Organizational theory in political sociology

Organizational theory and research has been enormously generative for political sociologists, if not always as fully centered as it might be, relative to broader notions of political power, economic resources, culture, and their interplay. This review both calls attention to the ways that organizational theory continues to inform political sociology and sets an agenda for how this interchange can be productively extended in various ways in scholarship on states, political parties, advocacy organizations, and business influences in politics. I highlight the genealogy of the new institutionalism and its variants (World Polity and institutional logics), population ecology (and the growing interest in both categories and audiences, alongside studies of the “ecology of ideology”), and research that follows in the broad tradition of resource dependence theory (and the link to more management-oriented approaches such as “non-market strategy” and stakeholder theories of organizational political activities). I also emphasize how novel theories of social movements and fields have offered innovative insights that incorporate organizational and political processes. I conclude by elaborating an agenda for how political sociologists can go further in maintaining and extending their highly productive and rewarding engagements with organizational theory.     

Power at a distance: Organizational power across boundaries

Organizational approaches can help to make sense of social phenomena, including inequality, politics, and culture. This is partly because large organizations exercise great power, both over employees and in their external environments. Revising Charles Perrow's classic account of the “society of organizations” in the 20th century, we argue that the organizational landscape has changed. There has been a dis‐embedding of individuals from organizations that contrasts with Perrow's idea of individuals being “absorbed” by organizations. Despite this hollowing out, there is a persistence of concentrated economic power or “concentration without centralization.” Organizational power in this landscape is increasingly exercised at a distance, not only geographically but also in the sense of moving across organizational boundaries and through technologies of valuation. Three bodies of research exemplify different types of power at a distance. (a) Research on global production networks shows how power travels across geographic and network distances. (b) Research on financialization and its consequences shows how power is mediated by frames and metrics. (c) Emerging research on big data and Artificial Intelligence shows how power is encoded into seemingly neutral technologies and made to seem inevitable. This work helps to update the sociology of organizations and opens up new research questions.     

Cultural Capital of Recruitment Decision‐Makers and its Influence on their Perception of Person‐Organisation Fit of Skilled Migrants

This article examines how recruitment decision‐makers’ cultural capital can influence their concerns about the organizational fit of skilled migrants (SM). We used survey data and interviews with Information Technology organizations in Australia. The study highlights the decision‐makers’ relatively poor understanding of non‐western cultures and how it negatively influences their perception of candidates from non‐western backgrounds. Furthermore, this study also notes how organisational cultural values and decision‐makers’ exposure to diverse cultures can influence their assumptions about the value of international qualifications and work experiences. Similarly, it can also influence how they assess the perception of fit based on a candidate's appearance and communication style. Consequently, the cognitive biases and judgements of resource acquisition managers can act as gatekeepers who keep non‐western SM out of the organizational resource pool. The article concludes by noting the importance of human resource practices that seek to develop cultural capital of decision‐makers.     

Peace and Conflict Resolution Organizations in Three Protracted Conflicts: Structures,Resources and Ideology

Guided by organizational and social movement theories, this study compares the structures, resource bases, ideologies, and strategies of nongovernmental organizations engaged in peace and conflict resolution (P/CROs) in three regions with extended violent conflicts: Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine. Qualitative content analysis techniques are used to analyze 27 detailed case reports. We analyze the funding patterns and structural attributes of the P/CROs in our sample, with particular attention to how they obtain fiscal resources and membership in spite of the risks they may experience. We then explore the degree of formalization among P/CROs over time and, finally, we examine the ideological frames that P/CROs use and how these frames relate to their tactics. Throughout the analysis we pay attention to how the political context of each region influences P/CRO behavior.     

The Social Impacts of Electronic Mail in Organizations: A case study of electronic power games using communication genres

This paper investigates the effects of the introduction of electronic mail on organizational structure and power. It provides empirical support to the view that technology, organizational context, and individual actors interact to shape the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their effect on organizations. Through an analysis of power games reflected in the progressive constitution of electronic mail genres, it illustrates in particular how the specific organizational configurations in which technology is deployed deeply influence its ultimate use. Far from transforming an organization, it appears that the introduction of electronic communication tools may in certain circumstances help reinforce an organization's preexisting structure.     

Leadership succession and the performance of nonprofit organizations: A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis

Leadership succession is critical to the performance of nonprofit organizations. Existing research has mostly treated leadership succession as an instantaneous event, and it has examined the independent effects of certain factors on organizational performance. However, little research has focused on the combinations of causally relevant factors. This article integrated organizational life cycle, resource dependence, and institutional theories, as well as the organizational fit literature, to explain how contextual and strategic factors combine to affect postsuccession performance. A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to analyze 15 succession events in Chinese environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The study identified four pathways to good NGO performance after succession. It also highlighted that it is not succession per se but the succession context (i.e. founders' control, board governance, professionalization, and political environment) and the strategic orientations of the successor that affect postsuccession performance in nonprofit organizations.     

利益代表与社会整合——法团主义视角下的武汉工会(1945-1949)

针对多元主义这一社团政治理论预设存在的盲区,本文以法团主义理论为视角,以战后武汉工会为研究对象,考察其是否具有利益代表职能及强组织凝聚力,并执行社会整合功能。研究发现,战后武汉工会不具备法团主义整合方案所要求的基本条件,其整合模式既异于国家法团主义模式,又不同于社会法团主义模式。究其原因,弱势独裁的政府始终未能实现行政权力的集中化、分层化与制度化;政府对社会的专制控制使得民间社会趋于萎缩,无法发展出充分专业化分工的社会团体。先天的不足使武汉工会只有法团主义的形而无其神,最终无法担负起社会整合的功能。     

Organizational Political Economy and Environmental Pollution

Environmental scholars have made important progress explaining the social forces associated with pollution. Although important exceptions exist, insufficient attention has been given to organizations, which is where most environmental pollution is produced. Even less attentions has been given to parent companies, which have ultimate decision‐making authority over their polluting facilities. To file this gap in the literature, this paper develops an organizational political economy perspective to advance our understanding of how organizational and political‐legal arrangements affect parent companies' capacity to externalize their pollution costs to society. Organizational political economy maintains that corporations' organizational complexity, financial characteristics, management operating systems, political embeddedness in subnational states, and the degree of compliance with national and subnational environmental policies affect their capacity to externalize pollution costs. This perspective also shows how the exercise of organizational power to externalize pollution costs subsidizes the managerial and investor classes by the middle and working classes, whose taxes pay for a large share of environmental clean‐up costs, thereby contributing to economic inequality that goes beyond standard inequality measurements.     

A relational approach to responsibility in organizations: The logic of gift and Lévinasian ethics for a ‘corporeal’ responsibility

The main purpose of this article is to classify some of the main theories on responsibility in organizations using a relational approach, according to the logic of gift. Since the logic of gift can be quite ambiguous and ambivalent, it will be necessary to clarify what this logic means from a philosophical point of view. In order to reach this purpose, a Lévinasian approach to responsibility will be used. After having clarified the concept of responsibility here adopted, the article will focus on relationships and their meaning. I argue that many of the theories on responsibility in organizations lack of the complexity and pluralism that the logic of gift can provide for the comprehension of relationships of responsibility. After having mapped the main theories on responsibilities in organizations using the logic of gift, the article will propose an evolutionary path to develop existing or new theories according to this approach.     

Terms of engagement: Facebook and Twitter use among nonprofit human service organizations

This study uses Lovejoy and Saxton's (2012) hierarchy of engagement to analyze how nonprofit human service organizations use Facebook and Twitter to engage stakeholders. Their framework has not been applied to this nonprofit subgroup, and most previous scholarship on this topic focuses on just one platform. We also contribute by drawing on organizational theory to better understand variation in the modes of engagement organizations emphasize. Based on our analysis, we add new subcategories to the hierarchy of engagement. In addition, we find that compared to other nonprofit subgroups examined in previous research, the organizations in our sample placed a greater emphasis on using social media messages to ask stakeholders to take action. We report only modest variations in how organizations were using Facebook and Twitter. Finally, according to our results, resource dependence and stewardship theories help explain the modes of engagement organizations prioritize.     

Examining the influence of organizational characteristics on nonprofit commercialization

A growing body of literature discusses the (dis)advantages of nonprofit organizations becoming commercial by engaging in the sale of organizational services and products. However, when explaining this phenomenon, scholars tend to focus on resource uncertainty, thereby disregarding the organizational ability to commercialize. Complementing resource dependency theory with insights from contingency theory, this study presents arguments drawn from a comparative case study of six sociocultural nonprofits in Belgium. We find that, when resource uncertainty is similar, organizational differences in terms of commercial income can be explained by differences in (a) organizational origins, (b) professional capacity, and (c) types of tasks. We conclude that organizational characteristics can either enable or disable the ability of nonprofits to commercialize and consequently their ability to self‐sustain in an increasing challenging resource environment.     

The Sociology of Religious Organizations

Whether willingly or not, the sociology of religion has become increasingly influenced by organizational theories and research. Despite objections, the sociology of religious organizations is an area of study rising in prominence. Growth comes from both explicit and implicit applications of organizational theories. In a push toward more explicit connections, we review three organizational theories with particular relevance to the study of religion: organizational ecology, resource dependence, and new institutionalism. For each, we suggest possible paths for future research. Methodological challenges complicate this research. Religious organizations vary widely in size and scope. The advent of new nationally representative surveys of religious congregations opens new analytic opportunities, although these data remain limited in significant ways. In closing, theoretical and methodological implications for the sociology of religious organizations are discussed.     

DO MANUFACTURERS POLLUTE LESS UNDER THE REGULATION‐THROUGH‐INFORMATION REGIME?

Because past studies on the effects of right-to-know laws have relied on highly aggregated data, it is still unknown whether being located in a state with a funded right-to-know program has a significant effect on the environmental performance of individual manufacturing plants. Nor has it been shown that such effects exist net of other plant characteristics that are known to increase pollution. To remedy this situation, we have used plant-level data from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory to test the effects of states' right-to-know programs on the toxic emissions of chemical plants in 1990 and 2000. Consistent with several organizational theories (neoinstitutionalism, organizational ecology, and the resource dependence framework) that stress how regulatory policies are just one of several institutional forces that bear on organizations, our findings reveal that states' right-to-know programs have had no significant net effect on plants' toxic emissions. In addition to raising questions about the efficacy of information disclosure laws, our results underscore the importance of approaching pollution as an organizational phenomenon and studying organizations where they most directly impact the environment-at the site of production.     

In Search of Strategy

The canon of volunteer administration contends that adoption of specified practices separates effective from ineffective programs. Alternatively, structural contingency and strategic human resource management theories suggest that managers make adoption decisions based on how organizational circumstances dictate the applicability or efficacy of particular practices. We test propositions that universalistic adoption of “best practices,” contingent adoption of practices, and configurational adoption of bundles of practices are associated with program outcomes of recruitment ease, retention of volunteers, and the net benefits that volunteers bring to organizational operations. With all sets of tests garnering limited empirical support, we conclude that human resource practice in volunteer administration is loosely coupled with outcomes, but that some organizations do—and many more should—manage according to the singular context of their institutional and external environments.     

Causes of Early and Later Organizational Adoption: The Case of Corporate Downsizing

While the causes of organizational adoption of new practices often vary across social contexts, organizational theories seldom recognize this fact. One of the few contextual theories on adoption views the causes of adoption as varying according to the timing of adoption: Economic causes should govern early adoption and institutional causes should govern later adoption. Tests of this theory generally have focused on gradual adoption among noneconomic organizations. Recognizing the need to expand our understanding of the timing of organizational adoption, I examine rapid adoption among economic organizations. More specifically, I focus on the adoption of downsizing programs among Fortune 100 firms and report that economic and institutional factors have affected downsizing throughout the downsizing era. Interpretation of these findings sheds light on the genesis and continuation of the downsizing era and on the impact that the rise of investor capitalism has had on shifts in the specific causes of early and later downsizings. I conclude by stressing the theoretical and practical utility of investigating how new practices spread across organizations in different contexts.     

Hollywood power brokers: Gender and racial inequality in talent agencies

As the US labour market shifts towards project‐based, contractual and contingent work, the importance of intermediary brokerage organizations will continue to grow. In this article, I use Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations to examine Hollywood talent agencies as one case of these powerful intermediary organizations. The power structures, promotion process, mentoring networks and discourses described by the talent agents I interviewed privilege white men. The agents interviewed for this study described their top management as being overwhelmingly composed of men, they discussed the patrimonial systems of mentorship and exclusive male networks that advantage white men, and talked about colleagues and clients in ways that valorized elite masculinity and disparaged femininity. Thus, the organizational structures and culture of these talent agencies collectively create an environment that reproduces itself, encouraging white men to join and persist, and presenting barriers to women and racial minority men. Although the focus of this article is on Hollywood talent agencies, the findings from this research help explain how inequality is reproduced in the non‐traditional work arrangements that characterize the new economy.     

Stuck in the Middle: Maintaining the Organizational Legitimacy of the Regional Environmental Center

Maintenance of legitimacy is central to the survival of any organization and is of particular importance to non-governmental organizations (NGO) reliant on external sources of income. Interaction with the external environment plays an important role in determining organizational legitimacy, shaping actions and determining opportunities. The ability of an organization to effectively respond to and influence the external environment can potentially strengthen its legitimacy. This paper considers the issue of organizational legitimacy by using resource dependence and institutional theories to analyze the development of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC). The findings indicate that it is possible for an organization to maintain legitimacy through adaptation, responding to the rise and fall of external opportunities and challenges. As predicted by institutional theory, it also argues that external environmental factors place increasing pressure for conformity over time, limiting scope to manoeuvre over the longer-term.     

Advocacy by Proxy: The Children's Lobby in American Politics

This essay considers the organizational and political activity of the children's lobby in the United States with reference to four issues: how advocacy groups emerge and are sustained, how various groups are legitimated, how advocates participate in constructing a children's agenda, and how advocates respond to changes in this agenda. The essay argues that this group sector has mobilized and become stagnant in response to various structures of opportunity. Second, it suggests that children's representation evolves over time, with various facets of the issue gaining currency in turn. Attuned to these changes, advocates shift their collective focus to emerging concerns, or fail to remain viable. Third, public interest groups scramble to differentiate their programmatic foci, sources of revenue, ana services offered to members. Fourth, the essay considers how their ability to navigate these organizational concerns determines the ability of children's advocates, and of public interest groups more generally, to provide representation for otherwise marginalized groups in American politics.     

From advocacy to service provision: state transformation and the disability rights movement in Taiwan

This research uses the development of the disability rights movement in Taiwan as a case study to analyze the impact of state transformation, in particular marketization of social welfare policy, on the disability rights movement. First, the institutionalization of the disability rights movement enabled it to expand its organizational structure and become involved in shaping policy. Secondly, when disability rights organizations started to undertake state-funded projects, their focus shifted from advocacy to service provision. Thirdly, competition for limited state-funding gave the organizations led by urban-middle class advocates a significant advantage over small, community-based NPOs and gathered significantly greater resources. Finally, this paper suggests that, in a context in which the state did not provide basic social services for its citizens with disabilities, the institutionalization of SMOs turned advocacy groups into service providers. Although the number of disability civic organizations increased, the voices of advocacy groups were weakened.     

External Perception Matters: The Phenomenon of Identity Coupling in Interorganizational Relations

This qualitative study investigates interorganizational relations (IORs) via 16 nonprofit organizations serving Chinese Canadians in Canada. This study reveals how potential partnering organizations perceive each other’s organizational identities that influence the formation and outcomes of IORs. An organizational ecological perspective of organizational identity is adopted. The study finds that value-based and resource-based organizational identity coupling of potential partnering organizations can facilitate the respective forms of IORs. The facilitating effect of Identity coupling is weakened in the presence of a third party with resource. The study demonstrates the utility of the orgnization ecology’s organizational identity literature and contributes to our understanding of value-based IORs.