Institutional theory has focused on the movement towards, and maintenance of, isomorphic institutional environments. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the forces that change institutional environments. Starting with a discussion of the implications of isomorphism on performance, this article attempts to develop a taxonomy of organizations within an institutional environment in order to develop a theory of how organizations respond to violations of institutional norms with possible implications for institutional change. Essential to this theory is the importance of organizational diversity, risk aversion, the effect of isomorphism on performance, and the role of relative performance in maintaining isomorphism and providing incentives to change.

Despite the increasing use of project management within organizations, an attendant poor rate of success among these projects has been observed (Clancy & Stone, 2005; Ives, 2005). Seventy‐five percent of all business transformation projects fail (Collyer, 2000) and only 16% of U.S. IT projects are completed on time and on budget (Peled, 2000). In an attempt to overcome such a high project failure rate, this paper investigates the effects of organizational culture on the performance of particular types of projects: new product development (NPD) projects. Using data from 95 U.S. organizations, the study provides evidence of the significant effects of organizational culture on NPD projects.

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Predatory journals are a concern in academia because they lack meaningful peer review and engage in questionable business practices. Nevertheless, predatory journals continue to flourish, in part because of increasing expectations that academic researchers demonstrate publishing productivity in quantifiable forms. We examined tenure and promotion policies at twenty Canadian universities and did not find any language that explicitly discourages publications in predatory journals. Instead, subjective criteria such as ‘quality’ are commonly used to assess the appropriateness of publication outlets. Additionally, information on avoiding predatory journals was located only on the library’s website at nearly every institution, and the information was primarily directed at students rather than at faculty members. We argue that if predatory journals are truly a threat to the integrity of academic research and knowledge dissemination, universities must take more substantive action against them. We recommend four institutional initiatives to discourage faculty members from publishing in predatory journals.