Disappearing organization? Reshaping the sociology of organizations

Besio, Cristina; Velarde, Kathia Serrano

doi:10.1177/0011392120907613

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…With an even increasing preoccupation with institutions (including institutional work and institutional logics) and their nature institutional scholarship has initiated a departure from explaining and understanding organizations (Greenwood et al , 2014; Lopdrup-Hjorth, 2015; Ahrne et al , 2016; Du Gay and Vikkelsø, 2016; Johnsen, 2018; Besio et al , 2020) towards diving into the ontology and epistemology of institutions and social reality (Seo and Creed, 2002; Battilana et al , 2009; Jones et al , 2017; Schilke, 2018; Harmon et al , 2019; Cardinale, 2019; Lok and Wilmott, 2019). From the beginning, organizations represented that phenomenon that had to be explained while institutional hypothesis served as an assisting force introduced phenomenologicaly.…”

Section: Abandoning Preoccupations With Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How institutional theories explain and fail to explain organizations

Aksom

Tymchenko

2020

JOCM

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PurposeThis essay raises a concern about the trajectory that new institutionalism has been following during the last decades, namely an emphasis on heterogeneity, change and agentic behavior instead of isomorphism and conformist behavior. This is a crucial issue from the perspective of the philosophy and methodology of science since a theory that admits both change and stability as a norm has less scientific weight then a theory that predicts a prevalence of passivity and isomorphism over change and strategic behavior. The former provides explanations and predictions while the latter does not.Design/methodology/approachThe paper offers an analysis of the nature, characteristics, functions and boundaries of institutional theories in the spirit of philosophy and methodology of science literature.FindingsThe power of the former institutional theory developed by Meyer, Rowan, DiMaggio and Powell lies in its generalization, explanation and prediction of observable and unobservable phenomena: as a typical organizational theory that puts forward directional predictions, it explains and predicts the tendency for organizations to become more similar to each other over time and express less strategic and interest-driven behavior, conforming to ever-increasing institutional pressures. A theory of isomorphism makes scientific predictions while its modern advancements do not. Drawing on Popper's idea of the limit of domains of explanation and limited domains of theories we present two propositions that may direct our attention towards the strength or weakness of institutional theories with regard to their explanations of organizational processes and behavior.Practical implicationsThe paper draws implications for further theory building in institutional analysis by suggesting the nature of institutional explanations and the place of institutional change in the theoretical apparatus. Once institutional theory explains the tendency of the system towards equilibrium, there is no need to explain the origins and causes of radical change per se. Institutional isomorphism theory explains and predicts how even after radical changes organizational fields will move towards isomorphism, that is, institutional equilibrium. The task is, therefore, not to explain agency and change but to show that it is natural and inevitable processes that organizational field will return to isomorphic dynamics and move towards homogenization no matter how much radical change occurred in this field.Originality/valueThe paper discusses the practical problems with instrumental utility of institutional theories. In order to be useful any theory must clearly delineate its boundaries and offer explanations and predictions and it is only the former 1977/1983 institutional theory that satisfies these requirements while modern advancements merely offer ambiguous theoretical umbrellas that escape empirical tests. For researchers therefore it is important to recognize which theory can be applied in a given limited domain of research and which one has little or no value.

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Section: Abandoning Preoccupations With Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How institutional theories explain and fail to explain organizations

Aksom

Tymchenko

2020

JOCM

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“…Zwar wird kaum in Frage gestellt, dass neue, teils "unkonventionelle Formen der Organisation" (Brès et al 2018) an Relevanz gewinnen, doch ist ihre Konzeptualisierung bislang wenig fortgeschritten (vgl. Besio et al 2020). Bartley et al (2019) K identifizieren jedoch eine wichtige, übergeordnete Veränderung in der Organisationslandschaft, die sie mit der Idee einer "concentration without centralization" zusammenfassen.…”

Section: Update: Neue Organisationsformenunclassified

Organizational Society Revisited: from Archetype to New Forms of Organization

2021

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ZusammenfassungWährend die Organisationssoziologie vornehmlich auf die Analyse von Organisationen und zwischenorganisatorischen Arrangements konzentriert ist, finden wir in verschiedenen anderen Teilgebieten der Soziologie die Einschätzung, dass die Rolle von Organisationen hinsichtlich ihrer gesellschaftlichen Effekte oftmals nur unzureichend reflektiert wird. Dieser Beitrag zielt darauf ab, konzeptionelle Voraussetzungen zur Überwindung dieser Situation zu schaffen. In Abschn. 2 wird auf das Konzept der Organisationsgesellschaft rekurriert, so wie es in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelt worden ist. Als gemeinsames Problem dieser Forschungsbeiträge wird identifiziert, dass sie sich auf eine bestimmte – hier als Archetyp bezeichnete – Organisationsform beziehen, deren Dominanz im 21. Jahrhundert fragwürdig geworden ist. In Abschn. 3 wird deshalb vorgeschlagen, neue Organisationsformen einzubeziehen. Insbesondere wird auf Hyper-Organisation, partielle Organisation und Plattform-Organisation eingegangen. Es werden zwei Schwachpunkte dieser Konzepte identifiziert: Erstens suggerieren die entsprechenden Beiträge eine Ersetzung des Archetyps und vernachlässigen zudem andere neuartige Organisationsformen; zweitens beziehen sie gesellschaftliche Voraussetzungen und Folgen nur selektiv ein. Abschließend werden Perspektiven zur Überwindung dieser gravierenden Schwachstellen diskutiert.

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“…Workers, in the service platform (or 'riders' as they refer to themselves at Smart Delivery), are either employed with nonstandard (typically short-term) employment contracts or as formally independent contractors. In both cases, the platforms employ technical and organisational means to -1 in recent research perspectives in organisational sociology such perspectives are not even mentioned (Besio et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The service platform as a dualistic meta-organisation: An ethnographic account of contingency work and its organisational cultures

Nachtwey¹,

Schaupp²

2021

Preprint

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This study examines the character of service platforms in terms of economic and organisational sociology. It is based on an ethnographic study and semi-structured interviews at a delivery platform in Germany. The article argues that ser-vice platforms can be conceived of as dualistic meta-organisations. At the centre of the company is a complete organisation with membership rights and obligations. Be-yond the centre of the organisation, there is a peripheral organisation which is a hybrid between organisation and market. This partial organisation only provides limited rights and duties to its members. These conditional labour relations in the digital economy can be seen as a modern-ized organisational match of precarious labour relations in the form of contingency work. Within this structure, em-ployees thus experience new forms of insecurity.

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Disappearing organization? Reshaping the sociology of organizations

Abstract: This monograph showcases some recent developments in the sociology of organizations, mapping out the most productive relationships between current social scientific work on organizations and core theoretical and empirical concerns in the discipline of sociology.

Cited by 16 publications

References 31 publications

How institutional theories explain and fail to explain organizations

How institutional theories explain and fail to explain organizations

Organizational Society Revisited: from Archetype to New Forms of Organization

The service platform as a dualistic meta-organisation: An ethnographic account of contingency work and its organisational cultures

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