orgtheory.net

Thanks to the orgtheory team for inviting me to post some food for thought in the coming days–I really enjoy the sense of community this site fosters.

Rather than starting with something heavy, let me celebrate that community by opening with a request: please join me in using the old “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke to reflect on what organization theory is.

If you have a moment, comment to this post by giving the theory that is supplying the punchline and the answer itself.

Drawing on the two theories I find myself using most often, here are some examples to get us started:

Institutional theory:
(Whining just a bit) “But all the other chickens are doing it, mom.”
-OR-
(Winking) “I don’t really cross it, I just pretend like I’m going to until nobody is looking.”

Organizational ecology:
(Dryly) “Cross the road? I think of it more as exiting the population, really.”

I’m sure these could be done in other ways, and better, so I’d like to hear from others on both these theories and other perspectives such as a network perspective, social movements, TCE, and so forth.

OK, but why?

Mostly for fun, of course, but also to warm up to one of the topics that interests me most, which is how org theorists can embrace their diversity and yet find the coherence needed to be relevant, both in the academy and beyond.

Thanks for playing!

(In case my examples don’t make this perfectly clear, there is absolutely no requirement that these quips by either really funny or even entirely fair.)

The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination.     

 — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

  

• Cognition is social.
• Context matters.
• Meaning is mostly post-hoc and a posteriori.
• Horizontal distinctions often become vertical.
• Purity is brittle.
• Most outcomes are contingent.
• Competition drives social life.
• People work lazily to get what they think they want using the tools in easy reach.
• Rules and conventions underdetermine action.
• Everyone plays multiple games.
• Relationships are largely outside one’s control.
• Networks are the skeletons of fields
• Institutions sculpt networks and condition their consequences
• Players can’t accurately map their fields or their networks.
• Constructed things are not unreal.
• Social science should also explain how statements become true or false.
• The minimal interesting unit of analysis is three entities interacting [3].
• Fidelity should often trump parsimony.
• Analogies allow ideas to travel. Travel is transformative.

On re-reading, I realize that I stole many of them. Yet they still paint a loose, idiosyncratic, and contradictory portrait.  Such is my mental life.  

Huzzah.

[1] Hubris, thy name is Jason. 

[2] Kieran, I’ll take my fountain pen with a left oblique nib. You can hold the unicorn tears.

[3] One of my psychologist colleagues responded to this with “Freud thought we were all three people interacting.”

I spent part of Friday grabbing daily  stock price data from CRSP. My organization-level dataset uses GVKEY (the primary Compustat identifier) as a key.  CRSP is an issue-level dataset (a company can issue more than one security). It uses a variable called PERMNO as a unique identifier.  Luckily lots of folks are looking to match price data to fundamental data, so there’s a complete and well-documented link table.  Problem solved, right?

Not so much.  It turns out there’s also an underlying difference in how the datasets handle mergers. Compustat seems to extend their data backward after merger. So if firm A merged with or was acquired by firm B at time T, Compustat often puts both pre and post-T data under the identifier for the successor, firm B.  CRSP keeps firm A and firm B issues separate and generally terminates firm A’s issue at merger/acquisition.

The upshot is that I end up with a lot of cases where the same GVKEY points to multiple  PERMNOs.  The duplicates require a mess of work to figure out when the PERMNOs in question point to legitimate primary and secondary issues and when they are artifacts of the strategy for handling mergers [1]. I’ve run into this problem with merging datasets before.  These differences have killed at least one interesting collaborative paper.

There seem to be three ways to treat mergers in panel datasets:

1. We treat mergers as if the successor/acquiring firm consumes the whole history of the merged/target firm.  This is the COMPUSTAT way.
2. We treat mergers as the death of the merged/acquiring firm and assume that the merger carries none of its history into the successor organization. This is the CRSP way.
3. We treat mergers as two deaths and one birth, implicitly assuming that the successor firm is a new entity  that contains none of the history of either of its progenitors.

Such different approaches are annoying when you draw on multiple data sources.  But I think this is one of those data management issues that speaks to larger conceptual fuzziness.

I/O economists seem to favor number 1, perhaps because mergers and acquisitions represent the combination of firm-level capacities. But presumably, some capabilities transfer imperfectly or not at all.

Ecologists and others interested in industry vital rates seem to favor number 3, perhaps because merger and acquisition are often a time for restructuring. If we expect that form is really sticky, though, then this feels like a bit of a cheat.

Finance types appear to favor #2, perhaps because they are really interested in investor behavior and investors can’t buy into firms that aren’t independent.  But, I suspect that investors who own stock in a successor as a result of buying into a progenitor don’t separate their decisions about the former from their history with the latter.

I don’t like any of the options. Nevertheless, I think some combination of #1 and #2 is closest to face valid.

I’m struggling with this because I think one key to figuring out the dynamics of strategic alliance networks will be linking up vital rates of nodes with vital rates of ties. Strategic alliances routinely weather the merger or acquisition of one of their original partners.  The failure of such relationships can also trigger mergers.

So (among other things) I need a way to figure of when ties outlive the nodes that originally formed them.  That means that I need to adopt a version of #1 where some but not all of the history of merged/acquired firms passes into their successors.  That turns out to be exceptionally difficult to do.

Esteemed orgtheory.net readers: What do you think is the most reasonable option?

[1] Sometimes it’s really, really nice to have RAs.

One of the most interesting things about electoral politics is that you don’t need to be particularly charismatic or knowledgeable if you have the right networks. Especially in smaller elections, where having a few key connections can mobilize the voters who make the difference. Consider the following quote from Martha Coakley, the Mass. democrat who is running for Ted Kennedy’s seat. A reporter asked if it was wise to rely on party insiders and unions:

“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands? This is a special election. And I know that I have the support of Kim Driscoll. And I now know the members of the [Salem] School Committee, who know far more people than I could ever meet.’

Of course, she can still lose. A string of nasty comments probably means that she will. Still, if Coakley merely did the minimal PR and said nice things, she could probably win this contest. There are many politicians (Bush II, Daley, Jr.) who got to where they were merely by not saying offensive things in public and relying on pre-existing networks.

We’d like to a welcome Jason Owen-Smith as our new guest blogger on orgtheory.  Jason is an associate professor of organizational studies and sociology at the University of Michigan. The organizational studies department at Michigan is one of the only departments of its kind in the country – an interdisciplinary program focused on training undergraduates in organizational theory and related fields. It’s a perfect home for Jason, who works at the nexus of organizational theory, social studies of science, and social network research. He’s published in a number of top social science journals, including the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Administrative Science Quarterly, but he also has the intellectual chutzpah to venture outside his discipline and publish in a specialized science journal like Nature Biotechnology. Jason is also a fellow graduate (hurrah!) of the University of Arizona sociology program. We’re excited to have you here Jason!

It’s been seven years since I graduated from Chicago. I’ve been thinking a bit about the program’s history and legacy. You might summarize the high points of Chicago this way:

• Urban studies, with a very heavy ethnographic and ecological focus: The tradition continues to this day with some great faculty (such as guest blogger Mario Small).
• Interactionism: Not always in the soc dept, but the early days had Mead and Dewey, followed by some Chicago school writers, then followed by Blumer. Then interactionism kind of stopped for a while after Blumer, but it gets picked up from time to time.
• Big N survey research: Chicago has been a pioneer in this area with the GSS, NELS, NORC, the Health and Life Surveys, etc. Still going strong.
• Orgs & networks: The phrase “Chicago School” doesn’t ususally remind you of this area, but the dept has been very strong since the 1980s: Clark and Blau taught organization theory there; Bidwell’s work on schools as orgs was done there; Laumann’s org state work was done at Chicago; most of Gould’s career was spent there; Burt is there; Padgett is there; etc. And these folks have all churned out tons of students who populate modern org studies, including myself.

What next? I have no idea! On the one hand, it’s not hard to build on these traditions. There are excellent scholars in all areas that can be hired. You might also try to create new areas, but that’s hard, since we seem to be at the tail end of a normal science cycle in sociology.  Finally, Chicago might give in to isomorpshism. I’ve been told that this has happened in Chicago economics – the econ dept’s newer faculty don’t particularly share the techniques or the views of the older faculty; it’s no longer a bastion of markets, except among the very senior faculty. If Chicago soc hired the best and brightest from other programs, they’ll resemble other programs. In any case, I’m quite eager to see what the future holds for the alma mater.

Previous installments: strat/work, education, org studies,  culture, urban, soc psych, demography, political sociology.

This is easy, since Indiana is usually regarded as a leader in medical sociology & health. The following folks do health in one way or another: Pam Jackson (mental health, race & health), Scott Long (aging), Jane McLeod (mental health, life course), Eliza Pavalko (aging, life course, health care politics), Bernice Pescosolido (suicide, mental health, networks), Quincy Stewart (race, mortality, demography), Peggy Thoits (mental health, life course). I also count in some ways – I’ve publised on health & networks and my RWJ works focuses on data analysis in health contexts and the organizational context of medical research.

Add other health heavy programs in the comments.

So you’re looking to get some good civic experience and become a major player in community politics? Although conventional wisdom would suggest that you join a bowling league or a political activist group, a new study by Matthew Baggetta in Social Forces tells us that the ideal organization for gaining valuable civic experience may be a choral society.  Choral societies, Baggetta argues, have organizational characteristics ideal for providing civic training to its members.  Any good civic organization should provide its members with three kinds of opportunities: chances for interpersonal interaction (i.e., network building), governance experience (including the opportunity to represent one’s fellow members), and institutional relationships (i.e., connections to other community organizations and institutions).

When compared to other kinds of civic organizations, choral societies excel in giving members exposure to all of these opportunities. Baggetta’s evidence suggests that they give more opportunities for interpersonal interaction and building institutional relationships than political organizations. The reasons for this are that choral societies do not have professional staffs like most political organizations, they are not extremely hierarchical, they tend to collaborate with other organizations in the community, and they have frequent meetings with high intensity interaction. As far as a civic organization goes, choral societies are excellent incubators for potential community leaders.

I think Baggetta’s article is especially interesting when compared to Ed Walker’s work on privatizing civic participation. As Ed has reminded us in an excellent series of blog posts, not all civic organizations are equal. Using corporate resources to create top-down, grassroots organizations (an apparent misnomer) may even even stifle community collaboration and weaken local social capital.  Unlike choral societies, corporate-sponsored civic organizations may simply provide their members too few opportunities for interpersonal interaction, governance experience, and institutional relationships. Rather than build communities, these organizations may substantially weaken them.

Reading Baggetta’s paper also reminded me of the fascinating new book by Mario Small, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life.  Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Tomasky’s provocative article a little while back in the NYRB, which discussed the Tea Parties and new right-wing protest movements, had me thinking about what initial insights social movement theory can offer to understanding this recent wave of activism. There are clearly certain aspects of this — such as the role of conservative talk radio, Glenn Beck, Freedomworks, concerns about whether the events should be considered “Astroturf,” and ties to the Republican Party — that make this case rather unique; on the other hand, there seem to be other aspects that fit broader patterns.

It’s probably not too much of a stretch to argue that social movement actors and other organized advocates have come to see the advantages of forms of mobilization that: (1) are coordinated centrally but executed in a decentralized fashion, (2) take a multi-pronged strategy, (3) involve building a broad coalition and (4) also resist heavy reliance on any single tactic (as Alinsky once pointed out, tactics that organizers depend on for too long run the risk of becoming stale, predictable, and ineffective; Barbara Epstein’s great book on antinuclear protest in California in the late 1970s showed, for example, what negative consequences followed when organizers relied too heavily on civil disobedience).

The use of the web in organizing appears to be encouraging the further expansion of centrally-coordinated local events, as groups like MoveOn and the Tea Party organizers have become quite skilled in coordinating local events all across the U.S. simultaneously.  The decentralized nature of web and social networking technologies seems to encourage further participation in events that take place all across the country at one moment, ala MoveOn’s vigils to support Cindy Sheehan in August 2005. Perhaps this repertoire will come to replace the mass Washington demonstration as the primary form of large-scale public protest in the U.S.; whether coordinating local events all across the country gets more media attention (or is more influential in shaping policy) than a single large demo is an empirical question.

The Tea Parties have built a broad but loose coalition across a wide range of constituencies. Ganz’s now-classic paper on “resources and resourcefulness” in farmworker organizing showed that “leadership teams that combine insiders and outsiders, strong and weak ties to constituencies, and diverse yet salient repertoires of collective action have greater capacity to develop effective strategy than those that do not” (p. 1015). Various political strategy manuals contend that an issue advocacy campaign that doesn’t include both insider and outsider tactics, or avoids attempting to bring multiple constituencies on board, may be doomed from the start. On the other hand, Jasper (2004) identifies the “extension dilemma”: broad coalitions often hold a less coherent set of goals and, naturally, have greater difficulty in coordinating collective action. Accordingly, certain media accounts are now suggesting that the tenuous coalitions that underlie the tea party protests may be fracturing.

Certain connected insiders have been present in organizing these events from the start, connecting grassroots activists with professional strategists and inside advocates. There are advantages to this. Levitsky (2007) finds that organizational diversity within the GLBT movement in Chicago helped to support a coherent movement identity: professionals engaged in lobbying and litigation often reported a cooperative division of labor between themselves and grassroots organizers, and vice versa. Similarly, I have found in some of my research that member-based advocacy organizations often display a mutually supportive, rather than competitive, relationship with non-membership advocacy organizations (like think tanks, policy institutes, legal advocacy organizations, etc.); grassroots activists and professional, staff-driven groups often complement one another. Banaszak’s new book discusses how feminist activists within the federal government played a central role in advocating for policy change on women’s movement issues.

Also, as Nella Van Dyke points out, there are broader issues of political opportunity to consider, as the movement has a number of elite allies but is not, it would seem, responding to the opening of new federal-level political opportunities. Instead, she attributes this new mobilization to threats:

…protest on the part of relatively privileged groups may be especially likely in response to threats. These groups already enjoy some level of resources and political opportunities, and therefore may be inspired to protest when they face a loss of resources or allies. Thus, political opportunity theory must recognize the mobilizing effect of threat, especially for reactive and right-wing movements.

President Obama heads to Allentown, Pennsylvania, today to talk about the recession and about jobs.  Since I wrote a book about how Allentown fared in the last major economic crisis — the recession of the early 1980s — I figured it makes sense to try to distill what I think the book says about how to respond to the current crisis and, in particular, what it means for creating jobs.

First, why is the President going to Allentown in the first place?  The answer is: when it comes to the economy, Allentown is typical.  The following chart shows unemployment rates in Allentown, PA and Youngstown, OH since 1990 (along with the unemployment rates of the Northeast and Midwest for comparison).  Allentown’s unemployment has pretty much tracked the unemployment rate of the Northeast since 1990.  The comparison with Youngstown — a city that up until the 1980s shared a very similar economic and demographic profile — is striking.  In Youngstown, unemployment has been higher than the rest of the Midwest’s unemployment rate and it has been much more volatile as well.

Unemployment in Allentown, PA, Youngstown, OH, the Northeast US and the Midwest US, 1990-2009.

What these numbers tell me is that Allentown’s performance since the 1980s hasn’t been spectacular.  Allentown has also suffered in the recession.  So the President will rightly spend much of his time today commiserating with the plight of jobless folks and of struggling small businesses.  But while the pain in Allentown has been acute, its performance over the long term — and even in the midst of this crisis — has been respectable.  There are lessons to be learned from it and from the parallel case of Youngstown.

Two things have made Allentown more successful (as a region) coming out of the economic crisis of the 1980s which I think have value for understanding how to respond to the crisis today.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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 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?

These are interesting times to be in an MBA program. Here at orgtheory we get glimpses of the faculty view, but what about the students? Gareth Keane is a student at Wharton, and since he started there — he’s now a second year — he’s been writing a column for the Irish Times about life in the program. Given the constraints on what someone in his position can politely say in print, you get a pretty good picture of the challenges, rewards and stresses of the program. (His most recent contribution mentions that he’ll be leading a group of first- and second-year MBAs to Antarctica over Christmas, which should make a nice change from a Philly winter. Gareth is of course too polite to say this.)

The general topic has been on my mind recently. My brother runs the customer service and operations divisions of a large financial services company. He’s getting ready to do a part-time MBA himself, and is wondering how much he’ll get out of it. Meanwhile (much to the brother’s amusement, it must be said) I’ll be teaching Organizations & Management next semester to Duke undergrads enrolled in our Markets & Management Program. M&M is a really interesting beast. It’s effectively an undergrad business concentration, the largest certificate program on campus, and it’s run by the Sociology department (Lisa Keister is the Director) with contributions from Economics and other units, together with. In some ways it’s like an Econ Soc undergrad program that got institutionalized about 15 or 20 years ahead of its time. While I’ve taught straight Soc of Orgs to sociology majors before, the audience here is a bit different so the course will be, too. I’ll probably post the syllabus here at some point. If you have any recommendations for relevant books or articles that have worked well with undergrad audiences, I’d be interested to hear them.

Incidentally, like me Gareth is an Irish expat. We’re from different parts of the country, went to different universities, and we have never met. It is a well-established theorem of mathematical sociology that we must therefore be no more than two degrees of separation apart. And indeed it turns out that I knew his wife when I was in college. You can see why social network analysis did not originate in Ireland, much as oceanography did not originate amongst schools of fish in the Pacific Ocean.

As many of you probably already know, Claude Levi-Strauss, the greath French anthropologist who advocated for the structuralist analysis of culture, passed away this week. I was surprised to hear this since I wasn’t even aware that Levi-Strauss was still alive. His version of anthropology, it seemed to me as a grad student reading his work, was outdated and no longer central to anthropological theories. But I’ve been thinking a little about Levi-Strauss lately while I’ve read John Levi Martin’s new book, Social Structures.  Perhaps structural theories of culture are alive again, but now this kind of work is taking place in sociology departments rather than in anthropology.

As Kieran and Teppo already discovered, Martin’s book is brimming with ideas. The basic premise of the book is that many sorts of individual and group action (and the subsequent meanings generated in that context) can be explained by basic principles of local structure. The premise is rooted in the work of Simmel, but it’s hard to miss Levi-Strauss’s influence throughout. Martin clarified in the beginning of the book how this local structural analysis differs from institutional analysis (he elsewhere distinguishes between structuralism and social network analysis):

The vision of Simmel’s dialectic of institutionalization that inspires this work implies that is is at such a local level that we may see social action being shaped by distinct principles that we would rightly call structural. When things have developed to the extent that regular equivalence guides action – that is, when one may interact with any of a set of for-all-purposes-equivalent actors – then we are looking at institutions, not structures as I here use the term. Thus a structure is a pattern of interaction that links a person to particular others, as opposed to classes of others.

The importance of such local or particular structures has been downgraded by a sociology that arose in the context of European political economy, which presupposed the division of persons into functionally equivalent classes. Sociology (exceptions such as Simmel aside), far from challenging the preexisting tendency of social though to ignore the particular elements of social life, associated itself with the strong theoretical claim that such particularism was doomed to extinction anyway (“modernization” theory). Certainly, from a functional perspective, great parsimony is gained by treating sets of persons and indeed whole social structures..as functionally equivalent. That is, it does not matter that one officer has a relationship over here with an enlisted man, and another officer has a relationship over there with a different enlisted man. All that matters is the overall relationship between officers and enlisted. But the parsimony of considering persons interchangeable representatives of categories comes at a cost: we are likely to be left with a misleading picture of the generation and stabilization of actually existing social structures and institutions by ignoring the importance of ties that connect specific persons (14).

Martin’s embrace of Simmel’s structuralist approach is refreshing in that he points to a real alternative to the institutional analysis (and I don’t mean just neoinstitutional theory from organizational research) that dominates much macro-social scholarship. He offers an intriguing way to link micro-macro without relinquishing all of the explanatory power to one level over the other. In a way, I suppose this is what Levi-Strauss was about as well. His agenda was to explain the particularities of local structures. Rather than jump right to institutions and history as an explanation, the origin of an explanation was to analyze how the interactions within that structure worked and how/why individuals continued to reproduce those relationships over time.

Martin’s book is really fascinating and sure to be a classic in sociological theory.

A few days ago, Thomas asked whether the 9/11 Truth people could be considered a social movement. It was a methods question, so let’s start with a definition. This is what I regard as a social movement:

A social movement is an organized group of people who pursue political, social, or economic change through non-institutionalized strategies.

This definition works for me because it taps into the idea that movements are trying to change something in some sort of systematic or organized fashion. At the same time, there is some tension between them and the rest of society, so they may choose to assert influence in non-establishment ways (e.g., protest vs. voting).

A subtle aspect of the definition is that it’s about a group’s role. A group, in some cases, may act in ways that are non-institutionalized, while acting “normally” in other cases. Take the civil rights movement. Collectively, influence was asserted in traditional ways (litigation) and in non-traditional ways (non-violence). Various conservative elements in America are the same way. When the GOP was dominant, they acted through voting and electoral mobilization.  Now that they are out of power, they have set up the Tea Party protest events. Third example: European social movements often turn into political parties. So you can be both a movement and interest group, possibly at the same time.

What about the 9/11 Truth crowd? If you buy the definition, they are a movement. Group of people who want social change? Check – they want us to change our beliefs about 9/11. Organized? Yup – they have conferences, networks, and organizations. Non-institutionalized strategies? A little bit – they show up at protests. I don’t know if they do other contentious activities, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

The following fact was recently told to me: apparently, the leading physics journals no longer accept social network analysis, even though these articles are now among the most cited in these journals. I found this odd. From a “pure” perspective, it makes sense: why should a journal dedicated to stuff like quantum mechanics accept articles on the Internet just because a physicist wrote it? On the other hand, it seems like disciplinary suicide. Why ditch the folks who’ve done such great work? Obviously, physicists have made wonderful contributions to the study of social networks and that’s a highlight of contemporary physics, then so be it. Furthermore, I was informed that socio-physics is a tough sell on the physics job market. Apparently, most tenure track socio-physics people teach in social science/professional units & most physics programs don’t hire new PhDs in this area.

In contrast, the economics profession seems to strongly support boundary crossing, long as you stick to some variant of the neo-classical framework. It’s hard to find a topic in the social sciences where economists – often highly regarded ones – haven’t treaded. Also, I have rarely heard of an economist who was punished for publishing in non-social science areas like math, statistics, and the sciences. Diedre McCloskey, if she wanted, could probably get away with an article or two in literary journals. Sure, there’s a core to the economics profession, but there are lots of well supported outposts.

So we have an interesting puzzle: two highly regarded fields with an abundance of clever people. Yet, one has very tight internal control, while the other is quite pleased with imperialism. The flippant answer is that, well, economists are self-interested. By requiring people to use a neo-classical framework, you maintain the brand. By allowing imperialism, you increase the value of the brand. But why don’t physicists do the same? Why don’t they say (like economists do), “we’ll just come in and clean up?” As a field with some serious internal problems (small market/running out of easy problems), conquering other disciplines would seem like a good solution. Both economists and physicists are encouraged to comment.

I attended a really interesting conference over the weekend co-sponsored by Northwestern and the UofChicago Booth School about innovation, organizations, and society. The conference included a diverse set of papers, the topics of which ranged from culture and cognition to network contagion to integrative capabilities of firms. The conference, organized by Pablo Boczkowski and Steve Kahl, left the impression that research on innovation and technology in organizations is alive and well. The entire set of paper abstracts can be found here.

Some highlights that resonate with some issues we’ve discussed here before – Sinan Aral’s paper distinguished between the effects of homophily (i.e., the tendency of similar people to know each other and, consequently, to do the same kinds of stuff) and direct network links on the adoption of a technology. The paper very effectively shows that when you control for selection effects due to homophily, direct network links do not account for as much technology adoption as you might think. In fact, according to his figures (which are not available anywhere online) the effect of network links may be cut by more than half once you account for selection effects. The study has important implications for those who argue that network studies may overstate the effects of network ties on the diffusion of everything from obesity to happiness (see posts here and here).

James Evans presented a paper looking at the effects of online access to citation papers in science. The general hypothesis often put forward by Web evangelists is that the Internet makes people more likely to search far and wide for knowledge and thus flattens the information hierarchy.  Interdisciplinary citations should thus become more common when journals become open access. Evans finds that, while it’s true that people are more likely to cite research outside their own discipline, the focus of citations tends to be on a few central hubs. The Matthew effect in citation patterns doesn’t disappear, it gets bigger! Thus, this is more evidence that the long tail hypothesis is essentially wrong. The internet, despite its potential for linking people to the far ends of the world, tends to focus people on the same kinds of “popular” knowledge that everyone else is citing.

Previous installments: strat/work, education, org studies,  culture, urban, soc psych, demography.

This week – political sociology. I don’t mean political sociology as in the “personal is political.” I mean political sociology as in stuff that happens in and around states. So here I would include: voter behavior/public opinion; states; political parties; interest groups/social movements; studies of citizenship and political status; regional and global institutions; revolution studies; the law and policy formation.

In this vein, I’ll nod to my colleagues. Indiana is not traditionally known for political sociology, but the last ten years have drawn an extremely strong group in political sociology: Clem Brooks (public opinion), Brian Steensland (welfare state studies), Tim Bartley (movements/institutions/state regulation of industry), Ho-fung Hung (the Chinese state, especially early modern), Ethan Michelson (contemporary China & the law), Art Alderson (the politics of stratification), Paulette Lloyd (global institutions, network analysis, the UN), Pam Walters (states and schooling), and myself (social movements, antiwar politics, the Black power movement).

Let me draw attention to a department that has popped up on this blog: UC San Diego. Usually known as a fortress of culture and science studies, they’ve also cultivated a strong group in political sociology: Amy Binder (movements & culture), Isaac Martin (tax politics – see my book review here), Kwai Ng (language & law – my book review here), Ivan Evans (movements), David Fitzgerald (ethnography), Jeffrey Haydiu (movements), Martha Lampland (political economy), Richard Madsen (China), John Skrenty (policy/law), Carlos Waisman (Latin America/development), Leon Zamosc (movements).

Add more political sociology depts in the comments.

From Computaional Legal Studies, the entire US code as a citation network.

My undergraduate studies were in a science field and I’ve come to really appreciate that education. Aside from the particular topic (math), I also gained a basic scientific literacy. Why? Because most science B.A. programs require or strongly encourage the following: calculus, physics, chemistry, computer programming. Even though you were required to know one field in some depth, you were expected to know basic ideas from other fields. And of course, many applied & topical areas (engineering, geology, medicine, etc) require at least basic knowledge in all these areas.

However, I have found that is not the case in the social sciences. Students may develop a broad social science education, but most programs do not require it, nor do faculty really encourage it. So you have the bizarre situation of econ majors who have never read a real history tome, or sociologists who don’t know what expected utility is.

So what would a “core” social science curriculum look like if it were designed to be basic knowledge for any social scientist? In no particular order:

• Psychology and decisions: Preferences and choices from multiple perspectives – micro-economics; bounded rationality; personality psychology; prospect theory; tool kit/situational psychology; etc.
• Social Structure: Theories of hierarchies, organizations, networks, states, and other “macro structure.”
• Classics of Social Thought: Start with Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Locke and move forward. Maybe add a follow up semester on recent theory.
• Meaning and culture: Definitions of culture and subjective in various disciplines.
• Research & explanation: One semester quantitative, one semester qualitative.

You’ll notice that most components already exist at nearly every university. The main thing is simply to insist that these ideas represent the core of the social sciences and that everyone be exposed. It’s not too crazy to ask that a social science major know what a demand curve is, or that they read classic ethnography. Wouldn’t we laugh if a biology major didn’t know Newton’s Laws?

This curriculum is designed to segue into the majors as normally imagined. The soc major would be a few more courses on issues such as inequality and race. The poli sci major could continue reading political theory and apply decision theory to voting and policy making. It’s also flexible in that social science develops, much can be substituted.

Jerry Davis’s new book will certainly challenge your way of thinking, especially if you’re a dyed in the wool organizational theorist. His book, along with his article “The rise and fall of finance and the end of the society of organizations,” contests the view that corporations are a core structure in society.  Although they were once social institutions, having been infused with value and a kind of “soulful” meaning to communities and wielding massive economic and political power, corporations are now reducible to contracts, relational or otherwise. The reason for this change was that society itself transformed. People reconceptualized the organization as something other than an institution with indebtedness to its society and members and as something less than a political juggernaut. Through legal changes, deregulation, and changes in corporate and investor practices, the corporation is now nothing more than a legal shell that houses economic exchange of various types. If you don’t believe this, Jerry would probably point to the securitization of corporate assets, noting that everything about a corporate entity can be bought and sold in small chunks on a securities exchange. The reconceptualization of corporations as bundles of assets has reduced their responsibility to anyone other than their shareholders. This gradual drift from “welfare capitalism” has been accompanied by a deterioration of employee commitment to corporations.

In his book Jerry provides an intriguing historical account of this change. Some important facts stick out in his analysis. 1) Due to the takeover wave of the 1980s and subsequent changes in agglomeration, the average company is now much less diversified than it was 30 years ago. In 1980 the median large manufacturer operated in three industries; by 1995 the number of industries had been cut to one. 2) Employment concentration has weakened over time. In 1960 the top ten firms employed roughly 5% of the U.S. workforce. In 1980 this number declined to 4.6% and by 2000 the top ten employed less than 3%. 3) The largest firms today, like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, have high employee turnover rates, especially when compared to the old large employers in manufacturing industries. The median employee in transportation manufacturing has a tenure of eight years, while the average tenure in the food services industry is 1.5 years. Thus, the more dominant employers in today’s age are less likely to retain their employees than was true in the past. The implication of this is that the social bonds between the corporation and its employees are disintegrating.

Consider this description of the corporation in chapter 3 of his book:

After the bust-ups of the 1980s, the idea that the corporation was nothing but a nexus, and that it had no special connection with its employees, became increasingly true. Firms became adept at retaining contractors rather than hiring permanent employees; outsourcing tasks outside their “core competence;” and engaging in more-or-less temporary alliances rather than vertical integration. The conglomerate had rendered dubious the idea that the corporation had an organic unity: parts came and went through acquisitions and divestitures, and to find a “core” or “essence” to an ITT was a fool’s errand. The network organization took the next logical step: the corporation was not attached to particular parts, or even to particular members. It was, “in a very real sense,” simply a nexus of contracts that existed to create shareholder value (91-92).

Such is the state of the corporation. A bedraggled, ineffectual monster of yesterday. Or is it?

Jerry’s book is  extremely useful I think for pointing out important corporate trends and challenging organizational theorists to adapt to the new economic conditions. And the book also raises important questions, including: if the employment relationship has changed, what function do corporations have in today’s society? Why do we still continue to see corporate hierarchies even in the midst of this reshuffling of parts? Where is the center of power now? Even if corporations are on their way out, what should we make of extensions to their citizenship rights? Who or what should the state regulate or do we live in an era in which regulatory control of corporations (read: anti-trust and competitive practices) makes less sense? Or are we fooling ourselves? Is shareholder value just another shield to justify managerial  policies (policies that may, in fact, benefit only the managerial class)? Who captures wealth in the system described by Jerry? And if corporation is not the primary medium for wealth generation, what should we study – the contract?

If networks and political science is your interest, please check out the recent American Politics Research. An entire issue dedicated to networks in political science:

• Michael T. Heaney and Scott D. McClurg. Social Networks and American Politics: Introduction to the Special Issue American Politics Research 2009 37: 727-741. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Jennifer Nicoll Victor and Nils Ringe The Social Utility of Informal Institutions: Caucuses as Networks in the 110th U.S. House of Representatives American Politics Research 2009 37: 742-766. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Matt Grossmann and Casey B. K. Dominguez Party Coalitions and Interest Group Networks American Politics Research 2009 37: 767-800. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Manoj K. Shrestha and Richard C. Feiock. Governing U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Self-Organizing and Multiplex Service Networks
  American Politics Research 2009 37: 801-823. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Jan E. Leighley and Tetsuya Matsubayashi The Implications of Class, Race, and Ethnicity for Political Networks American Politics Research 2009 37: 824-855. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Casey A. Klofstad Civic Talk and Civic Participation: The Moderating Effect of Individual Predispositions American Politics Research 2009 37: 856-878. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Seung-Jin Jang Are Diverse Political Networks Always Bad for Participatory Democracy?: Indifference, Alienation, and Political Disagreements American Politics Research 2009 37: 879-898. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Mathew D. McCubbins, Ramamohan Paturi, and Nicholas Weller Connected Coordination: Network Structure and Group Coordination American Politics Research 2009 37: 899-920. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]
• Robert Huckfeldt Interdependence, Density Dependence, and Networks in Politics
  American Politics Research 2009 37: 921-950.

Check it out!!!

1. Computational Legal Studies by Daniel Katz and Michael Bommarito. Nerds + Law school. Networks, simulations, Supreme Courts. Gotta love it.

2. Brendan Nyhan, Dartmouth faculty and current RWJ scholar, has a blog on political science and current events.

Our evil twin, Orgs and Markets, covers the Inside Higher Ed article that discusses how some sociologists have econ envy, an article that generated a bit of chuckling. And I can’t blame them: sociologists do have econ-envy. It’s a bigger, more prestigious field that has a lot of policy influence. Peter even cited examples where economists were responsible for eliminating sociology programs (Washington, Rochester), but, to my knowledge, no economics program at a major university has ever been eliminated.

When it comes to policy, I’ll side just a little bit with economists who poo-poohed the sociologists. If it’s something like setting interest rates, or the technical issues of taxation, I think we should get our advice from people who study the topic for a living. At the same time, sociologists should really stand up for themselves. Sociology is a discipline that’s contributed a great deal to our culture, often in ways that have pretty important applications for policy and business:

• Network analysis: That’s right. Decades before the physics people got into the game, sociologists were the main force behind network analysis, now a key tool in studying everything from terrorists groups to the structure of the Internet. Thank you, sociology!
• Social psychology: Biases in decision making? Issue framing? Reference groups? Social roles? Yup, sociologists have been key players in inventing and developing these ideas – especially in applied areas. Thank you, sociology!
• Demography: Some basic tools of studying populations, such as the Kitagawa decomposition, came from sociologists. Thank you, sociology!
• Focus groups: A key tool in marketing and many other areas. That’s right – invented by seminal sociologist Robert Merton. Thank you, sociology!

It’s not very hard to see how these ideas, and others, would have applications in a whole range of areas in policy from national security, to health, and even economic policy. But of course, economists know this already – they’ve been doing sociology for years!

The revelation that hundreds of articles published in medical research journals were actually written by contractors in the employ of pharmaceutial companies, and fronted by high-status “authors” at fancy universities, seems to be part of a broader movement toward an OEM (“original equipment manufacturer”) format among organizations.  Pet food laced with melamine was sold under over 100 brand names but produced by the same vendor in Ontario, poisoning thousands of pets in the US.  Baxter Health’s blood thinner heparin, manfactured by a Chinese contractor, killed 81 and injured hundreds of others due to toxins in its supply chain (which reaches back to rural pig farmers).  The dream of financial economists, in which the corporation is nothing but a nexus-of-contracts, seems to have come true.

The OEM format has also found traction in the US federal government.  Vigorous interrogation, extraordinary renditions to allies with different cultural traditions around prisoner treatment, you name it — they often turn out to be done by contractors.  Nowadays, you can’t even trust the label on a CIA assassination, as it might turn out to be Blackwater.  Don’t brand names mean anything any more?

The American OEM state in its current version traces back to the Clinton administration.  As part of his “reinventing government” initiative, Clinton sought to emulate some of the best practices of the corporate world to enhance government efficiency.  A principal way this was accomplished was by the use of contractors.  The Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act of 1998 (“FAIR Act”) mandated that every Federal agency and department — including the military — identify any activities they do that could in principle be done by contractors, and put them out for bid each year.  Activities that were “inherently governmental” were supposed to be immune from contracting, but the boundaries around that term proved porous.  (What could be more inherently governmental than assassination programs?)

Federal civilian employment declined every year under Clinton from a high of over 3 million at the start of his term to 2.7 million at the end, and it has stayed at almost precisely this number ever since. At the same time, there has been a burgeoning growth of contractors, with annual spending growing from $200 billion to $400 billion under Bush. This sector is far larger than many of us realize, and contract employees evidently outnumber Federal employees by a big margin. “The biggest federal contractor, Lockheed Martin,… gets more federal money each year than the Departments of Justice or Energy.”  Indeed, the three largest remaining US-based manufacturers are all military contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman).

Organization theorists by and large have not caught up with this model of the OEM state. We’re still accustomed to thinking of states as sovereigns, the source of laws and regulations (although recent work by Joel Baum and Anita McGahan on the growth of neo-mercenary corporations is a great start). Of course the OEM state is not entirely new: Italian merchant states of the Renaissance also contracted out for military and tax services. And many states are in effect run as conglomerate businesses (e.g., Singapore, Dubai). But is there more work out there examining the OEM state? If not, why not? (Can we convince any promising grad students to abandon performativity or actor-network theory for a dissertation on the forms of 21st century states?)

A number of recent conversations have revolved around the following issue: how, exactly, does one count organizations? If I wanted to do my own population level study, how do I develop a list of all relevant organizations? For the sake of argument, let’s assume you have a decent definition of the population. You know an organization of type X when you see it. There are number of strategies you can employ to build a census or sample:

1. Publicly certified organizations: In some cases, organizations might be required to register themselves with the government. Political action committees, for example, must be registered. There may also be accreditation: an organization needs the state or some other group to sanction them. Then some government (or quasi-gov’t) organization will likely have a list of all orgs in your population.
2. “People friendly” organizations: These are organizations which make it possible for outsiders to contact them. For example, they may be listed in directories. They might also be in the telephone book, or they may have a professional association that lists them in a nice book.
3. Visible organizations: Some industries have organizations that are easy to spot. For example, it’s not too hard to find every auto firm that has ever produced a car because when you produce cars, you are covered in all kinds of media.

Ok, that was easy. But some populations are harder to sample or enumerate:

1. Hypernetwork sampling: Consider churches. Some are huge, some are tiny. Some literally exist in garages, others on the internet. And there is no requirement that they register with the government, unless they need tax exempt status. So you take a sample of people and ask them to list their religious affiliations. That’s called “hypernetwork” sampling. Eliminate the repeats, or weight by frequency.
2. Snowball sampling: Some groups don’t want to be found. Or they only serve specific populations and this won’t show up in a random sample of people. Then you find one or two prominent orgs in the field, and ask leaders to list other org. Go to the leaders of those orgs and repeat. If you do this a few times with different starting points, you’ll get a reasonable sample.

As you can see, these is nothing obvious or easy about the task, especially for organizations that are under no obligation to register with the state or otherwise present themselves to the public. It’ll will also depend on your research question. For example, if I wanted to study highly influential antiwar orgs (a project I am currently working on) then I only need to find some threshold and work from there (e.g., registered as a 501(c)). But if I wanted to study the small army of antiwar organizations that exist in every small town then I will not have the luxury of organizational directories. I will need a more aggressive sampling strategy that may involve hypernetwork sampling, media analysis, and so forth. And of course, if I am studying illegitimate or marginalized orgs (e.g., criminal groups or anarchist synidcates), ethnographically driven snowball sampling is my only choice.

Please welcome Jerry Davis to orgtheory.net!

We’re excited to have Jerry guest blogging here.  He is the Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Management at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.   Jerry has made some foundational contributions to organization theory and sociology — in the areas of networks, social movements, governance etc etc.  Most recently Jerry has published a provocative book, Managed by the Markets: How Finance Re-Shaped America (Oxford University Press).  The current issue of the Academy of Management Perspectives has an excellent article that summarizes central themes from the book.“The Rise and Fall of Finance and the End of the Society of Organizations.”

You can learn more about Jerry’s research on his web site. Again, great to have you here Jerry!

Cesar Chavez and Marshall Ganz

A lot of research on social movement outcomes tries to explain under what conditions movements are likely to experience success. Weight is given to the movement context (i.e., political opportunity structures) or the kinds of tactics used by the movement. There are fewer studies examining the effects of leadership on movement outcomes. Marshall Ganz is the major exception. Ganz, at least partly due to his own experience as a labor organizer, studies how leadership and organizing capabilities affects movements’ chances of success. Leadership may explain why even movements that lack good political opportunities and that are relatively powerless are capable of shaping their environment and improving the lives of their members. Resources matter, of course, but resourcefulness (i.e., knowing how to use those resources) also matters (see Ganz’s 2000 AJS paper for more on this; also see my previous post on Ganz and organizing).

The importance of leadership to movements is also the theme of Ganz’s new book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement. The book is truly unique given Ganz’s perspective as both a social movement theorist and as someone who was actively involved in most stages of the farm worker movement. Ganz gained his initial experience working in the civil rights movement during Freedom Summer but soon thereafter he joined Chavez’s forces, eventually becoming the director of organizing for the United Farm Workers. Because of his intimate knowledge of the events and internal happenings of the movement, Ganz provides a detailed and rich history of how it all happened. But he also takes the time to step back and analyze the movement from a sociological perspective. I doubt I’ve read a book like this before.

Ganz’s view of leadership is based on the idea that the main function of leaders is to set strategy, a combination of targeting, tactics, and timing. Unlike much of the strategy literature in organizational research (in which strategy has become equated with performance outcomes), Ganz is really interested in how leaders formulate strategy and adapt their strategies to fit the new challenges that face an organization.

Strategy is a verb – something you do, not something you have. An ongoing interactive process of experimentation, learning, and adaptation, we strategize as we act. Because the unknown is almost by definition such a big factor in social movements, we often can’t get the information we need to make good strategic choices until we begin to act…So, in discussing effective strategy, I refer not to a single tactic, but to a whole series of tactics through which strategies may turn short-term opportunity into long-term gain. And long-term gain is most securely won when one not only acquires more resources (higher wages, for instance) but also generates new institutional rules that govern future conflicts in ways that privilege one’s interests (pg. 10).

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A basic question for social studies of policy is this: which policies go together? Why does one person believe policy X and Y? In other words, why should flat taxes and gay marriage go together (or not)? For a while I believed the following answer:

Ideology: People tend to be attracted to simple world views that assign value to policies that clearly promote that world view. For example, libertarians support policies that minimize government growth. E.g., they nearly always oppose taxes. Socialists promote worker rights and restraints on corporations.

But I realized that policies are bundled in some weird ways. People can say, “I’m conservative/liberal” and adhere to policies that seem to contradict the stated ideology. So now I believe this:

Pragmatic Policy Networks: The same person can promote policies X and Y for multiple reasons. Some reasons are ideological, but these may not be as important as other reasons. For example, partisanship may matter a lot. If a Republican president promotes X, then other Republicans will assimilate that as a “conservative idea.” Thus, policies may not be linked on their relation to abstract goals, but they may be linked by the need to build coalitions, support leaders, or whatever.

Once I accepted the pragmatic view, it has been way easier for me to understand the weird combinations of policies described as “liberal” or “conservative.” In orgtheory talk, policies, actors, and ideologies are “loosely coupled things.”

My colleague Jim Moody sent along this interesting graph. He took all papers cited by an ASR, AJS, or Social Forces publication since 1999. He then mapped the top 50 such citations (actually 53, because there were some ties) as a citation and co-citation network. Here’s the result.

Some quick observations. First, reading anti-clockwise from the right, it looks like the core of the field is Stratification, Networks, Organizations, Social Movements — and HLM methods. Second, despite Sociology’s alleged inability to forget its founders, only one piece of work in the Top 50 citations was published before 1965, and that’s Weber (1922). Third, it’s great that the visualization shows Swidler (1986) and Sewell (1992) right where they belong — trying to bridge structure (on the right) with agency (on the left).

Popularizers par excellence Duncan Watts and Malcomb Gladwell go mano a mano in a Fast Company article by Clive Thompson over mechanisms of network diffusion.  Watts attacks Gladwell’s key idea that “influentials” are the drivers of viral diffusion effects:

Why didn’t the Influentials wield more power? With 40 times the reach of a normal person, why couldn’t they kick-start a trend every time? Watts believes this is because a trend’s success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend—not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded.

Ed Keller rides in to defend his (and by extension, Gladwell’s) argument:

“They’re fonts of word of mouth,” Keller insists. And ahead of the curve, too: In the 20 years he has been polling them, Keller has found they began using computers, mobile phones, and the Internet years before the mainstream.

I take Keller’s and Gladwell’s points to be that social space is heterogeneous and the identity (not just the structural position, e.g., being a broker) of an individual matters in explaining the effect that individual has on diffusion within the network.  Indeed, I’ve made that argument myself.

Yet, Watts is on to something here.  Particularly if you are interested in whether a practice or idea or innovation is incorporated into behavior (and I’d guess that most of us who read orgTheory are), and not simply in whether an idea spreads ephemerally.  It suggests parallels with the concept of political opportunity structures in social movement theory or even to the importance of Stinchomb’s “liability of newness”.  People and organizations are embedded, not just in a set of relationships, but in a set of roles and rules governing those relationships.  So, in order for an idea to spread and take root, the roles and rules implicated by an innovation need to be buttered up (or undermined) first. Very few studies have pulled off the dual challenge of examining structural diffusion along side these broader institutional, cultural and political opportunity structures simultaneously.

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Moses Hall… site of the celebrated Politics of Markets Workshop.

Last Friday, Berkeley hosted the “Politics of Markets” workshop.First, I want to thank the organizers: Dan Beunza, Marion Fourcade, Fabrizio Ferraro, and Yuval Millo. Great job!!!!! Also, we should collectively thank the sponsors: UC Berkeley and LSE. The sandwiches were delicious.

Now let’s get to the creamy filling:

• One theme was that social categories seem to be important factors in economic decisions, even beyond what might be salient. For example, Marion and Kieran reported on the common finding that credit scores include a residual that’s suspiciously linked to race. In other words, if you regress credit history on income and other observable economic behavior, there’s still a race-dependent residual. Alya Guseva’s talk on credit rating assignment in Russia touched on similar issues.
• A lot of good stuff on networks in financial markets. Buenza & Stark’s paper showed how traders influence each other’s judgments. Joon Nak Choi showed that hedge fund centrality ain’t what it used to be.
• The final theme was the social construction of financial instruments. Dan Lainer-Vos discussed how early Israeli bond issues had to be tailored to the social expectations of the American Jews who bought the instruments. Greta Krippner had a nice discussion of “regulation Q,” which constrained a bank’s interest payments on deposits, and how its abolition created modern consumer credit markets, with some dire political consequences. Caitlin Zaloom discussed the evolution of yield curves among finance professionals.

There were others: Neil Fligstein summarized the growth of the mortgage bond market and the ensuing crisis; Simon, Millo, & Kellard on idea formation among brokers; and Sommerfeldt & Ventresca spoke about the transformation of clearing practices from informal practice to state regulated institution. Thumbs up! Add your own comments below.

The Boston Globe’s ideas section has a summary of research looking at the intersection of psychology and social networks.  Bottom line: we read into people more what we want to see than what may actually be there, so even people who are close to us can turn out to be surprising.  Implications for what to make of social referrals are drawn.

But this tidbit toward the end struck me as pertinent as many of us are tromping around recruiting or being recruited this week:

Sandra Murray at the University of Buffalo has found that couples that maintained positive illusions about each other tended to be happier than those that didn’t.

Something similar may be at work in close friendships. And, according to Dunning, a slightly different form of social illusion may also arise. People naturally seek out those they see as most like them, and a falsely inflated sense of similarity may only further cement friendships.

In other words, one of the nicest things a friend can do is let us misunderstand them just a little.

Since I’m in paper-plugging mode, and since Omar has not been seen — I’ll call quick attention to one of his forthcoming papers (with former orgtheory guest blogger Steve Vaisey) in Social Forces on network composition, influence and culture:  “Can cultural worldviews influence network composition?”

So, as we’ve discussed/debated here many times, there are some really sticky issues with understanding causality when it comes to networks, and this paper seems to do a very nice job of teasing out, with longitudinal data, various effects (endogenous factors related to previous network composition/structure and issues of homophily, etc) and finding a strong culture/worldview effect.  The paper focuses on how networks arise from and are influenced by cultural and associated cognitive antecedents.  And, the paper looks at the dynamics and fluidity of networks over time, rather than presuming network stability and the (overwhelming) causal influence of networks.  For me the paper still raises some infinite regress-type questions (issues of self-selection and choice, endogenous culture creation — if that makes sense, and the need for specificity and links related to cognitive mechanisms and culture, etc) — infinite regress of course is a problem in any study —and good papers of course not only answer questions but also raise them.

A highly recommended paper!