CONTEMPORARY TRAJECTORIES IN INSTITUTIONAL THEORY
Soc. 294
Spring 2002
Tuesday 12:30-3:20
Sociology Seminar Rm. Ellison 2803
John Mohr
3117 Cheadle Hall
Office Phone 893-2013
email: mohr@soc.ucsb.edu
Office Hours: Thurs. 1:00-3:00 PM
Course Description:
Twenty-five years ago the organizational sociology community was rocked by the
appearance of a new style of theorizing, heralded by the classic American Journal of
Sociology article by John Meyer and Brian Rowan “Institutionalized Organizations:
Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” What followed was the rapid rise and
successful institutionalization of a style of work which led to a thorough overhaul of
theorizing about organizations and society, away from a rational actor, resource driven
model toward a radical new cultural approach to understanding social organization. The
end result of this early phase of development (marked by the publication of the Powell
and DiMaggio edited volume The New institutionalism in Organizational Analysis in
1991) was a style of research which took as its goal the description and explanation of
recognizable clusters of activity known as social institutions. Theoretically, the work
follows the mandates of social theorists who call for an analysis that integrates the duality
of agency and structure, and thus, presupposes an integration of the cultural and the
social.
Having started in what at the time seemed to be the most unlikely of sociological
venues, the new institutionalists have progressively worked toward de-stabilizing if not
actively overturning many of the old shibboleths of mainstream sociology and are leading
the charge toward a new culture-centered paradigm in American sociology. One of the
most interesting features of this project is that it has become a site — perhaps the key site
— in which the formalist methodologies of mainstream American sociology are running
up against the interpretative hermeneutic methodologies of the humanities.
The goal of this seminar is twofold. First, we will be looking to map out the
various alternative futures of institutional theory. This means that we will try to organize
our readings and discussions around what would appear to be the major contenders for
the “next big move” in institutional research. I have broken these down into three general
categories that I call features of the self, features of the text and features of the social.
The first reflects the move back to a more thorough understanding of the effect of
physical subjectivity, from the workings of the brain, to the machinations of the body
located in physical, material, practical space. The second has to do with the turn toward
the humanities and the tools that humanists have developed over the years for describing,
explaining, and accounting for the textual character of meanings. This includes a
renewed focus on the study of genres, of rhetoric, and of narratives that serve to organize
meaning. The third concerns the ways in which broader aggregations of agents and
meanings are structured in the world. Here we will look in particular at research directed
toward understanding the character of organizational fields and also the work coming out
of European studies of science described as “actor-network theory.” Each of these
represents a place where new scholarship is turning to reap innovative insights and styles
of approach for new research projects.
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Second, the focus of the seminar is on the research process itself. Though this is
not strictly speaking a course on methods, our focus will nonetheless be turned toward
how these ideas are being grounded in research practice. How do you do these things as a
practicing research scholar? The procedure we will follow is to read recent (usually very
recent) empirical work on these topics with an eye to asking the question, how have
scholars operationalized these kind of theoretical constructs. What kind of data does one
look for? How does one collect these kind of data? What sort of analysis is appropriate?
Course Requirements:
No prior course work in sociology is required. A reader is available at Grafikart (6550
Pardall Road) in Isla Vista (Phone # 968-3575; email: info@grafikart.com). Seminar
participants will be asked to take turns in reporting to the group on one recommended
reading each week. You will also be asked to write a paper based on course readings and
your own research project.
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Week 1 (April 2).
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Course Introduction.
Some Background Reading:
DiMaggio, Paul J. and Walter W. Powell. 1991. "Introduction." Pp. 1-38 in The
New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis edited by Walter
W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Marc Ventresca and John W. Mohr. 2002 “Archival Research Methods.” Pp. 805828 in Companion to Organizations, edited by Joel Baum.
Blackwell.
Zald, Mayer N. 1996. "More Fragmentation? Unfinished Business in Linking the
Social Sciences and the Humanities." Administrative Science
Quarterly , 41:251-261.
New Directions #1: Features of the Self
Week 2 (April 9).
Cognition and Culture: New Contributions of Cognitive
Science to the Empirical Analysis of Culture
DiMaggio, Paul J. 1997. Culture and Cognition. Annual Review of Sociology 23:
263-87.
Porac, Joseph F., Howard Thomas, Fiona Wilson, Douglas Paton and Alaina
Kanfer. 1995. "Rivalry and the Industry Model of Scottish
Knitwear Producers." Administrative Science Quarterly 40:203227.
Further Reading:
Ruef, Martin. 1999. "Social Ontology and the Dynamics of Organizational Forms:
Creating Market Actors in the Healthcare Field, 1966-1994."
Social Forces 77(4):1403-1432.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied
Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic
Books. (see Chp. 25 for summary of argument).
Porac, Joseph F. 2002. "Interorganizational Cognition and Interpretation."
Forthcoming in Companion to Organizations. Edited by Joel A. C.
Baum. Blackwell Publishers.
Porac, Joseph and Howard Thomas. 1990. "Taxanomic Mental Models in
Competitor Definition." Academy of Management Review 15:224240.
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Porac, Joseph, Howard Thomas, and C. Badden-Fuller. 1989. "Competitive
Groups as Cognitive Communities: The Case of Scottish Knitwear
Manufacturers." Journal of Management Studies 26:397-415.
Anand, N. and Richard A. Peterson. 2000. "When Market Information Constitutes
Fields: Sensemaking of Markets in the Commercial Music
Industry." Organization Science 11(3):270-284.
Week 3 (April 16).
An Alternative Cognitive Theory: The Epistemologies of
Enacted Practice
Cook, Scott D. N. and John Seely Brown. 1999. "Bridging Epistemologies: The
Generative Dance Between Organizational Knowledge and
Organizational Knowing." Organization Science 10:381-400.
Hutchins, Edwin. 1995. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.
(chapter 8 & 9).
Further Reading:
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Week 4 (April 23).
Analyzing Practices: The Study of Grammars of Action
Pentland, Brian.T. and Henry H. Rueter. 1994. “Organizational Routines as
Grammars of Action,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 39
(3):484-510.
Pentland, Brian.T. 1999. “Organizations as Networks of Action.” In Joel Baum
and Bill McKelvey (eds.) Variations in Organization Science: In
Honor of Donald T. Campbell. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications.
Further Reading:
Padgett, J. F., and Ansell, C.K.: “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici,
1400-1434,” American Journal of Sociology, 98(6) (1993):12591319.
New Directions #2: Features of the Text
Week 5 (April 30).
Studying Genre
Orlikowski, Wanda J. and JoAnneYates. 1994. “Genre Repertoire: The
Structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations.”
Administrative Science Quarterly, 39(4): 541-574.
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Yates, JoAnne, Wanda J. Orlikowski and Kazuo Okamura. 1999. "Explicit and
Implicit Structuring of Genres in Electronic Communication:
Reinforcement and Change in Social Interaction." Organization
Science 10(1):83-103.
Further Reading:
Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas
Press. (See especially “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the
Novel”).
Yates, JoAnne and Wanda J. Orlikowski. 1992. "Genres of Organizational
Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying
Communication and Media." The Academy of Management Review
17(2):299-326.
Yates, JoAnne. 1989. Control through Communication: The Rise of System in
American Management.” Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Week 6 (May 7).
Studying Rhetoric (session with guest author — Charles
Bazerman, Gervirtz School of Education, UCSB).
Bazerman, Charles (2002). "The Production of Information for Genred Activity
Spaces: Informational Motives and Consequences of the
Environmental Impact Statement." Manuscript.
Bazerman, Charles (2001). "Nuclear Information: One Rhetorical Moment in the
Construction of the Information Age." Written Communication
18:3.
Bazerman, Charles (1999). The Languages of Edison's Light: Rhetorical Agency
in the Material Production of Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press. (Selected chapter).
Further Reading:
Bazerman, Charles. 1988. Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of
the Experimental Article in Science. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Bazerman, Charles. 1998. "The Rhetoric of Technology." Journal of Business and
Technical Communication 12(3): 381-387.
Bazerman, Charles. 1997. "Discursively Structured Activities." Mind, Culture and
Activity 4:4 (1997): 296-308.
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Bazerman, Charles. 1994. "Systems of Genre and the Enactment of Social
Intentions" Rethinking Genre. Ed. A. Freedman and P. Medway.
Taylor & Francis: 79-101.
Week 7 (May 14).
Studying Narrative
Pentland, Brian T. 1999. “Building Process Theory from Narrative: From
Description to Explanation,” Academy of Management Journal,
24(4):711-724.
Bearman Peter S. and Katherine Stovel. 2000. “Becoming a Nazi: A Model for
Narrative Networks.” Poetics 27(2-3):69-90.
Further Reading:
Bearman, Peter S., Robert Faris, and James Moody. 1999. “Blocking the Future:
New Solutions for Old Problems in Historical Social Science.
Social Science History 23(4): 501-534.
Propp, V. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Albert, Stuart. 1995. "Towards a Theory of Timing: An Archival Study of Timing
Decisions in the Persian Gulf War." Research in Organizational
Behavior 17:1-70.
Abbott, Andrew. 1995. "Sequence Analysis: New Methods for Old Ideas."
Annual Review of Sociology 21:93-113.
New Directions #3: Features of the Social
Weeks 8 (May 21).
How Culture Creates Fields (and vice-versa) (session with
guest author — Marc Ventresca, Kellogg School of
Management, Northwestern University).
Ventresca, Marc and Rodney Lacey. 2001. "Origins and Activities of Industry
Entrepreneurs in the Formation of the U.S. Online Database
Industry, 1969-1982. Forthcoming in The Entrepreneurial
Dynamic edited by C. Schoonhoven and E. Romanelli.
McDonough, Patricia M., Marc Ventresca and Charles Outcalt. 2000. "Field of
Dreams: Organization Field Approaches to Understanding the
Transformation of College Access, 1965-1995. Pp. 371-405 in
Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, edited by
J.C. Smart and W. G. Tierney. New York: Agathon Press.
Further Reading:
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Andrew J. Hoffman and Marc J. Ventresca (eds). 2001. Organizations, Policy,
and the Natural Environment. In press, Stanford University Press.
Joseph Porac and Marc J. Ventresca (eds). 2002. Constructing Industries and
Markets. In press. Elsevier.
Weeks 9 (May 28).
Actor-Network Theory
Law, John. 1999. “Topology and the Naming of Complexity.” In Actor Network
Theory and After, edited by John Law and John Hassard.
Blackwell.
Bijker, Wiebe. 1995. “King of the Road: The Social Construction of the Safety
Bicycle.” Pp. 19-100 in Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Further Reading:
Latour, Bruno. 1999. “On Recalling ANT.” In Actor Network Theory and After,
edited by John Law and John Hassard. Blackwell.
Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern.
Week 10 (June 4). Analyzing Duality: The Study of Institutional Logics
Breiger, Ronald. 2000. “A Tool Kit for Practice Theory.” Poetics 27(2-3):91-115.
Harcourt, Bernard. 2002. "Measured Interpretation: Introducing the Method of
Correspondence Analysis to Legal Studies." Forthcoming in
University of Illinois Law Review.
Further Reading:
Friedland, Roger and John Mohr. 2002. “Introduction.” The Cultural Turn in
American Sociology. Forthcoming, Cambridge University Press.
Mohr, John W. and Vincent Duquenne. 1997. "The Duality of Culture and
Practice: Poverty Relief in New York City, 1888-1917."Theory
and Society Vol. 26/2-3: 305-356.
Friedland, Roger and Robert R. Alford. 1991. "Bringing Society Back In:
Symbols, Practices and Institutional Contradictions." Pps. 232-263
in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis edited by
Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press
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