orgtheory.net

In case you did not see this on the OMT listserv, the December 2009 issue of the Journal of Management Inquiry is definitely worth reading.  In particular, see the following articles:

Donald Palmer, Brian Dick, and Nathaniel Freiburger.  Rigor and Relevance in Organization Studies. Journal of Management Inquiry 2009 18: 265-272. [Abstract]

Danny Miller, Royston Greenwood, and Rajshree Prakash.  What Happened to Organization Theory? Journal of Management Inquiry 2009 18: 273-279. [Abstract]

Jeffrey T. Polzer, Ranjay Gulati, Rakesh Khurana, and Michael L. Tushman.  Crossing Boundaries to Increase Relevance in Organizational Research. Journal of Management Inquiry 2009 18: 280-286. [Abstract]

Sticking with the food theme, let me call attention to John Colapinto’s great article on the Michelin Guide in the recent New Yorker food issue.  There’s a lot in this article that should be of interest to org theorists and institutionalists, especially given former guest blogger Michael Sauder’s important work (with Wendy Espeland) on the U.S. News & World Report rankings of law schools.  In the piece, Colapinto gains access to a covert Michelin inspector, a task that fell to him after the famously secretive Michelin dragged its heels on letting another reporter talk with an inspector. In it, he describes a lunch at Jean Georges shared with “Maxime” (the inspector) and Michelin managing director Jean-Luc Naret, which he uses as an entry point for describing the way that Michelin recruits and trains its inspectors, its very French orientation to judging the quality of the cuisine and ambiance of the establishment, and the way that chefs and restaurant owners respond to the rankings.

The piece inherently raises a number of organizational questions, such as:

• How well do the cultural understandings inherent in an institutionalized rating system translate into new environments?  The more populist Zagat guides (or crowd-sourced websites like Yelp.com) seem to be much better suited to the U.S., although they too suffer from worries that interested parties will try to game or cheat the ratings.  On the other hand, the role of the disinterested, anonymous expert Michelin critic seems to encourage a sort of standardization.  A dish is either “right” or “wrong,” in true French form.  Indeed, as Rao has pointed out, French cuisine went through considerable changes associated with the rise of the insurgent nouvelle cuisine form, and in which those chefs who borrowed from a rival form of cuisine in their dishes became significantly more likely to lose a Michelin star as a result.  Consider the following case in which Maxime describes why famed Upper East Side restaurant Daniel scored only two out of three Michelin stars until very recently:

[It lacked] consistency — and accuracy… It’s just technical.  I mean, cooking is a science, and either it’s right or its wrong. And that’s something that’s very objective.  Either a sauce is prepared accurately — or it’s not.  A fish is cooked accurately — or it’s not. There’s the talent, the creativity that has to be applied to get a three-star — he has to be a very talented chef — but there was just a lot of inconsistency.

• Further, consider NYT food critic emeritus Frank Bruni’s thoughts on what gets lost in applying a universal standard:

… I wonder if a certain sort of chromosomal stodginess can ever really be completely leached out of the Michelin guide and the system. [...] The other thing that has always made me wonder about Michelin rankings is that they claim a lot of science to them, but is there a lot of soul to them? When Michelin describes its own system, I think, where is the allowance for just a visceral, emotional response to a restaurant?

• As Surowiecki notes about the worries many have about the impact of health reform, anxieties about losses tend to overpower the pleasures associated with potential gains.  Losing a Michelin star can be catastrophic for a restaurant in a concentrated market, even though being rated at all remains a considerable status marker.  Colapinto recounts the story of former La Côte d’Or chef Bernard Loiseau, who threatened that he would kill himself if he ever lost one of his Michelin stars.  Shortly after losing the star, Loiseau made good on that promise.
• Do the judgments of one rating system tend to spill over to others?  There’s indication in the story that the Michelin Guide has been struggling to build its legitimacy in the U.S. market since its arrival here in 2005, and that its editors feel considerable pressure when its ratings are inconsistent with those of Zagat or the Times.  They may, therefore, be more inclined to give an additional star to a restaurant others have rated quite highly, or to take one away for a negative reputation.

John Searle has argued — and he might just be correct — that social scientists are poor philosophers (he even goes after Weber, Durkheim and Simmel).  I’m not sure how long we can go along publishing things that are not philosophically sound (“soundness” of course might be relative — though, as a scientific realist, I don’t think it is).  That said, it’s a tall enough order to get our theories and empirics correct in any given paper, without even getting into the philosophy.  But I think we can most definitely do better in spelling out, or at least being aware of, our underlying philosophical commitments and assumptions.  Plus, I think that the nexus of philosophy and org theory provides a tremendous opportunity for future work.

So, whether you agree with Searle’s brand of realism or not, I’d highly recommend his Fall 2009 “Philosophy of Society” course, you can download the lectures here (or, via iTunes, just search for “phil 138″).   Thirty plus hours (with more to come) of engaging lecture on philosophy and society.

From the Chicago Reader, an article on the growing underground sausage and bacon scene:

The charcuterie resistance is growing. Professional restaurant chefs without legal licensing or dedicated facilities cure their own meats out of view of the health inspectors all the time. And Erik and Ehran aren’t the only ones making and selling outside of those professional kitchens: A former restaurant chef is currently curing two dozen duck breasts in a south-side warehouse; they’ll end up on restaurant menus sometime around the holidays. Personal chef Helge Pedersen cures and ages lamb legs for the Norwegian salted meat fennelar, along with guanciale, soppressata, and pancetta, in a dedicated refrigerator in his Humboldt Park apartment and another in a garage space on Western Avenue. He sells them to friends as he hones his craft in anticipation of the day he opens his own retail space.

This is pure Hayek:

“The regulations are written for industrial food operations,” says Mate [an amateur charcuterist]. “And if you apply them to small-scale local producers, no one’s gonna do it. It’s legislating local food out of the market. Unfortunately, the health departments don’t appreciate that. But that food is actually safer. It’s easier for someone on that small scale to move things more quickly and be more careful. Local markets are self-regulating. If there’s anything wrong with your products and someone gets sick from it, then you’re out of business.”

Yup, the invisible ham of the market.

But there is some serious economic sociology to be hatched here. First, this is clearly the sort of producer activism that Huggy Rao, Klaus Weber, and others have written so much about. Second, there is an institutional story to be told here. The state regulation of food is, as these amateurs claim, designed with mass industry in mind. These people seem to want to work with the law, but the current system isn’t designed with them in mind. Isomorphism at work. Third, there is a story of culture to be told here. What does it say about current American food culture when people set up an alternative ham scene? This is part of a re-emergence of artisnal food and “local” consumption.

Mary Tripsas has a nice piece related to organizational identity in today’s New York Times: “When Names Change to Protect the Future.“

From the Home Offices in London and Paris, François has compiled a list of social science articles that have appeared in Science. Interesting list. Do you think there’s a pattern?

A 1940 Time Life photograph (from the google archive) that I ran into.  The caption reads: “A baby climbing pedestals which he has pushed together to reach the lolli-pop hanging from the ceiling.”

It was recently announced that there will be an antiwar protest in San Francisco. You might know that I am currently conducting a study of the antiwar movement. Normally, I might try to get to SF to survey people, but I’m already committed for a trip next week. So I am looking for one or two trustworthy souls who can hand out surveys for me next Wednesday (Dec 2) at 5pm in San Francisco. It’s easy and I pay $15/hour. So, if you are interested in helping me out, just email me. Thanks.

… then you might enjoy this video:

Happy thanksgiving. Here’s a holiday snack: performativity and critical race theory come together, via Andrew Sullivan.

A recent study just published in PNAS, hit the mainstream news and attendant blogsphere circuit yesterday.  In the study, as most of you must have heard by now, the authors (Eugene Caruso, Chicago Booth School of Business; Nicole L. Mead, Tilburg University Marketing and Emily Balcetis, NYU Psychology) show that respondents who are shown a picture of a biracial political candidate tend to choose doctored photos of that candidate—some “ligthened” and other one’s “darkened”—as “most representative” of that candidate depending on how close they are to that candidate’s political views. When there is a match, the candidate is seen as better represented by his lighter self, and when there is a mismatch, the candidate is seen as better represented by his darker alter-ego (of course this is an experiment so exposure to stimuli is randomized).

The study is in the press because the authors of the study were smart enough to not only use a nondescript biracial candidate (they did that in study 1, the (poor?) guy’s name is Jarome Iginla, “a 32-year old biracial male whose father was a Black Nigerian and whose mother was a  White American.”), but then (in study’s 2 and 3) they selected the most famous biracial candidate in the history of modern democratic politics.  They also planned well, since study 2 was conducted just before the 2008 election and study 3 was conducted right after.  What they find is that the “photoshop” effect was replicated with Obama and that the extent to which participants judged that a lightened photograph better represented Obama’s “true essence”* predicted both voting intentions (study 2, before the election) and restrospective reports of actual voting behavior (study 3, post-election), controlling for both standard lib-con placement and (implicit and explicit) racial attitudes (the last of which were surprisingly impotent in predicting anything in this study; sorry Larry).

This is a very cool study, the authors have pretty big substantive (not just statistically) significant effects and this could probably be easily replicated.  The effect is real and (given the news attention) spectacular.  The issue is of course interpretation.  I believe that the main interpretation that’s circulating in the news report (and which the authors don’t appear to be doing much to combat) is a (slight) misinterpretation.  Most news reports are blabbing about how political views alter or skews the perception of the photograph. In fact the study is literally called “Political Partisanship Influences Perception of Biracial Candidates Skin Tone.”  But while this title was obviously designed with the press-release in mind, this is not what the study is actually about.  In fact, Marc Ambider’s summary at the Atlantic is actually a more accurate characterization of the effect: “Lighter Skin, More Like Me.”

For the key issue in this study is not “partisanship” but the extent to which you rate the candidates view as similar to your own. The confusion stems from the fact that this was explicit in Study 1 (where candidates where informed about the unknown biracial candiates view and then had to judge how representative these views where of their own) but became implicit in studies 2 and 3, since there all that you needed to know was the respondent’s lib-con placement (Obama’s was presumed to be known of course).

But most importantly (and I’m sure the Psychologist in the study knows this very well) this was not a perception task (e.g. in the psycho-physical sense, “estimate how dark or light this photograph is…”).  It was a judgment task (“how well the photographs represent…”), so “partisanship is not skewing perception in the raw sense.  In judgment (like judging distance) perception is involved but it is more complicated than partisanship making you “see” a photograph as lighter or darker. In fact, the best explanation for this effect in my view, is Dan Kahneman’s “attribute substitution” story.  All of the elements for an attribute substitution effect are there: (1) an ill-defined, loosely bounded judgment task (like judging distance), (2) a readily available (cognitively and affectively accessible) cue that can be used as a heuristic (the relative distance between the person and the candidate in terms of political views) in order to produce a judgment.

So I propose that the effect occurs in two steps:

1) First, we substitute the (impossible to define) “true essence” of the candidate with the more accessible “how close is this candidate from my values?” heuristic:  close to me=good essence, far from me=bad essence. This simplifies the problem to one of being asked to judge which picture best represents a bad essence (if candidate disagrees with my views) or a good essence (if candidate agrees).

2) We then answer this (more answerable) question with a second substitution, using a simple (and culturally entrenched heuristic [e.g. see Gandolf's robe]) dark=bad and light=good); both steps occur at an implicit level of course.  So there is not effect of partisanship on perception.  The partisanship effect is cognitive/affective, and occurs during the first substitution (when judging “distance from self”).  The second effect is “cultural” and (you don’t have to see the scene in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X when the title character goes through a dictionary, or read Durkheim and Mauss’ Primitive Classification to get this), thoroughly intuitive (e.g. Dark Magic, etc.).

*The actual prompt is as follows:

…participants read instructions describing that photographs can differ in how well they ‘‘represent a politician’’ and capture his or her ‘‘true essence.’’ They then rated how much each of three photographs—one lightened, one unaltered, and one darkened—represented the candidate  on  scales  ranging  from  1  (not  at  all)  to  7  (a  great  deal).

A few weeks ago, I was visiting New York and my spouse’s friend came by to say hello. Oddly, we got into a discussion of blogger/economist Robin Hanson, who is well known for pushing a number of unusual ideas. He’s the type of guy who will take a slightly off kilter idea and push it to the logical conclusion. For example, he’s responsible for “ideas futures,” where experts bet on some future outcome. Yup, this is the same concept behind the “terrorism market,” which caused a stir a few years back.

Two ideas that he’s associated with are “the singularity” and cryonics. The first idea is popular among futurists and it’s pretty simple to state. The singularity is where we reach some sort of utopic state where artificial intelligence, technology, and computing have reached a whole new level. Kind of like in the Matrix, but we voluntarily plug ourselves in. The economic side of it is that we have GDP growth that’s beyond what any contemporary theory suggests. The social side of it is that we are plugged into a new virtual world, even achieving a sort of immortality through uploading ourselves. The second idea predates Robin, but he’s known as a big fan.

Given that we now have devices that were depicted as radical in Star Trek, I’m not the kind of person to poo-poo technological utopianism. But let me give you my take on why I can buy singularity theories and not cryonics. In a nutshell, we already know that computers can emulate or copy just about any system if given enough time and computing power. In my life time, I fully expect people to be plugged into a virtual reality – it’s already happening via games, facebook, chat rooms, etc. Thus, an electronic and permanent copy of me isn’t hard to fathom. On the economic side, given the speed at which human life and thought might occur, maybe we can have some truly amazing economic growth.

In contrast, freezing yourself (a) damages the tissues, which makes it hard for me to believe that I will be revived in decent shape, and (b) requires money that I’d rather go to my descendants. I also have a tough time believing that collectively we’d ever be good enough to put up the $$$ to maintain a large number of forzen people over the next few hundred years. Heck, we barely have it together to take care of the living, much less the almost dead, except a few folks who can set up huge foundations to take care of them. Finally, there’s a philosophical point. I’m really cool with being finite. Seriously, I am. I don’t look forward to being sick, but heck, my attitude is that I have a great life and that the order of the universe is to have my move on so other people can also have great lives.

It’s not often that I’m so genuinely surprised by a journal article that I jump out of my seat and nearly knock my computer screen over. Yet this is what happened to me yesterday morning. And what, you may ask, caused my outburst? Well, I noticed an article in the most recent issue of Organization Studies about the cognitive dimensions of organizational life that was written by Nicolai Foss and Mark Lorenzen. Yes, that Nicolai Foss – the guy who writes at our evil twin blog has published a paper about cognition. Don’t spill anything, it’s a very interesting article.

Foss and Lorenzen think about how coordination problems are resolved through the evolution of shared cognitive categories. One of the central problems underlying coordination, they argue, is that in any given situation people have heterogeneous beliefs regarding their potential interaction. These differences in beliefs inhibit meaningful debate and create friction when trying to align incentives. Thus, individuals with differing beliefs may never be able to agree about what’s important, what should be done, etc., which leads to a failure of collective action.

In a certain sense, the cognitive coordination problems caused by differing beliefs are more fundamental than the coordination problems related to incentive conflicts, because they need to be solved before the latter category of coordination problems can be addressed. Thus, understanding how situations become cognitively well defined — that is, the process of achieving cognitive coordination — should be a central analytical task for economists (1202).

In classic game theory, they maintain, theorists assume that people will reason away those differences; however, this reasoning process is not very well explained by the theory (perhaps because most game theorists choose to ignore cognition). Foss and Lorenzen tackle it head on. They argue that people reason with analogies, anchoring on past events or ways of doing things to guide future interaction. Rather than argue that there are a few simple analogies on which people converge in their interactions, their theory makes room for local specificity. In a real constructivist sense (or at least that’s how I’d label it), analogies emerge from interaction and become precedents for guiding future interaction. Empirically the paper focuses on a Danish furniture district and looks at the ways that producers resolve coordination problems among themselves, such as price-setting.

Once you get into the details of the paper, you realize that this is not at all an atypical Foss paper. It’s written with clarity, it seeks an elegant solution to a common empirical problem, and the paper is very interesting. While it was surprising to me to see that Nicolai is now writing about cognition, the link to his research agenda is pretty clear. Shared cognition enables tacit coordination over prices, reduces transaction costs, and facilitates ongoing market interaction. Prices, it could be argued, reflect not just preferences but also convey information about market players’ shared beliefs.  Imperfectly rational actors use analogies to help resolve tensions that inhibit coordination, but given their sticky nature, analogies may turn into institutions that provide long-term solutions to the coordination problem. By linking insights from psychology, organizational theory, and Hayekian economics, Foss and Lorenzen have written a nice bridging paper.

Orgheads know that I [heart] Theda Skocpol. I [heart] her because she’s a rockin’ dean. And I [heart] her because she’s a rockin’ historical sociologist. Gosh, there’s so much to [heart].

What I like about Skocpol’s historical sociology is tha tshe  manages to do two things that are fairly hard. First, she has a pretty good grasp of the literature on individual nations and their development. She’s very comparative but grounded. Few people can really do that, especially in sociology, where we don’t encourage graduate students to develop reading abilities in multiple languages. Second, she’s extremely strong in theory development and can make new concepts link to comparative observations. Without  theory, a lot of comparativists get lost in endless detail and the conclusions feel mushy. Skocpol is disciplined as a writer, so even if you don’t agree, one can see how evidence was marshaled behind a certain argument.

That brings me to the Skocpol Zone: that’s when you reach an enlightened state where you use theory to tightly organize a mass of historical information and secondary sources in a convincing way.

This last weekend I ran into an interesting 2006 interview with Oliver Williamson, by Geoffrey Hodgson and David Gintis.

Here’s an interesting comment on theorizing:

My recommendation is that all would-be theories of firm and market organization be examined with respect to the four precepts of pragmatic methodology: first, keep it simple; second, get it right; third, make it plausible; fourth, make predictions and engage in empirical testing to see how the theory corresponds with real world experience. Taking all these precepts together, I would describe the exercise as one of operationalization. All would-be theorists should work through these steps and display their hand.

The interview touches on fascinating interdisciplinary issues and has lots of links to central questions in organization theory.  The interview was published in the Journal of Institutional Economics: “An Interview with Oliver Williamson” and can be downloaded (pdf) for free.

This weekend, I decided to kick my Microsoft habit. I’ve always enjoyed Apple computers ever since my dad brought home a IIE, but I’ve stuck with Windows for professional reasons. Most software is written with Windows in mind and it was always clear to me that Microsoft was way more serious about becoming the industry standard. In many ways, Apple products are better, but if you aren’t compatible with everyone else, that advantage is mitigated. Even though we got to a point where many Mac and Windows files are compatible, I’d gotten comfortable with Windows. In a university, I could always ask the staff for help on problems. However, I’ve now reached a point where the benefits of Windows are a thing of the past.

First off, I no longer need my Windows machine for Windows only software. I can always port to my office machine. Or run heavy duty computing in UNIX. Thus, Windows is now something to be paid for by someone else. I really don’t need my own Windows machine.

Second, my experience with Windows Vista was atrocious. Even when I updated to Windows 7, I still had too many problems with third party software and it still takes forever to start up and power down. It befuddles me as to why faster and better (and brand new!) machines are saddled with software that makes them slower than my XP machine that’s 3+ years old. I’ve heard that some people cling to truly ancient Windows, like 98 or so, out of fear of later versions.

Third, Mac users don’t suffer from the Blue screen of death and most computer viruses. I’ve been zinged by both. I got the BSoD today in Windows 7 – on a new computer that has almost no software installed on it.

Fourth, the Microsoft business model is no longer the only game in town. I think Google’s Chrome is a real challenge: open source OS that can draw and store data around the Web in a decentralized way. Sure, big institutions that need uniformity (e.g., colleges) may still desire a package from Seattle that’s maintained by an army of tech support. But I don’t need it. Most people need office apps, email, Web, and media players. We’ll soon get to a google model where that’s given away for free and it’ll work (unlike LINUX, which requires quite a bit of knowledge and effort to make work).

Another challenge will be from small, hand held computers that grow out of iPhones, BlackBerries and the like. They have their own OS, they’re hooked up to the internet, and it’ll be a matter of a few years when they can replicate what most desktops and laptops can do, especially if data storage can be outsourced. I imagine you’ll have small combo computer/phone/media player that you can plug into a keyboard and monitor to replicate the office experience. There’s not much Microsoft can do to prevent that. I don’t think they’ll monopolize the OS, like they did on desktops, which only happened when key players underestimated the economic and technical value of the OS.

So what do I do? The first step is easy. Stop all future investment in Windows. I’ll keep my old XP around so I can continue to work any Windows apps I want to, like Winamp. If it breaks down, I’ll probably just get the cheapest machine possible (like one of those tiny laptops). The machine I have that that runs Windows 7 is the last “full grown” machine that I will ever acquire that runs Windows. All necessary Windows work will be done on university machines. Second, my next machine will in all likelihood be a Mac. I assume there will be problems, but Apple seems interested in making good products, instead of making money with pop-ups, bundled software, unwanted pre-loaded software, and horrid OS releases (though Mac has had a few doozies). I assume that once I outgrow that Mac, perhaps 5 to 7 years from now, a new model for personal computing will have emerged. It should be interesting.

Like Fabio said, despair is a running theme of much fiction, but did you also know that it’s a central emotional component of most organizations? It’s true. A student sent me a link to this (simply awesome) website that contains “motivational products and posters for pessimists, underachievers, and the chronically unsuccessful.” My favorite discoveries were these podcasts about creating status barriers between executives and employees, organizational storytelling, and dealing with employee complaints.

Loyal orghead Thorfinn draws my attention to the following post about the Baathist dictatorship in Iraq. The blog Cheap Talk reports on a talk by Kevin Woods of the Institute for Defense Analysis  about what was learned about Saddam Hussein by US gov’t investigators after Gulf War II:

Delusions At a meeting in the mid-ninetees with leading generals and strategic thinkers, one officer offered a subtle and nuanced theory of how an invading army might be forestalled and defeated by an attrition strategy using small, fast-moving decentralized groups (a little like the fedayeen that plagued US troops in Gulf War II).  The officer compared this to the strategy used by the Russians against Napoleon.  ( I assume extreme heat replaces extreme cold as the weather component of the strategy.)  Saddam dismissed the strategy.  His argument was that the fact that he, Saddam, was still standing and alive meant that he had defeated the U.S. coalition in Gulf War I.  A coalition of thirty odd nations had been brought to its knees by him.  Therefore, since he had a winning strategy in 1991, there is was no reason to replace it for the next invasion.  Notice that Saddam also wants to learn from his mistakes – that is why he had the after-event analysis done, just like the analysis done for the US by Woods.  But Saddam is subject to so much overconfidence that he cannot use any useful information that might come out of the analysis.

And:

A key player, the head of research into WMDs, was asked: Is it possible that there was a WMD program and you did not know about it?  He said it was quite possible.  First, information was compartmentalized and no-one knew anything.  After Gulf War I, many documents, resources etc were destroyed so inspectors would not find them and hold Saddam in contempt of various UN resolutions.  But this process was haphazard and no-one really knew what was and was not destroyed and whether some WMDs had been hoarded secretly.

Why did he believe that Saddam had WMDs?  Because “little Bush”, as Saddam called him, had said there were WMDs.  And if he invaded and there were no WMDs, Little Bush would be very embarrassed so he would make sure there were WMDs before saying it!

Major problem for game theory  – game theory has actors who can correctly infer the strategies of others:

Another theme is also familiar to game theorists though we have no clear answer: it is very hard for one player to understand the strategic intent of another.  It is very hard for one player to communicate his strategic intent to the other indirectly: presumably Big Bush thought it was obvious which side had defeated the other and could not imagine that Saddam would even consider Gulf War I a win for the Iraqi regime!  This leads the players to have two quite different interpretations of the same event and creates room for future errors.

Worth reading.

Last week I posted about my interest in the apparently increasing interest of many formal organizations in encouraging stakeholder participation, whether in participatory governance, formal deliberation, or, as in my own work, political participation.  What followed was, as I see it, the seed of an interesting conversation on the conditional role of democracy in organizations (which reminds me that it’s time to return to Lipset, Trow, and Coleman 1956), the (potential) limits of engagement facilitated from the top down, and Brayden’s interesting question on how we can distinguish between the types of facilitated participation I describe and what we think of as traditional grassroots organizations.  All of these questions, it seems to me, implicate a common question: how much weight should we put on the outside sponsorship of public participation?  This is a topic that’s on a lot of people’s minds these days, especially after what some have called the “summer of astroturf,” with groups on both the right and left trading barbs that the other side is doing the bidding of an elite sponsor, whether it’s the insurance industry (as discussed recently on OrgTheory’s sibling blog) or Organizing for America (as some on the right suggest).  And others, as in the recent work of Eliasoph (2009 and in her forthcoming book), are asking whether we should understand top-down civic activity differently from the comparatively “unfunded, informal, ongoing associations that theorists like de Tocqueville described.”

Perhaps the most productive way to move this discussion forward is to consider not only the differences, but also the similarities between the top-down campaigns sponsored by public affairs professionals and those of grassroots community organizations.  These comparisons show how it can be quite difficult to determine exactly what it is that many in popular discussion refer to as “astroturf.”

Sponsorship.  As Brayden correctly points out, grassroots community organizations often rely on outside sponsorship. I’ve found in some of my research with John McCarthy on community-based organizations that even though a significant portion of such groups’ resources come from local community fundraisers – through efforts like bake sales, ad revenue from newsletters, canvassing, and the like – much of their backing comes from private foundations, government grants, and also corporate donors.  There’s also evidence in other research that funders tend to favor more professional organizations when evaluating grant applications (who, of course, have a stronger infrastructure in place to write grants in the first place, maintain compliance with the terms of those grants, etc.).  And professionals help organizations to build legitimacy, broker coalitions, and more.

There are undoubtedly some similarities here to the largely top-down campaigns of public affairs professionals that I have studied.  Funding from these campaigns comes from elite patrons or organizations with a vested interest in its outcome.  Many of these campaigns work with existing community organizations in order to build support, as in the case of pharmaceutical lobbying of the public, which often builds upon patient and consumer networks.  Professionals whose job it is to advocate for an issue are often heavily involved in these cases and provide a framework for claims-making, but, like in the case of community organizing, the professionals are there to encourage local voices to be heard.

Legitimacy.  In the work of community organizations, legitimacy is tied to organizations’ recognition by granting agencies, national and regional organizing networks, and the local communities in which they reside.  The legitimacy of a public affairs campaign is linked to recognition that, despite the fact that it is being sponsored by an elite organization, it has the support among the public that it claims. If it does, the campaign is merely making clear to public officials that public opinion is consistent with the organization’s position; if not, and the campaign is trying to manufacture the appearance of support that doesn’t in fact exist, it runs the risk of de-legitimation through being labeled “astroturf.”  Kollman (1998) finds that advocacy groups are less likely to take the latter strategy, in part because when the public popularity and salience of the issue in question are both at low levels, it’s not typically in an organization’s interest to mobilize public participation (they’ll favor insider, or “elitist,” strategies instead).

Resources. Those active in lobbying the public on behalf of elite interests often point out that they put their resources into encouraging political participation, and, in fact, help to compensate for the apparent decline of civic and political engagement.  However, some are uncomfortable with the representative implications of the campaigns of public affairs professionals, as the considerable resources they bring to bear on mobilizing public participation raise questions not only about buying political influence, but how resources can be used to shape civil society (both through participation and public attitudes).  Even if there are certain similarities in sponsorship between grassroots citizens’ groups and campaigns that build participation from the top down, the resource differentials are considerable.  Certain advocates have suggested, strkingly, that the amount spent on such campaigns may outweigh even the amount spent on direct lobbying expenditures, although first amendment concerns and no required disclosure make it impossible to know this in any systematic fashion.

Membership.  Mobilizing members is a quite different process than mobilizing non-member constituents like suppliers, distributors, donors, or sympathetic segments of the broader public. Community organizations tend to mobilize their members (or members of constituent religious congregations) in order to build local support.  Public affairs campaigns are more likely to be sponsored by firms, industry groups, and those large interest groups that tend to be either more centralized or are associations without “members.” Those who are members of a voluntary association often participate, in part, for a feeling of mutual civic benefit, whereas those who participate in a media-driven lobbying campaign do so in a more short-term and individualistic fashion.  Indeed, signing on to an email form-letter, calling a toll-free advocacy line at the end of an advertisement, or repeating a set of talking points is, of course, a much more atomistic process than participation in a thick network of community participants.  But it may, nonetheless, have effects.  A (defeated) proposal in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 would have recognized this distinction, in that it exempted member mobilization by associations but would have regulated paid mass appeals directed at the public.

Thus, despite certain specific similarities in sponsorship, there are considerable differences between grassroots organizations (as traditionally understood) and top-down campaigns for building public influence by elite organizations.  On a more theoretical level, this has implications for how we understand the relationships between states, market actors, and civil societies.

CALL FOR PAPERS
MICHIGAN SOCIAL THEORY CONFERENCE
MARCH 12-13, 2010
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: December 15, 2009

The aim of the Michigan Social Theory Conference is to showcase graduate student work that integrates theoretical and practical aspects of the analysis of social problems and puzzles. We solicit papers from graduate students interested in using theory to illuminate observable aspects of social, political and economic behaviors and practices. In sum, we seek new ways of thinking about how theory and empirical data work together to inform social scientific studies. Our scope is broad: we hope to feature sociologists, social workers, political scientists, economists, anthropologists, and policy scholars, though this list is not exhaustive.

The two-day conference will comprise six panels focused on aspects of the material world that social theory has often ignored or found difficult to incorporate: Space, the Body, Time, Visuality, Memory and Technology.

For more details on the panels and conference, visit http://sitemaker.umich.edu/theory/home. Direct questions to: theoryconference@umich.edu.

We’ve been highlighting youtube clips for teaching (and for various other purposes) —- so here’s another teaching-related resource: Mason Carpenter has put together a list of forty or so youtube clips to highlight various concepts related to strategy. Here’s his BPS teaching tool-kit that many are probably already familiar with.

Last night I attended a Northwestern domain dinner for faculty on campus interested in sustainability issues.  The talks, including one by my colleague Klaus Weber about the role of social movements in encouraging sustainable practices in the market, were interesting and sought to cross disciplinary boundaries. One of the issues that always comes up when talking about sustainability is the link between corporate environmental/social performance and profitability. I’ve been thinking about this lately since my PhD class is reading David Vogel’s excellent The Market for Virtue. One of Vogel’s main points is that profitability may be an elusive goal of socially/environmentally responsible behavior.

[E]ven if it were possible to convincingly demonstrate a positive causal link between CSR and financial performance, it is unclear what this would prove. If some firms are actually more profitable because they are more responsible, it does not necessarily follow that their less responsible competitors would be more profitable if they were more responsible. It is equally possible that the market niche for relatively responsible firms is limited and that they would be better off continuing to pursue a less responsible strategy. And a link between responsibility and profitability does not necessarily mean that firms would be even more profitable if they were more responsible, since there may be declining returns for behaving more responsibly. In fact, if all firms behaved responsibly – which presumably is the goal of the CSR movement – then at least some of the advantages a firm receives from being more responsible than its competitors would disappear, and thus, ironically, future studies of the links between CSR and profits would find no statistically significant relationship (pg. 34).

That firms may be competing in a market for “virtuous” behavior seems to escape a lot of the research on CSR. Hundreds of studies have tried to identify a link between CSR and financial performance, some more successful in their efforts than others. In a meta-analysis of this literature, Josh Margolis and his coauthors found that, at best, there is a weak link between the two. In fact, there is a stronger relationship between past financial performance and future social performance than the other way around. They wonder if firms that try to compete with companies that have an established history of good social performance may be wasting their free cash flow.

Does this mean that activists and academics should stop trying to get companies to behave themselves? Absolutely not. But I think it does suggest that activists may be better off focusing on the normative and coercive avenues for influencing corporate behavior and stop trying so hard to sell every company on the idea that sustainable practices will be profitable. Save the profitability talk for those companies that have the most to gain (and lose) from sustainability.

In the New York Times, there is an essay by Steven Pinker, who goes after Malcolm Gladwell. Fair enough. Gladwell’s a great writer, but he’s a journalist who loves telling a great story, so he makes an easy target. But I was a little confused after reading this passage:

It is simply not true that [stuff that Pinker accused Gladwell of getting wrong, but Gladwell has a strong defense*] or (the major claim in “Outliers”) that above a minimum I.Q. of 120, higher intelligence does not bring greater intellectual achievements.

I was a little struck by this. According to Keith Sawyer’s textbook on creativity, Pinker is wrong. Sadly, I just returned my copy to the library, but my memory is that high achievement in creative areas is not always tied to IQ.

A quick google scholar does back up my memory. For example, the Journal of Creative Behavior has a recent article on a meta-analysis of the correlation between divergent thinking (the ability to conceptualize novel ideas), IQ and achievement. The paper shows that the literature is far from settled on the issue, and that a meta-analysis finds a modest IQ/creative achievemnt correlation, but the correlation depends a lot on specific instruments used. The paper also claims that divergent thinking has a modestly larger correlation with achievement than IQ.

Now, I think that Pinker is still correct in a very important sense. If you look at the entire human population, IQ is going to be a huge predictor of success. Nearly every regression of income and educational attainment that has IQ as a regressor shows a positive correlation. Though I haven’t seen any studies, I’d be shocked if IQ, in the whole population, didn’t predict artistic achievement. One needs substantial intellectual capacity to make a film or write a book. There’s not going to be a threshold effect either.

But I think Pinker may be missing Gladwell and Sawyer’s point: within professions, IQ is probably a weaker predictor and maybe has no link. Why? It’s because high achievement is a multi-stage process. Yes, you need IQ to become a mathematician, but success in scientific and artistic fields also depends on attributes such as emotional control, ability to generate novel ideas, networks, coaching, and academic street smarts. Or, as I’ve said before, you need more than talent. IQ may put you in a position to make an impact, but among people who are in that position, success may be determined by things other than raw analytical capacity.

* Originally, I took Pinker’s word on stuff like the quarterback issue, but if you read Gladwell’s response, the man’s got a point.

I’ve used various conducting/conductor-related clips in my teaching, here’s a smattering of interesting ones:

• A very engaging Itay Talgam TED presentation on conducting (with links to leadership, organizing, community etc).
• Domingo meets Zubin Mehta: No Puede Ser (hat tip to Esa Saarinen on this one).
• Videos of various orchestra conductors.
• USC’s Larry Livingston on conducting.
• A famous conductor-less orchestra: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
• The conductor-less vegetable orchestra.
• Gustavo Dudamel is getting lots of attention these days (here’s an interview).
• And, no post on conducting is complete without Esa-Pekka Salonen, here discussing the work of Olivier Messiaen.

Although my post last week on citation counts was meant to be fun, it raised an important issue that deserves some thought. Here’s the comment from Eric Schwartz:

The hold of Chomskyan theory over the field of linguistics, and the strength of its exportation to other fields like philosophy of language and evolutionary psychology, is substantial.

Indeed. In some areas, Chomsky has played the role of a founding figure who articulated some pretty deep principles. Probably the most important is his argument is that people (and I suppose most organisms) are born with some hard wired architecture that helps them interpret and communicate about the world. We all are born with some type of rules that allow us to process information and communicate. It’s a powerful insight. It explains, for example, why children can pick up and generate language, which can be extremely complicated.

Now, here’s my question: where is Chomsky in the more macro social sciences? Sure, he’s a founding figure in linguistics and evolutionary psychology, and has a following in related areas. But he’s rarely a figure in fields where culture and decisions are important. You don’t see many soc of culture syllabi with Chomsky in it (except his political works). He’s non-existent in economics and political science, and barely shows up in anthro. There are occasional articles using “generative approaches” (see Farraro and Butts or Cederman) in sociology, but it’s not hard core Chomsky. Noam – where are you?

Citation count craziness:

Talcott Parsons has a bigger google scholar citation count than Albert Einstein. So does Gary Becker. And Noam Chomsky. According to gs, Parson’s biggest hit is The Social System (8500 cites). Becker’s is The Treatise on the Family (7800 hits). Chomsky’s Theory of Syntax: 12000! Einstein? A 1935 article on quantum mechanics garners a measily 5400 hits. Loser. So, by the Transitive Law of Citation Impact Scores, I declare Chomsky the most important academic of the 20th century and twice as important as Albert Einstein.

I’d like to take a moment to thank our other October guest blogger – Leslie Hinkson. Thank you!

Maureen Dowd went populist in her column yesterday.  Picking up on on Matt Tabai’s slimy imagery, she refers to “Goldmine” Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”…

The name calling tries too hard to foment middle and working class anger where, frankly, I don’t really see protests forming in the streets.  But what I find interesting is Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s rebuttal to the claim.

We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital… Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.

So here’s a question…  Clearly, banks are brokers; they are intermediaries engaged in managing the two sided market of investors and investees.  But, what kind of broker are they?

Ron Burt’s work shows convincingly that brokers realize economic benefits from connecting disconnected actors.  For Ron, brokers are  tertius gaudens: the third who benefits by exploiting asymmetric resource flows and contests for control. Isabel Fernandez-Mateo built on this to ask the following question: do brokers’ profits come from making transactions more efficient or do they come from the fact that, where two parties lack full information, the left hand doesn’t really know what the right hand is doing?  She shows that brokers can pass on greater rewards to partners with which they have a closer relationship and that the pound of flesh is extracted from the other partner to the transaction.  One interpretation of this is that the latter mechanism prevails.

Yet, by emphasizing banks’ socially beneficial role, Blankfein is channeling what David Obstfeld refers to as the “tertius iungens” form of brokerage.  The intuition behind the iungens idea is that more value is created by connecting disconnected actors than if they weren’t connected.  Everyone benefits: the parties to the transaction, the broker and society at large.

So which is it?  Are investment banks iungens or are they gaudens?  In Fernandez and Gould’s formulation, are they honest brokers or… not?

Read the rest of this entry »

Let me begin by offering my thanks to the OrgTheory team for inviting me to guest blog!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the growth of practices, found among a variety of types of organizations, in facilitating stakeholder participation and also in encouraging the adoption of participatory (or what some call “new”)  governance structures. It seems clear that this is linked to the rise of neoliberalism (and, indeed, institutional analysis itself). While there’s much that’s appealing about facilitating participation – more accountability in organizational processes, the potential for consensual deliberative processes, devolving decision-making to the bottom in order to overcome (some of) the rigidity of bureaucracies, and the potential for more meaningful engagement – there are also serious trade-offs to consider.

Much of this discussion is well established.  Most are familiar with Fung and Wright’s (2001) argument for the benefits of thick participatory governance, which provides examples of a number of reforms: local governance councils in Chicago, participatory budgets in Brazil (see also Baiocchi 2003), and the devolution of development decisions in India. They describe these as instances of Empowered Deliberative Democracy (EDD).

Consider also that nonprofits have been picking up what’s been left behind by a number of state agencies. Non-membership organizations like think tanks, institutes, policy centers, etc. often collaborate with member-based civic groups in order to make up for what they inherently lack in grassroots participation.  Disclosure and transparent governance continue to be hot buzzwords.  Increased stakeholder participation is encouraged on both the right and the left, although for quite different reasons. And it’s not just a question of voluntary compliance for organizations, but often one of mandated public participation (especially in the public sector through environmental review boards, zoning hearings, planning commissions, etc.).

What I find most interesting about the “new governance” and the augmented stakeholder focus of organizations is not just how it spans sectors (and encourages diffusion of practices between for- and non-profit organizations and public sector agencies), or even the somewhat surprising political coalitions that tend to advocate for these practices.  Instead, what stands out for me is something often overlooked: how participation is employed strategically from the top-down, and often channels participation in directions that suit elite agendas (even if done with progressivist aims in mind). Although others have already raised concerns about the role of power in empowerment and the democratic limitations of governance beyond the state, there’s another side to it.

There are, for example, now whole industries devoted to facilitating public participation, and their clients span sectors (although individual firms and industry associations make up the majority).  I’ve written about how the massive growth of civic organizations in the late 1970s and early 80s, in combination with increasing mobilization of industry associations, influenced the founding patterns of professional grassroots lobbying firms; these are groups that, for a fee, help to mobilize public participation on behalf of a corporation, industry group, government agency, or public interest group. The growth of this organizational population, as I see it, serves as a case in which outside organizing helped to facilitate the emergence of a new organizational form. These groups have been quite active in the recent health reform debate (a topic I’ll post about later), and have had their own legitimacy called into question quite prominently lately.  Although they focus most heavily, but not exclusively, on promoting forms of “thin” participation like form e-mailing, patch-through calls, advocacy advertising, and the like, there are also other formal organizations out there that attempt to facilitate “thicker” forms of participation and deliberation for clients (Caroline Lee has been doing great work on groups like the latter).

I find this important for org theory in getting us to think not only about how participation shapes organizational legitimacy, but also how elite organizations shape social movements and civil society. Thinking about the latter, the opposite has received a lot of much-deserved attention (movements shaping organizations), but we also need to think about how organizations are reshaping their civic and political environments through facilitating participation.  Organizations often take strategic action in response to institutional pressures and, although influenced by stakeholders, also engage in efforts to mobilize them from the top down.  Whether they can do so effectively, of course, depends on whether key stakeholders are already aligned (or can be brought into line) with an organization’s agenda.  Consumers of a particular pharmaceutical who depend on it for their survival may not be too difficult to mobilize in response to legislation that, the producer says, could threaten their product or its distribution (especially when participating “costs” so little).  Employees involved in a labor dispute, when asked to write letters on behalf of the firm’s broader political interests, on the other hand… notsomuch.  And there’s still the concern that organizational political activity often comes with costs, whether in contradicting a firm’s corporate social responsibility program or in threatening a nonprofit’s tax exemption.

I’m curious to hear what others make of the trend toward facilitating participation in organizations.

We’d like to welcome Ed Walker as our newest guest blogger at orgtheory. Ed is a sociologist at the University of Vermont and is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation fellow at the University of Michigan. Examining emerging organizational forms that individuals and businesses use to construct institutional change, his research has relevance for organizational theory, social movements, and political sociology and has appeared in journals like the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology.  Glad to have you here Ed!

We really appreciate Matt Kraatz for writing a thoughtful set of posts about institutions, values, and leadership. You can find all of Matt’s posts here. As a big Selznick fan, I’ve appreciated seeing the relevance of this particular brand of institutionalism. Thanks again for taking the time out to contribute Matt!

I have always wondered about the label “Organizational Theory” or “Organization Theory.” I know that this label is sacrosanct, and that bringing it into question challenges even this blog’s URL. I focus on it not to be cute or counterintuitive, or out of lack of respect, but rather because labeling theory indicates that labels matter in many ways. I focus on it out of a genuine interest in why the label “Organizational Theory” remains so institutionalized (or is it?), even though there seems to exist some interesting, more descriptive, and maybe more beneficial labels in the battle for gaining disciplinary market share: terms like “Organizational Sociology” or, better , “Organizational Science” (who would challenge science?)

So, my question is: is the label “organizational theory” the right one for organizational theory?

I think the label mystifies me for at least four reasons.

First, and rather obviously, the work done under the banner of “Organizational Theory” is not only theoretical (although this may be one of its strengths), but more predominantly empirical. So why not rename the field “Organizational Studies” or “Organizational Research” or even “Organizational Theory and Research” though the later is a little clunky?

Second, one might argue that the purpose of theorizing and research in organizational theory is not only to study organizations (though this should constitute the primary focus), but also to develop organizational prescriptions (though this might be more of a priority in Business Schools). If so, then why not adopt a more neutral label like “Organizational Design” as opposed to the current “Organizational and Management theory” label used in the Academy of Management.

Third, it seems to me that most research and Organizational Theory today is diachronic, rather than synchronic. So why not a term like ”Organizational Dynamics” recognizing full well that, on the downside, the label has a checkered history, but that, on the upside, this history has almost completely been forgotten.

Fourth, it seems to me that most research in Organizational Theory really pertains predominantly to collectivities, fields, or populations of organizations. The focus is more on organizational interrelations and networks, and less on focal organizations and what happens within their boundaries (though this could change).  Here, I think a compound label might be required; something like,”Organizational and Interorganizational Dynamics”, for instance.

One last question perplexes me: where did the label “Organizational Theory” emerge (I am ashamed to confess that I don’t know and can’t find out), was it ever challenged, and if so, why did it prevail?

My posts over the last couple of weeks have tried to identify and elaborate some of the central themes in Philip Selznick’s work (e.g., the need for normative theory, the centrality of values and ideals, and the critical role that institutions play in their realization).  I have also tried to draw attention to the work of some other scholars who have more recently sounded similar themes.

My personal attraction to this peculiar way of thinking is largely the result of my preoccupation with higher education institutions.  (These being the organizations that I’ve spent much of my career studying and the only ones from which I have ever drawn a real paycheck).  Despite being 49% cynical, I am still inclined to follow Selznick in seeing colleges and universities primarily as “vehicles” for the realization of genuine human ideals.  Like March, I am also troubled by the contemporary tendency for universities to overlook their “essential” purposes as they pursue more “incidental” market-oriented goals.  I am not so naïve as to think that more “institutional thinking” and Selznickian institutional leadership could solve universities’ many structural and systemic problems.  But, I do think that it could make a difference.   I also think that it does make a difference.  I’m pretty sure that things would be much worse if we didn’t have a lot of committed institutional thinkers out there right now “fighting the good fight.”  This makes me want to tell theoretical stories which emphasize that there is indeed a good fight to be fought.

While I think that Selznick’s basic message is also relevant to the management and governance of business organizations, I lack the space and the expertise to elaborate this connection.  So, I’d like to close my post – and my stint as a guest blogger – by drawing attention to the work of one person who has made some important strides in that direction (Joshua Margolis).  Margolis, a business ethicist, has written a number of papers which make a strong case for bringing social scientific and philosophical inquiry together toward the end of developing normative theory.  He has argued that ethical conduct can be promoted in business organizations by “normatively justifying vivid aims worthy of pursuit alongside economic objectives,” and has called for empirical work that identifies the “conditions and practices” which both advance and undermine these aims.  He has also emphasized the need to “put human agency in charge of causal forces” thereby “rescuing the moment of dignity” and preserving the intelligibility of ethical discussions.

“Organizational actors cannot be mere pawns of larger forces – billiard balls – if we wish to make them culpable or put them on notice … Ethical questions are worthy of consideration only if we believe human beings capable of responding deliberately to them even amid the [social and psychological] forces bearing down upon them.  In order to be held responsible, human beings must be capable of responding.”

These arguments clearly resonate with Selznick’s call for a ‘humanist science’; with his emphasis on leadership, responsibility, and integrity; and with his lifelong focus on “the conditions and processes which frustrate ideals or instead give them life and hope”).  (I should note that the similarities between Margolis’ arguments and Selznick’s appear to be due to the fact that both have been strongly influenced by Dewey and Kant, rather than to Selznick’s direct influence on Margolis).

Margolis’ work is exemplary in that it is remarkably well-grounded in both moral philosophy and social science.  He possesses a combination of competencies that is hard to imitate (and frankly daunting, IMHO).  Nevertheless, his work points a way toward a place wherein social science and philosophy can meet —  with good effects for both and any number of positive externalities, as well.  Selznick clearly thinks that organizational theorists – and institutionalists in particular – should also be pushing toward this place.

I am inclined to agree.

“World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms” (WWOOF, here’s the wiki primer) is an organization that wraps production, travel, community, social movement and cause into one —- here’s an engaging 2009 documentary by Robin Moore (director) on the day-to-day of “WWOOFers”: Because There are Goats.

Timothy Garton Ash’s piece in the New York Review of Books highlights the differences between the revolutionary styles of 1789 and 1989. The distinctions demonstrate big changes in the dynamics of political conflict.

Painting with a deliberately broad brush, an ideal type of 1989-style revolution, [velvet revolution], might be contrasted with an ideal type of 1789-style revolution, as further developed in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Mao’s Chinese revolution. The 1789 ideal type is violent, utopian, professedly class-based, and characterized by a progressive radicalization, culminating in terror. A revolution is not a dinner party, Mao Zedong famously observed, and he went on:

A revolution is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrows another…. To right a wrong it is necessary to exceed proper limits, and the wrong cannot be righted without the proper limits being exceeded.

The 1989 ideal type, by contrast, is nonviolent, anti-utopian, based not on a single class but on broad social coalitions, and characterized by the application of mass social pressure—”people power”—to bring the current powerholders to negotiate. It culminates not in terror but in compromise. If the totem of 1789-type revolution is the guillotine, that of 1989 is the round table.

In a way, Ash is pointing out that the tactical repertoire of contentious politics has shifted from violent overthrow to social movement. This claim is central to the work of the late, great Charles Tilly, who argued that the 19th Century introduced mass politics to the world. Rather than social groups organizing in local, patronage systems around very particular issues (as happened in the 18th Century), the centralization of the state and the expansion of industrialism led to a new kind of repertoire in which groups conceived of themselves as civic groups with an active interest in the management of state authority. This shift in repertoire was accompanied by a change in identities. People began to see themselves as citizens. The state belonged to them. If you wanted political change, you just needed to find a way to orchestrate it through institutional means or by mobilizing loud complaints (e.g., drawing in third parties via marches). Revolutions were no longer necessary once the state belonged to everyone and not just a single elite class. By the time “political opportunities” for change emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, those seeking a regime change had the new tools of movement mobilization at their disposal.

In looking around at Tilly stuff tonight I found these Powerpoint slides for his last undergraduate course at Columbia (co-taught by Ernesto Castañeda).  The slides provide a glimpse into his brilliant mind and give a nice introduction to his work.