Modernization theory

About: Modernization theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14641 publications have been published within this topic receiving 232469 citations.

Organization Theory and the Public Sector: Instrument, Culture and Myth

Abstract: Public-sector organizations are fundamentally different from their private-sector counterparts. They are part of the society’s political organizations and are major political actors. They are multifunctional, follow a political leadership and the majority do not operate in an external market. In an era of rapid reform, reorganization and modernization of the public sector, this book offers a timely and illuminating introduction to the public-sector organization that recognizes its unique values, interests, knowledge and power base. Drawing on both instrumental and institutional perspectives within organization theory, as well as democratic theory and empirical studies of decision-making, the book addresses five central aspects of the public-sector organization: ■ goals, values and motivation ■ leadership and steering ■ reform and change ■ effects, learning and implications ■ understanding and design The book challenges conventional economic analysis of the public sector, arguing instead for a political-democratic approach and a new prescriptive organization theory. A rich resource of both theory and practice, Organization Theory and the Public Sector: Instrument, Culture and Myth is essential reading for anybody studying the public sector. This second edition of the book contains a range of new and updated themes, examples and references.

Why the Middle East is Economically Underdeveloped: Historical Mechanisms of Institutional Stagnation

Abstract: Amillennium ago, around roughly the tenth century, the Middle East was an economically advanced region of the world, as measured by standard of living, technology, agricultural productivity, literacy or institutional creativity. Only China might have been even more developed. Subsequently, however, the Middle East failed to match the institutional transformation through which western Europe vastly increased its capacity to pool resources, coordinate productive activities and conduct exchanges. True, the institutional endowment of the Middle East continued to evolve. But in certain areas central to economic modernization change was minimal, at least in relation to the structural transformation of the West and, for that matter, the Middle East’s own evolution during the early Islamic centuries. In eighteenth-century Cairo, credit practices hardly differed from those of the tenth century. Likewise, investors and traders were using enterprise forms essentially identical to those prevalent eight centuries earlier. By the nineteenth century, the entire Middle East was clearly “underdeveloped” relative to western Europe and its offshoots in the new world; and by the twenty-first century, it had fallen markedly behind parts of the Far East as well. This essay offers reasons why the Middle East became underdeveloped. In particular, it points to certain Middle Eastern institutions, including ones rooted in the region’s dominant religion, as past and in some cases also continuing obstacles to economic development. The institutions that generated evolutionary bottlenecks include: 1) the Islamic law of inheritance, which inhibited capital accumulation; 2) the strict individualism of Islamic law and its lack of a concept of corporation, which hindered organizational development and contributed to keeping civil society weak; and 3) the waqf, Islam’s distinct form of trust, which locked vast

Are Cultures Becoming Individualistic? A Cross-Temporal Comparison of Individualism–Collectivism in the United States and Japan:

Abstract: Individualism-collectivism is one of the best researched dimensions of culture in psychology. One frequently asked but underexamined question regards its cross-temporal changes: Are cultures becoming individualistic? One influential theory of cultural change, modernization theory, predicts the rise of individualism as a consequence of economic growth. Findings from past research are generally consistent with this theory, but there is also a body of evidence suggesting its limitations. To examine these issues, cross-temporal analyses of individualism-collectivism in the United States and Japan were conducted. Diverging patterns of cultural changes were found across indices: In both countries, some of the obtained indices showed rising individualism over the past several decades, supporting the modernization theory. However, other indices showed patterns that are best understood within the frameworks of a shifting focus of social relationships and a persisting cultural heritage. A comprehensive theory of cultural change requires considerations of these factors in addition to the modernization effect.