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Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony
... Popular institutional theory is applied to provide a complete and broad perspective in the environment of public organizations (Ansmann & Seyfried, 2022;van Helden, 2005), in line with the NPM's idea to explain the background of public sector institutional reform (Alsharari, 2020;Rana, Ahmed, Narayan, & Zheng, 2021). The primary view of organizations is in the social environment, and the institutionalization process reflects the cultural rules and beliefs operating in the social environment (Scott, 2014); in meeting social expectations, organizations gain legitimacy, which is considered a significant factor for organizational survival (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). When organizations within the same field face the same institutional conditions, they become the same over time (DiMaggio & Powell, 2022). ...
... Thus, the primary determinant of organizational structure and behavior is the pressure that the institutional environment exerts on the organization to conform to a set of expectations for legitimacy and secure access to vital resources and long-term survival (Brignall & Modell, 2000). One way to gain legitimacy is to align with some rationalized institutional myths (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), which is sometimes translated by the organization through some process of isomorphism, so that it appears in the structural attributes of the organization (DiMaggio & Powell, 2022). ...
... Formal and informal pressures placed on an organization by other organizations, as well as the cultural standards expected of the society in which the organization operates, lead to coercive pressure (DiMaggio & Powell, 2022). Such pressure can be perceived as force, persuasion, or an invitation to join in an agreement that, according to Meyer and Rowan (1977), organizational behavior and structures increasingly reflect the rules established and legalized by the state. As a result, organizations are increasingly homogeneous within specific domains and increasingly organized in rituals that align with broader institutions (DiMaggio & Powell, 2022). ...
This research aims to provide empirical evidence on the effects of external pressure and institutional leadership on the utilization of local government performance reports. The hypothesis is built based on institutional theory, especially isomorphism pressure using coercive pressure shown in external pressure and Giddens' structuration theory using the concept of institutional leadership which is thought to influence the process of organizing performance measurement, namely the use of local government performance reports. Data collection and processing was carried out by conducting surveys by handing out questionnaires directly to all Papua Province government work units. The sample of respondents is state civil servants who have a role in preparing performance reports in each agency. The data analysis method uses Partial Least Square (PLS). The results, quite surprisingly, show that the external pressure variable has a significant negative effect on the use of local government performance reports and institutional leadership does not have a significant effect on the use of local government performance reports. The discussion will be reviewed in depth by paying attention to the latest conditions in Papua to try to understand the results of this research.
... For this to happen, management must develop communication strategies. Conversely, the latter suggest that the objective of adopting new management tools is not only better performance but also to gain legitimacy by conforming to isomorphic pressures from the environments (Meyer & Rowan, 1977;DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). ...
... The basic assumption in organizational-institutional theory is that organizations adopt their internal characteristics in order to conform to the expectations of the key stakeholders in their environment (Meyer & Rowan 1977). According to this view, the decision to adopt new management tools (e.g. ...
... Secondly, the strategies may be "merely" formal symbols subject to decoupling (Meyer & Rowan, 1977;Brunsson, 2003) with limited or no relation to communication practices. As Scott (2007: 173) notes, however, "…to an institutionalist, the adjective merely does not fit comfortably with the noun symbolic". ...
Public organizations are increasingly paying attention to strategic communication. However, the extant literature on public sector communication is predominantly descriptive, exploring how strategic communication is performed in practice, with little emphasis on why strategic communication has become so popular. Drawing on organizational institutional theory together with reports from a case study of strategic communication in Danish local governments, we take a first step towards explaining “all this communication”. Our results reveal how normative and mimetic institutional pressures occur, as key external stakeholders support and legitimize strategic communication while communicating general, yet detailed, instructions for performing strategic communication in a context of radical organizational changes. Moreover, we demonstrate how local governments translate strategic communication somewhat differently than external stakeholders, causing not only isomorphism but also heterogeneity in organizational strategies. Based on the empirical findings, we argue that strategic communication issues might benefit from being interpreted in a broader socio-political context rather than as a simple management tool for professionalizing public sector communication.
... And yet, in the 1970s, K-12 schools in America generally looked the same and had the same formal organizational features. Going further, they had these organizational trappings despite evidence that, in the classroom and in practice, the rules were not followed (Meyer & Rowan, 1977,1978. So, if these organizational forms are not, in fact, technically rational, why do schools conform to them, and do so across the country? ...
... According to Meyer and Rowan (1977), "myths" are any institutionalized rules, services, products, techniques, or policies that organizations incorporate to vie for status and survival in their broader environment. The terminology of "institutional myths" can be confusing, but in general they are widespread cultural ideals about how an organization ought to operate (Hallett & Hawbaker, 2021;Meyer & Rowan, 1977). ...
... According to Meyer and Rowan (1977), "myths" are any institutionalized rules, services, products, techniques, or policies that organizations incorporate to vie for status and survival in their broader environment. The terminology of "institutional myths" can be confusing, but in general they are widespread cultural ideals about how an organization ought to operate (Hallett & Hawbaker, 2021;Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Such ideals can be socially and/or legally binding, but again, they might only operate in theory and not practice. ...
Research on schools has long been central to the development of institutional theory. Scholars from the tradition now labeled “old institutionalism” used historical case studies of educational institutions to examine how organizations pursue social values and how those values and the organization change in the process. The subsequent shift to new institutionalism entailed a more macro-level approach, as scholars began to view schools as organizations nested within a broader field or environment. Instead of analyzing how organizations pursue values, new institutionalists examine how organizations conform to macro cultural “myths” or “logics” to maintain legitimacy in their respective fields. For instance, national and global education reforms compel schools to adopt remarkably similar organizational forms, despite the diverse needs of schools and their divergent practices. Inhabited institutionalism, which explores the recursive relationships among institutions, organizations, and social interactions, provides a consolidated approach and incorporates a symbolic interactionist lens to examine the meaning and implications of institutions at a more local level. Educational settings have been important sites of empirical investigation in the development of inhabited institutionalism, specifically by showing how schools incorporate cultural mythologies such as “accountability” in context-specific ways.
... What has lost was the organizational view that interrogated the politics of teaching (Lortie 1975), the bureaucratization of schools (Bidwell 1965(Bidwell , 1987(Bidwell , 2001, and the school as a socializing organization (Bowles and Gintis 1976;Parsons 1959). Many reasons can be proffered for this recession of the organizational perspective: the dominance of production function models that view schools as firms producing student learning, the financial support of government agencies and philanthropies for randomized controlled trials and quasi-experiments, the move of organizational theorists from sociology departments to business schools, the widespread use of standards and assessments, and the inability to engage with practical policies in favor of more abstract conceptualization in classic theories like new institutionalism, population ecology, and resource dependence (Hannan and Freeman 1977;Meyer and Rowan 1977;Pfeffer and Salancik 1978). More historically, these changes have also been outcomes of the larger push for educational equality as in Brown v. Board of Education, and economic changes to a knowledge economy focused on skills acquisition and human capital investment (Hanushek 2019; Mehta and Davies 2018; Ray 2019). ...
... Resource dependence theory studies how resources external to an organization affect the organization's actions and decisions (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978). New institutional theory focuses on the constraining and enabling effects of formal and informal rules, that is, institutions (DiMaggio and Powell 1983;Meyer and Rowan 1977). Rather than focus on macro-sociological trends, inhabited institutionalism investigates the recursive relationships among institutions, social interactions, and organizations-bridging institutional analysis and micro-interactionism (Hallett and Hawbaker 2021). ...
... Organizational actors in federal, state, and district education offices create policies and make decisions that affect schools instituting similar practices (Diehl and McFarland 2015). While classic studies have argued that the internal organization of the school is "loosely coupled" and buffered from the technical demands of the institution (Meyer and Rowan 1977;Weick 1976), more recent research has shown that changes in policies have led to structures being recoupled through accountability systems (Hallett 2010). If the educational bureaucracy creates a policy and applies it to all schools, this can lead to similar practices shared among different schools. ...
Highlighting changes in education and organizational theorizing since the 1950s, this review integrates three perspectives for an organizational sociology of education. The structural perspective focuses on how the formal organization of resources, relationships, and information can influence student outcomes and inequalities through opportunities to learn. The network perspective highlights the role of informal interactions and interpretation as well as social and cultural capital to bring about changes. The ecological perspective illustrates how schools are affected by other schools (horizontal dimension), the educational bureaucracy (vertical dimension), and organizations outside schools (community dimension). An organizational perspective can concretize often abstract sociological topics on stratification, social reproduction, and socialization. The perspective can also reconceptualize often individualistic views on contemporary education issues like student well‐being, teacher shortage, racial inequalities, and school politics. The review ends with a discussion on how to incorporate these organizational perspectives and how they can complement current studies in education, sociology, and public policy.
... Despite the abstract sound of the idea of performative 'overflowing', directly analogous phenomena have been documented and described in sociological analyses. For instance, Meyer and Rowan (1977) have famously analysed how organisations' 'formal structure' exercises merely 'ceremonial' control over their actual operational practice: although the shared governing abstractions are continuously 'ritualistically' reasserted in and through practice (illocution), they fail to perform substantively corresponding (perlocutionary) effects. A similar 'ceremonial' (Meyer and Rowan, 1977) form of (performative) control has been analysed in Michael Power's (1997 accounts of audit and risk management as modes of social control that ritualistically document formal conformity ('verisimilitude') of local practices with abstract prescriptions while absorbing and invisibilising the pragmatic heterogeneities in the social practices they are supposed to make conform to formal structure. ...
... For instance, Meyer and Rowan (1977) have famously analysed how organisations' 'formal structure' exercises merely 'ceremonial' control over their actual operational practice: although the shared governing abstractions are continuously 'ritualistically' reasserted in and through practice (illocution), they fail to perform substantively corresponding (perlocutionary) effects. A similar 'ceremonial' (Meyer and Rowan, 1977) form of (performative) control has been analysed in Michael Power's (1997 accounts of audit and risk management as modes of social control that ritualistically document formal conformity ('verisimilitude') of local practices with abstract prescriptions while absorbing and invisibilising the pragmatic heterogeneities in the social practices they are supposed to make conform to formal structure. While, as Power's analysis in particular demonstrates, (performative) overflowing can go unnoticed for a long time (since the calculative frame through which ritualistic conformity is asserted is disentangled from local pragmatics and conduct), it imperceptibly 'frays out' performative control and erodes its felicity conditions. ...
... My analysis and argument suggest that there is an intrinsic trade-off between illocutionary efficiency and perlocutionary effectiveness that becomes particularly acute in the case of governing through quantified futures. The 'metonymic' (Ertürk et al., 2022: 34) qualities of the quantification of present conditions facilitate their insertion into increasingly 'virtual' (Linstead and Thanem, 2007) illocutionary frames in which 'surrogate' (Mäki, 2009) meanings are performed whose 'false precision' (Jasanoff, 1991: 31) allows highly persuasive 'ceremonial' or 'ritual' performances of control that buttress institutional legitimacy (see Meyer and Rowan, 1977; for the case of CBs, see Walter, 2022;Wansleben, 2021), but which are effectively disentangled or de-coupled from the substantive social practice(s) they are meant to govern. ...
In this article, I analyse the case of ‘modern’ central banking’s dual failures in effectively containing financial fragilities and inflationary pressures as a cautionary tale about the intrinsic limitations and contradictions of ‘governing through quantified futures’. I construct a genealogy of central banks’ much-vaunted ‘performative art’ of governing the economy through the management of expectations in order to reveal a crucial tension between the control of expectations about the future and controlling the future through (present) expectations of it. I argue that social scientific analyses tend to operate with a truncated understanding of performativity that prevents them from developing sufficiently precise and discerning accounts of the mechanics of performative processes to reveal their (intrinsic) limitations and explain how and why they (may) fail. By dissecting the surprisingly complex mechanics of central banks’ performative agency, I thus contribute towards a more precise theorisation of how governing through quantified futures operates.
... The sociological theorist, Parsons (1956) saw organizations as components of a larger social system and later, this view created a basis for institutional research on organizations. Meyer and Rowan (1977) corroborated what Parsons had already noted concerning the need for organizations to find a suitable relationship with the larger society (David et al., 2019). Based on the classic sociological approach, DiMaggio (1988) became a key person in creating the research strategy which later became known as ''institutional entrepreneurship.'' ...
... The relationships between entrepreneurship and institutions are also recognized at different levels of interactions, that is, at the macro, meso and micro levels (Zhai et al., 2019). Scott (1995) formulated three institutional forces, called pillars, which affect entrepreneurial activity (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). First, the regulative pillar is based on a rational actor model and assumes that it is in the interest of entrepreneurs that they follow the rules, which the state and governmental institutions have created. ...
... We have been approaching entrepreneurial activity from the perspective of institutional theory, which assumes that entrepreneurs are a part of the broader societal systems. In this sense, entrepreneurs need to find a suitable relationship with the larger society (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). In the present study, entrepreneurial activity is approached at the country-level by asking how the norms and values of a society have an effect on entrepreneurial activity. ...
The aim of this article is to examine whether the cross-country and gender variations of entrepreneurship can be explained within the institutional framework. The study addresses normative forces to which entrepreneurs are expected to adapt within European welfare states. The normative forces are focused on norm-based factors of governmental quality and value-based factors of governmental generosity, which are both hypothesized to be associated with entrepreneurship at the level of society and furthermore from the gender perspective. To verify our hypotheses, the research was conducted among 28 European countries in the years 2012 to 2018. We adopted the macro-level of analysis and undertook panel data analysis (PDA). We estimated the econometric models with entrepreneurship rates as dependent variables and those with norm-based and value-based factors as independent variables. The results confirm that norm-based factors are associated with entrepreneurship and there are significant differences in the responses of female and male entrepreneurial activities to the quality of government. However, we did not find supporting evidence for the statistically significant impact of governmental generosity on entrepreneurship. The novelty of our research is in implementing institutional theory into the discussion on entrepreneurship from the welfare state perspective, by introducing the concept of norm-based and value-based factors which reflect the quality and generosity of the government. We also distinguish between the impact of governmental quality and generosity on entrepreneurship from the gender perspective to contribute to the discussion on the gender gap in entrepreneurship.
... Det betyr at informasjonen som formidles har et klart mål, for eksempel ved å vise hva kommunen faktisk gjør, har gjort eller ønsker å gjøre for å nå målsettingene med reformen. I et symbolsk perspektiv kan informasjonsformidling forstås som aktørenes søken etter legitimitet i omgivelsene (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Ut fra et symbolsk perspektiv kan hensikten med informasjonen vaere for eksempel å gi et inntrykk av at kommunen gjør noe. ...
... Seks kommuner har ingen informasjon om Samhandlingsreformen på sine websider. Ved tvetydige, fragmenterte og løst koblete intensjoner og mål (Meyer & Rowan, 1977;Olson & Guthrie, 1998;Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2000), kan det vaere vanskelig å operasjonalisere konsekvensene av reformen fra sentralt til lokalt nivå. På denne måten kan strategisk usikkerhet i kommunene reflekteres i andre typer usikkerhet hos kommunens ulike interessenter. ...
In this article we focus on how Norwegian municipalities present information about the results of their work of implementing The Coordination Reform to the inhabitants through their websites. The point of departure is that political reforms may lead to uncertainty for the inhabitants. This uncertainty can partly be handled by giving specific information about how the reform will affect the inhabitants. We contribute to the debate about the municipality as an information agent by following how the 25 municipalities in Troms County cover their work on The Coordination Reform on their websites over a period of one year. We focus on external communication to a heterogeneous target group (the inhabitants) in a reform context. The main finding is that the municipalities disseminate relatively little information about their work with the reform and about specific results. But there are variations between the municipalities. It may seem that they wish to show that they focus on the reform in different ways and part of the information on the websites are therefore of symbolic character.
... The decoupling literature facilitates such an engagement. Decoupling represents a core concept of neoinstitutional theory (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Initially, it was introduced to describe processes in which organizational actors adapt to social expectations only superficially in ceremonial communication and formal policies, while their practices remain-often unintentionally-unaltered (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). ...
... Decoupling represents a core concept of neoinstitutional theory (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Initially, it was introduced to describe processes in which organizational actors adapt to social expectations only superficially in ceremonial communication and formal policies, while their practices remain-often unintentionally-unaltered (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). In recent decades, scholars have substantially modified and extended this initial concept in two directions. ...
Purpose
The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.
Design/methodology/approach
Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.
Findings
Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.
Originality/value
This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.
... Compounding this, when a district is cited for disproportionality, it must report compliance to mandates even if it has not substantively applied them in practice. When formal mandates are followed without substantive changes made to practice is called symbolic compliance (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Districts symbolically comply to avoid lawsuits, as well as state and federal sanctions and oversight over district actions. ...
... The process whereby individual efforts to deal rationally with uncertainty and resource and policy constraints that contributes to a remarkable degree of similarity in the structure, culture, outcomes and quality of organizational (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) and special education services. Can result from mimetic (imitative of others), coercive (culturally accepted rules and policies), or normative (shaped by professional norms) pressures (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) Symbolic Compliance The practice where formal policy mandates are followed in absence of substantive changes to practice (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) Formal Mechanisms Aspects such as the offices, positions, and the organizational chart that connects them, as well as the formal rules, programs, positions, and procedures (Edelman, 1992) Informal Mechanisms Aspects such as the actual communication channels between offices and positions, the actual behaviors of individuals who occupy them, and the informal norms and practices that influence people's work (Edelman, 1992). ...
Please cite as: Kramarczuk Voulgarides, C., (2015) DOES COMPLIANCE MATTER? SPECIAL EDUCATION LAW AND RACIAL DISPROPORTIONALITY. New York University.
This study attempted to better understand how legal regulations designed to protect all students with disabilities inadvertently furthers educational inequality for culturally and linguistically diverse students, as evidenced by racial disproportionality. I used sociological organizational theory, with a focus on neo-institutional theory and legal endogeneity, to view IDEA as a central organizing force of school district actions, in conjunction with an ethnographic research approach, to expose a space between the intent of law and its interpretation to practice. This is a crucial space to understand because it allows for deeper questioning into why and how a well-intentioned law, IDEA, has failed to abate racial and ethnic disproportionality since its inception. I investigated how practitioners – more specifically Local Education Agency (LEA) leaders – use, interpret, and comply with IDEA when attempting to remedy racial disproportionality in their school district. It explored how legally mandated equity has been interpreted in practice and how legal mandates have related to the entrenched complexities and inequities of the American educational system.
The following research questions guided this study:
*In what ways does legal compliance to federal and state special education law relate to the occurrence of disproportionality?
*Is compliance to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) a remedying or contributing factor to disproportionality?
*When districts are cited for being disproportionate, what drives organizational and administrative decisions and responses?
*What becomes prioritized by district representatives, administrators and teachers when trying to mediate a citation for being disproportionate and how is this related to the social context of a district?
*How do the individual perspectives of administrators, teachers, and school personnel contribute to or sustain a specific interpretation and understanding of disproportionality?
The study is organized into seven chapters. The first introduces the issue of disproportionality, outlines common theories and research on disproportionality, and explains how I used sociological theory to explore the social mechanisms and processes that underlie its persistence. The second chapter broadly describes IDEA, its central tenants and mechanisms, how it is translated to practice in the state in which research was conducted, and what federal and state disproportionality monitoring indicators look like. The chapter also provides a context for how IDEA is referred to in the data chapters. The third chapter outlines the rationale and methods of the study, site selection, and the strategies used to analyze the data. Chapters IV, V, and VI are individual case studies that explore what addressing disproportionality looked like in practice.
synthesizes the commonalties and differences between the three case studies and makes a broader comparative point on how disproportionality is addressed in varying local contexts. It also theoretically summarizes the data analysis and concludes the dissertation. Interview protocols are also included.Selected dissertation chapters with research questions, theoretical framing, methods, and protocols used.
... The normative pillar refers to institutions that guide behaviour by stating what is deemed as appropriate in diverse social and commercial contexts, and they include social obligations to comply with (March & Olsen, 1998). Finally, the cognitive pillar refers to models of individual behaviour, which tend to be based on a set of learned rules that operate at individual levels and are embedded in culture language (Carroll, 1964) and other taken-for-grantedness features that people barely think about (Meyer & Rowan, 1991). The cognitive pillar is important to entrepreneurship research, as it addresses the ways societies see entrepreneurs and may create a cultural mindset whereby entrepreneurship is encouraged and fostered (Li, 2013). ...
... Effective regulation and legislation are needed to encourage and require the development of new circular business, but to foster the sustainable CE replacing the linear economy, a closer attention to norms and culture is needed. Working to change the culture and the taken-for-granted practices (Meyer & Rowan, 1991) is a task with which circular start-ups and public sector actors need to work synergistically (Lehtimäki et al., 2022). ...
... The issue of quality may appear to exemplify a dynamic that runs counter to the currently dominant hypothesis of the 'isomorphism' of organisations. As is well known, this concept was proposed by Meyer and Rowan (1977) to indicate the processes through which organisations are driven to increasingly resemble one other (Bonazzi, 2002). ...
... There seems to be a kind of 'race for quality', which not even the university as an organisation is shying away from. We would probably not find it difficult to see the theme of quality interpreted in this light as a true 'rationalised myth', imaginary beliefs made plausible by a logical discourse (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Of course, this is not the same as claiming that quality is an imaginary belief, but if, as Meyer and Rowan pointed out, the rationalised myth fosters the creation of new fields of activity in which old and new organisations race to satisfy the business fuelled by the myth itself, this can probably also apply to the theme of quality, which increasingly fuels the race to achieve it. ...
In recent decades, social organisations seem to be moving against the dominant representation of the ‘isomorphism’ in literature. In practice, they contemplate several paths simultaneously and on the cognitive level this is reflected in the presence of several intertwining theories. In this article we address the issue of quality as effectively representative of the hypothesis that the approach to organisations is never just one type, but instead reveals a combination of different dimensions and orientations, reflecting a pluralistic model. The interpretation of quality through the Service Charter – and, in particular, the case of the Service Charter of the Sapienza University of Rome – seems to clearly exemplify this assumption. Through the analysis of three elements in particular – the role of the external context, organisational learning and communication –, which can be considered as points of a possible strategy to focus on in order to improve the university's quality model, the intertwining of the above-mentioned perspectives will be accounted for, highlighting how organisations tend to move mainly between a cooperative and an institutionalist approach. Received: 29 March 2023 / Accepted: 30 October 2023 / Published: 5 November 2023
... The institutional theory emerged in the 1970s and has been developed by various scholars over the years. Notable contributors to the theory include Meyer and Rowan (1977), DiMaggio and Powell (1983), and Scott (2008). Institutional theory focuses on how organizations conform to and adopt institutional norms, values, and practices within their environment (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). ...
... Notable contributors to the theory include Meyer and Rowan (1977), DiMaggio and Powell (1983), and Scott (2008). Institutional theory focuses on how organizations conform to and adopt institutional norms, values, and practices within their environment (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). It examines the external pressures that influence organizations' behavior, as well as the internal processes through which organizations respond to those pressures. ...
The study investigated artificial intelligence and economic aspects of public universities in Nigeria. Three research questions and three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. A descriptive research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised the 51 Federal and the 60 State Universities in the federal republic of Nigeria. The sample size of the study was 13 Federal and the 15 State Universities. Making 25% of the Universities in Nigeria. The sample was derived using simple random sampling technique to ascertain the sample of the study. The instrument used for data collection was self-structured questionnaire titled: "Utilizing Artificial Intelligence for Enhancing Economic Aspects of Nigeria Public Universities Questionnaire" (UAIEEANPU). The instrument was coded in modified four (4) points Likert Scale of Very High Extent (VHE) = 4 Points, High Extent (HE) = 3 points, Low Extent (LE) = 2 points and Very Low Extent (VLE) = 1 point. The copies of the questionnaires were distributed by the researcher with the aid of two research assistants who were adequately trained so that they could answer any question that the respondents may come up with. The 28-questionnaire were issued to universities public relation officers/communication officers which were the respondents of the questionnaires, out of the 28 questionnaires issued, only 25 were retrieved, of which 2 questionnaires were not useful, leaving only 10 federal universities and 13 state universities response rate and this is considered significant for the study. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation at mean benchmark of 2.5 while one sample t-test inferential statistics was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance, with the aid of SPSS version 23.0. The finding revealed that utilizing artificial intelligence enhances the economic aspects of Nigeria public universities. Hence, is important to acknowledge that the integration of AI in public universities with careful consideration of ethical and privacy implications. The study concluded that by embracing AI technologies and effectively leveraging their potential, public universities can deliver quality education and support services to their stakeholders. The study recommended that public universities should consider investing in AI technologies and infrastructure to facilitate the integration of AI into various operational processes specifically designed for classroom management process.
... Avoidance is a more active form of compromise that includes direct tactics, such as concealment, disguised compliance or escaping. With these tactics, resistance can be manifested in the ceremonial adoption of new regulations, which results in the underlying practices being modified superficially without a substantive change in actors' behavior (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). This "compliance in appearance" with the regulatory prescriptions is likely to result in symbolic changes in actors' practices (Meyer and Rowan, 1977;Maroun and van Zijl, 2016). ...
... With these tactics, resistance can be manifested in the ceremonial adoption of new regulations, which results in the underlying practices being modified superficially without a substantive change in actors' behavior (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). This "compliance in appearance" with the regulatory prescriptions is likely to result in symbolic changes in actors' practices (Meyer and Rowan, 1977;Maroun and van Zijl, 2016). Defiance is a form of resistance to institutional pressures through strategies such as dismissing or challenging the source of isomorphic pressure. ...
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine both the responses of auditees to corporate governance audit (CGA) regulation and the practices of CGA auditors.
Design/methodology/approach – The study used a mixed method. Content analysis of 200 annual and CGA reports was carried out for 13 years, from 2008 to 2021, split into voluntary disclosure and mandatory
disclosure periods. Quantitative analysis was also conducted using Kruskal–Wallis and Dunn’s tests. Data gathered were interpreted through the lens of isomorphism and Oliver’s (1991) strategic responses to institutional processes.
Findings – The study revealed that in the voluntary disclosure period, auditees responded mainly with acquiescence, motivated by mimetic isomorphic pressure. In the mandatory disclosure period, auditee responses ranged from acquiescence to dismissal of corporate governance regulation (i.e. coercive isomorphic pressure). Auditor reporting of CGA findings was found to be heterogeneous, suggesting that normative and mimetic isomorphism did not homogenize auditor practices.
Practical implications– The absence of uniform auditee responses to CGA regulation during the mandatory
disclosure period suggests that the purpose of mandating the regulation has not yet been achieved and may signal inadequate coercive isomorphic pressure from the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN). Similarly, heterogeneous reporting of CGA findings by corporate governance auditors inhibits the comparability of audit findings, limiting their value for information users.
Originality/value – This study examines corporate governance auditor practices and auditee responses to corporate governance audit regulation.
... [Entrevista JLA, 2016] Sin embargo, otros fenómenos salieron a la luz. La UABC había incorporado las reglas, prácticas y procesos considerados racionales, prevalecientes en el ambiente institucional y, con ello, incrementado su legitimidad (Meyer y Rowan, 1992). La incorporación del PIFI para obtener recursos extraordinarios mediante ejercicios de planeación estratégica funcionó como un mito poderoso. ...
... Entonces más bien en la gestión, lo que se fomentó en los programas educativos era la base, porque era el reconocimiento social, lo que maneja en aquel momento la politica publica educativa, tener un posicionamiento y reconocimiento social de las universidades, y eso lo hacían a través de que las universidades tuvieran sus programas acreditados, estudio de emprendedores, estudio de egresados y reestructuración de programas con base a esos criterios. [Entrevista JLA, 2016] Ello implicó mantener las apariencias de que los mitos realmente funcionaban, a pesar de que en ocasiones las estructuras eran inconsistentes con las necesidades del trabajo, pero aceptarlo implicaba negar la validez de los mitos y, como consecuencia, sabotear la legitimidad de la organización (Meyer y Rowan, 1992). Algo similar ocurrió en la UABC, pues algunos actores reconocieron que en el marco de los lineamientos del programa, el cumplimiento de los indicadores generó inconsistencias y simulación, desvirtuando los objetivos del planeación participativa promulgada por el PIFI: entonces, es cuando dice el amigo Manuel: eso se llegó a la perversión, es decir, el esfuerzo que la universidad había hecho con su desgaste institucional, lo que había hecho en términos de una propuesta, lo que había cumplido en términos de la defensa del propio rector o rectora ante lo pares, las visitas in situ que ya se fomentaban en ese momento, todo es no cuenta, lo más importante es el cumplimiento en términos financieros, entonces no había tolerancia de ninguna tendencia, o sea, si vas al 50% te apoyo o no, tiene que ser el 25% el origen y luego el 50% para los siguientes periodos, y lo más critico ahora es que del ejercicio presupuestal se cierra a noviembre. ...
Este artículo muestra los resultados de investigación sobre el cambio organizacional derivado de la implementación del Programa Integral de Fortalecimiento Institucional (PIFI), como una herramienta de gestión a partir del año 2001, en la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC). El estudio se aborda desde los Estudios Organizacionales; específicamente del Nuevo Institucionalismo Sociológico. Desde esta perspectiva, se indaga el proceso de cambio organizacional en tres niveles de análisis: normativo (Ley Orgánica, Estatuto General y Reglamento de Planeación), estructura formal (división del trabajo administrativo y toma de decisiones) y financiero (asignación de recursos financieros extraordinarios a la universidad). Palabras clave: cambio organizacional, cambio institucional, planeación, universidad.
... That is, the focus is not only on technically efficient structure and routines, but on creative ways of dealing with needs and uncertainty (Scott, 1992). Facing substantial uncertainty, firms may decouple technical, formal requirements and informal, social requirements (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Therefore, the formal organizational structure, which is purposefully designed to regulate behavior toward specific goals, may be supplemented or transformed by the emergence of an informal structure (Scott, 1992). ...
This paper examines innovation through corporate social responsibility (CSR), which among other things, encourages corporations to represent more stakeholder interests than just those of stockholders. Limitations of the traditional corporation relate to internalization and hierarchy, as the traditional goal of the corporation is to maximize internalized value, perhaps even at the expense of its customers and employees. However, a problem with stakeholder capitalism may occur when value and power are too dispersed, and value-creation is not measured. To address these problems, the organization must innovate how it organizes, and engage its most critical stakeholders-its employees and customers.
... One reason for this decoupling is that while there are incentives to be ceremonially compliant in environments with external validation (e.g. Knight, Dobbin, and Kalev 2022), real impact relies on everyday practice and creating organizational cultures that reflect structural change (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Simultaneously, there is acknowledgment that performances of identity that signal allyship without nurturing actual solidarity might reinforce existing hierarchies and problematic stereotypes (Deo 2021), or they might alienate new entrants despite inclusion by highlighting their differences (Mackenzie and Abad 2021). ...
Using preliminary observations from three parallel projects that employ a range of methods (network and content analysis, surveys, focus groups, and interviews), this article traces the experience of navigating different kinds of identity as useful capital within the legal profession. Identity is not the first kind of non-economic capital to influence professional navigation, but it is distinct in that it is owned and deployed primarily by minority actors. Adding to scholarship that has located the extensions for identity as capital, three interrelated contributions follow from this research. First, it reveals the prevalence of a diffuse field of diversity consciousness where, regardless of outcome, there is a sense that diversity is useful capital. Second, despite being notionally useful, these multi-method sources reveal the ways in which navigating such capital is simultaneously complicated for both actors within visible (e.g. race and perceived gender) and invisible (e.g. some disability, genderfluidity, and religion) identity categories. The isomorphic diversity posturing by organizations fosters a system where being a minority is seen as an advantage, but inclusion feels like accommodation either because it demands certain portrayals of precarity or because it leaves individuals unsure of their worth beyond the expected performance of their identity. As a result, even though the new version of the ideal professional norm might valorize identity as capital, it continues to serve organizations rather than individuals. Finally, these data make the methodological case for the usefulness of the periphery as an analytical vantage point to assess systemic inequalities in legal profession research.
... For small-scale enterprises, CSR plays an active role in UIGG, while large enterprises have no significant impact. As Wickert et al. (2016) stressed, the mismatch between the CSR talk and CSR walk of large firms may lead to "greenwashing" (overstating their CSR talk) (Bowen, 2014;Bowen & Aragon-Correa, 2014) and "decoupling" (inconsistency between the emblematic communication of the implementation of CSR-related organizational practices and the real implementation of these practices) (Marquis & Qian, 2014;Meyer & Rowan, 1977). In summary, large companies are inclined to publish or report their assumed social responsibility (CSR talk), while small firms tend to take substantive actions to fulfill their CSR goals (CSR walk). ...
Urban inclusive green growth (UIGG) refers to the synergetic enhancement of the economy, the environment, and the society in a city. Achieving such enhancement requires addressing a series of problems in the development of urbanization, such as unemployment, lack of access to education, insufficient medical resources, inequity, and environmental pollution. As firms are critical to city development and urbanization, whether they practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays a crucial part in UIGG. In this study, we focus on Chinese cities as examples of UIGG and Chinese listed companies as CSR engagers, employing matched data on Chinese listed companies and cities to investigate how CSR affects UIGG. Specifically, the empirical results of a high-dimensional fixed effect model indicate that CSR significantly promotes UIGG. This finding remains valid after a set of robustness checks, including instrumental variable (IV) regression. CSR can promote UIGG by positively influencing enterprises’ economic performance, innovation, and employment. To promote firms’ substantive CSR actions, the government of Jiangsu Province, China, launched a pilot policy for CSR promotion by issuing an official guidance document, which can be considered a quasi-natural experiment to test the causality between CSR and UIGG. We find that the CSR pilot significantly promoted UIGG. The heterogeneity test results indicate that the influence of CSR on UIGG varies based on the audit company, the nature of the enterprise, and the structure of corporate leadership.
... Since the 19th century, education is organized in large bureaucracies managed by political systems, as many other social activities that came under political and bureaucratic control in modern societies (Meyer & Rowan, 1983). The emergence of largescale educational organizations has been interpreted through rationalist arguments (Bidwell, 1965), and next, within the neo institutionalist perspective (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), through cultural ones. This last perspective considers that the source of these organizational features is the surrounding macrolevel societal order, which diffuses societal myths, ideologies and norms as to what particular organizations should be (Ingersoll, 1993), but also that the environmental pressures on organizations are largely limited to their structural characteristics and do not affect much their core technology. ...
Accountability policies have become more important in the educational sector over the last two decades. Arguing that these policies focus increasingly on the technical core, some scholars have recently challenged the enduring finding that classroom activities and teachers’ practices are largely decoupled from their institutional environment. In this paper, we argue that this discussion could be enriched by taking into account the processes through which accountability policies are developed and implemented. Two contrasted processes of construction and implementation are comparedregarding the extent to which they have an impact on the level of decoupling between the formal structure of evaluation and the teachers’ practices. The results show that compared to the bureaucratic approach to educational reform, the network model of organizing is more favourable to the emergence of social and cognitive changes, which contribute to reduce the level of decoupling between the evaluation’s mechanism and the teachers’ practices.
... The Institutional Theory (IT) approach, a common approach adopted in accounting research in different public organisation, was adopted in this research (Jacobs, 2012;Dillard et al., 2004). The Institutional theory proposed that there is structural uniformity in most organisations, in modern societies, imposed by institutional environments (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). The work of Cohen et al, (2007) 29 @ECRTD-UK: https://www.eajournals.org/ ...
... This gap is evidence of what is known as a rational myth. Institutional theory offers a sociological perspective for understanding the emergence of rational myths and, more generally, how organizations integrate norms, rules, and beliefs into their practices (Alvesson & Spicer, 2019;DiMaggio & Powell, 1983;Meyer & Rowan, 1977). ...
The main objective of this study is to understand the value of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure assurance in the context of the development of sustainable finance standards and laws. This study is based on an analysis of 188 comment letters submitted by such actors in the context of public consultations on the development of three new sustainable finance initiatives (the CFA Institute, the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, and the New Zealand parliament). The study shows these actors' nuanced and often quite critical perceptions of the effectiveness of external assurance in preventing greenwashing and their reservations about its mandatory nature. These actors have raised various criticisms, including concerns about the vagueness surrounding verification practices; the lack of expertise available to conduct assurance in a new, specialized, and complex field; the costs of the assurance process, particularly for small players; and the lack of control over the reliability of the ESG data used. This article contributes to several emerging trends in the literature—in particular, research on governance practices to prevent greenwashing, on the institutionalization of sustainable finance standards and laws, and on the role of rational myths in the assurance process for ESG disclosures.
... IT emphasises the influence of extra-organizational institutions (social, economic, and political) on organisational practises and provides the advantage of analysing the phenomenon at a macro level, (Bouma & Van der Veen, 2002). Meyer & Rowan (1977) and DiMaggio & Powell (1983) claimed that institutional environments can have a significant impact on the emergence of formal structures inside an organisation, frequently more so than market forces. A study by Azah et al. (2017) using institutional pressure on the adoption of green initiatives across Malaysian enterprises, came to the conclusion that the regulatory bodies could encourage greater adoption of green solutions by offering more financial incentives. ...
The objective of green tax law is to promote green growth among companies, people and communities as well as environmental preservation. The Malaysian green tax law, however, is more concerned with tax incentives than with tax penalties. Evidence showed most companies in Malaysia are not even aware of the incentive-based tax and thus, do not include them as part of their strategies for environmental sustainability. The green tax penalty has become a popular environmental policy tool for many countries, but not in Malaysia. The Malaysian system of environmental taxes should include the green tax penalty. Therefore, this study aims to identify key drivers for companies to respond to the green tax policy. The study uses institutional theory to explore the driving force of green tax acceptance within companies. Institutional pressure suggests that the three mechanisms of organisational changes are coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures. Coercive pressure stems from political influences and the legitimacy problem; mimetic pressure results from a standard response to uncertainty, and normative pressure is associated with professionalisation. The study utilises the survey questionnaire to identify opinions, experiences and behaviours towards green tax acceptance among manufacturing companies. The population of the study is manufacturing companies and the unit of analysis is managers or accountants who represent the manufacturing companies and members of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturer (FMM). The outcomes from the study confirmed the institutional theory to support the green tax reform acceptance for companies in Malaysia. The study also develops a green tax model that the government can take into account when enacting green tax reform so that companies can cooperate with Malaysia's green tax law. The study contributes to institutional theory by conceptualising the key drivers of green tax laws among Malaysian companies. The conceptualisation is used to formulate a structural model that explains the key drivers of green tax laws, and the structural model is tested against empirical data. A better understanding of factors influencing green tax policy acceptance is relevant to the government to strengthen the green growth environment and enhance awareness to create a shared responsibility among Malaysian companies.
... It can shed light on how MNCs adapt their strategies to align with local norms and regulations, ensuring legitimacy and minimizing institutional voids. For instance, an MNC operating in Indonesia may need to adopt local customs, adhere to specific corporate governance standards, and navigate complex bureaucratic processes to thrive in this institutional environment (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). ...
Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine the strategies of multinational corporations in emerging markets in Indonesia Methodology: The study adopted a desktop methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library Findings: Multinational corporations (MNCs) in Indonesia's emerging markets exhibit a preference for collaborative entry strategies, emphasizing joint ventures and strategic alliances. These approaches enable MNCs to harness local expertise and navigate the complexities of the Indonesian market effectively. Government policies play a pivotal role in shaping MNC strategies, with favorable policies attracting greater foreign investment and expansion. Industry-specific competitive strategies, including price competition, technology differentiation, and product innovation, are tailored to meet local market demands. Additionally, MNCs actively engage with the Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Eclectic paradigm (OLI Framework), Resource-based view (RBV) & Institutional theory may be used to anchor future studies on the examining the strategies of multinational corporations in emerging markets in Indonesia. Encourages MNCs to build meaningful partnerships, leveraging local expertise and networks, which can be crucial for navigating complex regulatory environments and market dynamics. Engaging in policy advocacy represents a proactive approach by MNCs to shape the regulatory landscape in their favor while contributing to the host country's economic development.
... Researchers can investigate how risk assessment and mitigation strategies in strategic planning align with or adapt to the institutional context of Nigeria. This theory helps to understand how organizations navigate regulatory challenges, compliance issues, and societal expectations in their strategic decision-making processes (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). ...
Purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate the role of risk assessment and mitigation in strategic planning in Nigeria. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library Findings: The study on risk assessment and mitigation in Nigerian strategic planning reveals a recognition-action gap in organizations. Despite understanding the importance of risk management, many lack a structured approach to address threats. Common risks include political instability, security concerns, corruption, regulatory changes, and economic volatility. To improve decision-making and stakeholder value, the study recommends a more integrated and systematic approach to risk management within Nigerian organizations. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Game Theory, Resource-Based View (RBV) Theory & Institutional Theory may be used to anchor future studies on the role of risk assessment and mitigation in strategic planning in Nigeria. Nigerian strategic planning should create context-specific risk maps that outline the geographical distribution of risks and vulnerabilities within the country. Nigerian policies should prioritize investments in building resilience to identified risks.
... In the context of China's digital transformation, this theory is relevant because it highlights how the country's unique institutional context, including government policies and regulations, influences firms' strategic change efforts. For instance, China's digital policies, such as the "Made in China 2025" initiative, can shape the direction and pace of digital transformation, impacting how firms adapt and compete in this changing landscape (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). ...
Purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of digital transformation on strategic change processes in china. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library Findings: The impact of digital transformation on strategic change processes in China has yielded several key findings. First, digital technologies have significantly accelerated the pace of strategic change, enabling companies to adapt swiftly to market dynamics. Second, digital tools have facilitated data-driven decision-making, enhancing the precision and effectiveness of strategic planning. Finally, successful strategic change in China increasingly hinges on digital capabilities, emphasizing the necessity for organizations to prioritize digital transformation as a core component of their strategic agenda. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Resource-Based View (RBV) Theory, Institutional Theory & Innovation Diffusion Theory may be used to anchor future studies on impact of digital transformation on strategic change processes in china. Companies in China should invest in developing digital talent internally Policymakers in China should continually adapt regulations to accommodate the dynamic nature of digital transformation.
... According to Choudhary and Vithayathil (2013), making decisions in a decentralized manner would be the most beneficial choice when adopting cloud services, offering a more significant internal quality enhancement of cloud-based IT services. Mimetic processes (Benlian et al., 2009;DiMaggio and Powell, 1983;Meyer and Rowan, 1977) and decentralized decision-making (Winkler and Brown, 2013;Choudhary and Vithayathil, 2013) have also emerged as two relevant organizational environmental characteristics in this study of SaaS affordances. ...
Although cloud computing is associated with organizational agility, anecdotal evidence points to resistance to cloud computing by employees in information technology (IT) units. We explored the links between software as a service (SaaS) and organizational agility by conducting two stages of interviews with key informants in large organizations, and by employing affordance and inertia-theoretical lenses. Two basic affordances emerged from the retroductive data analysis-implementing quickly and sourcing independently-which in turn yielded two higher-level affordances: trialing alternatives and self-organizing business teams. We developed a model that explains how and why these four affordances enhance agility by accelerating the sensing-to-acting process of organizations. We also describe how five categories of organizational inertia in IT units hinder agility. Our main contribution is how adopting SaaS applications enables organizational agility while highlighting the role of IT unit inertia in SaaS affordance actualization processes.
... 26 In 1977, in what is now considered a landmark article, Meyer and Rowan theorised that new organisations incorporate existing myths and ceremonies into their founding structures, because of a perceived link between modelling and legitimacy, and an observed link between increased legitimacy and increased likelihood of survival. 27 Anteojito's operational and structural modelling on Billiken is evident both at the level of its visuality and of its cultural and ideological positioning. ...
Argentina’s Billiken was the world’s longest-running children’s magazine, publishing 5144 issues over one hundred years. It educated and entertained generations of schoolchildren and came to occupy a central role in Argentine cultural life. This volume offers the first academic history of the whole lifespan of Billiken as a print magazine, through to its transition into a digital brand. As an editorial project founded at the time of the massification of print culture, Billiken was in the business of creating future citizens. From its transnational and literary beginnings, Billiken quickly became organised around the school year, offering valuable extra-curricular material aligned to the patriotic drivers of state schooling. Billiken told the story of the Argentine nation, cyclically and repeatedly, gaining such momentum that it became part of the nation’s story itself. This volume adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to take account of the many different facets of Billiken’s content born from a combination of ideological, commercial, political and cultural drivers. This history of Billiken examines the changes, contradictions and continuities in the magazine over time as it responded to political events, adapted to new commercial realities, and made use of technological advances. It explores how Billiken magazine not only reflected society, but shaped it through its influence on childhoods, children’s culture and education, and provides an alternative window onto the history and politics of a tumultuous hundred years for Argentina.
... Alternatively, institutional theory was considered a viable option by offering new lens for understanding PS. Established in 1977, its main idea is that formal organizational structures include technological imperatives, resource dependencies and "institutional" forces, vaguely defined at that time as "rule like" frameworks (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Institutional theory addresses the organizational processes and argues that the expectations regarding the fitting organizational forms and behavior endorse the development of an organization's structure (Badewi and Shehab, 2016). ...
Purpose
In literature, it is recognized that there is no universal set of critical success factors (CSFs) applicable to all projects. The goal of this research is to validate a theoretical model which considers that CSFs’ influence on project success (PS) is configurational, that CSFs combine to influence PS.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors proposed a theoretical framework which operationalizes CSFs considering contingency and institutional theories' terms, as external contingencies, organizational resources and project strategies, which influence PS. The framework is validated through a qualitative approach on 18 social projects implemented by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Based on the conducted semistructured interviews with NGO managers or project managers, 91 instances when CSFs combine to influence PS were identified.
Findings
The dominant path reveals the combination of CSFs in terms of strategies adopted to face contingencies (70 instances), another as resources which moderate managers' strategies (14 instances), and in seven instances positive contingencies and resources combine and influence the PS. The results reveal that CSFs combine in reactive and dynamic ways to influence PS.
Originality/value
The research contributes to the vast literature on projects' success by adopting a different perspective. Configurational theory explains project management and projects' complexity better than the traditional approaches, which have a rather correlational perspective.
... In a sense of organizational behavior, greenwashing can be classified as a form of the environmental decoupling strategy, while its opposite, understating environmental performance is often referred to as brownwashing. Decoupling can be defined as a gap between firms' formal structures and actual activities, aiming to reconcile the conflict between institutional rules and organizational efficiency (Meyer and Rowan 1977;Bromley and Powell 2012). External environment circumstances, such as lax rules and regulations, can lead firms to engage in decoupling (Tashman et al. 2019;Zhang 2022b;Zhang 2023b), while the focus on firm-level factors can shed light on why firms respond to institutional pressure in different ways (Crilly et al. 2012). ...
The greenwashing phenomenon, which implies the misalignment between environmental disclosure and performance, has received significant scholarly attention. We review the diverse literature on corporate greenwashing to develop an integrative framework that examines its antecedents and consequences from the perspective of corporate governance. Specifically, we identify theoretical perspectives commonly assumed in the literature on greenwashing, including green marketing, green finance, signaling strategy, and corporate decoupling. We outline why and how greenwashing occurs from the aspects of external governance environments and internal governance mechanisms, and what influences greenwashing exerts on firm performance and stakeholder reactions. The analysis further leads to the identification of a research agenda to continue advancing our understanding of corporate greenwashing. Future studies should re-evaluate whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues should be included in greenwashing, address potential trade-offs within an ESG framework, explore internal governance mechanisms that influence greenwashing, and examine the differentiated impacts of corporate greenwashing on various stakeholders.
... In addition, legitimacy is classified into three dimensions: pragmatic, moral, and cognitive. In the mid-1990s, pragmatism was termed "rational effectiveness," where legitimacy is based on logical thinking (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), and an individual's actions are measured on the extent of how they will be useful and effective . Meanwhile, morality centers on collective values and purpose, where actions are evaluated whether they are correct (positive norms) or incorrect (illegitimacy). ...
Purpose-This paper aims to contribute to the study of the factors of consumers' attitudes toward boycott intention. This examines how behavioral beliefs and attitudes are statistically related to boycott intention through the modified conceptual framework of Ajzen's Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior.
Design/methodology/approach-Human behavior concerning boycott intentions is studied using a sequential explanatory research design. Data are obtained from 90 valid respondents through questionnaires and 8 interviewees from focus group discussions. It was analyzed using regression analysis and Baheiraei's points of integration.
Findings-Animosity, legitimacy, and boycott attitude significantly affect boycott intention. Boycott attitude served as a mediator between legitimacy and boycott intention. Weak evidence shows that ethical relativism and animosity significantly affect boycott attitudes.
Research Limitations/Implications-The study is limited to millennials and Generation Z Filipino fashion consumers who have substantial purchasing power and awareness of social events.
Practical/Social Implications-This paper shall help companies and researchers better understand the motives behind boycott intentions for ethical decision-making processes and further engage in social and moral involvements within the community.
Originality/value-The study proposes the addition of relevant variables to studies on boycott intention in the fashion industry. This may help increase the understanding of consumer attitudes leading to boycotts and aid a company in countering boycotts.
... As observed in organizational contexts, formal policies can be separated from actual practices, with organizations appearing to comply with external demands without genuinely implementing the intended changes (Bromley & Powell, 2012). Decoupling is intended to maintain the appearance of conformity with institutional expectations (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). However, in the context of smart government, this decoupling seems to emerge in the multi-level governance of Chinese new authoritarianism, where statelevel political legitimacy is solidified (Zhang et al., 2023). ...
... Complementing this view are studies from the field of organizational sociology. This literature is guided by the notion that organizations adopt practices based on their perceived alignment with pre-existing conceptions of appropriate conduct, rather than on their efficiency in enhancing organizational performance (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). What is recognized inside organizations as appropriate, proper, or desired may often serve as barriers to implementing practices that break away from that view (Boxenbaum, 2008). ...
Classroom interactions emerging from socioscientific argumentation may be incompatible with the traditional definitions of learning, thus creating tension and potentially undermining its implementation. Leveraging existing literature, we identify argumentative talk that shifts away from scientific content and toward subjective claims, as well as instances of unproductive argumentation as the points of incompatibility. We contend that attention to the degree of compatibility of enactments of socioscientific argumentation with traditional schooling practices may be necessary for substantive implementation. The role of teachers’ and students’ interactional moves in relation to this compatibility is qualitatively examined using two analytical frameworks related to the content and form of the students’ arguments. To generate practical implications with empirical foundations, compatibility is examined in teacher-led and peer-led argumentation. In teacher-led argumentation, we show that the degree of incompatibility can be managed when teachers extend their elicitation of responses with follow-up interrogative questioning, leading students to rely more on scientific knowledge. In peer-led argumentation, incompatibility can be identified when the argumentation collapses into confrontational disagreement or uncritical agreement, obscuring instances in which students rely on scientific knowledge. We discuss the significance of productive talk moves as a way to advance from incompatibility with traditional schooling toward integrating socioscientific argumentation as a core instructional practice.
... Notably, the primary aim of SR targets governmental entities and stakeholders, not direct consumers. Additionally, grounding the argument in Institutional Theory (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), which underscores external pressures as pivotal in molding organizational behavior, it can be inferred that a firm's financial health can shape its response to SR-related pressures. Companies with better FP might meet and exceed these pressures due to their fiscal strengths. ...
... Departman düzeyinde stratejinin kalite yönetimi uygulamalarına bağlı olarak nasıl oluşacağı Yeni Kurumsallaşma Kuramı ve ile açıklanabilir. Yeni kurumsal kurama göre kurumsallaşma, "belirli davranış ve düşünce biçimlerinin, kural benzeri bir statü kazanması sürecidir" (Meyer ve Rowan, 1977, akt. Özen, 2013. ...
Günümüzde işletmelerin müşteriye sundukları ürün ve hizmet alanlarında önemi gittikçe artan kalite, maliyet, hız ve memnuniyet kavramlarının bir yönetim anlayışı olarak toplam kalite yönetimi ile daha çok ilişkilendiriliyor olması, bu yönetim anlayışında kalite yönetimi araçlarından daha çok yararlanılması sonucunu ortaya çıkarmaktadır. Tam Zamanında Üretim (TZÜ)/Kanban, 5S, kalite fonksiyon göçerimi (KFG), kalite çemberleri, altı sigma, toplam verimli bakım (TVB), benchmarking (kıyaslama), ve poke-yoke olarak adlandırılan kalite yönetimi araçlarının departman düzeyinde stratejilerin oluşturulmasında ve uygulanmasında önemi bu nedenle artmaktadır. Bu bağlamda departman düzeyinde stratejilerin oluşturulma ve uygulanması, belirtilen kalite yönetim araçlarının işletmeye sağladığı yarar perspektifinde göz önüne alınacak verilere/bilgilere bağlı olacaktır. Araştırmanın amacı, belirtilen kalite yönetimi uygulamalarının departman düzeyinde stratejilerin oluşturma ve uygulanmasına olan etkisi ve farklılaştırıcı rolünü incelemektir. Araştırmanın örneklemini yönetici konumundaki 150 katılımcı oluşturmaktadır. Nicel araştırma yönteminin benimsendiği çalışmada, verilerin analizinde parametrik ve parametrik olmayan yöntemler kullanılmıştır. Araştırma bulgularına göre, departman düzeyinde stratejik yönelimin ortaya çıkmasında görece en etkili uygulama benchmarking olmuştur. En az etkisi ortaya çıkan uygulama ise Poke-Yoke olarak belirlenmiştir. Stratejik planın oluşturulması sürecinde diğer departmanlar ve işletme sahiplerinin yer alması, kalite yönetim araçlarının uygulanmasını etkilemektedir. Departman düzeyinde stratejik planın oluşturulmasına katkıda bulunan kişiler açısından yarar ve etkinlik farklılığı TZU, KFG, Altısigma ve TVB uygulamaları için ortaya çıkmıştır. Benchmarking ve kalite çemberlerinin kullanılıyor olması stratejik planların uygulaması sürecinde anlamlı bir farklılık ortaya çıkarmıştır. Departman olarak mesainin ne kadarının stratejik analiz ve karar alma faaliyetleri için harcanması açısından" 5S, AltıSigma ve Benchmarking uygulamalarının yarar ve etkinlik değerlendirmesi istatistiksel olarak anlamlı şekilde farklılaşmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Toplam kalite yönetimi, kalite yönetimi araçları, strateji, departman stratejisi.
... Departman düzeyinde stratejinin kalite yönetimi uygulamalarına bağlı olarak nasıl oluşacağı Yeni Kurumsallaşma Kuramı ve ile açıklanabilir. Yeni kurumsal kurama göre kurumsallaşma, "belirli davranış ve düşünce biçimlerinin, kural benzeri bir statü kazanması sürecidir" (Meyer ve Rowan, 1977, akt. Özen, 2013. ...
Este trabalho teve como objetivo discutir a ocorrência do isomorfismo mimético de práticas de compliance, por meio da Lei Anticorrupção, nos estados brasileiros, principalmente considerado a responsabilização administrativa, a compliance público e a exigibilidade de compliance nos contratos com o setor privado. Para tanto, houve a utilização da Teoria Institucional, com a abordagem sociológica e o pressuposto do isomorfismo. Metodologicamente, houve a utilização da pesquisa documental, por meio de documentos que contemplassem ações anticorrupção nos estados brasileiros. As categorias de análises, foram baseadas nos conteúdos de responsabilização e compliance nos contextos de relacionamentos público e privado. Os principais resultados encontrados aludiram a indícios de isomorfismo mimético dos estados em relação à União, e entre os próprios entes subnacionais. Com os resultados, este estudo diferenciou-se dos demais em apresentar o cenário de adoção de práticas de compliance nos estados. As contribuições encontradas foram: teóricas – à similaridade do ambiente institucional brasileiro em adotar normativas; práticas – o esclarecimento de que os estados possuem ações para combater à corrupção.
Este artigo analisou o processo de autoavaliação em um instituto federal de ensino sob a lente da gestão do conhecimento e da teoria institucional. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa caracterizou-se como qualitativa, do tipo estudo de caso. A coleta de dados ocorreu por meio de entrevistas, observação participante e pesquisa documental. A análise de dados seguiu os procedimentos da análise de conteúdo e da técnica de triangulação. Os resultados identificam o processo autoavaliativo como um mecanismo de legitimação institucional, com incidência de mecanismos isomórficos miméticos e coercitivos. A associação das lentes da gestão do conhecimento e da teoria institucional proporcionou uma compreensão mais robusta do processo de autoavaliação, identificando limitações e potencialidades.
Wildfires are one of the signature threats of climate change and scientists have devoted considerable attention to documenting the biophysical linkages between climate and wildfire. However, we know far less about the linkage between the changing environment and its implication for the human institutions with responsibility to respond to these changes. Institutional complexity is an important concept for advancing climate science as it creates the conceptual linkage between a changing biophysical environment and associated changing institutional task environment. Despite its importance for understanding needs for institutional adaptation, our knowledge of the institutional dimensions of wildfire and its interactions with the changing environment remains relatively nascent. In particular, we know little about where pressures for institutional adaptation are most acute. Effective institutional adaptation is understood as readiness to meet the demands of the new task environment. However, during times of change, institutions may struggle to re-align logics to reflect the demands of the new task environment, particularly if those changes are not well understood. In this paper, we developed and present findings from a novel dataset compiled to understand the evolution of wildfire in the United States from 1999- 2020 in terms of patterns of change in the institutional complexity of wildfire response. Findings reveal national trends of increasing institutional complexity of wildfire in indicators associated with wildfire governance, logistics, management, resource scarcity, and network coordination. However, findings also reveal substantial variation across regions.
This chapter argues that Bourdieu has largely been absent in debates on institutionalism, but potentially has much to offer. The chapter proceeds in five key moves. First, it is useful to address the nomenclature in this debate and establish the difference between organisations and institutions, which, although related, are distinct, but are often used interchangeably. Second, I address the issue of whether there are traces of an organisational and institutional analysis to be found in Bourdieu’s oeuvre. Third, I explore the scholarly literature on new or neo-institutionalism and look at how it has engaged with Bourdieu’s ideas to further its insights. Here, I particularly focus on the concept of the ‘organisational field’. In the fourth section, I offer an agenda which outlines key insights for a Bourdieusian analysis of organisations and institutions, showing how this enriches Bourdieu’s project, while also filling a gap in social critique. Drawing on Bourdieu and critical realism, in the fifth section of the chapter, I turn to the problem of institutional racism, and show the difference that a more critical engagement with the concept of institutions makes for conceptualising and tackling institutional racism.
We use content analysis to show that the diagnosis of the financial crisis of 2007–2009 shifted significantly from a focus on the need for structural change in the banking industry to an emphasis on culture and reform at the organizational level. We consider four overlapping subsystems in which this shift in problem–solution clusters played out—political, regulatory, legal, and consulting—and show that the “structural reform agenda,” which was initially strong and publicly prominent in the political arena, lost attention. Over time it was displaced by a neoliberal managerialist turn, which watered down or abandoned structural solutions and instead played up a new “culture and conduct reform agenda.” We explain this shift in terms of the marketization of regulation, which—following Mautner (Language and the market society, 1st ed. Routledge, 2010)’s model of interdiscursive alignment—we detect in the shifting language of financial-services reform across the four subsystems in scope. We argue that a neoliberal turn took place with a discursive closure that made the structural reform alternative gradually unsayable and, in the end, unthinkable. At the same time, the discourse turned to embrace the neoliberal agenda, built on the myth of self-regulating actors and markets, manifest in the culture problematic. This managerialist turn was able to mobilise, and be operationalised by, an industry of consultants, whereas structural change came to be seen by regulators as too risky to implement. We claim that these dynamics reveal how a form of “collective strategic ignorance,” based on powerful institutional myths, was systematically oriented to ignore and reject structural sources of crisis. Finally, we suggest that the observed pattern of displacement—whereby initial calls for structural change become later displaced by managerial and procedural solutions—is common to other social issues, such as audit reform and corporate social responsibility.
Zusammenfassung
Gestaltungsaufgaben pädagogischen Handelns in Institutionen und Organisationen betonen heute das „System des Lebenslangen Lernens“. Auch in den Aus- und Fortbildungsdimensionen für pädagogische Berufe kommen zugehörige Gestaltungs- und Handlungsanforderungen zum Ausdruck. Eine aufeinander Bezug nehmende interdisziplinäre Organisations- und Professionalisierungsforschung rückt in den Vordergrund. Dieser Beitrag formuliert Thesen zur jeweiligen Richtung aktueller organisationaler und professioneller Entwicklung und Forschung in der Weiter- und Erwachsenenbildung. Eine mehrebenen-analytische Betrachtung wird durchgeführt, um die unterschiedlichen Dimensionen, in denen Entwicklungen für Organisationen, professionell Handelnde und Teilnehmende wirksam werden, zu integrieren.
Parmi les questions qui intéressent l’analyse du discours se trouvent les formes de récurrences lexicales – figements, routines, formules etc. –, porteuses de signification sociale (Fiala et al., 1987 ; Krieg˗Planque, 2009, 2010, 2013). L’inscription durable de tels figements est d’autant plus pertinente pour l’analyse critique du discours, qui met en garde contre la naturalisation d’idéologies (Fairclough, 2010). Dans le cas du discours de responsabilité sociétale des entreprises (RSE), de nombreux phénomènes linguistiques, participant d’une démarche de greenspeak (Harré et al., 1999), ont été mis en évidence pour construire le récit de l’implication environnementale de ces dernières. Cet article représente une étude préliminaire au sein d’un travail plus large mobilisant l’outil textométrique. Il exploite la morphologie des langues scandinaves pour tenter de saisir, par l’analyse co˗occurrentielle, les régularités du discours autour des mots formés de miljø˗/miljö˗ (‘environnement’). Deux corpus, l’un danois, l’autre suédois, sont convoqués ; les textes concernés relèvent d’une thématique environnementale et/ou sociétale, et proviennent de PME dont l’engagement peut être décrit comme « volontaire » puisqu’elles ne sont pas soumises à la directive 2014/95/UE. Préalablement, l’article cherche à contribuer à une méthodologie pour l’extraction de contenu pertinent à partir de pages Internet, dans un objectif d’analyse du discours outillée par des outils de textométrie.
In this chapter, we consider several theoretical paradigms which have emancipation of the suppressed and subjugated as their focal agenda. We follow-up our discussion of these diverse theoretical paradigms with an evaluation of their usefulness in deconstructing, examining, and comprehending entrepreneurship as a socio-economic emancipation strategy. Additionally, we also address methodological concerns which might arise in emancipatory underlined entrepreneurship projects and identify appropriate research methods. The objective of the chapter is to provide the readers with several theoretical and methodological alternatives when considering entrepreneurship projects with emancipatory connotations.
This paper seeks to contribute to the growing literature on sexual harassment of female journalists from the Global South more broadly and Southern Africa in particular. We selected three Southern African countries for this investigation: Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia. Much of sub-Saharan Africa still experiences patriarchy that has proven to be resilient with misogynistic residue. Theoretically, the study utilizes the new institutionalism theory that deals with the socio-political environment within which news organizations are embedded and the postcolonial feminist theory. Primarily, this study uses the qualitative method of semi-structured interviews with 15 journalists across the three countries and offers a thematic analysis of the gathered data. Female journalists’ responses in the selected three countries reveal that they are facing sexual harassment in various forms including, both verbally and physically. The sexual harassment that female journalists are subjected to, we argue, is in part a result of inadequate policies and media regulatory bodies that can curb harassment.
The study on women's empowerment has gained more interest among researchers in the past decade. In the recent context of Malaysia, the government is focusing on enhancing inclusiveness and equitable opportunities for all Malaysians including women, echoed in the Twelfth Plan from 2021 to 2025 and in the National Entrepreneurship Plan 2030. Both plans mirrored the multi-dimensional spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in keeping women at the center of development efforts. Women joined cooperatives as their purposes are to provide access to resources, training, and markets and create a supportive environment for members to build their skills, confidence, knowledge, and networks. However, despite the potential benefits of women cooperatives , they face numerous challenges that hinder their performance and sustainability. Furthermore, past studies revealed that there were many factors of women's empowerment, but few studies were done to identify the factors of women's empowerment from the resource-based point of view and further explain the co-operatives' performance from the perspective of board members in women cooperatives. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between empowerment and women cooperatives. Quantitative research will be conducted which covers experts' validated questionnaires to be distributed to the purposedly selected 7 board members from 256 women's cooperatives in Malaysia. Further analysis will be conducted to examine the influence of structural empowerment and co-operatives' performance. This paper also explores the mediating effect of the government effectiveness on the relationship between structural empowerment and women co-operatives' performance which will be the novelty of this study. The findings of this study shed light on the challenges that women face in accessing economic resources, opportunities, and decision-making. It highlights the importance of addressing these challenges and creating an enabling environment for women's empowerment.
By linking concepts and ideas from the private health services (PHS) and Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) literature with Porter's generic framework, this paper aims to identify the competitive positioning at a micro-clinic level in the private health services industry and to examine the perceived role of the institutions and intellectual capital associated with each one. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) was used.The results show that organizational configurations are associated with proactivity when competing via differentiation. In contrast, cost leadership is linked to firms that compete with low tariffs and a defensivearchetype. Our work can serve as a basis to recommend specific competitive strategies for thehigh number of firms still following a stuck-in-the-middle positioning strategy.
Las empresas estatales representan, aún después de casi quince años de privatizaciones, una parte significativa en las economías de diversos países. No obstante, aún permanecen sin tratar algunos aspectos asociados a su eficiencia, su capacidad de alcanzar objetivos y el uso político que se hace de ellas. Este artículo analiza como aspectos específicos de la gobernabilidad corporativa pueden ser aplicados en las empresas estatales, explorando las posibilidades y limitaciones de su utilización, con miras a estimular el diálogo latinoamericano sobre el tema, a partir de la experiencia brasileña. El foco del análisis está centrado en el papel desempeñado por el Consejo de Administración, órgano responsable de conducirla interacción entre el gobierno y la empresa, cuya efectividad de actuación ocupa un papel fundamental en la buena gobernabilidad.
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