative Science Quarterly British Journal of Management European Management Journal Journal of Management Journal of Management Inquiry Journal of Management Studies Long Range Planning Management and Organization Review Organization Science Organization Studies Organization and Environment Scandinavian Journal of Management Strategic Management Journal STAR STAR STAR S S P S STAR P S STAR STAR S S STAR A* A* A* A B A* A A* A A A* A* B B A* 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CSR Business Ethics: A European Review Journal of Business Ethics S P B A 2 3 Total located papers 6
11 citations
Dissertation•
18 Dec 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose to repondre un utilisant l'approche par les oppositions paradoxales, which permits de prendre en consideration l'indissociabilite du double niveau organisationnel des reseaux.
Abstract: Les reseaux d’entreprises sont des formes organisationnelles conduisant a un certain nombre d’avantages pour les entreprises qui en sont membres. Pour ces dernieres, cette forme organisationnelle presente l’interet de ne pas supprimer leur autonomie ni leur independance, tout en beneficiant des avantages lies aux rapprochements inter-organisationnels. De par cette particularite, les reseaux comprennent ainsi deux niveaux organisationnels distincts mais indissociables : le niveau organisationnel des entreprises membres et le niveau organisationnel du reseau. Avant de beneficier des avantages auxquels conduit l’organisation en reseau, il est necessaire qu’il soit construit par les organisations qui en sont a l’origine. Dans le temps, la construction du reseau conduit a un certain renforcement de son degre de neguentropie, se traduisant par une complexification sur le long-terme. Cette complexification s’opere tout en conservant l’autonomie et l’independance des organisations qui en sont membres. Peu de recherches se sont interessees a cette question de la construction des reseaux. Cette these propose d’y repondre un utilisant l’approche par les oppositions paradoxales (approche par les paradoxes et approche par les dialectiques), qui permet de prendre en consideration l’indissociabilite du double niveau organisationnel des reseaux. Par le biais d’une etude de cas appliquee a un reseau d’entreprises dans le secteur horticole de la region angevine, nous cherchons a identifier comment les objectifs de chacun des deux niveaux organisationnels contribuent a la construction du reseau en question et au renforcement de son degre de neguentropie.
11 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2018
11 citations
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of the managerial activities that produced two radical business innovations in a major Finnish telecommunications company called Sonera, which involved the launch of new technologies in an emerging customer market, is presented.
Abstract: This is a study of the managerial activities that produced two radical business innovations in a major Finnish telecommunications company called Sonera. The data clearly indicated the central impact of managers on these innovations, which involved the launch of new technologies in an emerging customer market. The two innovations were selected as research objects after a careful examination of innovations in the telecommunications industry in general and Sonera Corporation in particular. It was also recognized that during the history of the company, the management of Sonera had communicated four major changes in the company’s core business. The second and third of these changes were vitally based on the studied innovations, ARP and Zed. After these first observations, a more detailed research question emerged, i.e., to clarify and conceptualize how the managers at Sonera contributed to the emergence of these two innovations. This exploratory study was based on longitudinal field data from Sonera Corporation. The main data collection methods were participant observation, interviews, and respondent validations. This study suggests that certain managerial activities, which can be labelled as buffering and bridging, have a strong explanatory power for the development of innovations. Most importantly, the study indicates that the focal managers’ experience and motivation, together with the specific situational circumstances, influenced the way in which managerial activities enabled the progress of these innovations through the processes identified already in the widely known Bower-Burgelman process model. Managers facilitated the development through simultaneous buffering and bridging activities, which had an important role in the cyclical development of the innovations and in the emergence of their distinctive features. In general, this study highlights the influence of simultaneous buffering and bridging activities at multiple managerial levels in the organization. In fact, when innovations are bootlegged, it is crucial for the organization to be open towards third parties in order to raise intrapreneurial capacity and absorb external technology and market knowledge. Hence, bridging is then the core managerial activity. Furthermore, it is important to provide sufficient room and space for the innovation initiators to define principles for managerial activities that enable bringing the innovations to fruition. Therefore, buffering is the core managerial activity at the time when the initiators define the innovation. Moreover, in the buffered technical core, the focal managers need to reopen the innovation development to third parties in order to create a group or community of people with sufficiently similar or congruent sources of motivation, experience, or intentions. This allows them then to mutually assist one another over the long term to develop the market and provide impetus for the innovation. Thus, striking a balance between buffering and bridging activities is the core managerial activity when the focal managers provide impetus for the innovation development. This study also indicates that one way to create a common general intention that includes sufficient joint attention to both bridging and buffering activities is by building intra-corporate communities across formal hierarchical levels.
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