Organizations: Negotiated Orders

Abstract

The negotiated order of an organization is the pattern of activities that has emerged over time as an outcome of the interplay of the variety of interests, understandings, reactions, and initiatives of the individuals and groups involved in the organization. To examine negotiated orders in any given organization is to turn away from the more traditional way of looking at organizations that give primacy of attention to the pattern or ordering of activities chosen (or ‘designed’) by those officially in charge of the organization. The concept started its life in the study of the hospital and was originally used within a broadly interactionist frame of reference. However, it has close affinities with a series of other developments in organization theory, and it provides a way of dealing with the issues that were once considered in terms of the theoretically inadequate distinction between formal and informal organizations. This is especially the case if the distinction between official and unofficial aspects of organizing is incorporated into a negotiated order perspective. More and more, the negotiated order notion is being linked to that of the social institution, and this makes it an invaluable conceptual resource for the type of multilevel analysis to which researchers are increasingly turning.