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Is the Sharing Economy a Field? How a Disruptive Field Nurtures Sharing Economy Organizations
... The pervasiveness of these "tangible touchpoint[s] between the organization and different audiences" (Santos, 2019, p. 240) has led to a growing interest in accessing, extracting, saving ("scraping"), and analyzing these data at scale. For example, organizational scholars have demonstrated that websites offer reliable insights into diverse organizational phenomena, such as their identity (Botero et al., 2013;Kroezen & Heugens, 2012;Powell et al., 2016;Sillince & Brown, 2009), strategy (e.g., Ebben & Johnson, 2005;Guzman & Li, 2023;Holstein et al., 2018;Jarvis et al., 2019), innovation (Kinne & Lenz, 2021), and networks (Oberg et al., 2009;Powell et al., 2017;Wruk et al., 2020). ...
... In addition to websites' visitor-centric texts and visuals, websites' HTML files can be leveraged to operationalize otherwise elusive constructs. For example, a stream of research in network theory operationalizes network ties through outgoing links on organizational websites (e.g., Powell et al., 2016Powell et al., , 2017Wruk et al., 2020). These studies are based on the premise that outgoing links represent relational resources and, thus, indicate embeddedness. ...
... These studies are based on the premise that outgoing links represent relational resources and, thus, indicate embeddedness. However, researchers in this domain have been confined to cross-sectional analyses, and were, thus, "technically not able to confirm an ongoing process" (Oberg et al., 2009, p. 6;Wruk et al., 2020). Therefore, longitudinal website data enable more rigorous assessments of network associations, for example, via stochastic actororiented models (Snijders, 2017) to help illuminate processes. ...
Websites represent a crucial avenue for organizations to reach customers, attract talent, and disseminate information to stakeholders. Despite their importance, strikingly little work in the domain of organization and management research has tapped into this source of longitudinal big data. In this paper, we highlight the unique nature and profound potential of longitudinal website data and present novel open-source code- and databases that make these data accessible. Specifically, our codebase offers a general-purpose setup, building on four central steps to scrape historical websites using the Wayback Machine. Our open-access CompuCrawl database was built using this four-step approach. It contains websites of North American firms in the Compustat database between 1996 and 2020—covering 11,277 firms with 86,303 firm/year observations and 1,617,675 webpages. We describe the coverage of our database and illustrate its use by applying word-embedding models to reveal the evolving meaning of the concept of “sustainability” over time. Finally, we outline several avenues for future research enabled by our step-by-step longitudinal web scraping approach and our CompuCrawl database.
... The third perspective focuses on the how digital transformation affects institutional fields, their infrastructure and thus their governance. Digitally enabled forms of organizing such as digital platforms (e.g., Google, Amazon, AirBnB, Uber, etc.) put at stake existing institutional conditions but also change and shape the relational networks and configurations that provide forms of governance within and across fields (Alaimo, 2021;Bucher, Schou, & Waldkirch, 2020;Frenken, Vaskelainen, Fünfschilling, & Piscicelli, 2020;Maurer, Mair, & Oberg, 2020;Ozcan & Hannah, 2020;Thomas & Autio, 2014;Wruk, Schöllhorn, & Oberg, 2020). Since the "concept of an institutional field is one of the cornerstones of institutional theory" (Zietsma, Groenewgen, Logue, & Hinings, 2017, p. 1), we need to better understand how digitally enabled forms of organizing affect field processes. ...
... Illia et al. (this volume) harness the explanatory power of sentiment analysis powered by a machine learning approach. Other scholars use organizational websites as identity-statements and analyze the networks across websites through tracing the weblinks (Oberg et al., this volume;Powell et al., 2016;Wruk et al., 2020). Combining approaches such as web crawling for data collection with a program for analyzing the "linguistic topography" are useful for field-level analysis in that it allows for the selfidentification of a community in which participants are identified by others on the basis of weblink connectivity (Oberg, Huppertz, & Woywode 2006;Oberg, Schöllhorn, & Woywode 2009). ...
... Zwar fußen jüngere, relationale Feldkonzeptionen wie die der "issue fields" (Hoffman 1999;Zietsma et al. 2017) oder der "strategic action fields" (Fligstein und McAdam 2011) bereits stark auf dem Feldbegriff von Pierre Bourdieu, setzen diesen aber insbesondere im Hinblick auf die symbolischen und materiellen Macht-und Herrschaftsbeziehungen, die dynamischen Interaktionen zwischen Feldern und den Einfluss historisch erworbener und zum Teil unbewusster Handlungsorientierungen nur teilweise um. Gerade im Kontext von Plattformen sind Feldgrenzen besonders relevant, da Plattformen selbst als "disruptive fields" (Wruk et al. 2020) daherkommen, welche mit etablierten Feldern interagieren und unterschiedliche ökonomische, zivilgesellschaftliche und regulatorische Akteure mobilisieren (z. B. Wood und Lehdonvirta 2021;Johnston 2018;Gegenhuber et al. 2021;Kirchner und Schüßler 2020). ...
... B. neue kognitive Kategorien und Diskurse wie "Sharing Economy" oder "Frames" wie digital, innovativ, konsumentenfreundlich), die sie mobilisieren und über die sie mehr oder weniger aggressiv in andere Felder hineinwirken können (s. Wruk et al. 2020). Diese Plattformen treffen nun auf europäische, nationale und lokale Felder der Governance mit ihren jeweils spezifischen Kapitalformen, Praktiken und Selbstverständnissen. Die Europäische Kommission und der EUGH sind im europäischen Machtfeld entscheidende Akteure, die mit nationalen politisch-administrativen, rechtlichen und assoziativen Akteuren in einem komplexen Interaktionsgefüge stehen. ...
Zusammenfassung
In dem Beitrag untersuchen wir die Rekonfiguration von Personentransportmärkten mit Pkw durch digitale Plattformen im Hinblick auf die Frage, ob neue Marktakteure ihre Vorstellung zur Governance dieser Märkte durchsetzen können. Hierfür entwickeln wir einen durch Pierre Bourdieus Sozialtheorie inspirierten feldtheoretischen Zugang, der die Wechselwirkung von endogenen und exogenen Kräften bei Kämpfen um die Governance von Feldern in den Blick nimmt. Empirisch führen wir einen Vergleich des Personentransportsektors mit Pkw in Wien (Österreich) und Berlin (Deutschland) durch. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass in beiden Märkten keine vollständige Disruption durch neue Akteure und Technologien stattfand. Während in Österreich (Wien) Plattformen in das Taxigewerbe eingegliedert wurden, blieben die feldspezifischen Spaltungen und Grenzkonflikte zwischen Plattformen und Mietwagenunternehmen auf der einen Seite und Taxiunternehmen auf der anderen Seite in Deutschland (Berlin) allerdings aufrecht und wurden durch Plattformen noch verstärkt. Dieses Ergebnis lässt sich vor allem durch unterschiedliche Strukturen und Praktiken der interagierenden assoziativen, politisch-administrativen und rechtlichen Felder sowie durch die resultierenden Deutungskonflikte um die Funktion von digitalen Plattformen in lokalen Taximärkten und im multiskalaren Feld der Macht erklären.
... SI-Feld "Wohnen für Hilfe" als neuartige Form des Zusammenwohnens bei dem Pflegebedarf, Integration, sozialer Zusammenhalt und leistbarer Wohnraum ermöglicht werden sollen). Ein weiteres Beispiel hierfür ist das SI-Feld "Sharing Economy" Wruk et al., 2020), das Akteure beinhaltet, die Angebote zum Teilen oder gemeinsam Nutzen machen. Die Felder lassen sich zusammenfassen oder weiter differenzieren. ...
What is "social innovation"? How can we measure the impacts of social innovations?
... By sector, cloud funding (73%), online employee brokerage (29%), P2P lodging (38%), car sharing (43%), music/video streaming (19%) appear to be pure. By country, North America (70%) and Europe (29%) accounted for the majority (Wruk et al., 2020). Asian countries are one of the most well-developed regions in the world for internet and mobile networks, so leaping into digital platforms in the sharing economy is a predestined sequence (Lenka & Barik, 2018) (Table 1). ...
The rational choice theory is applied to determine consumer usage attitudes and norm intents in the sharing economy. Sharing economy, an economic activity where individuals share products currently available to them, has received increased attention since the global economic crisis. The main objective of the article was to demonstrate and prove the role of the sharing economy in integrating local communities as well as in improving the quality of life of urban residents. Data were collected from Chinese and consumers were asked to complete a survey about their experience with the use of sharing economy sharing services. The study involved the answering of a structured questionnaire by 390 adult consumers across China, and statistical analysis using SPSS version 21.0 was performed. The sharing economy is an alternative model of consumption entered around an access to given goods without the need to possess it. The concept fits excellently into the ideas that are at the core of the social economy. In the construct of rational behavior theory, consumption patterns were higher than usual. Researchers determined that participants with experience using a sharing economy service were more likely to have a higher intention to use a sharing economy service than those without experience. Sharing economy participation and value were higher than usual among consumers, according to the study. Additionally, the intention to use the sharing economy increased, as did subjective norms, attitudes toward the sharing economy, participation in the sharing economy, emotional benefits of participating in the sharing economy, and values assigned to the sharing economy. The research confirmed that the sharing economy, as a form of social innovation, influences the improvement of the quality of life. A stable economic policy and information on the sharing economy for consumers, as well as consumer policies, are expected to promote the sharing economy.
... A common identity of the social economy enhances the recognition and visibility of the field and its values, practices, and purpose. An important part of its identity is thereby to initiate and promote change in other fields and thus to serve as a driver of change or a disruptive field (Wruk, Schöllhorn, Oberg, 2020). In combination, institutional theory and transitions theory help us paint the big picture and conceptualize different transformation pathways promoted by the social economy. ...
Lack of progress in the area of global sustainable development and difficulties in crisis management highlight the need to transform the economy and find new ways of making society more resilient. The social economy is increasingly recognized as a driver of such transformations; it comprises traditional forms of cooperative or solidarity-based organizations alongside new phenomena such as impact investing or social tech ventures that aim to contribute to the public good. Social Economy Science provides the first comprehensive analysis of why and how social economy organizations create superior value for society. The book draws on organizational theory and transition studies to provide a systematic perspective on complex multi-stakeholder forms of action. It discusses the social economy’s role in promoting innovation for impact, as well as its role as an agent of societal change and as a partner to businesses, governments, and citizens.
... Local and national authorities started to engage themselves in governing and regulating sharing economies (EC 2016). 6 The sharing economy have been subject to public and academic debates that have contributed to the definition of legitimate members and boundaries of the sharing economy (Wruk et al., 2020). In sum, the shared issue (phenomenon), emergence of new forms and practices around, building of associations and the ongoing and unsettled debates about the shared purpose and defining characteristics of the phenomena might be interpreted as the signs of an emerging field of the sharing economy (Grodal, 2007;Negro et al., 2010;Powell et al., 2017). ...
This article offers a state‐of‐art review of previous research in the field of sharing economy. It explores the definitional dilemma and presents the research field of sharing economy as a contested one. In an attempt to contribute to the numerous efforts of ordering, summarizing and characterizing sharing economy, the article further unpacks the debates driving the emergent sharing economy field. First, it is a debate on the role and place of ICT and platform technologies in sharing economy. Second, the article explores the role and place of economic interest in sharing economy, placing the empirical reality of sharing economy along a broad spectrum from for‐profit enterprises to non‐profit community sharing projects. Third, the paper analyses the question of ownership and its transfer in sharing economy, exploring its positioning vis‐à‐vis gift economy, and short‐term renting and lending. It further analyses relationships between stakeholders (private individuals and business actors) participating in sharing economy, presents the overview of literature on the three transactional models in sharing economy, Business to Consumer (B2C), Business to Business (B2B), and Peer to Peer (P2P). Finally, the paper suggests future research avenues. This study highlights the lack of research looking at sharing outside of the purview of market exchange. It is suggested that the definition of sharing economy and research in the field should focus on P2P activities. Furthermore, it is suggested that the configuration of the sharing economy should be understood from a field perspective. Field‐level studies of issues that bring together various actors in debates on sharing economy should allow for understanding further development of sharing economy.
This article examines how digitalisation is used for organisational distinction in the field of Swiss universities for the period 2010-2020. It shows that digitalisation does not fundamentally challenge the order of the Swiss university field but triggers competitive dynamics that are accompanied by different forms of identity articulation. The article concludes that the interplay of competition and identity articulation of actors is complex and must be analyzed in the context of relative field positions. Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie die Digitalisierung zur organisatorischen Distinktion im Bereich der Schweizer Hochschulen im Zeitraum 2010-2020 genutzt wird. Er zeigt, dass die Digitalisierung die Ordnung des Schweizer Hochschulfeldes nicht grundsätzlich in Frage stellt, sondern Konkurrenzdynamiken auslöst. Der Artikel zeigt, dass das Selbstver-ständnis als digitale Universität mit relativen Wettbewerbspositionen im Feld verbunden ist.
Undoubtedly, digital transformation is permeating all domains of business and society. We envisage this volume as an opportunity to explore how manifestations of digital transformation requires rethinking of our understanding and theorization of institutional processes. To achieve this goal, a collaborative forum of organization and management theory scholars and information systems researchers was developed to enrich and advance institutional theory approaches in understanding digital transformation.This volume’s contributions advance the three institutional perspectives. The first perspective, institutional logics and technological affordances, and digital transformation seeks to deepen our understanding of the pervasive and increasingly important relationship between technology and institutions. The second perspective, digital transformation, professional projects and new institutional agents, explores how existing professions respond to the introduction of digital technologies as well as the emergence of new professional projects and institutional agents in the wake of digital transformation. The third perspective, institutional infrastructure and field governance and digital transformation, inquires how new digital organizational forms, such as platforms, affect institutional fields, their infrastructure, and thus their governance. For each of these perspectives we outline an agenda for future research, complemented by a brief discussion of new research frontiers (i.e., digital work and sites of technological (re-)production; AI and actorhood; digital transformation and grand challenges) and methodological reflections.
The idea of “sharing instead of owning” – though it is not new – is currently experiencing a revival and becoming a major trend in modern (business) life. It constitutes the defining principle of the so-called sharing economy, characterized by peer-to-peer-based sharing of access to goods and services, coordinated through information- and communication-technology platforms. Starting as grassroots movements, initiatives associated with the sharing economy have gained increasing importance and diffused in different sectors and markets. A variety of new (and old) forms of organizing based on the basic idea of sharing, bartering, or lending have emerged and spread,
changing or even disrupting existing ways of organizing in a number of markets, such as mobility, service delivery, and hospitality .
Recent developments around the sharing economy bring to the fore questions of governability and broader societal benefit—and subsequently the need to explore effective means of public governance, from nurturing, on the one hand, to restriction, on the other. As sharing is a predominately urban phenomenon in modern societies, cities around the globe have become both locus of action and central actor in the debates over the nature and organization of the sharing economy. However, cities vary substantially in the interpretation of potential opportunities and challenges, as well as in their governance responses. Building on a qualitative comparative analysis of 16 leading global cities, our findings reveal four framings of the sharing economy: ‘societal endangerment,’ ‘societal enhancement,’ ‘market disruption,’ and ‘ecological transition.’ Such framings go hand in hand with patterned governance responses: although there is considerable heterogeneity in the combination of public governance strategies, we find specific configurations of framings and public governance strategies. Our work reflects the political and ethical debates on various economic, social, and moral issues related to the sharing economy, and contributes to a better understanding of the field-level institutional arrangements—a prerequisite for examining moral behavior of sharing economy organizations.
Previous research has shown that institutional fields evolve around issues, but has devoted less attention to explain why certain issues trigger substantial field-level changes while others remain largely inconsequential. In this article, I argue that the extent to which an issue is likely to trigger field change and the type of field change triggered depend on the structure of the field and the ways in which the issue is framed. I develop a model linking two types of issue frames (adversarial vs collaborative issue frames) with two types of field structures (centralized vs fragmented). The model explains how the likelihood of field change and type of field change vary across four configurations of these issue frames and field structures. In particular, I highlight four types of field change that entail different re-distribution of power within a field (weakening vs reinforcing the field’s elite; aligning vs polarizing fragmented actors). Overall, I contribute a much called-for comparative approach to institutional fields, explaining how the effects of issue frames on field change vary across different fields.
The webpages of organizations are both a form of representation and a type of narrative. They entertain, persuade, express a point of view, and provide a means to organize collective action and economic exchange. Increasingly, webpages are the primary point of access between an organization and its environment. An organization's online presence offers a major new source of rich information about organizations. In this paper, we develop three perspectives on websites from an organizational point of view: as identity projects, tools, and relational maps. We draw on data from the online and offline presences of " brick and mortar " nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area to both illustrate how a digital transformation shaped these organizations and identify a host of new methods that can be used to study organizations using webpages. Finally, we reflect on both the strengths of these new sources of data as well as possible limitations and conclude with theoretical implications for organizational scholars.
In recent years, numerous writers have criticized the current state of institutional theory, and organization theory in general (Davis 2010, 2015; Suddaby, Hardy, and Huy, 2011; Greenwood, Hinings, and Whetten, 2014). We have found these hand-wringing discussions somewhat odd, as they routinely focus on papers written back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, treating them like biblical texts, and then arguing that the old canon is no longer relevant. This form of critique both obscures the context in which the early statements were written and avoids considering how older ideas might be profitably amended for contemporary times.
Rather than join this chorus that clamors for more agency, pluralism, ambidexterity, or other forms of complexity, in this chapter we develop new mechanisms in the spirit of the initial ideas about institutional analysis. We think attention to a new set of social processes can prove analytically useful. Put differently, rather than come up with more nouns and labels, we focus on verbs, that is, on the processes and mechanisms that can be used to illuminate moments of organizational change and field transformation.
Improving the sharing economy will require addressing myriad problems
The Internet has opened up a new era in sharing. There has also been an explosion of studies and writings about sharing via the Internet. This includes a series of books, articles, and web discussions on the topic. However, many of these apparent cases of sharing are better characterized as pseudo-sharing-commodity exchanges wrapped in a vocabulary of sharing. The present paper reviews subsequent research and theorizing as well as controversies that have emerged surrounding sharing and what is best regarded as pseudo-sharing-a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing phenomenon whereby commodity exchange and potential exploitation of consumer co-creators present themselves in the guise of sharing. The paper begins with a pair of vignettes that highlight some of the contested meanings of sharing. By detailing four types of pseudo-sharing and four types of sharing that are specifically enabled or enhanced by Internet technologies, the paper argues that pseudo-sharing is distinguished by the presence of profit motives, the absence of feelings of community, and expectations of reciprocity. It concludes with a discussion of theoretical, practical, and ethical implications of pseudo-sharing and offer suggestions for future research.
When organizational concepts spread beyond national and cultural boundaries, they must pass through powerful filters of local cultural and structural opportunities and constraints in order to mobilize legitimacy. Struggles over their meaning are intensified if they challenge the prevailing order. Drawing on the case of shareholder value in Austria, we examine how the different ways of framing a contested issue in public discourse are related to the local cultural and sociopolitical context. We combine in-depth content analysis with multivariate statistics to explore the meaning structures that organize this issue field.
An organization's identity, symbolized by its corporate name, is rooted in institutional fields. We advance the construct of symbolic isomorphism, or the resemblance of an organization's symbolic attributes to those of others within its institutional field, and examine its effects on the homogenization of names and legitimacy. We review historical naming patterns and present two studies that examine the antecedents and outcomes of name conformity: The first analyzes 1,600 name changes to demonstrate how institutional conformity shapes organizational identities, and the second surveys public audiences and delineates how symbolic isomorphism serves as a touchstone for legitimacy.
This study measured changes in the constituency of an organizational field centered around the issue of corporate environmentalism in the period 1960-93, correlating those changes with the institutions adopted by the U.S. chemical industry to interpret the issue. The article develops the ideas that fields form around issues, not markets or technologies; within fields, competing institutions may simultaneously exist; as institutions evolve, connections between their regulative, normative, and cognitive aspects arise; and field-level analyses can reveal the cultural and institutional origins of organizational impacts on the natural environment.
In a qualitative study of the emerging field of HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy in Canada, we found that institutional entrepreneurship involved three sets of critical activities: (1) the occupation of "subject positions" that have wide legitimacy and bridge diverse stakeholders, (2) the theorization of new practices through discursive and political means, and (3) the institutionalization of these new practices by connecting them to stakeholders' routines and values.
We theorize how new market categories emerge and are legitimated through a confluence of factors internal to the category (entrepreneurial ventures) and external to the category (interested audiences). Using qualitative and quantitative analyses and multiple data sources overtime, we study the evolution of the U.S. satellite radio market over its initial sixteen years. We offer convergent evidence to show that the legitimation of a new market category precipitates shifts in the focus of market actors' attention from the category as a whole to the differentiation of firms within. This effect was demonstrated for entrepreneurial identity claims, linguistic frames, and announcements of interorganizational affiliations and endorsements, as well as in the focal attention of media and financial audiences. We synthesize these findings to offer an integrated theoretical framework on new market category emergence and legitimation.
Recently, there has been a proliferation of measures responding to demands for accountability and transparency. Using the example of media rankings of law schools, this article argues that the methodological concept of reactivity-the idea that people change their behavior in reaction to being evaluated, observed, or measured-offers a useful lens for disclosing how these measures effect change. A framework is proposed for investigating the consequences, both intended and unintended, of public measures. The article first identifies two mechanisms, self-fulfilling prophecy and commensuration, that induce reactivity and then distinguishes patterns of effects produced by reactivity. This approach demonstrates how these increasingly fateful public measures change expectations and permeate institutions, suggesting why it is important for scholars to investigate the impact of these measures more systematically.
We draw on an in-depth longitudinal analysis of conflict over harvesting practices and decision authority in the British Columbia coastal forest industry to understand the role of institutional work in the transformation of organizational fields. We examine the work of actors to create, maintain, and disrupt the practices that are considered legitimate within a field (practice work) and the boundaries between sets of individuals and groups (boundary work), and the interplay of these two forms of institutional work in effecting change. We find that actors' boundary work and practice work operate in recursive configurations that underpin cycles of institutional innovation, conflict, stability, and restabilization. We also find that transitions between these cycles are triggered by combinations of three conditions: (1) the state of the boundaries, (2) the state of practices, and (3) the existence of actors with the capacity to undertake the boundary and practice work of a different institutional process. These findings contribute to untangling the paradox of embedded agency—how those subject to the institutions in a field can effect changes in them. We also contribute to an understanding of the processes and mechanisms that drive changes in the institutional lifecycle.
What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization
and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and
the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises:
rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to
change them. We describe three isomorphic processes--coercive, mimetic, and
normative-leading to this outcome. We then specib hypotheses about the impact of
resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty,
and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest
implications for theories of organizations and social change.
We propose a simple method to extract the community structure of large networks. Our
method is a heuristic method that is based on modularity optimization. It is shown to
outperform all other known community detection methods in terms of computation time.
Moreover, the quality of the communities detected is very good, as measured by the
so-called modularity. This is shown first by identifying language communities in a Belgian
mobile phone network of 2 million customers and by analysing a web graph of 118 million
nodes and more than one billion links. The accuracy of our algorithm is also verified on ad
hoc modular networks.
To date, management research has paid little attention to dynamics of the sharing economy: how markets for sharing resources emerge and change, and the intended and unintended consequences of resource sharing. We propose a definition of the sharing economy that brings the role of organizations as infrastructure providers to the fore and helps us to assess the culturally rooted pluralism of forms and practices in these organizations. We introduce two perspectives in research on organizational institutionalism that focus on culture and pluralism – institutional complexity and institutional work – and argue that unpacking the pluralism of organizational forms and practices is critical to examine the dynamics of the sharing economy. We propose an agenda for research to capture the dynamics of the sharing economy at the organizational, field, and inter-field level. Such an agenda helps to document and analyze how the sharing economy manifests and evolves across various economic systems and has the potential to refine and recast existing management theory.
The concept of an institutional field is one of the cornerstones of institutional theory, and yet the concept has been stretched both theoretically and empirically, making consolidation of findings across multiple studies more difficult. In this article, we review the literature and analyze empirical studies of institutional fields to build scaffolding for the cumulation of research on institutional fields. Our review revealed two types of fields: exchange and issue fields, with three subtypes of each. We describe their characteristics. Subsequently, we review field conditions in the extant literature and develop a typology based on two dimensions: the extent of elaboration of institutional infrastructure and the extent to which there is an agreed upon prioritization of logics. We discuss the implications of field types and conditions for isomorphism, agency, and field change, based on a review of the literature that revealed six pathways of field change and the factors affecting them. We outline a research agenda based on our review highlighting the need for consolidation of field studies and identify several outstanding issues that are in need of further research.
This paper presents a longitudinal case study examining why and how commercial banks sought to integrate sustainability issues into their project finance operations between 2003 and 2008. We study the evolution of a set of influential environmental and social risk management guidelines for project finance – the Equator Principles (EP) – and the simultaneous structuration of a field around these guidelines focused on the issue of socially accountable project finance. The case is theoretically framed using Hoffman’s (1999) concept of an issue-based field and associated conceptualisations of the role of internal and external (social) movements in the structuration of these fields. The structuration of the issue-based field studied is shown to encompass a dynamic, contested process involving extensive interactions between a non-governmental organization (NGO) movement and a commercial bank movement. We unveil how the conflicting, collective rationales and actions of both movements fuelled the structuration process and facilitated an evolution in the social accountability of commercial banks. While prior work sees little potential for civil society actors to engage with and move corporate social responsibility and reporting in a more challenging direction, we reveal how the NGO movement evoked a progression in social responsibility and reporting in a sector that had previously shown little inclination to address its wider social accountability. Drawing on our case analysis, we theorize how issue-based fields cohere and crystallise, particularly how they build an institutional infrastructure based upon the infrastructure of the mature field which they straddle and which the relevant issue impacts upon.
Despite the success of some environmental and sustainability initiatives and measures in policy-making, business and society, overall trends follow an unsustainable path. Especially in the field of production and consumption of goods and services, environmental sustainability and social equality remain critical challenges. Therefore new approaches are needed alongside existing strategies and policy instruments. The "sharing economy" has the potential to provide a new pathway to sustainability - and transdisciplinary sustainability science has the opportunity to co-shape and accompany this pathway.
Categorization processes have gained currency in organizational theory. Categories are endemic to organizations and markets, serving as touchstones for organizational identity claims and for audience attention, legitimation, and valuation. Durand and Paolella argue for an expansion of current perspectives on categories, particularly that of prototype theory. Although we agree in spirit, we advocate an expansion of their perspective, which seems to focus primarily on the cognitive aspects of categorization and the force of their constraint, particularly at the individual level of analysis. We suggest three revisions to Durand and Paolella's arguments in order to extend the conversation. First, we advocate that categorization processes might usefully be understood by socio-cultural perspectives that explicitly consider the role of audiences and the embeddedness of categories in wider classification systems. Second, we connect categorization processes to identity formation and maintenance at the levels of both the organization and the market. Third, we move beyond the constraining power of categories to consider their generative capabilities in processes of emergence and change. Overall, we discuss these in the context of organizational identities and cultural classification systems.
Associations with a professional staff but no members (nonmem-bership advocacy organizations, or NMAOs) are the subject of lively debate. Many argue that their proliferation has allowed an expansion of advocacy without an accompanying growth in civic engagement. This article asks if there has been significant recent growth of NMAOs and if those organizations have displaced membership advocacy organizations (MAOs). The authors find no evidence for a proportional increase of NMAOs since the 1960s. Further, among all organizations in three populations-peace, women's issues, and human rights-NMAOs have not displaced MAOs. In particular, the authors find that MAO density shapes NMAO founding, as membership groups provide a base for professional advocacy. These findings challenge the notion that U.S. civic life has undergone a systemic transformation away from organizational forms that promote civic engagement.
Much social scientific inquiry seeks to specify the conditions and mechanisms underpinning the flow of social practices among actors within some larger system. Sociology, rural sociology, anthropology, geography, economics, and communication studies all have rich traditions of diffusion research. 1 Virtually everything seems to diffuse: rumors, prescription practices, boiled drinking water, totems, hybrid corn, job classification systems, organizational structures, church attendance, national sovereignty. Whether viewed as a hindrance to structural-functional analysis, 2 the deposited trace of social structure, 3 or a fundamental source of social control and change, 4 diffusion seems critical to social analysis.
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