Pamela S. Tolbert's research while affiliated with Cornell University and other places
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Publications (72)
Although previous studies show that the emergence of evaluation criteria for a new technology improves the life chances of well-performing firms, we theorize that consensus in such criteria among technology experts increases investments to all firms in the new sector. We provide a variety of supportive evidence for this claim. First, in an experime...
This essay is composed of commentaries from four scholars critically evaluating Noordegraaf’s article ‘Protective or Connective Professionalism? How Connected Professionals Can (Still) Act as Autonomous and Authoritative Experts’. All four scholars, in different ways and from their different perspectives, question the dichotomy at the heart of Noor...
Organizational studies have yielded conflicting answers to the question of whether having a clear, focused organizational identity or a complex, category-spanning one leads to more favorable reactions by external audiences. We propose one approach to reconciling apparently divergent findings by focusing on the social roles and relative importance o...
Recently, scholars have begun to transform and expand institutional theory to a multi-level approach that explicitly incorporates the role of micro-processes. Although the emerging research stream of microinstitutionalism has seen much advocacy and enthusiasm, it is still in its infancy and relatively little consensus exists on what exactly microin...
The authors propose a research agenda based on the premise that entrepreneurship can and should be viewed as an institution. This approach assumes that typical structures and processes involved in founding new businesses reflect common social understandings held by members of a group about the value of entrepreneurship and how it should be undertak...
The present study builds on the explanatory power of the “doing gender” perspective to understand the effects of family economic structure on the family and career satisfaction of husbands and wives. Using data from a two-panel, couple-level survey of full-time employed middle-class families in the Northeastern United States, we find that when wive...
Using data from a large-scale national survey of employers and employees in Britain, we examine the impact of the presence of contingent employees on work attitudes of standard (full-time, indefinite-term) employees. Drawing on differing explanations for the increased use of contingent employment arrangements, we derive competing hypotheses about h...
Although there are many potential points of intersection between institutional theory and contemporary studies of entrepreneurship, these have generally remained distinct literatures, with the connections left more implicit than explicit. We argue that there are a number of benefits to explicitly articulating the links between these bodies of schol...
A common strategy used by professions to support claims of workplace jurisdiction involves the institutionalization of professionally-endorsed formal structures, yet both theory and research suggest that ensuring the implementation of institutionalized structures after formal adoption can be problematic. This study investigates the influence of org...
Although there are many potential points of intersection between institutional theory and contemporary studies of entrepreneurship, these have generally remained distinct literatures, with the connections left more implicit than explicit. We argue that there are a number of benefits to explicitly articulating the links between these bodies of schol...
Foundational work on institutional theory as a framework for studying organizations underscored its relevance to analyses of entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurship research has often ignored the insights provided by this theoretic approach. In this chapter, we illustrate the utility of institutional theory as a central framework for explaining entr...
It is a popular assumption that women and racial minorities who are numeric minorities in high-prestige work groups will advocate for a demographically similar other as a potential work group peer. However, these individuals may face special challenges in fulfilling this role. We discuss how three factors—the general social status associated with a...
In this paper, we examine the dual role that social movement organizations can play in altering organizational landscapes by undermining existing organizations and creating opportunities for the growth of new types of organizations. Empirically, we investigate the impact of a variety of tactics employed by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WC...
This article argues that Michels's core arguments about the nature of oligarchies in organizations, and research generated in response to his work, are not only relevant to understanding the dynamics of political organizations but can be extended as a useful framework for thinking about important aspects of contemporary economic corporations as wel...
Creativity has been underscored as a key factor to organizational adaptability and competitiveness in today's rapidly changing business environment. Designing as well as managing work environments that facilitate creativity have therefore received growing attention, resulting in a multitude of research examining the social-psychological work enviro...
[Excerpt] In 1991, DiMaggio and Powell observed:
Institutional theory presents a paradox. Institutional analysis is as old as Emile Durkheim's exhortation to study 'social facts as things', yet sufficiently novel to be preceded by new in much of the contemporary literature. (1991: 1)
We argue that this paradox is, at least in part, the result of a...
[Excerpt] As the terms career choices and opportunity structure suggest, demographic influences on careers operate at multiple levels of analysis: at the individual level, on individuals' perceptions of work environments and career decisions, and at the organization level, on group dynamics and organizational selection processes. However, there are...
Almost all four-year institutions of higher education have adopted the tenure system as a formal policy for faculty employment. The degree to which tenure systems are actually implemented, however, depends on resource flows and institutional pressures. Fewer resource constraints (i.e., greater per-student revenues and larger endowments) increase th...
Building on sociological research on institutions and organizations and psychological research on risk and decision making, we propose that the development of institutions that reduce the risks of entering new sectors has a stronger effect on the founding rates of firms using novel technologies than on firms using established technologies. In an an...
Building on sociological research on institutions and organizations and psychological research on risk and decision making, we propose that the development of institutions that reduce the risks of entering new sectors has a stronger effect on the founding rates of firms using novel technologies than on firms using established technologies. In an an...
Changes in patterns of long-term employment make understanding the determinants of different career forms increasingly important to careers research. At the same time, the rise of dual-earner families demands greater attention to the ways in which gender and family characteristics shape careers than has been paid by traditional research. This paper...
[Excerpt] Part-time work, temporary work, independent contracting, and self-employment have experienced unprecedented increases in the last several decades. These employment arrangements characterize approximately 25-30 percent of the workforce, and they are growing fast. The rate of growth in part-time workers is 30 percent greater than in the ove...
The differentiation of faculty work between two “tiers” affected a foreign language department and led to the formation of two separate departments.
[Excerpt] Prior to the publication of Kanter's seminal Men and Women of the Corporation in 1977, the field of organizational studies exhibited a striking degree of oblivion to the effect of gender relations on work group dynamics. This neglect may have been due, in part, to the relatively small proportion of women in the labor force in the first ha...
Group gender composition and work group relations: Theories, evidence, and issues Prior to the publication of Kanter's seminal Men and Women of the Corporation in 1977, the field of organizational studies exhibited a striking degree of oblivion to the effect of gender relations on work group dynamics (Acker & Van Houten, 1974). This neglect may hav...
Whether and to what extent men and women hold differing preferences for particular job attributes remains the subject of debate, with a sizable number of empirical studies producing conflicting results. These conflicts may have temporal sources—historical changes in men's and women's preferences for particular job attributes, as well as changes in...
Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because...
[Excerpt] Our primary aims in this effort are twofold: to clarify the independent theoretical contributions of institutional theory to analyses of organizations, and to develop this theoretical perspective further in order to enhance its use in empirical research. There is also a more general, more ambitious objective here, and that is to build a b...
Using data collected from a sample of 50 academic departments over the years 1977-88, the authors test several hypotheses about the effects of departmental gender composition on faculty turnover. They find that as the proportion of women in a department grew, turnover among women also increased, confirming the prediction that increases in the relat...
[discusses] intergroup dynamics that occur within larger organizational units / question of interest is how changes in the relative sizes of subgroups affect the relationships between the subgroups / social contact theories predict that relationships should improve as a minority subgroup increases in size, but competition theories predict the oppos...
Working at home is often claimed to adversely affect employees' career progress, presumably because supervisors are inclined to negatively evaluate the performance of employees whose activities are not available to frequent observation. However, such claims are usually based on studies of supervisors' attitudes, not on direct evidence of the achiev...
We review institutional theory to assess the direction of theory and research on institutional structures and processes. Our primary goal is to suggest an overall frame within which a coherent and interrelated body of theory and research might develop that would address institutional processes underlying stability and change of organizational struc...
Three theoretical explanations of variations in the demographic composition of organizations are used to derive empirically testable hypotheses on the determinants of the proportion of female faculty members in colleges and universities. The first, drawn from economic theory, emphasizes the role of employers' associational preferences. The second e...
Despite the growing number of studies of professionals in organizations, surprisingly little attention has been given to the way in which professions shape organizations. This research addresses this issue by examining the determinants of formal structures in large law firms for decision making in two areas: compensation and promotion. We argue tha...
[Excerpt] In The System of Professions, Abbott directly confronts these important and long-neglected issues in an original and highly thought-provoking approach to the analysis of professions. Focusing on the dynamics through which occupations define their jurisdiction, or the right to control the provision of particular services and activities, th...
Many, perhaps most, individuals who are trained as engineers eventually become managers. However, the reasons for this occupational transition are unclear. The present study examines the occupational aspirations (technical versus managerial) of two groups of engineers with varying work experience: current engineering students and engineering alumni...
[Excerpt] A large body of research has been generated within the last few years on the forms and functions of organizational culture and on the consequences of culture for organizational control and effectiveness. Surprisingly little attention has been given, however, to the sources of organizational culture and, in particular, to the features of o...
This paper examines the relationship between organizational characteristics and earnings differences between male and female faculty from two theoretical perspectives. Two general sets of organization variables are considered: (1) characteristics that index an organization's power and autonomy in environmental relations, and (2) demographic charact...
Two theoretical perspectives are combined to explain the pattern of administrative offices in public and private institutions of higher education. The first perspective, resource dependence, is used to show that the need to ensure a stable flow of resources from external sources of support partially determines administrative differentiation. The se...
[Excerpt] The results of the study provide support for Wilkinson's primary contention that neither the adoption of particular technologies nor the organization of work based upon those technologies is objectively determined. Instead, both are the result of informal political negotiations between management and workers. Much of the previous work on...
This paper investigates the diffusion and institutionalization of change in formal organization structure, using data on the adoption of civil service reform by cities. It is shown that when civil service procedures are required by the state, they diffuse rapidly and directly from the state to each city. When the procedures are not so legitimated,...
[Excerpt] Career scholars regularly cite Hughes’ (1937: 413) dictum that the study careers as “the moving perspective in which persons orient themselves with reference to the social order, and of the typical sequences and concatenations of office – may be expected to reveal the nature and 'working constitution' of a society.” Yet the greater part o...
[Excerpt] The paper begins by elaborating on the utility of viewing organizational conflict and negotiations in social movement terms, and some of the implications of this approach for negotiations research. It then turns to a review of the traditional sociological literature on power and conflict in organizations, and of current research on social...
Excerpt] More recently, organizational strategists have begun to turn their attention to issues of internal as well as external organizational relations and to examine many of the traditional assumptions underlying strategic analyses, with an increasingly critical eye. This book reflects such changes, both in the diversity of approaches taken by di...
Excerpt] In "War and Peace," Baron, Dobbin, and Jennings provide an integrative analysis of the role of internal organizational requirements and external environmental forces in structuring the personnel function in modern organizations. To appreciate fully the scope of this contribution to organizational theory and research, it is useful to consid...
[Excerpt] The lack of research and, by extension, the paucity of empirically grounded theory on organizations and occupations have left unanswered questions that are critical for understanding the social organization of work in post-industrial economies. Under what conditions are organizations likely to bureaucratize professional tasks? What types...
Excerpt] In order to evaluate the full impact of such changes on physicians' work and the health care system, it is necessary to understand the forces bringing change about. Thus, we begin by providing a brief history of the contemporary medical care system, then turn to an assessment of current trends and their consequences for the practice of med...
[Excerpt] Resource mobilization, a dominant theoretical approach to the study of social movements for many decades, points to social movement organizations (SMOs) as a focal point for efforts to understand the variations in both the impact and fate of social movements. SMOs, like other types of political organizations, are expected to represent mem...
Most research on organizational negotiations has concentrated on factors that affect negotiating outcomes, given some predefined problem or issue. In contrast, this paper focuses on the institutionalization of negotiations, or the process through which social definitions of negotiating issues, procedures and outcomes emerge and are accepted by part...
[Excerpt] This volume represents another effort by Research in the Sociology of Organizations to focus on a crucial issue in organizational sociology. In some of the previous volumes, we concentrated on organizations and professions (Volume 8, 1991), the structuring of participation in organizations (Volume 7, 1989), and the social psychological pr...
Citations
... Extant literature indicates that category fuzziness recalls organisations that span multiple market categories (Bogaert, Boone, and Carroll 2014;Vergne and Wry 2014). Previous studies investigated fuzziness in the financial context, showing conflicting results (Shen, Li, and Tolbert 2021). In particular, scholars considered the investment portfolio as the unit of analysis to disentangle fuzziness, evidencing that investors may prefer ventures that are related to 'fuzzy' categories because they can benefit from cross-pollination and distant knowledge sources. ...
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... That said, the beyond dimension may be the domain in which a metareflection is taking place on the very nature of professionalism. Noordegraaf 's (2020, p. 209) idea of "connective" professionalism has added new fuel to this debate (for a critical appraisal of this concept, see Adams et al., 2020aAdams et al., , 2020bAlvehus et al., 2021;Faulconbridge et al., 2021;Noordegraaf & Brock, 2021). With it, the author calls for "a move beyond hybridity". ...
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... Таким образом, МО основывается на «переходе» на внутри-индивидуальный уровень анализа, т.е. обращение к психологии и нейронауке (Tolbert and Zucker, 2019). ...
... Similarly, Tolbert and Darabi (2020) pointed out that different kinds of institutional pressures may generate variations in motives for conformity; they illuminated how the explicit recognition of these motives can explain observed heterogeneity in individual and organizational behavior. ...
... The coverage decisions of expert critics are driven, among other things, by a desire to enhance the value they provide, in turn bolstering their credibility. One way they do this is through specialization (Noh & Tolbert, 2019). For example, a financial analyst may specialize in the auto industry (e.g., Zuckerman, 1999), and a restaurant critic may focus on a certain type of cuisine or geography. ...
... Such benefits include tax breaks for businesses, providing consulting resources and offering loans with favourable rates for new venture creation (Mason and Brown, 2011;Tende, 2014). Sine and David (2010) have also found that these initiatives create effects by promoting particular industries and supporting new ventures, possibly including sustainable new ventures. ...
... How the concept of (institutional) logic 2 can help to implement business model ecoinnovation Although institutional theory is prominent in contemporary organizational studies, as stated earlier, ours is one of the rare approaches to the intersection of new business models and sustainability, and mostly follows the works of Tolbert and Coles (2018), Jennings & Hoffman (2018) and Bazzerman & Hoffman (2000). They adhere to the notion of an institution (Scott & Meyer, 1992, in Bazzerman & Hoffman, 2000 as the set of constraints (cultural and contextual) that shape behavioral patterns and justifies certain behaviors and rejects others. ...
... In addition, they may be more easily mobilized to attend museum-sponsored activities (e.g. family-centered education programs, lectures by local speakers, etc.), and since art museums with complex identities are likely to reflect the logic of community service than those with focused identities (Noh & Tolbert, 2016), they may be more apt to sponsor such events. Therefore, we predict that, all else equal: ...
... Recognizing the powerful far-reaching impact of compassion on employees and workplaces, this panel symposium speaks to its interface with workplace inequalities, a major concern alongside the contemporary quest for social responsibility, inclusion and ethics at work (Amis et al., 2021;Tolbert & Castilla, 2017). Indeed, workplace inequalities may persist despite an emphasis on employee dignity and well-being through responsible leadership and sustainable workforce management (Amis et al., 2018(Amis et al., , 2021 as well as efforts towards diversity and inclusion (Tolbert & Castilla, 2017). ...
... ([13; 16; 20]) у конкретному контексті: суспільство, кластер організацій, організація та внутрішньоорганізаційні підсистеми [14]. Зокрема, у цій статті, дотримуючись аргументів Цукера [20], інституціоналізація розглядається як кумулятивний і динамічний процес, через який інституційні елементи набувають «різного ступеня» сприйняття як даності та даності. ...
