what is new in orgtheory?
When I went to grad school in the late 90s/early 2000s, organizational sociology/org theory was taught in the following way:
- Two or three major schools of thought –
ecologydemography, institutionalism, and rat choice/neo-rat choice/Carnegie school. - One “perspective” – networks of/in organizations
- Various topics, such as gender or race in the workplace
What has changed in the last ten years? I’d guess that we’ve deepened our selves a great deal in networks and institutions, people are less interested in ecological arguments, and there are new topics (e.g., movements and orgs). What I find interesting is that were don’t have many new variables, in the same way the ecologists brought us density or institutionalists brought us isomorphism/diffusion.
Do you agree with this assessment? What do you think is the new variable in orgtheory? What ought to be the new variable in org theory?
Awesome books: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
Discourses and cultures (e.g.professions, aka inst. logics)?
henri
November 13, 2012 at 7:45 am
Space?
Bernard Forgues
November 13, 2012 at 9:31 am
The idea of a communicative constitution of organization (CCO; Putnam & Nicotera, 2009; Taylor & Van Every, 2000) has gained considerable momentum over the past years with a special issue of Organization Studies (Cooren et al., 2011) and it’s first big review article in the Academy of Management Annals (Ashcraft et al., 2009).
And the next generation of scholars is already ready already over at orgcom.org ;)
* Ashcraft, K. L., Kuhn, T. R., & Cooren, F. (2009). Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing’’ Organizational Communication. Academy of Management Annals, 3(1), 1–64.)
* Cooren, F., Kuhn, T. R., Cornelissen, J. P., & Clark, T. (2011). Communication, Organizing and Organization: An Overview and Introduction to the Special Issue. Organization Studies, 32(9), 1–22.
* Putnam, L. L., & Nicotera, A. M. (Eds.). (2009). Building Theories of Organization: The Constitutive Role of Communication. New York, NY: Routledge.
* Taylor, J. R., & Van Every, E. J. (2000). The Emergent Organization: Communication as its Site and Surface. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Steffen
November 13, 2012 at 9:52 am
I don’t know about variables, but perhaps taking an Occam’s razor to our respective paradigms is something that… ought to be done?
sd
November 14, 2012 at 5:59 am