The New Structuralism in Organizational Theory

The New Structuralism inOrganizational Theory

Michael Lounsbury and Marc VentrescaCornell University, USA and Northwestern University, USA

Abstract. Over the past decade, a new structuralism has begun to emergein organizational theory. This exciting new research program drawsinspiration from the social structural tradition in sociology, but extendsthat tradition by more broadly conceptualizing social structure as com-prised of broader cultural rules and meaning systems as well as materialresources—revealing the subtleties of both overt and covert power.Building on the insights of Bourdieu and related work in social theoryand cultural sociology, new structuralist empirical research focuses onconcrete manifestations of culture in everyday practice and has pio-neered the measurement of cultural aspects of social structure using avariety of relational methods. In this essay, we revisit mid-century socialstructural approaches to organizations, review the development oforganization theory as a management subfield that increasingly focusedon instrumental exchange, highlight key aspects of the new structuralismin organizational theory, and discuss promising new research directions.Key words. Bourdieu; culture; institutional theory; new structuralism;social structure

Over the past decade there has been a gradual reemergence and revitali-zation of social structural approaches to organizational analysis (Louns-bury and Ventresca, 2002). This new structuralist sensibility inorganizational theory draws inspiration from a rich conceptual andmethodological toolkit, energized by contemporary social theorists suchas Bourdieu (e.g. 1984), and is taking shape at the interface of a number of

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sociological subfields including research on organizations, stratification,culture and politics (e.g. Breiger, 1995; Mohr, 2000). In organizationaltheory, this new structuralism has become most evident in the work ofinstitutional scholars who view organizational action as fundamentallyshaped by broader social and cultural processes (e.g. Scott, 1995).

In contrast to perspectives such as resource dependence (Pfeffer andSalancik, 1978), transaction cost analysis (Williamson, 1975), and organi-zational demography (Hannan and Freeman, 1977), which focus onconcrete exchange processes within and between organizations, the newinstitutionalism is explicitly anti-reductionist and rejects the causalprimacy of efficiency or narrow self-interest (Schneiberg and Clemens,forthcoming). Even though institutional analysis is well known for thestudy of legitimacy and isomorphism (Hirsch and Lounsbury, 1997), newstructuralist thought has spurred the development of field-analyticapproaches that examine the co-evolutionary dynamics of logics, actors,practices and governance structures (e.g. Haveman and Rao, 1997; Thorn-ton and Ocasio, 1999; Scott et. al., 2000; Jones, 2001).

In this essay, we situate these intellectual shifts in a historical contextthrough a review of the development of organizational theory since themid-20th century, when scholars were concerned about the role oforganizations in society with a big ‘S’ (Michels, 1949; Selznick, 1949;Gouldner, 1954; Stinchcombe, 1965). Our review shows that through the1970s and 1980s, the study of organizations in the US became increas-ingly disconnected from the study of societal stratification, politics andsocial change, which were the core problematics in classic studies oforganizations and society. Empirical research on organizations becamedominated by a conceptualization of interorganizational relations ashighly rationalistic and instrumental, a conceptualization that continuesto provide a central imagery in our field.

Yet, in the 1990s the new structuralism gradually made its way intoorganizational theory, challenging narrower conceptions of organizationsand their environments. Unlike mid-century approaches to social struc-ture, however, these new conceptualizations include more direct con-sideration of cultural processes and meaning systems (Meyer et al., 1987;Friedland and Alford, 1991), including a cultural-cognitive perspective(DiMaggio, 1997). For new structuralists, social structure includes notonly distribution of resources, but also meanings along with the everydaysocial practice that support and can contribute to the reshaping of socialstructure (Bourdieu, 1977; Clemens, 1997; Stryker, 1994). While ourhistorical arguments are centered mainly on developments in the US andNorth America, new structuralist research also involves theorizing fromcommunities of scholars in Europe, Canada, and the Pacific region, theinfluence of Bourdieu being a prime example.

After our historical review, we offer an overview of key aspects of thenew structuralist agenda and highlight how new structuralist thought isreshaping the institutional analysis of organizations. We argue that the

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time is ripe for organizational theorists to renew their attention to broadersocial structures and to bring ‘society’ back to center stage. We review asampling of recent work in this genre to demonstrate the utility of thenew structuralism in organizational theory and then suggest new spacesfor development. To those who despair at the apparent restricted ambi-tion of organizational research exemplified in many of the prominentjournals in our field, take note that the social structural tradition is aliveand well!

Social Structure and the Development of Organizational TheoryThe development of sociological approaches to organizations in the1950s and 1960s was informed by a deep engagement with the work ofMax Weber. While Weber is well known for his work on bureaucracy, hesituated his theorization of organizational processes within a broaderpolitical economy framework, emphasizing aspects of social structuresuch as power, domination, authority, and legitimacy. This engagementwith the corpus of Weber’s work helped to forge a collective sociologicalimagination that spawned an approach to organizational analysis inter-twined with the study of broader political processes and related societal-level social structures (e.g. Selznick, 1949; Gouldner, 1954; Bendix, 1956;Lipset et al., 1956; Stinchcombe, 1959). For example, Selznick’s (1949)classic study of the Tennessee Valley Authority showed how organiza-tions are explicitly enmeshed in broader political negotiations thatinvolve some degree of cooptation. Focusing more on the constitutivepower of societal beliefs, Bendix (1956) helped to forge a comparativetradition that highlighted how variations in state-building projects andassociated ideas of authority resulted in distinct configurations of workand management practices.

The development of rich empirical case studies was a point of con-vergence for much of this work, which intended to generate concepts fora middle-range theory of organizations as complex, often contentiouscontexts for action, as well as collective actors. A legacy of the Mertoniantradition, much of this research resisted the high abstractions of domi-nant social theory and sociological theorizing to cultivate a moregrounded understanding of how organizations mattered for social changeas a result of relatively overt struggles over material resources andcontrol. While social structure was often treated as a social fact withgeneral analytic consequences for organizations, the empirical studiesinvestigated how the interplay of interests, intentional choices, andbroader political dynamics resulted in particular patterns and impact ofsocial structure. Given their interests in broader social organization, mid-century sociologists did not aim to build a synthetic theory of organiza-tion and rarely studied organizational phenomena outside of aconsideration of broader societal values, commitments and institutionalarrangements. Instead, organizations were seen as sites for understanding

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the constitution and consequences of power, always situated and embed-ded in broader social structures.

These case studies were important because they challenged the overlyrationalist conceptions of organization built from narrower US readingsof Weber’s ideal-type theory of bureaucracy. By emphasizing organiza-tional activity as embedded in broader social structure, these studiesoffered a basis for empirically grounded skepticism about a conceptionof organizations as simply a social ‘tool’ that extended the capacities ofindividuals and that could be characterized by unitary purpose, andintegrated in tightly-coupled formal structures (Scott, 1992). Theyfocused on work processes and on the varieties of social organization ofsuch activity. They recognized and provided explanations for conflictand change by emphasizing the dynamics of complex organizationalsystems, as well as how authority relations took shape and becamemanifest in meaningful contexts of beliefs, ideologies, and culturalmodels. Research in organizational analysis outside the US developedand reinforced similar analytic sensibilities, research designs, and coreproblems of society and organization (e.g. Crozier, 1964).

By the early 1970s, however, sociologists and increasingly researchersin management and other professional schools generated a distinctlydifferent set of theoretical arguments and empirical research traditions(Scott, 1992). A new tradition of ‘organization theory’ paid direct atten-tion to formal organizations across settings and sectors, often with areforming or meliorative focus: understanding organization structures inorder to better manage them. For example, Peter Blau developed proposi-tional theories about formal organizational structure and administrativecapacity (Blau and Scott, 1962; Blau and Schoenherr, 1971). Otherresearchers developed theories of general contingency to explain patternsof organization structure, and reduced their focus on general societalstructures either as a driver of formal organization structures or asimpacted by the formal features of organizational hierarchy, size, andcomplexity.

Instead of focusing on how social structure shaped organizations,contingency theorists built on the administrative theories of Taylor,Barnard and Fayol to identify optimal or necessary structure-contextcongruence and develop prescriptions for managers to take effectiveactions and enhance the performance of their organizations. Thompson’s(1967) synthesis of propositions about environments, technology, andorganization structures exemplified a high point in this traditionand presaged modern ‘open systems’ theories of organizations and envir-onments that came to intellectual and professional prominence in thelate 1970s and since (Aldrich and Pfeffer, 1976; Scott, 1992).

This new work was facilitated by the growing allure of social exchangeapproaches to power and animated by aspirations for more parsimoniousquantitative models and the development of a more synthetic, anduniversal, organization theory. For example, Warriner et al.’s (1981) call


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for the creation of a standardized approach to the analysis of organiza-tions that would unify the field and enable the progressive cumulating ofknowledge offers a prototypical view of where the core of organizationaltheory was headed. The pathos that guided this shift in sensibilitiesrestricted conceptions of politics, resources, and their interplay insocietal context. Weberian concerns about the institutional and legalbases of organizations became implicit, typically assumed or unex-amined. Theoretical and empirical work paid less attention to widersocietal patterns and distributions of resources. Concomitantly, mid-century attention to social structure became narrowly transformed into amore sterile conception of organizational environment as an abstract,exogenous force that constrained organizational behavior.

The Institutionalization of Organization Theory in the USTrue to our arguments, it is important to reflect on the institutionalcontexts of these developments. In US sociology departments, organiza-tional theory as a synthetic research tradition has had limited spreadsince the aspiration to build a theory of complex and formal organization,latterly organization theory, had been historically contested by a widersociological community skeptical of this abstraction (see Perrow, 1986,2002). Some specialty concentrations in organizational analysis began toappear in sociology departments in the late 1960s, often accompanied byfoundation and federal support for research in applied areas such aseducation, mental health and policy services. But one is hard pressed tofind many mainstream organizational theorists located in sociologydepartments today.

In the 1970s, the few sociologists that specialized in organizationtheory began to migrate to professional schools, most prominently toschools of management and business. One of the consequences of thisout-migration was that business schools became the dominant site fororganizational theory discourse and development. Over the next coupleof decades, research in organization theory increasingly concentrated onissues of relevance to managers and leaders of for-profit enterprises,which in turn focused attention on questions of internal organizationstructure and process as well as the relationship between organizationsand their resource environments. As Stern and Barley (1996) passionatelyargued, the study of how organizations related to broader social struc-tures became a neglected topic that was often derided and viewed as ananachronism among mainstream organizational researchers who valori-zed the development of knowledge about strategy and performance.

One of the main infrastructural factors driving this shift in researchsensibilities away from the study of social structure pertains to effortsof organizational scholars to professionalize their work around issues ofmanagement and organizational effectiveness (Lounsbury and Ventresca,2002). This professionalization mainly occurred through the Academy of


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Management, the leading professional association for managementresearchers in the US (Wrege, 1988). In particular, the creation ofthe Organizational and Management Theory division in 1971 marked theformation of a subfield for organizational theorists which includedall the self-conscious professional apparatus for managing and main-taining jurisdictional boundaries—professional prizes, organizations,informal colleges, etc. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Aldrich, 1972;DiMaggio, 1983; Kanter, 1977; Hirsch, 1972; Zald and Berger, 1978), thisboundary-making reduced interactions between organization theoristsand sociological researchers specializing in the study of stratification,culture and other subfields.

The formalization of the Academy of Management dovetailed with therise to prominence of leading management schools, many of which hadhired social science disciplinary-trained faculty by the 1970s. The incor-poration of scholarly researchers from disciplines such as sociology andpsychology into business schools was pragmatically catalyzed by theFord and Carnegie foundation reports (Gordon and Howell, 1959; Pier-son, 1959) that suggested that this was a key way to transform the existingvocational business school model into a more prestigious research-focused one. These developments changed the terms and stakes oforganization theory significantly since the presence of research-focused,Academy-affiliated researchers solidified a space for the valorization ofmanagerially centered theories that emphasized instrumental notionsof organization and their exchange relations with other organizations intheir environment.

Hence, by the 1970s, there was a distinctive trend away from asking bigquestions about organizations and society (Perrow, 1986) and towardsproducing narrowly oriented research in the idiom of normal science.While this is clearly evident in contingency theoretic formulations andmuch of mainstream organizational research, even more sociologicalapproaches to organizations became codified and packaged into standardresearch strategies that smacked of rational-functionalism and economicdeterminism (Ventresca and Mohr, 2002). This was quite explicit inorganizational ecology where empirical analyses often seemed like avariant of industrial organization economics, focusing on how com-petitive interactions among producer organizations are shaped byindustry-level resource availability (Hannan and Freeman, 1989). Net-work analysis relied on the conceptual apparatus of resource dependencetheory to examine how an organization’s network position affects itsbehavior and performance outcomes (e.g. Burt, 1992; Mizruchi andSchwartz, 1987). New institutionalists in organizational analysis con-ceptualized organizations as legitimacy-seekers that became more homo-geneous in appearance as a result of isomorphic processes (DiMaggio andPowell, 1983; Strang and Soule, 1998).

In short, as organizational theory emerged as a management subfield,conceptualizations of both social structure and organizations became


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increasingly instrumental, driven by functional imperatives, and ani-mated by the prominence of narrow exchange approaches to behavior(e.g. Emerson, 1962). In these treatments, social structure finds expres-sion only in a conception of the ‘environment’ that is abstract, unitaryand exogenous to the actual workings of organizations and social life (seeScott, 1995). The instrumental approach de-emphasized the insights ofpolitical economy approaches to organizations (Perrow, 2002; Stern,1979; Zald, 1970), which underscored complex organizational arrange-ments in heterogeneous relation to varied constituencies. In addition,prominence was given to a notion of controllable ‘uncertainty’ in prefer-ence to the recognition of fundamental ambiguity and loose-coupling thatinspired earlier works in the behavioral and cognitive traditions (Marchand Olsen, 1976; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Weick, 1995). These shiftsreinforced a conception of organizations as goal-driven unitary entitiesinterlocked in concrete exchange relations.

Efforts to construct a ‘parsimonious and elegant’ organization theorywere not entirely uncontested (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). While the coreof organizational theorists in the US wanted to develop a more posi-tivistic science, progressing by hypothesis-testing and adjudicatingamong competing theoretical claims, social constructionists argued thatsuch efforts were inherently misguided given the ambiguous nature oforganizational phenomena, which was shaped by social and culturalmeanings, including the meaning-making of organizational theorists. Forexample, in reviewing research on internalization—bringing activitiesfrom an organization’s environment into the boundaries of a firm—Astley(1985) highlighted the pervasiveness of multiple analytical interpreta-tions of the same empirical phenomenon. He concluded:

. . . It is quite possible that any one instance of internalization maysimultaneously exhibit all of the empirical elements needed to lendsupport to each of these respective theories [absorption of critical con-tingencies, adjustment of portfolios, efficient allocation of resources, andpolitical control by elite giant corporations], in which case each theorywould capture a different aspect of the phenomenon. This, however, is notthe point. Rather, the key issue is that different observers tend to applyfavored theoretical perspectives in a more or less exclusive manner.(Astley, 1985: 500)

Nonetheless, organizational theorists generally neglected the insightthat wider environments, including the researchers’, provide constitu-tional materials for organizations—and that particular elements, ideol-ogies and rationales are contingent, time-dependent, and potentially inconflict one with another. Rather, research began to focus on hyper-rationality and resources as the main drivers of structure and activity,without sufficient attention to how social structure shapes behavior andmediates the effects of resources—as well as how resources and ration-ality are institutionally contingent (e.g. Bendix, 1956; Dobbin, 1994;


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Douglas, 1986; Hamilton and Biggart, 1988). By truncating the socio-logical imagination to functionalist conceptions of social structureand reducing conceptions of organization to objectifiable and tractablemeasurements, organizational theorists sidelined concerns with history,context, and more situated, relational approaches to social analysis.

The New Structuralism and the Renewal of Structural Approachesto Organizations

Despite the apparent dominance of instrumental thinking in contempo-rary organizational theory, we see a broader dialogue emerging that isanimated by concerns with broader societal issues, theories of practiceand fields, and related methods. These new structuralist directionsinvolve a shift towards richer conceptualizations of social structure andprocess that have taken shape at the intersection of the sociology ofculture, stratification and politics, and institutional analysis (see Mohr,2000 for a review). Contemporary practice theorists reject ‘older’ structur-alist lines of investigation rooted in the work of Levi-Strauss (1963) andthe early work of Foucault (1972) that suggest that discourse can bestudied as a cultural phenomenon that is discrete and separate fromsocial interaction.1 Practice theorists believe that cultural systems are‘structured as an embodiment of the range of activities, social conflicts,and moral dilemmas that individuals are compelled to engage with asthey go about negotiating the sorts of everyday events that confront themin their lives’ (Mohr, 1998: 353).

Similar to social constructivist and related interpretive approaches tosocial analysis (e.g. Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Burrell and Morgan,1979), practice theorists focus attention on ontological problems havingto do with how conceptions of reality are rooted in broader social andhistorical processes that operate beyond the direct consciousness ofactors but are visibly instantiated in daily activities (Meyer et al., 1987).In exploring the deeper cultural categories and meanings that informpractices in fields, social structural researchers are moving towards amore direct examination of social ontologies that aim to ‘uncover therules that bound the objects populating our natural and social worlds’(Ruef, 1999: 1405). As opposed to theorizing organizations as hyper-rational and driven by functional imperatives, much of this researchsituates rational action within broader belief systems such as institu-tional logics.

Friedland and Alford (1991: 243) define logic as ‘supraorganizationalpatterns of human activity by which individuals and organizationsproduce and reproduce their material subsistence and organize time andspace.’ At the level of societies, the capitalist market, bureaucratic stateand the nuclear family can be conceptualized as logics that constitute theinterests of actors and thereby shape cognition and action. As Friedland(2002: 383) has argued,


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. . . institutional theory is not about the leftovers of rational action, theways in which cultural conventions rush in where means-ends relationsare opaque. Rather, institutional logics constitute the cosmology withinwhich means are meaningful, where means-ends couplets are thoughtappropriate and become the naturalized, unthought conditions of socialaction, performing the substances at stake within them.

Unlike most theoretical approaches in the social sciences, practicetheorists do not assume that actors have any real essence, but insteadregard them as constituted by the broader scale arrangements withinwhich they are embedded. The concept of field helps to provide asystematic approach to the employment of these theoretical commit-ments. Pierre Bourdieu claims that:

The notion of field reminds us that the true object of social science is notthe individual, even though one cannot construct a field if not throughindividuals, since the information necessary for statistical analysis isgenerally attached to individuals or institutions. It is the field which isprimary and must be the focus of the research operations. This does notimply that individuals are mere ‘illusions,’ that they do not exist: theyexist as agents—and not as biological individuals, actors, or subjects—whoare socially constituted as active and acting in the field under considera-tion by the fact that they possess the necessary properties to be effective, toproduce effects, in this field. And it is knowledge of the field itself inwhich they evolve that allows us best to grasp the roots of their singularity,their point of view or position (in a field) from which their particular visionof the world (and of the field itself) is constructed. (Bourdieu and Wac-quant, 1992: 107)

Reflecting on the work of Bourdieu, Swartz (1997: 285) notes that ‘atthe heart of Bourdieu’s sociological inquiry is the question of why formsof social inequality persist without powerful resistance. The answer,Bourdieu argues, lies in how cultural resources, practices, and institu-tions function to maintain unequal social relations.’ Power is thereforeembedded in cultural rules and meaning systems that overlie societalstratification (e.g. classes) and make unequal resource distributions andallocation systems seem natural or inevitable much of the time. Whilethere is a strong emphasis on covert forms of power (Lukes, 1974; Stryker,2002) in the work of Bourdieu and field theoretic/practice research, itwould be a mistake to view this research as taking an overly sanitizedview of power relations since concerns about power and stratification arecentral. In fact, much of this research also explicitly focalizes overt formsof power by analyzing the origins of logics and other cultural meaningsystems that constitute actors and valorize certain dimensions ofinequality over others. In addition, as Bourdieu’s work emphasizes, thereis constant struggle at the boundaries that demarcate social space, high-lighting that social change often occurs as various social groups renego-tiate the meaning of boundaries (see Lamont and Molnar, 2002 for areview of research on boundaries). Further, by revealing hidden, and


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subversive, forms of power embedded in culture, the new structuralistresearch program can foster a more critical and reflective set of analysesthat can inform policy efforts to alleviate the most insidious aspects ofinequality and related forms of domination.

Analytically, new structuralists draw on a wide variety of relationalmethods such as multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, networkanalysis and correspondence analysis to study how cultural beliefs andsocial relationships provide distinct yet overlapping dimensions thatstructure practices in fields (Mohr, 1998). Also on the horizon areimportant new breakthroughs in the development of more dynamic formsof network analysis as well as agent-based and related evolutionarymodeling techniques (see Macy and Willer, 2002; Padgett, 2003; Powellet. al., 2003; Watts, 2003), which will no doubt help to expand our abilityto theorize about mechanisms of institutional change in a much moregrounded, yet non-reductive way. These methods take inspiration fromnetwork analysis, but have been adapted to study the evolution ofpractices in a way that takes the structure–agency duality seriously(Bourdieu, 1984; Breiger, 2000).

Field-level analyses employing practice theories and relationalmethods expand the scope of social structural analysis by redirectingattention to temporal and spatial variations in meaning and the ways inwhich actors, enmeshed in relatively durable power relations, engagein continual struggles for positional advantage. These field approachespromise to usefully extend analyses of social structure by providing asystematic means for exploring and uncovering the dimensions ofsimilarity and difference that structure conflict and social interactionpatterns. Altogether, these new analytical approaches provide methodo-logical rigor to the study of culture and, more important, foster deeperconnections between theories of practice (e.g. Bourdieu, 1977) and theanalysis of organizations and society.

Consider, first, new structuralist empirical studies that have become animportant part of the organizational theory landscape via discourse in theinstitutional analysis of organizations. For instance, Mohr and Guerra-Pearson (forthcoming) show how meaning-making activities that definedthe status categories of welfare relief recipients facilitated the replace-ment of settlement houses with social work bureaucracies as the keyorganizational solution in the emerging field of community social welfareservices around the turn of the 20th century. Through a multidimensionalscaling analysis of welfare organization discourse, they showed howdemographic categories (e.g. men, women, boys, girls, etc.), classes ofsocial problems encountered (e.g. criminality, delinquency, disability,etc.), and technologies of organizational action (e.g. general relief,employment assistance, character-building, etc.) formed a matrix thatorganized relief recipients and shaped the provision of welfare services.In a similar vein, Ruef (2000) tracked how changes in medical journal


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discourse shaped the ecological dynamics of organizational forms in theUS healthcare field after the passage of Medicare/Medicaid Acts in1965.

Relational methods have also been used to uncover logics and docu-ment more fine-grained dynamics that unfold over shorter time periods.For instance, through an analysis of Congressional testimony on solidwaste in 1969 and 1970, Lounsbury et al. (2002) showed that incinerationbecame defined as a standard practice as a result of the dominance of amarket efficiency logic over a competing central governmental logic thatprovided an alternative belief system that might have led to the develop-ment of different practice standards. This occurred even though publichearings and discourse suggested that incineration and recycling prac-tices were equally viable in the late 1960s. Methodologically, they codedCongressional testimony to create an affiliation matrix of testifying wit-nesses and their espoused views on various solid waste techniques andthen used multidimensional scaling techniques to uncover logics under-pinning the centralization of the US solid waste management field.

In an insightful analysis of the cultural and organizational dynamicsunderpinning the 1992 Brazilian impeachment of President FernandoCollor de Melo, Mische and Pattison (2000) highlighted how pro- andanti-impeachment organizational coalitions formed as a result of dis-cursive positioning in the field of Brazilian politics. They drew on publicrelations materials, pamphlets, resolutions, and other organizationaldocuments through Galois lattice techniques (Duquenne, 1991; Freemanand White, 1993), to show how a wide variety of organizational forms,the interconnections and alliances between them, and their discursiveclaims about the particular kinds of projects in which they were engaged,shaped the impeachment dynamic.

Moving to more organizationally centered analyses, institutionalscholars have developed the concept of organizational field to directattention to how broader social forces shape the actions of similarlysituated organizations (Hoffman, 1999). Different from institutional ana-lyses of organizations in the 1980s, however, which detailed processes oflegitimacy and isomorphism by depicting institutions as constrainingand institutionalization as a binary outcome variable (Tolbert and Zucker,1996), field approaches have redirected researchers towards the explicitexamination of variation across time and space (e.g. Greenwood andHinings, 1996; Ruef and Scott, 1998). Organizational fields have beendefined as both the organizations that produce common outputs, whetherthese are automobiles, social services, or spiritual salvation, as well asthe organizations that supply resources, effect constraints, or pose con-tingencies, particularly government agencies and trade associations(DiMaggio, 1983: 149).

Field analyses require attention to both the cultural beliefs and mate-rial interactions that stabilize practices among actors in a field as well as


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exogenous factors such as governmental regulation, economic conditionsand consumer demand. For example, Jones (2001) showed how a shiftfrom a technology to content focus in early 20th-century American filmwas driven by entrepreneurs with different career histories. Her studyhighlights how a co-evolutionary perspective on entrepreneurial careers,institutional rules and competitive dynamics is more generally useful forunderstanding the dynamics of emerging industries. Shifting attention tohow specific organizational practices change in tandem with shifts inlogics, Thornton and Ocasio (1999) demonstrated that a change from aneditorial to market logic in higher education publishing led to lower-levelorganizational changes in executive succession.

Rather than tracking shifts in dominant logics and associated formsand practices, Leblebici and colleagues (1991) argued that changes inpractices in the radio broadcasting field occurred as a result of innova-tions at the periphery of the field, which migrated to the core after theyhad been shown to be effective. Among several important contributions,the study highlighted how the existing social structure of a field—thehistorical, network, and cultural elements that comprise field ‘texture’ atany particular time—shaped the sources and efficacy of non-routineaction. In still another example, Lounsbury (2001) showed how anenvironmental social movement organization helped to instantiate eco-logically committed recycling activists in bureaucratic educational orga-nizations. He focused on how broader field-level processes and actorsshape variation in organizational work practices.

While field analyses are still a nascent development within organiza-tion theory, the embrace of the concept of organization field has occurredwith a concomitant broadening out of institutional research circles toinclude sociologists and other new structuralist scholars who have beenfocusing on issues and debates in cultural and political analysis. Encoun-ters between these research communities suggest the development of amore sociological orientation to organizational analysis that harks back tothe classic social structural studies of mid-century. However, they alsopromise richer and more nuanced approaches for the understanding ofsocial structure that will advance the study of institutions by enablingmore systematic studies of social change and organizations.

Hopes for the FutureMid-century sociologists faced few subfield boundaries that segregatedthe analysis of organizations from politics, culture, social movements andstratification. Our hope is that the new structuralism will catalyze amovement to eradicate, or at least make more porous, current boundariesdividing the study of organizations from broader societal problematics.Even though we have emphasized the contributions in this regard ofnew structuralist conceptualizations and methods incorporated into


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institutional analysis, we also see some encouraging examples in otherdomains of organizational theory.

For example, the analytical engine of organizational demography hasrecently been extended to analyze the dynamics of labor markets acrossfirms (e.g. Haveman and Cohen, 1994). Network researchers have expan-ded the scope of their work in a more sociologically rich direction bydeveloping the concepts of embeddedness and social capital (e.g. Adlerand Kwon, 2002; Dacin et al., 1999; Granovetter, 1985; Zukin andDiMaggio, 1990). Taking network ideas in a more historical direction,Padgett and Ansell (1993) advanced a multi-network conception of socialstructure and robust social action to show how Cosimo de’ Medici wasable to gain and maintain political control in 15th-century Florence bymanaging network disjunctures within the elite. However, the embrace ofbroader societal concerns by organizational theorists in the US remainsquite limited overall.

Nonetheless, we believe that the seeds for a broader appreciation of amore robust social structural research agenda are in place. Yet, to be clear,we do not advocate the replacement of a one-sided view of organizationsmainly influenced by instrumental exchange processes with another one-sided view of organizations as culturally constituted. Following socialtheorists such as Bourdieu (1984) and Sewell (1992), we view symbolicand material realms as mutually constituted and contend that analyses oforganizations that fail to account for broader social structural processesare woefully incomplete. Further, we believe that both overt and covertforms of power need to be foregrounded. Let us outline a few organiza-tional research problematics and directions suggested by new structural-ist scholarship and that have already begun to take shape in concreteways.

The Social Construction of Performance and RationalityWhile much of mainstream organizational theory studies performance ina highly unreflective manner, the new structuralist agenda urges thatmore attention be paid to the social construction of performance and howthe ability to judge performance or efficiency depends upon the kind ofinstitutional infrastructure that is built (Polanyi, 1944). As Fligstein(1990) showed, the goals and performance-drivers of corporationschanged over the course of the 20th century as dominant leadershipbackgrounds and related conceptions of control shifted from operationsto sales and marketing to finance. Similar arguments have been made bynew structuralists about the situatedness of rationality (see Friedland,2002) which has, in turn, led new institutionalists in organizationalanalysis to rethink the distinctions they had made between the ideas oftechnical efficiency and institutional forces in the 1980s, and focus onhow technical considerations such as performance are institutionallyconstructed. As Richard Scott has argued,


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. . . who has the right to have interests, what interests are regarded asreasonable or appropriate, and what means can be used to pursue them areall products of socially constructed rules: Institutional rules invent ration-ality, defining who the actors are and determining the logics that guidetheir actions. This means that, as the rational choice theorists argue, ifactors pursuing interests take actions to create institutional frameworks,this can occur only under particular circumstances in which selectedactors are constituted as having those interests and powers. Where socialagency is located—who has the right to take self-determined and self-interested actions—is expected to vary over time and place. (1995: 140)

The Study of Variation

While little progress has been made on the study of how performance andrationality are socially constructed, following Scott, we believe thatorganizational theory can make headway in these directions by focusingon the study of variation—both temporal and spatial. Along the lines ofFligstein’s (1990) research mentioned above, a variety of scholars havedemonstrated how temporal variation in institutional circumstancesshapes decision-making processes that guide organizational behavior(e.g. Leblebici et al., 1991; Scott et al., 2000; Thornton and Ocasio, 1999).Other research has shown that institutional shifts can have consequentialeffects on the survival of organizational forms (Haveman and Rao, 1997;Ruef, 2000).

A focus on spatial variation can facilitate analyses of how differentpositions in a field, relational connections or identities shape whetherorganizations adopt novel practices and how they then implement them(Carroll and Hannan, 2000; DiMaggio and Mullen, 2000; Lounsbury,2001; Schneiberg and Bartley, 2001). Too much organizational researchon diffusion and population ecology has analyzed organizations as uni-tary actors. Recently, Strang and Macy (2001) argued that research ondiffusion that has found evidence of contagion may in fact be wrong, or atleast misguided, since such empirical work often lacks serious attentionto organizational decision-making processes. We are similarly skepticalof much of the research that has stressed contagion, and suggest thatresearchers engage in much more fine grained analyses to uncoversubstantive aspects of spatial variation leading to more nuanced explana-tions of organizational behavior not necessarily in opposition to generalnotions of rationality or sensible action.

Building on these directions, we especially need focused attention onhow social and organizational change is influenced and shaped bymultiple forms of rationality (Stryker, 2000; Weber, 1978) and howorganizations come to define their interests in the first place (Clemens,2002). As new structuralist research suggests, this requires an analysisthat integrates attention to culture, politics and history. Stryker (2002:176) has argued that crucial to the study of


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. . . the emergence, success or failure of any organizational form is thespecification of relevant (multi-level and intersecting) lines of politicalconflict, along with corresponding identification of the relevant interests,values and cognitive schema at stake and the relevant resources availablefor mobilization and counter-mobilization oriented to these interests,values and schemas . . . [this] requires deep historical knowledge. It isimpossible to apply the conceptual apparatus of politics unless the analystcan give concrete historical specificity to actors, interests, resources, cogni-tive schema, etc.

The Study of Organizations and OccupationsFurther, while the role of disenfranchised actors has been neglected inorganizational theory (Lounsbury and Ventresca, 2002; Perrow, 2002), thenew structuralism highlights the usefulness in embedding organizationalanalysis within the broader study of stratification systems (e.g. Breiger,2002; Sacks, 2002). One obvious and important way to make stratificationissues more central would be to reconnect the study of organizations andoccupations. Even though organizations and occupations used to bestudied simultaneously (e.g. Zald, 1971), they became increasingly sepa-rate intellectual realms and professional domains since mid-century withorganizational sociologists employing structural approaches to the ana-lysis of rational bureaucracies, while sociologists of work mainly engagedin interpretive studies of workers inside single organizations (Hirsch,1985; for alternatives, see Musselin, 2003 and the integrated tradition ofsociology of work and organizations at CSO/CNRS in Paris).

If organizational theorists began to focus attention on the dynamics ofoccupations and organizations in fields, extant theories of institutionalprocess could be usefully extended to account for conflict over authorityand jurisdiction (Abbott, 1988). A central analytical focus could be onhow status competition among different kinds of organizations andspecialized occupations opens up opportunities for upward and down-ward mobility as new actors emerge, others die, and as boundariesstructuring the organization of work get refashioned (Lounsbury, 2002).New expert occupations can often usher in new sets of practices andprovide an important mechanism that drives institutional change pro-cesses such as the reconfiguration of fields. While organizational institu-tionalists have stressed the role of professionals in catalyzinginstitutional transformation, much could be gained by focusing more onhow the multiplex relationships among organizations, work and knowl-edge are interpenetrated in fields. Further, research in the sociology ofwork suggests that it may also be useful to draw on ethnographicapproaches to the study of work and organization to develop a deepunderstanding of the dynamic interrelationship between knowledge con-struction processes and the realignment and transformation of socialstructure (Lounsbury and Kaghan, 2001). This would enable researchersto elaborate social structural dynamics in a more grounded way.


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The Study of Social Activism

Another line of inquiry gaining momentum attends to the role of socialactivism and movements in transforming institutions and organizations(Clemens, 1997; Davis and McAdam, 2000; Rao et al., 2000). An explicitfocus on how social-movement-like efforts reshape institutions con-cretely returns conflict and struggle to the analysis of organizations andfurther underscores how grievances and dissent foster identity andresource mobilization processes challenging extant rules and beliefs.Recent studies illustrate the benefits of integrating social movementsanalysis with institutional ideas by showing how broader societal mobili-zation enables the rise of new kinds of industries (e.g. Schneiberg, 2002;Lounsbury et al., 2003). Schneiberg (2002), for instance, used historicalmethods and time series analyses to show how the growth of mutual fireinsurers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was influenced by themovement-like activity of a variety of actors such as property owners andagrarian groups that resisted corporate development and enabled moredecentralized and cooperative forms of economic development.

Developing the concept of field frame, Lounsbury et al. (2003) trackedan archaeology of recycling practices across sectors to show how activistsin the 1960s and 1970s promoting recycling provided crucial culturalmaterials, social infrastructure, and practical innovations that enabledthe later rise of a commercial recycling industry in the US solid wastemanagement field. The efforts of activists made available alternatives tothe industry consensus that had marginalized recycling in favor ofincineration and landfilling as standard solutions. While early commu-nity recyclers had promoted non-profit forms of organizing with socialjustice aims, the development of curbside collection programs in collab-oration with waste haulers, the rise of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)social activism challenging incinerator sitings, and a new model oforganized recycling politics spurred the development of a for-profitrecycling industry that has largely displaced non-profit alternatives.

Moving inside organizations, Scully and Segal (2002) interviewedworkplace activists to develop an understanding of how social movementenergy takes shape in the context of bureaucratic authority relations. Byfocusing on what workplace activists actually do, they developed atheory of piecemeal change that highlights the need to examine incre-mental changes that occur, avoiding both the naive optimism that majororganizational transformation in authority relations can occur and thepessimism that nothing can change since bureaucracy is inherentlyrepressive. Creed and Scully (2000) developed similar theoreticalinsights by examining gay and lesbian activists in a variety of workorganizations.

These studies are pioneering exceptions. Zald and Berger (1978) argued25 years ago for the study of social-movement-like activity in organiza-


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tions, and the opportunities for progress here remain broadly available.The paucity of studies on activism in organizations is surprising sincesuch research provides tools and a design strategy to uncover silentvoices (Calas and Smircich, 1999) and emancipatory possibilities (Alves-son and Wilmott, 1992) in organizations. In the spirit of Bourdieu, newstructuralist approaches suggest that useful insights may be gained byconnecting localized investigations of intraorganizational activism to ananalysis of broader societal dynamics that shape the possibilities forvoice and emancipation in particular settings (e.g. Armstrong, 2002;Moore and Hala, 2002). Through such research, critical traditions may beplaced in direct dialogue with more mainstream organizational theories(Westwood and Clegg, 2003).

Overall, as we scan empirical and methodological developments acrossorganizational theory and the wider discipline, we are encouraged by thegrowing sensibilities towards sociologically rich analyses of organiza-tional phenomena that specify directly and variously society andsocietal-level dynamics. These innovations give credence to and supportour interest in further expanding the scope of organizational theory toembrace more fully specified conceptions of social structure and organi-zations. We believe that the most exciting work evidences the borrowingand translation across existing theoretical programs and research tradi-tions.

Building on the new structuralism, thus, we advocate a more culturallyand politically informed analysis on how broader elements of stratifica-tion and societal beliefs embodied in category schemes such as logics,models, and frames constitute social actors and change as a result ofmulti-level political processes, involving a wide variety of actors such asproducer organizations, state agencies, trade associations, social move-ment organizations and other field-level organizations. The examples wehave cited are necessarily partial and selective, but these studies share aresearch strategy that involves traffic across previously separate per-spectives in organizational theory such as organizational demography,network analysis, and institutionalism, while also reconnecting the studyof organizations to core questions of the discipline (Kilduff and Dough-erty, 2000; Scott, 1995) and increasing traffic among various subfieldtraditions and constituencies (Huff, 2000).

To wit, we call for organizational theorists to engage more directly withcontemporary social theory and design/methodological developments,and to put the distinctive insights of an organizational approach to workin exploring pressing questions about social organization and socialchange that speak to audiences in sociology, across the social sciences,and in policy circles. Organizational sociology further sharpens Mills’s(1959) vision of the distinctive contribution of a sociology at the inter-section of history and biography. By attending to politics (both overt andcovert), culture, and history, the new structuralism opens up a new realm


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of possibilities for a more critical and reflective organizational theory thataddresses broader societal concerns.

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time, in ways that reinforce the Weber/Foucault comparisons about method.

Michael Lounsbury is an Assistant Professor at the School of Industrial and LaborRelations and Department of Sociology at Cornell University. His research focuseson the relationship between organizational and social change, social entrepre-neurship, and the rise of new industries and practices. Recently, he has beenworking on projects that investigate the emergence of the recycling industry andthe dynamics of the mutual fund industry. Professor Lounsbury serves on anumber of editorial boards and his work has been published in journals such asAdministrative Science Quarterly, Socio-Economic Review, Academy of Manage-ment Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Strategic ManagementJournal. In addition, he is the series editor of Research in the Sociology ofOrganizations published by JAI/Elsevier. Address: Cornell University, School ofIndustrial and Labor Relations and Department of Sociology, 367 Ives Hall,Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. [email: [email protected]]

Marc Ventresca is Assistant Professor of Organizations and Management and AssistantProfessor of Sociology at Northwestern University. His research uses institutionaltheories of organizations to develop and test arguments about industry emergenceand entrepreneurship in the information and environmental services industries,multi-level models of diffusion of strategic reforms and innovations in highereducation, and the dynamics of global policy fields and financial markets. He hasheld visiting professor and visiting scholar positions at the University ofCalifornia, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois. Address: KelloggSchool of Management and Department of Sociology, Northwestern Univer-sity, 2001 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. [email: [email protected]]


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The New Structuralism in Organizational Theory

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