Organizational Sociology Research Articles

Robert K. Merton and Innovation-Related Topics: Three Theoretical Ideas

As in other disciplines, such as organization science, sociology, and economics, there are good reasons for scholars in innovation and entrepreneurship research to revisit the classics within and outside their own research fields. Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) is not usually explicitly connected to innovation research, but to fields such as the sociology of science and knowledge. However, his scholarly productions include texts relevant to innovation and entrepreneurship. In 1935, he published on invention and innovation in American industry, and in 1938, he put forward the idea of innovation as deviant behavior or nonconformist adaptive behavior (Merton 1938a). In 1945, he began writing about the concept of serendipity, which he later discussed several times. This paper discusses how theoretical insights from Merton may inspire entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation research. The discussion is framed around Merton’s innovation-related ideas and their relevance today, based on 20–25 Merton publications from 1934 to 2004 drawn from his larger scholarly production. The paper extracts three main examples of Merton’s theoretical ideas and insights. The first is his interest in simultaneous independent discoveries (Merton 1961a; 1961b), which has later been seen as a zeitgeist perspective on (scientific) creativity. The second is his view of innovation as deviant behavior and an adaptive response (Merton 1938), which is relevant to, among others, discussion of the dark side of innovation. The third is his interest in the idea of serendipity in scientific discovery (Merton 1945; 1948a), which is relevant today in relation to entrepreneurial opportunity and accidental innovation.

The Sociology of Entrepreneurship Revisited

Over the last two decades, the sociology of entrepreneurship has exploded as an area of academic inquiry. Most of this research has been focused on understanding the environmental conditions that promote entrepreneurship and processes related to the initial formation of an organization. Despite this surge in activity, many important questions remain open. Only more recently have scholars begun to turn their attention to what happens to organizations, and the people connected to them, as they mature and move through the life cycle of entrepreneurship. These open questions, moreover, connect to many classic themes in the literature on careers, organizational sociology, stratification, and work and occupations. Using a framework that focuses on three phases of the entrepreneurial life cycle—pre-entry, entry, and post-entry—we summarize sociological research on entrepreneurship and highlight opportunities for future research.

A Critical Realist Model for Organizational Sociology

A Critical Realist Model for Organizational Sociology

(Re-)Vitalizing the Concept of Organization: Inspirations From Recent Social Theory

In this essay, we introduce recent debates on both concepts of organization and organization’s future. Since Max Weber’s ideas gained acceptance, there has been a strong link between social theory (rationalized modernity) and a concept of organization (bureaucracy) in organization theory as well as organizational sociology. Today, organizational scholarship challenges, but at the same time defends, this classical link. We argue that both positions can be substantiated empirically. This situation motivates a debate on updating and revitalizing the link between organizational concepts and social theories that we aim to put forward with this special issue of Critical Sociology. We discuss the assembled contributions in relation to this fundamental conceptual debate of organization research and conclude that the richness of social theories can still serve as an inspiration to explain recent organizational phenomena.

(De)Constructing the Disruption: Enacted Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Institutionally Plural Fields

Abstract If an event happens in the woods, and nobody responds to it, is it a disruption? In this paper, we address a gap in the organizational sociology literature about how events are constructed as “institutional disruptions” in institutionally plural fields. We integrate the disconnected literatures of sensemaking/sensegiving and institutional pluralism to argue that institutional disruptions in institutionally plural fields are not coterminous with exogenous events, but rather are the result of a process of fieldwide sensemaking and sensegiving mediated by intermediary organizations. We use the American higher education community’s response to the Trump administration’s 2017 ‘travel ban’ as a paradigmatic example that illuminates these dynamics with some clarity. In particular, we illuminate the relationships between conditions of institutional pluralism, extra-field events, the social construction of meaning within fields, the role of intermediary organizations, and the nature of organizational actions in response. Emerging from our theoretical exploration, we offer implications and avenues for future research for organizational sociologists. Collectively, our theorizing opens the door for scholars to re-examine previously taken-for-granted assumptions about disruptions and better theorize the earliest moments of institutional change.

The life cycle of international cooperation: Introduction to the special issue

AbstractInternational organizations’ lives often extend far beyond the moment of their initial contracting. How IOs do adapt to shifting circumstances in their member states global geopolitical changes, and even internal dynamics within the IO itself? This special issue on the life cycle of international cooperation explores the ebbs and flows of the IOs that underpin the international system. Firm theory, organizational sociology, and agency theory all have incorporated life cycles perspectives into the study of organizations, but IR has yet to fully harness these frameworks. A life cycles approach centers on, first, incorporating the IO itself as the core unit of analysis and, second, the dynamic processes within IOs — including life stages such as false starts, consolidation, inertia, growth, revitalization, death, and succession. Incorporating these dynamic processes into our understanding of IOs reminds us that historically, IOs have always experienced periods of both flourishing and faltering. Grasping the mechanisms that drive these changes is indispensable for a thorough understanding of the international system’s vitality and resilience. Articles in this issue explore the durability of IOs in the face of crises; the measures that IOs deploy to legitimize their existence; the role of individual leaders’ rhetoric in IO vitality; the tradeoffs that member states face between pulling the plug on an IO versus creating a new institution; the effect of member-state IO withdrawal on the international system overall; and the mass public’s perceptions of such withdrawals.

On the issue of rethinking the conceptual foundations of management as a social phenomenon

Social and digital technologies are exposing the impact of governance on society. It acts as a factor that simultaneously solves problems and poses threats to all of humanity as a result of mistakes, personal interests, and unforeseen consequences. With the growing influence of management on social processes, questions arise not only about how management is structured, but also what place it occupies in society. There is a need to rethink the phenomenon of management. Despite the prevalence of the term “management,” its understanding is far from ambiguous. An additional complexity is associated with the absence in foreign scientific literature of a term identical to the Russian word “management”. The article proposes that management is understood as a social phenomenon manifested in the activities of individual and group subjects, which is aimed at interfering in the natural course of events to bring them into line with subjective ideas. In this interpretation, management serves as the basis for the emergence of an artificial component. To understand the place given to management in sociology, the article analyzes the main sociological paradigms based on the typologies of K.Dubar, R.Collins, J.Ritzer. In the usual dualism, objectivism-subjectivism, structure-agent, society-personality, macrosociology-microsociology and the desire to overcome them, management is given a secondary, auxiliary role, and disciplines studying management (sociology of management, sociology of organizations) are given the place of industrial sciences. Each of the sociological paradigms is a response to the challenges of its time. The modern world is characterized by the growth of man-made artificial reality with a simultaneous increase in uncertainty. This actualizes new challenges, the answers to which the author proposes to look for in the problem field of management, expanding it to a general sociological theory. For this purpose, the social space is described as the intersection of the “natural-artificial” and “determined-uncertain” axes. The author sees an important difference between the sociology of management and other disciplines in the study of not only what one should “know in order to foresee, and foresee in order to be able,” but also how this “can” can be realized. The study of management covers the theory and practice of social and, rising to abstract levels, it does not lose pragmatism (it takes into account how knowledge is applied by social individuals in practice to solve real social problems).

Nationalist sentiments and the multinational enterprise: insights from organizational sociology

International business scholars have recognized the impact of political and economic nationalism on the multinational enterprise (MNE). We complement these approaches by highlighting the sociological manifestations of nationalism and their implications for the MNE. We argue that nationalist sentiments, i.e., widely shared assumptions of superiority over other nations and cultures, constitute an under-researched but critical element in international business (IB). Drawing insights from organizational sociology, we elucidate how nationalist sentiments manifest in the MNE’s external and internal environment. Specifically, we suggest that nationalist sentiments accentuate national institutional logics, generate status-based categorizations of foreign and domestic firms, and heighten emphasis on national organizational identities. These manifestations impact the MNE’s operations by limiting room for hybridization of dissimilar practices and routines, increasing the risk of discrimination and stereotyping by local audiences, and entrenching resistance to foreign ideas and practices among organizational members. We suggest that MNEs have three strategic choices in responding to nationalist sentiments: avoid their manifestations, mitigate their implications, or leverage nationalist sentiments to the MNE’s advantage. In sum, our framework provides a starting point for IB scholars to examine the strategic implications of nationalist sentiments for the MNE.

Burnout symptoms in elite athletes: Assessing the role of effort–reward imbalance, support and emotions

Drawing on theories from the sociology of work and organizations, such as Leiter and Maslach's concept of burnout and Siegrist's model of effort–reward imbalance, this paper argues that burnout symptoms in elite sport are related to a mismatch of investment and gratification. Building on data from a sample of German elite athletes ( N = 312), findings show that high time investments for training and competitions, the experience of time and role conflicts and negative emotions related to daily training are associated with more burnout symptoms, while sporting success, social support and training-related positive emotions are associated with lower burnout scores. Vulnerability to burnout is increased in situations that qualify as gratification crises, in which athletes perceive that high time commitment does not pay off in terms of sporting success.

Organizational Sociology Perspectives on University Incubation for Student Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of the Emerging Internet Company miHoYo

Nowadays, the employment situation is grim, and the postponement and reemployment of college students have become the mainstream employment solutions. School-enterprise cooperation and university business incubation are particularly important at this juncture. From the perspective of organizational sociology, it is a win-win way for enterprises to place talent training before universities. In this process, there will be institutional construction born from the perspective of new institutionalism, emphasizing three institutional elements: regulatory, normative and cultural cognitive [1]. There are both restrictions and constraints on talents within the framework, as well as rewards based on prospects and future. In the existing research in China, many scholars focus on the dilemma, relatively critical and examine it; but there is a lack of dismantling and research on extremely excellent cases. Therefore, the author conducts research through the new institutionalism perspective of organizational sociology, giving full play to its interdisciplinary (including sociology, economics, psychology, etc.) many roles, so that organizational sociology, a knowledge so rich and connotative, can complete a complete analysis and study through composite materials, and provide some insignificant reference experience and significance for the field.

Organization and quality of care in childbirth in private for-profit maternity units in France: Risks of the deprofessionalization of midwives

ObjectiveIn France, in 2007–2009, the risk of peripartum maternal mortality, especially the one due to hemorrhage, was higher in the private for-profit maternity units than in university maternity units. Our research, a component of the MATORG project, aimed to characterize the organization of care around childbirth in these private clinics to analyze how it might influence the quality and safety of care. Material and methodsWe conducted a qualitative survey in 2018 in the maternity units of two private for-profit clinics in the Paris region, interviewing 33 staff members (midwives, obstetricians, anesthesiologists, childcare assistants and managers) and observing in the delivery room for 20 days. The perspective of the sociology of organizations guided our data analysis. Findings/resultsOur study distinguished three principal risk factors for the safety of care in maternity clinics. The division of labor among healthcare professionals threatens the maintenance of midwives' competencies and makes it difficult for these clinics to keep midwives on staff. The mode of remuneration of both midwives and obstetricians incentivizes overwork by both, inducing fatigue and decreasing vigilance. Finally the clinical decision-making of some obstetricians is not collegial and creates conflicts with midwives, who criticize the technicization of childbirth. Some demotivated midwives no longer consider themselves responsible for patients' safety. ConclusionsThe organization of work in private maternity units can put the safety of care around childbirth at risk. The division of labor, staff scheduling/planning, and a lack of collegiality in decision-making increase the risk of deprofessionalizing midwives.

When Do Trade Unions Support Universal Demands? Organizational Context and Trade Union Strategies in the US and UK at the Turn of the 20th Century

AbstractWhen do labor movements come to support universal welfare policies? This article examines this question through a comparative account of the British and American labor movements at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on newspaper and meeting records from the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS), the Cigarmakers International Union (CMIU), and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen (BLF) from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, it considers why, given a common tradition of exclusive benefits, the two movements diverged on the question of universal state health and pension schemes at the turn of the century—with the British labor movement abandoning its voluntarist orientation and the AFL preserving it.Complementing existing sociological accounts that emphasize state and party structure, sectoral composition, pace and quality of industrial change, and the demographic makeup of labor movements, this article builds on approaches from the sociology of organizations in centering the importance of organizational arenas in shaping trade union strategies and aims. In particular, it investigates the role of friendly and fraternal societies in structuring trade union interests over this period. The article demonstrates how changes within the friendly and fraternal society movement shaped the contextual significance and strategic value of benefit provision in each trade union over time. In doing so, it opens the way for a deeper reflection on the importance of organizational reasoning in shaping trade union organizing and the trajectory of welfare institutions.

Analysis of the relationships among Organizational Culture Indicators Using the DEMATEL Method at the Islamic Azad University in the West of Mazandaran Province

Organizational culture represents attitudes, beliefs, traditions, and values within an organization and reflects the main concerns of organizational sociology. This research aims to analyze the relationships among organizational culture indicators using the DEMATEL method at the Islamic Azad University in the west of Mazandaran province. The purpose of this research, in terms of the objective method, is applied, which has examined the current situation at the Islamic Azad University in the west of Mazandaran province as a case study. The present research community includes faculty members of Islamic Azad Universities in the west of Mazandaran, including Islamic Azad University of Mahmoudabad, Noor, Nowshahr, Chalous, Tonekabon, Ramsar, which altogether include 491 people. Out of this number, based on Cochran’s formula, 215 correctly completed questionnaires were considered as primary data for the DEMATEL technique. It should be noted that despite all the reviews during the completion and collection of the questionnaire, 12 questionnaires were not properly completed and were excluded from the review cycle. Using a review of previous literature, six indices of process-oriented versus result-oriented, employee-centered versus job-centered, professional-oriented versus local-oriented, open system versus closed system, easy control versus hard control, and legalism versus pragmatism were considered as organizational culture indicators. The DEMATEL technique was used to analyze the data, and based on the analysis, the index of legalism versus pragmatism was introduced as the most influential and most affected index, which also had the highest interaction with other indices.

Enduring Hypocrisy as ASEAN's Organisational Problem?

This paper complements the limited scholarly interest in the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)'s consistent practice of word–deed gaps, or “hypocrisy” according to some scholars, by employing the insights of organisational sociology. Specifically, it introduces a claim that the gap between ASEAN's words and deeds can be understood as an organisational response to its material and political vulnerability in relation to its major external stakeholders, aiming to ensure its survival and adaptability. Accommodating multiple, or sometimes even conflicting, demands from various external actors, ASEAN may be able to secure its material and diplomatic engagement in developmental and political regionalism within Southeast Asia. However, ASEAN also wants to protect its local identity and practices; or it may want to avoid forced internal reforms at an undesirable scale and pace. In this context, organised hypocrisy would likely become a vital consideration for the complex institution. For ASEAN, this paper notes, these word–deed gaps reflect the way it wants to manage conflicting external demands as an international social agency.

Waste in Organizations: Discerning (Dis)value in Rational, Natural, and Open Systems Perspectives

Society overflows with waste, and waste and discard studies emphasize the social construction and contingency of waste, outlining it as the negatively valued. However, organizational sociology currently does not reflect these insights and rarely accounts for waste. Therefore, this article asks what kind of theory is required to capture waste in organized contexts. By searching for waste in Scott and Davis’ well-accepted three perspectives on organizations (as rational, natural, or open systems), it becomes evident that each perspective conceptualizes waste based on its theoretical conception of organizations (rational: disorder; natural: disintegration; open: overdetermination) that is mirrored in different accounts of waste. While these perspectives assign negative value to different organizational conditions, they offer little insight into how organizations themselves disvalue entities and generate waste. To overcome this shortcoming, the article introduces an integrative perspective that incorporates the three prevalent perspectives, conceptualizing organizations as closed and open systems (COS) based on Luhmann’s system concept and observation theory. The COS perspective explains how organizations construct waste through their selective indication of values and disvalues. It thereby identifies waste as a contingent yet inevitable part of any organization and shifts attention from the study of symptomatic waste to its underlying origins.

An Organizational Sociology of Education: Using Structural, Network, and Ecological Perspectives to Study Schools

Highlighting changes in education and organizational theorizing since the 1950s, this review integrates three perspectives for an organizational sociology of education. The structural perspective focuses on how the formal organization of resources, relationships, and information can influence student outcomes and inequalities through opportunities to learn. The network perspective highlights the role of informal interactions and interpretation as well as social and cultural capital to bring about changes. The ecological perspective illustrates how schools are affected by other schools (horizontal dimension), the educational bureaucracy (vertical dimension), and organizations outside schools (community dimension). An organizational perspective can concretize often abstract sociological topics on stratification, social reproduction, and socialization. The perspective can also reconceptualize often individualistic views on contemporary education issues like student well‐being, teacher shortage, racial inequalities, and school politics. The review ends with a discussion on how to incorporate these organizational perspectives and how they can complement current studies in education, sociology, and public policy.

Sociology of Fourah Bay College Library as Critical Cultural-Social Space in Freetown, Sierra Leone

The thought and modes of sociological study of Fourah Bay College library emanate predominantly from the sociology of communications and organisation, according to which a library is a social mechanism. The functional social function of this is to probe and form selections from the stream of engraved communications to systematise and stock the preferred publications and to form the streamed stock of publication accessible to a social public and to determine the social and cultural domination of the touch between the library and the students’ social community. The accomplishment of students in the future is lodged upon the social pillar established during years utilised at Fourah Bay College. Fourah Bay College library plays a critical functional social function in carving the future of students by nurturing them for intellectual engagement beyond the college. The college library as a fundamental presence of the college curriculum has considerable potential to carve students through contingent privileges for autonomous learning. The research will seek to find out the strategies that Fourah Bay College library exploits to advance students’ relational abilities in the onset of Information and Communication Technology. It will also examine the functional social function of Fourah Bay College library in broadening relational abilities progress amongst students to bolster authoritative social behaviour or intellectual self-determination. The research will explore the extent to which Fourah Bay College library can utilise technology to enhance interpersonal communication, thus enhancing social inclusion. The researcher will utilise a phenomenological prototype to point out the challenges and conveniences or opportunities facing Fourah Bay College library in traditional metropolitan Freetown to provide competent library services to students so that they can be appropriately processed for the electric technology motivated life predicated on such abilities like information social scholarship.

The education of international educators: A personal view

Background“Que voyager c’est apprendre à vivre”. This is how Montaigne starts one his essays, “traveling is learning to live”. It was certainly my story. And this story begins in the 1970s. I went to the U.S. for graduate education, my interests have always been the psychology of learning and its practical implications for education. During my doctoral studies, I had the opportunity to engage in international projects led by my thesis advisor, Robert Morgan. At the time he was one of the principal advisors of the educational reform in Korea. In the early seventies there was great optimism about the potential of "new technologies," including emerging ones like Educational Radio, Educational TV, and Computer-based education. Ronald Gass was leading CERI – a Center for Educational Innovation at the OCDE, sponsored a tour which provided me with a taste of educational developments in Europe and also gave me to opportunity to evaluate a distance-learning program in Portugal. This is how I entered the world of international education.Returning to Brazil after completing my doctorate in the USA – I think I was the first Brazilian to obtain a doctoral degree in Education - I actively participated in various initiatives in Brazil between 1973 and 1986, including the Ministry of Education, in the area of distance education, in the Ministry of Planning, in the areas of Science and Technology and in a special non-portfolio Ministry in charge of “De-bureaucratization”. These experiences in my own country provided me with valuable insights into the possibilities and limitations of change, innovation, technology, and reforms in general.Three significant experiences shaped my understanding of change processes and their impact.First and more important, I learned that implementing educational technology projects was an attractive proposition, innovations are always welcome, but scaling up and interfering with regular school operations remained a chimera.Second, I witnessed the launching and implementation of policies and institutions in the fields of science and technology, the major push came from the Ministry of Planning. This effort taught me the importance of a strong start, selecting competent leaders and individuals with appropriate credentials. I also learned to recognize the significance of institution-building as a foundation for sustainable change.A third, and pivotal experience, was related to large-scale administrative reform.A special ministry was created to simplify rules and regulations in a highly bureaucratic and formalistic culture. I learned how power, bureaucracy and corruption were deeply interwined. I also learned that while initiating change may be relatively straightforward, the resilience of bureaucracies often undermines the best intentions. Bringing about and sustaining change requires addressing both structural and attitudinal transformations. Leadership, continuity, and accountability are essential. Chance can also play a role.These experiences led me to delve into the study of organizations and organizational change. A post-doc at Stanford Business School gave me the opportunity to study, learn, and exchange ideas with various experts on the sociology of organizations, such as Jim March (bounded rationality), Richard Scott (formal organizations), Judith Tendler (Inside Foreign Aid), Aaron Wildawsky (Implementation), and John Meyer (Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony), among many others. Despite the warnings, knowledge, and experience, hope prevailed.Despite being based in Brazil, throughout this period, I was engaged in numerous consultancy activities over the years, collaborating with organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), UNESCO, OECD, and USAID in various countries. I learned a great deal from Dean Jamison and François Orivel about economics and cost/effectiveness studies, and also learned how evidence played such a minor role in actual decision-making. I also learned a great deal about implementation of large-scale projects in several consulting missions with Emile McAnany and John Mayo. Throughout these experiences, I learned far more than I contributed.Just before joining the World Bank in 1986, I sought to understand how Brazil interacted with the institution. In a conversation with the Brazilian Minister of Planning at the time, I obtained an extremely valuable piece of information: Brazil was primarily interested in obtaining "hard currency" rather than specific projects. This revelation made me realize that the logic and intentions of the local government differed significantly from those of financiers or even sectoral ministries. This early insight made me aware of the limitations of project-based change. With this background, I could not be accused of naivety. And so, my international journey continued.

The brave new world of unstable jobs hiding in plain sight: A reply to Murphy and Turner

The article Employment stability and decent work published in the Journal of Industrial Relations by Murphy and Turner presents evidence forming the basis of a claim that job instability has not increased in Ireland between 1998 and 2021. This contrasts with a rich literature in industrial relations and the sociology of work and organizations, which documents the fundamental transformation of employment relationships since the 1990s toward greater insecurity. In this response paper, I question the empirical foundations of Murphy and Turner's claims. Analyzing the same data set used in their study, I provide clear evidence that an increase in job instability consistent with the precarious work literature has been hiding in plain sight. I also engage with their efforts at theorizing the nature of the recent transformation of employment relationships in Ireland specifically, and in Liberal Market Economies more broadly. In doing so, I suggest research avenues that go beyond a polarized debate in whether or not job instability has increased in order to contribute to a more complex understanding of contemporary changes in career trajectories.

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT): is routinization problematic?

BackgroundThe introduction and wide application of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has triggered further evolution of routines in the practice of prenatal diagnosis. ‘Routinization’ of prenatal diagnosis however has been associated with hampered informed choice and eugenic attitudes or outcomes. It is viewed, at least in some countries, with great suspicion in both bioethics and public discourse. However, it is a heterogeneous phenomenon that needs to be scrutinized in the wider context of social practices of reproductive genetics. In different countries with their different regulatory frameworks, different patterns of routines emerge that have different ethical implications.This paper discusses an ethics of routines informed by the perspectives of organizational sociology and psychology, where a routine is defined as a repetitive, recognizable pattern of interdependent organizational actions that is carried out by multiple performers. We favour a process approach that debunks the view – which gives way to most of the concerns – that routines are always blindly performed. If this is so, routines are therefore not necessarily incompatible with responsible decision-making. Free and informed decision-making can, as we argue, be a key criterion for the ethical evaluation of testing routines. If free and informed decision-making by each pregnant woman is the objective, routines in prenatal testing may not be ethically problematic, but rather are defensible and helpful. We compare recent experiences of NIPT routines in the context of prenatal screening programmes in Germany, Israel and the Netherlands. Notable variation can be observed between these three countries (i) in the levels of routinization around NIPT, (ii) in the scope of routinization, and (iii) in public attitudes toward routinized prenatal testing.ConclusionAn ethics of routines in the field of prenatal diagnostics should incorporate and work with the necessary distinctions between levels and forms of routines, in order to develop sound criteria for their evaluation.