Essays
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Framing Work in Metacompetition - Barnett, William P.
Existing research studies competition among organizations, but normally takes as a given the formal and informal “rules of the game” governing competitions. Yet, these “rules” are often determined through a prior, higher‐level competition over the game to be played. Such “metacompetitions” determine who can compete, what kinds of competitive moves can be made, what criteria will be used to evaluate competitors, and what will be the payoffs to competitions. By prevailing in metacompetitions, organizations gain the advantage of competing in a game for which they are well suited, and the disadvantage of rivals who find themselves playing the wrong game. This essay notes that organizations engage in framing work to influence the outcome of metacompetitions, and argues that this behavior shapes the distribution of strategies that we observe among organizations in competition. -
Institutions and the Economy - Gershenson, Carl
Sociology, political science, and economics have undergone parallel revolutions since the late 1970s, following on the heels of the behavioral revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Four distinct institutional paradigms have emerged: sociological institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism in political science, historical institutionalism in the same discipline, and new institutional economics. Sociologists argue that economic institutions—which encompass paradigms, conventions, rules, and regulations—shape modern behavior. National institutional differences produce stable patterns of economic behavior within countries, but institutions themselves change over time. Four recent trends in sociology are reviewed: studies of the global spread of regulatory institutions; studies of the use of economic theories to support policy design and economic conventions; studies of market actors as social movements promoting economic change; and studies of the moral and cultural underpinnings of the economy. -
Organizational Economics - Gibbons, Robert
Organizational economics applies the theoretical and empirical methods of economics to study the nature, roles and performance of organizations, especially managed ones like business firms. In this essay we trace the development of this field, survey the questions it addresses, point to recent work that we find especially germane and offer suggestions for promising future directions. -
Organizational Populations and Fields - Haveman, Heather A.
This essay examines two major perspectives on organizations that have been prominent since the 1970s: ecology and institutionalism, both of which emerged as reactions against rationalist approaches to the study of organizations. Both take as their primary units of analysis collections of organizations, rather than individual organizations: “populations” for ecologists (groups of organizations with the same form) and “fields” for institutionalists (groups of organizations of different forms that interact with each other in some social sector). Ecologists seek to explain the changing distribution of organizations (rates of founding, failure, growth, and change) in terms of the features of organizations' environments. Institutionalists seek to explain organizational legitimacy, variety, and change by reference to cultural norms, values, and expectations about what is the “right” or “normal” way to organize. While ecologists seek general explanations that apply to all populations, institutionalists seek explanations that are sensitive to the peculiarities of the field under study. Ecological and institutional studies of organizations have converged in the past decade, which has yielded studies that minimize the weaknesses of each perspective and maximize their strengths. Ecologists have examined many explanatory factors, such as pressures to imitate legitimate organizational forms, which were originally highlighted by institutionalists. In the same vein, institutionalists have turned their attention to founding and failure, outcomes that were ecologists' original focus, and have used factors such as the number of organizations, much studied by ecologists, to explain these outcomes. We conclude by suggesting potential fruitful avenues for further integration between these perspectives. -
Organizations and the Production of Systemic Risk - Perrow, Charles
Organizations and Systemic Risks Systemic risks are those threatening multiple parts of an organizations, or other organizations and systems in its environment. Interdependencies abound in our highly technological world and can be unexpected, and in the case of global warming—largely an organizational failure—dire. An 80% reduction in the assets of oil, gas, and coal companies is required to reduce warming but is not anticipated. So‐called “natural” disasters are shown to be enhanced or even caused by organizations. The organizational roots of the 2008 economic meltdown, Fukushima, and chemical plant accidents are examined with regard to regulations, profits, and system interdependencies. With economic systems favoring short‐run concerns, and shareholder rather than stakeholder values, there is little evidence of emerging long‐run visions that could protect future generations. -
Sociology of Entrepreneurship - Ruef, Martin
Since the 1970s, we have witnessed a growing body of scholarship that investigates the social context, processes, and consequences of entrepreneurship. Despite—or, perhaps, because of—the conceptual vagueness around the definition of the entrepreneur, this topic has attracted attention from a wide range of interdisciplinary scholars and has been applied to a variety of entrepreneurial activities among businesses, nonprofits, social movements, and public sector initiatives. This review begins with three views of entrepreneurs that are rooted in classical scholarship, conceptualizing them as innovators, autonomy seekers, and organizers. It then analyzes the mechanisms that link these views to entrepreneurial outcomes at different levels of analysis. Scholarship on social networks examines how the structure of relations may transmit new ideas, encourage freedom from interpersonal constraint, and produce social support for organizing. Research on career structures considers how past organizational contexts tend to augment or decrease entrepreneurial propensities. Studies of organizational populations and regions address when the ecology of those contexts allows entrepreneurs to carve out a new niche, despite competition from incumbents. The review concludes with suggestions for improving research methodology and the representativeness of social contexts in the study of entrepreneurship. -
Stability and Change in Corporate Governance - Davis, Gerald F.
Corporate governance describes the process that allocates power and resources within organizations and the societal institutions that shape how they look, how they make decisions, and how the proceeds from their activities are divided. Research and theory traditionally focused on the institutions that overcome the separation of ownership and control created by dispersed shareholdings. Critics noted that this problem was distinctively American, and that corporate governance is shaped by history, culture, and power. We describe several domains for productive future research that is comparative, historical, and attentive to power dynamics. -
The Institutional Logics Perspective - Thornton, Patricia H.
This essay discusses a new approach to institutional analysis—the institutional logics perspective (ILP). This perspective is a meta‐theory useful for integrating and augmenting a variety of social science theories to better understand the effects of cultural institutions on individuals, organizations, and societies. We describe the history of the development of the ILP, define its core concepts and mechanisms, and review and discuss foundational and cutting‐edge research. Prior overviews emphasize the mechanisms, variety of substantive contexts, and the cross‐level effects. We take a different approach by organizing the literature review by institutional orders. This meta‐analysis reveals a pattern of institutional change—the weakening of the professions and the spread of the market logic in many domains. We discuss implications of this finding and suggest future research. -
What is Special about Specialization? - Underhill, Anne P.
This essay argues that several key issues regarding craft specialization deserve to be further investigated. These include how specialization develops, variation in strategies to achieve intensification of production, causal factors for technological innovation versus technological conservatism, and how specialization changes in relation to the development of urbanism. Recent studies moving us forward in productive directions with respect to methodology examine the value of goods in specific social contexts, consider the impact of ritual life on craft production, and more thoroughly assess the sources of variation in finished products.