Organizational Types and Organizational Innovation: Downsizing Among Industrial,Financial, and Utility Firms

Sociological Forum - Given the importance of innovation to organizations and to society-at-large, scholars have asked: Why do organizations innovate? Institutionalists argue that the causes of...     

Gender Equality as Institutional Work: The Case of the Church of Sweden

Institutional theory predicts that organizations respond to external changes in their environment to be able to safeguard their long‐term viability. One of the most significant institutional changes in the last century has been the entry of women into both labour markets and professions; however, an extensive literature reports that gender inequality and various forms of sexism still structure and influence the everyday work of organizations. Drawing on the recent literature on institutional work, the article reports on a study of how the Church of Sweden has managed to relatively successfully institutionalize female ministers as legitimate and widely respected members of the professional category of ministers ordained by the Church. Female ministers believe they are, by and large, respected in the Church, but suggest that gender remains an issue as women are at times expected to embody certain interests and have to answer some questions that their male colleagues may have been spared. The findings describe institutional work as an ongoing process with no fixed end‐point, stressing agency as the distributed and collective capacity to question established beliefs and norms.     

The Institutional Capacity for Forest Devolution: The Case of Forest Land Allocation in Vietnam

The article assesses the institutional capacity of a devolution policy, namely forest land allocation (FLA) in Vietnam. We applied the governance capacity framework, which is based on the policy arrangement approach, to examine the extent to which the policy enables actors to work together in order to solve collective problems. The findings reveal that, overall, the institutional capacity of FLA in Vietnam is rather low, although it varies from region to region. This result is determined by the restricted and ambiguous codification of property rights, the limited resource availability, the symbolic venues for deliberation and the lack of openness of actors towards others’ views in the policy process. External factors, particularly agricultural development, also had a major impact on institutional capacity.     

Resource Dependence Patterns and Organizational Behavior/Structure in Korean Nonprofit Organizations

This article examines the relationships among the three dimensions of resource dependence patterns (RDPs) and organizational formalization and goals in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). These three RDPs (that is, the appearance of the financial resource inflow) are resource dependency, resource diversity, and resource competitiveness. The empirical findings suggest that high dependency on government funding (high resource dependency) is positively associated with organizational formalization, although resource diversity does not have any explanatory power on organizational behavior and structure, and that a very competitive environment for resource acquisition significantly affects goal setting in NPOs. In particular, resource competitiveness well explains goal clarity and goal change in NPOs. NPOs with high resource competitiveness present clearer organizational goals or missions and are likely to experience frequent goal change.     

Institutional processes of organizational culture

Queries into the creation of collective meaning through social processes arise in both organization culture and institutional theory. This paper applies DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983 DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell, W.W. 1983. The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48: 147–60. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) three isomorphic processes (mimetic, normative and coercive) from institutional theory to re‐think how structural and dynamic aspects of culture become nested, taken‐for‐granted and transmitted. We consider both acquiescence and resistance to isomorphic pressures in an effort to understand cultural persistence and transmission, forms of resistance to culture, change, the role of sub‐cultures and power usage through Oliver’s (1992 Oliver, C. 1992. The antecedents of de‐institutionalization. Organization Studies, 13: 563–88. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) de‐institutionalization thesis. Our purpose in applying isomorphic processes to organizational culture is to offer another layer of understanding enhanced by the growing body of research in institutional theory, bridge one division between micro and macro theory and provide some suggestions for future research.     

Strategic Management and Change in High Dependency Environments: The Case of a Philanthropic Organization

On the basis of a detailed, in-depth study of the operations and strategic decision-making of Centraide, a charitable organization in Greater Montreal, this paper suggests that dependency on the environment can be a stimulus to organizational adaptation. Two major changes over a 10-year period are studied to show that strategic management in high dependency situations requires a continual attention to the organization's relationships and interactions with the forces in its environment, and a continuous management of the process by which change takes place. The basic position advanced is that: strategy in philanthropic organizations is more effective in ensuring survival and growth when the search for autonomy is seen as irrelevant and when dependence is seen as an unavoidable fact that should shape behavior. A set of propositions helps conceptualize the findings and is offered as a guide for further research.     

Interorganizational relations of nonprofit organizations: An exploratory study

In their several roles as appropriators, redistributors, and providers, nonprofit organizations are involved in complex transactions with organizations in the nonprofit, for-profit, and public sectors. The purpose of this exploratory investigation, based on a sample of New York State nonprofits, is to explain variation in the extent of intrasector and intersector transactions. Various kinds of prevailing environmental complexities, coupled with the ways in which organizations are structured to deal with these complexities, help explain variation in the extent of organizational transactions. Another important predictor is directors' perceptions of main problems affecting the activities of their agencies. These findings are consistent with the conclusion that environmental uncertainties and perceptions about them affect the nature and extent of interorganizational contact.     

Organizational innovativeness and its determinants in South Korean nonprofit human service organizations

This study compares the level of organizational innovativeness and its determinants in different types of nonprofit human service organizations. Based on theoretical conceptualizations of organizational innovation, it was hypothesized that community service organizations (CSOs) would be more innovative than residential service organizations (RSOs), and determinants of organizational innovation (such as organizations' characteristics, internal and external properties, and executive leadership) would influence innovativeness. Data from a survey of two types of human service organizations in South Korea (127 RSOs for children and 220 CSOs) revealed that the level of innovation in both types of organizations was not significantly different. The determinants of decentralization and formalization showed significant impacts on innovativeness in CSOs. Decentralization also had a significant positive effect on innovativeness in RSOs. However, executive leadership was a significant determinant of organizational innovativeness in CSOs only. Based on these results, administrative implications are suggested for the facilitation of organizational innovation in nonprofit human service organizations.     

The Interrelationship Between Program Development Capacity and Readiness for Change Among Small to Mid-Sized Nonprofits

ABSTRACT

Based on survey data from 396 small to mid-sized nonprofit organizations operating within Southeast lower Michigan, this article examines the relationship between program development capacity and readiness for change and the predictors of these two components of capacity building among small to mid-sized nonprofits. It uses a simultaneous equation approach as the basis for examining the relationship between program development capacity and readiness for change. The findings indicate that program development capacity and readiness for change are mutually enforcing processes and that the levels of program development capacity and readiness for change are predicted by two distinct sets of predictors.     

Networks as Resources, Organizational Logic, and Change Mechanism: The Case of Private Business Schools in Post-Socialism

The paper differentiates between three conceptualizations of organizational networks: as resources, as organizational logic, and as a change mechanism. We integrate and apply these conceptualizations in one of the first comprehensive studies of private business schools in post-socialism. Using case studies, content analysis of websites, and an open-ended survey of administrators, we show how East-West networks helped in establishing a new type of organization at the end of socialism, how schools use networking as a core organizational principle to enhance efficacy and legitimacy, and how their activities help build capitalism from the bottom up by transmitting market-based knowledge to post-socialist economic actors.

Book Review: The Death Knell of the Utilitarianism: A Review and Theoretical Implications of To Profit or Not to Profit

This paper uses the edited volume To Profit or Not to Profit; The Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector as an opportunity to review the theories of the nonprofit sector based on the utility maximization behavioral model linked to neoclassical economics. The existence of a large nonprofit sector and its increasing commercialism undermines the logical sufficiency of these theories to explain organizational behavior. The book in question is an effort to solve that problem and reconcile the utility maximization model with seemingly contradicting evidence. In the end, however, these efforts are not very successful and lead to the partial acceptance of an alternative model, grounded in the neo-institutional theory of organizations.     

Embedded Systems: The Case of HIV/AIDS Nonprofit Organizations in New York City

In this paper the notion of an embedded system is developed as an analytic model to examine how state–nonprofit relations develop and become differentiated, using the case of HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among three prominent HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations in New York City, this paper shows how the kinds of relationships these nonprofit organizations are likely to form with state agencies are based on their embeddedness in the state–nonprofit system of relations. Three forms of embeddedness are distinguished according to the type and regularity of state–nonprofit contact—direct, outsider, and mediating. Importantly, it is shown how the configuration of relations within which an organization is embedded determines many of the organization's constraints and opportunities.     

Organizational Fields and Third Sector Housing in Ireland,North and South

This paper applies organizational field analysis to compare the structure of the third sector housing fields in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Following preliminary accounts of history, structure, funding, and regulation, four key dimensions of field structure are compared: interaction, subgroups, structural equivalence, and patterns of domination. In both fields studied, early steering by the state into specialist roles has been overtaken by state funded expansion in general needs housing--increasing the dominance of larger organizations and tensions around voluntary sector identity. However, differences remain in the extent of domination and tightness of field structure, with greater emphasis on whole organization regulation, and adherence to professional and trade bodies in Northern Ireland. It is also shown how cross-border activity and the espousal of a European model will influence future trajectories.     

Wage Inequality and Performance in Nonprofit and For‐Profit Organizations

This article examines the effects of several forms of wage inequality on service quality and employee effort. We suggest that two popular theories, tournament and fair wage/equity, are not necessarily competing. Each theory accurately describes aspects of employee behavior, but because of sectoral differences in organizational objectives and employee attitudes, tournament theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the for‐profit sector, while fair wage/equity theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the nonprofit sector. Using an employer–employee matched data set of nursing homes linked to a federal regulatory database and a resident survey, we found that ownership moderates the relationship between wage inequality and service quality. Although wage inequality positively affects service quality in the for‐profit sector, the reverse is true among nonprofit organizations. We also found that overall wage inequality in the workplace has a more pronounced influence on employee discretionary effort than does the employee's place in the distribution of wages.     

The Organization of Nonprofit Activities

This paper investigates the repertoire of organizational forms in Western societies in order to assess the nonprofit sector's distinctiveness. A repertoire of six different ideal type constructs is presented adding to and reformulating existing theories, which have primarily focused on the market and the firm. This new extended theoretical platform builds both on theories discussing market, organization, and governmental failures and on approaches where homo economicus is replaced by homo complexicus and transactions by interactions. This effort aims at making the nonprofit (or voluntary) sector in society both more visible and theoretically substantiated. At the end of this paper, the theoretical framework is applied by analyzing empirical nonprofit organizations.     

Institutional Amnesia: Sustainability and Peacebuilding in Croatia

This article studies the relationship between sustainability and institutional memory in postwar Croatia. Is institutional memory preserved after interventions end? Is so, how and by whom? What are the causes of loss of institutional memory? What are the consequences for sustainability and accountability? When international organizations pulled out of peacebuilding operations in Croatia in the mid to late 2000s, they quickly lost their institutional memory of their projects. Donors, international nongovernmental organizations, and intergovernmental organizations all lost their ability to recall the work they had done in the past. Using interview, ethnographic data, and archival documents gathered over five years (2008–2013), I define three types of memory—archival, human, and electronic—and show how each of these forms of memory eroded as international projects in Croatia ended. The loss of international memory has implications for international organizations' own stated goals of sustainability and their ability to achieve and assess sustainability, and for the downward accountability of donors to their beneficiaries and the countries they worked in.     

The Mean and Lean Firm and Downsizing: Causes of Involuntary and Voluntary Downsizing Strategies

Despite the longevity and pervasiveness of downsizing, our knowledge about this practice is inadequate for at least two reasons. One involves underanalysis of the historical context in which downsizing has evolved and the other involves the tendency to equate downsizings with layoffs even though layoffs represent only one of numerous downsizing strategies. I address the one inadequacy by identifying two institutional factors—the spread of economic competition and shareholder activism—that have motivated large firms to embrace the lean and mean conception of control and thus to implement downsizings. I address the other inadequacy by distinguishing between involuntary and voluntary downsizings and by testing the ability of a theory of downsizing strategies to explain these two kinds of downsizing among Fortune 100 firms from 1979 to 1995. The findings support the theory: Involuntary downsizings occur when firms face economic pressures and when social processes define these acts as natural; voluntary downsizings occur when firms are shielded from economic pressures and when there is a social preference for these acts. There also is support for the hypothesis that the effects of economic factors on downsizings should decrease over time while those of institutional ones should increase. Finally, I emphasize the role that analyses of institutional contexts, conceptions of the firm, and corporate strategies and structures can play in advancing our understanding of the powerful large firm in America.     

Identity and integration: The roles of relationship and retention in nonprofit mergers

Prior research suggests that nonprofits are flexible and possess multiple identities, although we know less about how transformative changes, such as mergers, shape nonprofit identity. This qualitative study draws upon in‐depth interviews from 13 nonprofit merger cases to explore factors that influence postmerger identity and integration. In particular, we focus on the roles of organizational similarity and relationships, program and personnel retention, and rebranding. Ultimately, we derive a typology of postmerger integration in nonprofits and suggest that postmerger identity may be classified in terms of absorption, preservation, or creation. Implications for nonprofit leaders are discussed.     

Organizational Elaboration as Social Movement Tactic: A Case Study of Strategic Leadership in the first US School-sponsored Program for Gay and Lesbian Youth

This research contributes to our understanding of two central and related problems in the study of social movements: tactical innovation and strategic leadership. Focusing on the leadership history (1984–2003) of the founder and director of the first US public school program for gay and lesbian youth, called Project 10 and located in the Los Angeles, California public school system, this case study illustrates the importance of leadership agency on the part of those ‘organizing from within’. Analyses herein indicate the significance of both institutional constraints and life course circumstances in determining leadership choices. This paper maps organizational obstacles and the tactical dilemmas they produced to explain how successful strategic choices get made. The case of Project 10 indicates that institutional constraints can be overcome tactically with organizational elaboration. Additionally, hybridity, assumed in the literature to produce organizational precariousness, is shown here to be a mechanism for stability, facilitating networks and resource acquisition over time.