Can Hospital Competition Really Affect Hospital Behavior or Not? An Empirical Study of Different Competition Measures Comparison in Taiwan

Different approaches to measure the hospital competition index might lead to inconsistent results of the effects of hospital competition on innovation adoption. The purpose of this study is to adopt a different approach to define market area and measure the level of competition to examine whether hospital competition has a positive effect on hospital behavior, taking quality indicator projects participation as an example. A total of 238 hospitals located in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung were recruited in this study. Competition index was used as the independent variable, and participation lists of Taiwan Clinical Performance Indicator and Taiwan Healthcare Indicator Series in 2012 were used as dependent variables. All data used in this study were retrieved from the 2012 national hospital profiles and the participation list of the 2 quality indicator projects in 2012; these profiles are issued by the Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare annually. Geopolitical boundaries and 4 kinds of fixed radiuses were used to define market area. Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and hospital density were used to measure the level of competition. A total of 12 competition indices were produced in this study by employing the geographic information system, while max-rescaled R² was used to evaluate and compare the models on goodness of fit. The results show that the effects of hospital competition on quality indicator projects participation were varied, which mean different indicators for market competition might reveal different conclusions. Furthermore, this study also found the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index at 5-km radius was the optimum competition index.

“Drinking Cultures” in University Residential Colleges

Young people’s heavy alcohol use has been widely linked to their “drinking cultures.” Recent scholarly commentary, however, suggests that prevailing conceptualizations of drinking culture, including those in “public health-oriented” research, tend to oversimplify the complexities involved. This article contributes to the conceptual clarification and development of young people’s “drinking cultures.” We provide a case study of a highly publicized example—that of Australian university residential college students. The case study focuses on the role of residential college policy and management in students’ alcohol use, examining how they represent, understand, and address it. Adopting a qualitative approach, we identify and analyze key themes from college policy documents and minimally structured interviews with college management related to students’ alcohol use. Our analysis is informed by two key existing works on the subject. The first is a sociological framework theorizing young people’s heavy drinking as a “culture of intoxication,” which is embedded in and shaped by broader social forces, especially those linked to a “neoliberal social order.” The second draws on findings from a previously published study on student drinking in university residential colleges that identified the significant role of institutional “micro-processes” for shaping alcohol use in university residential colleges. In understanding the specific character of students’ drinking in Australian university residential colleges, however, we also draw on sociological—specifically neo-institutionalist—approaches to organizations, proposing that Australian college policy and management related to students’ drinking do not operate simply as regulatory influences. Rather, they are organizational processes integral to residential college students’ drinking cultures and their making. Accordingly, college alcohol policy and management of students’ drinking, as they have prevailed in this Australian context, offer limited opportunities for minimizing harmful drinking.

Leadership Vistas: From the Constraints of the Behavioral Sciences to Emancipation through the Humanities

Leadership studies, as represented by the two principal journals in the field --Leadership Quarterly and The Journal of Leadership Studies -- has been contrained primarily within the "behavioral sciences" and, more particularly, within the disciplines of psychology/social psychology and business/management. This article proposes consideration of emancipatory perspectives on leadership offered by the humanities and, more particularly, by literature/literary studies. Using neo-institutional theory as a means of framing the discussion, it argues that leadership studies has become embedded, institutionalized enterprise and that the humanities may provide one means of deinstitutionalizing and broadening the field.

Standard Setting and Following in Corporate Governance: An Observation-Theoretical Study of the Effectiveness of Governance Codes

Researchers have lately been pointing out the increasing significance of standards in all areas of contemporary life. There have been calls for more research into the processes of setting and following standards. In this article we analyse the effectiveness of codes of corporate governance as a specific type of standard that has become particularly prominent over the last decade. On the basis of an observation-theoretical approach, codes are conceptualized as schemas of observation that establish a field of mutual observations. The effectiveness of codes depends on the one hand on the extent to which they become integrated into recursive cycles of mutual observation between the corporation and the various actors in the field. On the other hand, effectiveness depends on how codes relate to other observational schemas. On the basis of the analysis several propositions about the effectiveness of code regulation are developed, which may be tested in further empirical studies.

Global Standards in Action: Insights from Anti-Money Laundering Regulation

As organizations have come under the increasing influence of global rules of all sorts, organization scholars have started studying the dynamics of global regulation. The purpose of this article is to identify and evaluate the contribution to this interdisciplinary field by the `Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research'. The latter's key proposition is that while global regulation often consists of voluntary best practice rules it can nevertheless become highly influential under certain conditions. We assess how innovative this approach is using as a benchmark the state of the art in another field of relevance to the study of global regulation, i.e. `International Relations'. Our discussion is primarily theoretical but we draw on the case of global anti-money laundering regulation to illustrate our arguments and for inspirations of how to further elaborate the approach.

Beyond Measuring the Human Resources Management-Organizational Performance Link: Applying Critical Realist Meta-Theory

One response to the possible outsourcing of the human resource (HR) function is to turn to ‘science’ and seek to demonstrate an empirical association between HR practices and increased organizational performance. This paper critically examines the shortcomings of the ‘scientific’ approach by first, reviewing the three distinctive versions of research on the Human Resources Management (HRM)-Performance link in an attempt to demonstrate their commitment to a common ‘scientific’ meta-theory. Second, we use critical realism to demonstrate: (1) that theoretical underdevelopment and lack of explanatory power are encouraged by the use of an inappropriate ‘scientific’ meta-theory; (2) the possibility of meta-theorizing the causal connection between HRM and performance without seeking statistical associations; and (3) how all this is in-keeping with Institutional theory. Finally, all of this is achieved by inserting evidence from interviews with HR professionals to demonstrate not only that they are sceptical of the ‘scientific’ approach, but also that they hold views of the world not dissimilar to the critical realist approach we advocate.

Corporate Transformations: Designer Culture, Designer Employees and `Post-Occupational' Solidarity

This article argues that the new corporate culture currently being constructed in the corporate institution of work has wide social implications. The interplay of post-industrial technologies, new organizational practices and wider social influences is effecting changes in corporate production and culture. In particular, the integration of knowedge and work tasks and employee flexibility enabled by the `smart' technologies is generating new forms of work organization and blurring occupational boundaries. It is argued that the deliberate reconstruction of corporate culture deconstructs the culture of industrial workplaces as it simultaneously attempts to compensate for the loss of forms of social solidarity typical of industrialism. Industrial corporate culture is replaced with a designer., `simulated' culture that requires and produces a shift in employee identification and industrial solidarities. This empirically based interpretive essay discusses some of the social effects of the corporate reconstruction of culture and its displacement of a primary locus of industrial society's social solidarity. It proposes the emergence of a post-industrial, `post-occupational' social solidarity.

Telling Technological Tales

This article examines the relationship between technology and the organization of work. Several theoretical positions are outlined and are drawn upon in the context of historical evidence relating to an industry case study. The empirical focus is the early US animation industry and in particular the introduction of cel animation in the second decade of the century and after. Standard histories of major studios and figures are examined, along with the patent applications for the cel animation process. A model of the main elements in the analysis is outlined and its connections with the theoretical positions that centre on technology and work are examined. The analysis emphasizes the importance of the wider institutional environment within which the technology of cel animation was designed and different aspects of its `interpretive flexibility'.

Pluralist Epistemology and the Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm

Our focus is the differences between monist and pluralist epistemologies. We want to illustrate how the adoption of a pluralist epistemology can reshape our theorizing about firms, organizations and their management. We can then build theories that are inherently dynamic and treat firms and organizations as the processes of creating the values which markets distribute. But to do this we must move beyond today's positivist monist conventions to a kind of epistemological pluralism that some might describe as postmodern. Given this shift we can then address the kinds of dynamic non-equilibrium systems that are proving of increasing interest to social and economic systems theorists. Our conclusion is that useful knowledge-based theories of the firm are less theories of objective entities `out there' than sets of contextualized heuristics guiding managers' intervention in their organizations as quasi-autonomous systems.

The Harvard Business School Story: Avoiding Knowledge by Being Relevant

Almost a hundred years after its foundation, the Harvard Business School (HBS) continues to represent the epitome of general management knowledge. As an academic organization, it is both idiosyncratic and conventional; as an institution, it is admired for its position, longevity and power. This paper investigates institutional mechanisms that have allowed HBS to organize around a particular set of values and beliefs, which may account for its privileged standing. We argue that a complex institution like Harvard is mirrored somewhat in the written text it produces, the case and the case method, which can be deconstructed by “reading” the resulting predicaments in sustaining such a model of knowledge. What is produced at the HBS is specific to its own organizational structure but intrinsically linked through the notion of relevance to three business ideologies: managerialism, institutionalism and American capitalism. The case method as organizational artifact and methodological tool provides a basis for understanding these general institutional dynamics as a limit to HBS’s ability to change.

Epistemic Objects, Artefacts and Organizational Change

One of the key concepts of the neo-institutional studies of organizations has been routine—an established, rule-governed pattern of action. The concept of routine creates difficulties when used for making sense of the emergence of new practices or change in organizations and institutions. There are two reasons for this. First, routine was introduced originally to account for the continuity of organizational life. Second, it is based on theories of action and behaviour that focus exclusively on the pre-reflective and embodied aspects of human practice. This paper seeks an alternative approach by using the concepts of epistemic object and artefact mediation of human activity. It argues that representational artefacts, such as concepts and models, are instrumental in inducing change in human practices. Using the work of occupational health and safety inspectors as an example, it is shown how a practice or set of routines is made into an object of enquiry in order to generate a working hypothesis for an alternative practice. The hypothesis is further objectified by designing a set of informational tools and procedures that carry on the new practice.

Rationality and the Philosophy of Organization

In this article a philosophical view of rationality is developed which is relevant to our understanding of organizations, especially in connexion with problems of meaning and power. I argue that we need to overcome the traditional dichotomy of feeling and reason, and that means-end and communicative rationality are to be supplemented by another mode, which I call `relational rationality'.

Shielding Idiosyncrasy from Isomorphic Pressures: Towards Optimal Distinctiveness in European Filmmaking

This paper advances a micro theory of creative action by examining how distinctive artists shield their idiosyncratic styles from the isomorphic pressures of a field. It draws on the cases of three internationally recognized, distinctive European film directors—Pedro Almodóvar (Spain), Nanni Moretti (Italy) and Lars von Trier (Denmark). We argue that, in a cinema field, managing artistic pressures for distinctiveness versus business pressures for profits drives filmmakers' quest for optimal distinctiveness. This quest seeks both exclusive (unique style) and inclusive (audience-appealing) artwork with legitimacy in the field. Our theory of creative action for optimal distinctiveness suggests that film directors increase their control by personally consolidating artistic and production roles, by forming close partnerships with committed producers, and by establishing their own production companies. Ironically, to escape the iron cage of local cinema fields, film directors increasingly control the coupling of art and business.

Introduction: Chaos, Complexity and Organization Theory

Chaos and complexity science are part of an emerging new imagery in the scientific and lay cultures, which helps us conceive of the social world as chaosmos-a combination of chaos and cosmos, disorder and order. Notions like nonlinearity, sensitivity to initial conditions, iteration, feedback loops, novelty, process, emergence and unpredictability, which for a long time were not part of mainstream science, have now come to the fore and furnish us with a new vocabulary in terms of which we may attempt to redescribe organizations, and the social world in general. The Newtonian style, whose most significant feature has been the pursuit of the decontextualized ideal, is gradually receding in favour of the chaotic style—the ability to notice instability, disorder, novelty, emergence and self-organization. For organization theory, it is argued that such developments are of great importance for they make central to our study of organizations) the notions of time, history, human finitude, freedom and circularity of behaviour. Moreover, the chaotic style, by privileging qualitative analysis, favours narrative descriptions of organizational phenomena.

A Critical Realist Approach To Institutional Entrepreneurship

Recent works in institutional analysis have challenged the traditional deterministic view, whereby institutional pressures explain actors’ actions and behaviours, and have called for the restoration of agency to this analysis. This presents institutional analysis with a major challenge: how to consider simultaneously the influence of both actors’ actions and the structures in which they are embedded, without conflating them? This issue is especially crucial when trying to analyse institutional entrepreneurs’ strategies. In this paper, we outline a non-conflating model of institutional entrepreneurship, by drawing on critical realism. We illustrate this model by mean of an illustrative case study.

The Re-Construction of Organization Studies: Wrestling with Incommensurability

This paper proposes a `re-construction' of organization studies in order to deal with the chronic incommensurability that characterizes the discipline. The paper begins by discussing the issue of incommensurability between organization studies schools of thought, arguing that it represents a significant problem with which the field must cope. Ambiguity of the key constructs that form the building blocks of organization studies schools is identified as one major reason for persistent inter-school incommensurability. To help deal with the problem, we recommend the creation of a dictionary that would include democratically produced definitions of key organization studies constructs. The procedures used by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to develop new accounting standards are presented as a possible model for the dictionary-building process. The role of the dictionary in reducing inter-school incommensurability is discussed, and possible disadvantages considered. While the need to formally create construct definitions is symptomatic of the low paradigm development of organization studies, the dictionary is envisioned as a tool for increasing the future paradigm development of the field.

The Structuringof Working Relationships in Small Firms: Towards a Formal Framework

Small firms operating in competitive conditions are often assumed to follow the dictates of the market. Existing institutionalist research shows that they are in fact embedded in networks and thus shaped by social institutions. It does not, however, show how different types of firm are embedded in different ways. A formal framework is thus developed, setting out the external context and internal resources that shape small firms’ behaviour. The framework is illustrated with empirical examples, and a research programme is outlined.

The Evolving Object of Software Development

This paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the effects of bureaucratic rationalization on relatively non-routine, knowledge-work activities. It focuses on the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model (CMM®) for software development. In particular, it explores how the CMM affects the object of software developers’ work and thereby affects organization structure. Empirical evidence is drawn from interviews in four units of a large software consulting firm. First, using contingency theory, I address the technical dimensions of the development object. Here CMM implementation reduced task uncertainty and helped master task complexity and interdependence. Second, using institutional theory, I broaden the focus to include the symbolic dimensions of the object. Adherence to the CMM involved the sampled organizations in efforts to ensure certification, and these symbolic conformance tasks interacted in both disruptive and productive ways with technical improvement tasks. Finally, using cultural-historical activity theory, I deepen the focus to include the social-structural dimensions of the object. Through these lenses, the software development task appears as basically contradictory, aiming simultaneously at use value, in the form of great code, and at exchange value, in the form of high fees and profits: the CMM deepened rather than resolved this contradiction. The form of organization associated with these mutations of the object of work is a form of bureaucracy that is simultaneously mock, coercive, and enabling.

Organization Theory and Military Metaphor: Time for a Reappraisal?

A ‘conventional’ use of military metaphor would use it to convey attributes such as hierarchical organization, vertical communication and limited autonomy. This is often used in contrast to a looser form of organization based on the metaphor of the network. However, this article argues that military practice is more complex, with examples of considerable autonomy within the constraints of central direction. It is suggested that not only might this be a more useful metaphor for many contemporary organizations, but also that simplistic uses of military metaphor divert our attention away from the functions that management hierarchies play. The discussion is embedded within a critical realist account of metaphor, arguing for both its value and the need for its further development.

David and Goliath in the Risk Society: Making Sense of the Conflict between Shell and Greenpeace in the North Sea

It is argued here that the victory of Greenpeace over Shell in the North Sea, in June 1995, exemplifies the empowerment of small organizations in the semiotic environment in which organizations in late modernity increasingly tend to operate. More specifically, it is argued that in late modern societies risk production tends to be at least as important as wealth production. In the risk society, symbolic power is of great importance, at times more important than economic power; social reflexivity, unfolding within a public discourse which favours post-materialist values, is an integral part of societal functioning; and the role of mediated communication occupies a central place. In a semiotic environment, business organizations do not only compete in the marketplace but, increasingly, in a discursive space in which winning the argument is just as important. These concepts are used to throw light on the conflict that broke out between Shell and Greenpeace in the North Sea, over the offshore dumping of a defunct oil platform.

Organization Structure as Ideology

This article uses an institutional framework to study how state socialist ideology influenced organization structure, governance modes, and administrative practices in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). An in-depth analysis of one organization, the Staatliche Porzellan Manufaktur Meissen (Meissen) was undertaken, employing qualitative field research methods. Our study shows how state socialism, as a complete institutional environment, imposes structures and practices on organizations. The methods that Meissen employed to buffer its technical core against the demands of the institutional environment are explored. Administrative practices' role in rationalizing and legitimating state ideology are highlighted; we further show that those structures and practices most influenced by state ideology were the first ones to be discarded when the regime was overthrown.

Albert and Whetten Revisited: Strengthening the Concept of Organizational Identity

The objective of this article is to formulate the concept of organizational identity in such a way that it can be distinguished analytically from related concepts, such as organizational culture and image, and can be used operationally to identify bona fide organizational identity claims referents and associated identity-referencing discourse. The proposal amounts to a stronger version of Albert and Whetten (1985), in that the implicit links between the elements of their composite, tripartite, formulation are made explicit and their treatment of organizational identity as a defined construct is emphasized. Although the proposal eschews conceptions of organizational identity formulated from the perspective of individuals, it treats organizational identity as an analogue of individual identity, drawing attention to the parallel functions identity plays for both individual and collective social actors, as well as the parallel distinguishing structural features of individual and organizational identity referents. The principle recommendation is to conduct the study of member-agents' answers to the question, “Who are we as an organization?” within the parameters of a defined identity-claim conceptual domain (what) and associated phenomenological markers of identity-referencing discourse (how, when, why).

The Dynamics of Merger and Acquisition Waves

The past two decades have witnessed the largest merger and acquisition (M&A) waves in history. Yet, the empirical evidence suggests that the perceived financial benefits of M&As often are not realized for corporate acquirers. We build a three-stage conceptual framework to illuminate the dynamics of this mergers and acquisitions wave activity and to help explain the frenzied persistence of this phenomenon despite poor performance results. From this framework, we show key considerations that are often missed in M&A assessments, particularly during a merger wave, and offer advice to ensure that managers make more enlightened M&A decisions.

A Technological Frames Perspective on Information Technology and Organizational Change

When information technologies (IT) have a central role in organizational change programs, understanding how organization members make sense of technology is critical to influencing their actions and to achieving planned outcomes. Orlikowski and Gash articulated a theoretic framework centered on technological frames of reference (TFR) to investigate interpretive processes related to IT in organizations. The TFR framework has been cited across a wide range of publications and has formed the basis for a genre of studies on the interpretive aspects of IT and organizational change. In this article, the author assesses these research contributions and argues that further theoretic development is needed for the TFR framework to reach its potential contributions to knowledge. The author outlines the following research strategies that could facilitate TFR theory development: focusing analysis on frame structure, investigating framing as a dynamic interpretive process, and examining the cultural and institutional basis of organizational frames.

The Institutional Embeddedness of International Business Strategy

U.S. managers and business academics alike have been slow to recognize some of the fundamental differences between domestic and international industrial competition. This article examines one particularly salient difference, the role of national institutional systems in shaping economic action across national markets. The article initially reviews four relevant bodies of literature on competitive strategy and international competition and finds that, despite progress in this direction, none of them adequately account for the institutional embeddedness of corporate strategy. The nature of national institutional systems and their impact on international business strategies are then theoretically described. Finally, some fundamental strategic implications of the institutional embeddedness approach are explored for U.S. firms.

Institutions and Technology

The paper offers a fresh approach to the analysis of technology in organization through a critique of Orlikowski and Barley's assessment that institutional theory has the potential to bridge the social and material facets of organizational change when greater emphasis is placed on the materiality of technology. Through analysis of a major information and communication technologies outsourcing contract between UK Inland Revenue and Electronic Data Services, the authors follow institutional theory in problematizing studies in which technology is treated as a material cause or independent variable. But the approach commended by Orlikowski and Barley, they argue, is flawed by its unproblematized assumption of a separation between the physical and social aspects of technology. Drawing on the thinking of Laclau and Mouffe, the authors advocate an alternative framework that unsettles the commonsense, naturalized differentiation of the materiality of technology and the discursive field through which it is articulated and given meaning.

The Revenge of Gratuitousness on Utilitarianism

This essay seeks to demonstrate that the spread of utilitarian rationalism within developed Western societies has had two crucial consequences: (a) gratuitousness and expressiveness, as irrepressible human needs, have been crushed “at the door” of utilitarian organizations but then have surreptitiously re-entered through the window, camouflaging themselves in forms that render them difficult to recognize and enable them to evade the mechanisms of social censorship that protect the image of organizations as the uncontested domain of instrumental rationality, and (b) the expert knowledge produced about organizations since the beginning of the last century has for almost 80 years ignored the expressive dimension of organizational life. From this point of view, the scientific community of organizational scholars has displayed an astonishing sort of collective repression. The forms taken by this repression and the expedients used to reduce the cognitive dissonance inevitably provoked by evidence of what has been repressed are examined.

Managing in Transition

MagoTaplan is a medium-sized, Cuban manufacturing firm located about 30 kilometers from Havana. Despite the catastrophic state of the Cuban economy, MagoTaplan continues to manufacture quality goods and is steadily increasing quality, product diversity, and production volume. But what management practices allowed this firm to succeed while others fail in an economy that has experienced a 50% drop in industrial output over the past 5 years? A large part of the answer lies in the careful and effective management of the complex institutional context faced by MagoTaplan combined with rapid innovation at an organizational level. In this article, the authors explore how managers at MagoTaplan implemented fundamental organizational change while managing complex institutional linkages and stringent ideological demands in a rapidly changing and uncertain institutional context. The results provide a basis for a discussion of institutional entrepreneurship and isomorphism in reaction to radical change in the institutional context.

Micro Matters

The primitive stuff of institutions is the individuals who staff them. This is seen in the plasticity of relations between leaders and followers. In this article, it is argued that excessive managerial control was a critical factor in determining the Challenger launch decision-making process. Specifically, it is shown that NASA’s Flight Readiness Review was ritualized through the aesthetic techniques of visualization, expectation, and repetition that intensified dependency relations. Aesthetic instruments as tools of power are a common but mostly unrecognized problem for organizational cooperation and communications. At NASA, a culture of conformity developed, characterized by the exaggerated centrality of the leader. Conflicts existed both between groups and within individuals, but these conflicts were suppressed. Recommendations are made for resolving these types of cultural problems.

Comment on Searle

While appreciative of Searle's contributions, this commentary questions whether the core insights of The Construction of Social Reality advance all that much beyond the position staked out more than a century ago by Emile Durkheim. Durkheim, to be sure, was no analytic philosopher, but both Durkheim and Searle recognize the existence of something like collective representations, view a key feature of such representations as being that of imposing new statuses, powers, and meanings on objects, and accept that social institutions are composed of individual actors who act on the basis of this collective imposition of status functions. For this reason, some of the criticisms that may be levelled against Durkheim's approach to social ontology – for example, that it ignores situations where collective representations are intrinsically coercive in nature – may also apply to Searle.

Spatial Dimensions and Institutional Uncertainties of Planning and the ‘New Regionalism’

Over the last two decades, there have been numerous advancements in theorising the significance of subnational territories within both the global economy and nation-states. Within the United Kingdom over the last few years, academic study has tended to concentrate on the ‘new regionalism’ and the rescaling of political processes caused by the ‘hollowing out’ of the nation-state and governmental devolution and decentralisation to the subnational level. Part of the reason for this push towards a renewed interest in regional governance and policy processes has been the autonomous institutional capacities of regions to harness regional economic development with planning processes. The new regionalism (a contentious label) has occurred throughout the United Kingdom, but has been implemented separately in each country, through the creation of Regional Development Agencies in the English regions, and new politically accountable elected forums in Wales and Scotland. In this paper, we provide one of the first attempts empirically to analyse the new institutional structures through a survey of agencies across Britain—in England, Scotland, and Wales—in order to provide a comparative assessment of evolving forms of regional governance. We illustrate a mixed reaction from public-policy stakeholders with concern over the ability of these new forums to develop a capacity to harness both economic development and planning policy processes. On a more conceptual level, the research indicates uncertainty over both the future spatial dimension of planning processes and the scale links between the new regional level and the existing national and local levels of governance.

The Burden of History in the Family Business Organization

In this article we focus on the study of history through the use of narratives, within the context of the prevalent form of organization worldwide: the family business. Specifically we consider the dilemma of the impossible gift of succession using Nietzsche’s discussion of the burden of history and paralleling the story of a family business succession with that of Shakespeare’s King Lear. This way, we seek to make a contribution to organizational studies by answering recent calls to engage more with history in studies of business organizations. By implication, the study also initiates an integration of family business studies into organization studies.

Project Networks and Changing Industry Practices Collaborative Content Production in the German Television Industry

Changing industry practices and forms of production organization are the medium and result of co-evolutionary processes of change. The disruptive event of transforming the German TV industry into a dual system triggered a change in content production from in-house to collaborative forms in project networks which are not only highly sensitive to previous and anticipated project practices, but also to industry practices. In turn, the change in the production organization recursively influences the reproduction of industry practices. The co-evolutionary analysis is based on structuration theory.

From Press to E-Media? The Transformation of an Organizational Field

The dynamics of field transformation is an under-investigated topic within organization theory. Drawing on the new institutional theory of organization, field transformation dynamics is examined, focusing on four change factors—external shocks, changes at the field periphery, ineffective isomorphic pressures and rearrangement of field boundaries. The impact of and interplay between these change factors is investigated within the business press field in Denmark and Italy over the last four decades. Four propositions are suggested and explored to analyse the relevance of change factors in the transformation of the business press field. The evidence from the Danish and Italian cases reveals how changes from the field periphery have minor impact on the field transformation, whereas external shocks, ineffective isomorphic pressures and boundary rearrangements play a major role. Based on these findings, a research agenda is suggested encompassing theory-driven attempts to define change factors and identify patterns of field change in cross-country comparisons in the same field.

Implementing Strategic Decisions: Four Key Success Factors

This paper reports an empirical study aimed at elucidating reasons for success or failure in the implementation of strategic decisions. Eleven decisions in six organizations were examined using a case-study approach. Findings highlight four factors that appear to be critical for the successful management of imple mentation : backing, clear aims and planning, and a conducive climate — as long as chance events do not get in the way. Perhaps surprisingly, other factors, such as having relevant experience, giving implementation priority, having abundant resources, an appropriate structure and implementing flexibly, appear to matter rather less.

Technical Efficiency or Adaptation to Institutionalized Expectations? The Adoption of ISO 9000 Standards in the German Mechanical Engineering Industry

In this paper we examine technical and internal organizational contingencies which encourage and discourage the adoption of institutionalized structural elements, namely ISO 9000 standards. The results show that the extent of customized production and a dominant influence of top management on quality control decisions reduce the likelihood of adopting ISO 9000 standards. However, the latter factor changes its influence significantly with greater organizational size and administrative intensity — two entities which increase the pressure to adapt to external expectations.

Organizational Diversity and Change in Institutional Theory

Institutional theory has focused on the movement towards, and maintenance of, isomorphic institutional environments. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the forces that change institutional environments. Starting with a discussion of the implications of isomorphism on performance, this article attempts to develop a taxonomy of organizations within an institutional environment in order to develop a theory of how organizations respond to violations of institutional norms with possible implications for institutional change. Essential to this theory is the importance of organizational diversity, risk aversion, the effect of isomorphism on performance, and the role of relative performance in maintaining isomorphism and providing incentives to change.

In Praise of Duality and Dualism: Rethinking Agency and Structure in Organizational Analysis

This paper develops a critique of a number of highly influential theoretical interventions in contemporary organizational analysis that have collapsed structure into agency. It suggests that these approaches, which draw, in various ways, on the 'postmodern turn' in organizational analysis, have seriously weakened the explanatory power and political imagination of the latter. In direct contrast to theoretical approaches based on flat or compacted social onto logies, the paper supports a critical realist position as providing a layered or stratified social ontology on which a more structurally robust and inclusive explanations of organizational phenomena can be constructed. By adopting a realist ontology and methodology, organizational analysis will be much better placed to understand and explain the interplay between structure and agency, and its 'fateful' consequences for social actors.