Sociology 530: Organizations

Sociology 520q: Selected Topics in Social Processes ORGANIZATIONS

Instructor: Paul DiMaggio (258-1971) Time: 9:00am-12noon, Tuesday Place: 2-C-8 Green Hall

Readings: Readings on closed reserve (i.e., borrow and photocopy, then return) in Sociology Department mailroom. I will put two copies of each reading in the seminar box at least one week before the seminar meeting. This system only works if seminar members do not remove papers for any other reason than immediate reading or photocopying.

Objective. The objective of this mini-seminar is to introduce the major themes and some of the major works in organizational studies, and thus to provide an overview for the curious and a platform from which the student who may wish to take comprehensives or teach a course in this area can pursue the topic independently.

Focus. Because this is a mini-seminar, the reading list is highly selective. (Lists of supplementary readings will be provided for those who wish to pursue certain themes further.) I have chosen to emphasize major contemporary issues and developments, at the cost of excluding much of the historical literature influential on the development of the field (e.g., Weber, Marx, Michels, Urwick, Fayol, Follett, Roethlisberger and Dixon, Barnard etc.). We begin with two weeks on older works and ideas that are as central to the field now as they were when they were written: Weber's essay on bureaucracy (from which all else in organization studies flows); in week 2, the work of "Carnegie School" theorists, Herbert Simon, James March, and colleagues, who emphasize the ways in which organization structures are shaped by the cognitive limitations of the people who occupy them.

The next two weeks provide menus de gustation for two organization-theory cuisines, described rather arbitrarily as "rational" and "institutional." (These terms are convenient but, as we shall see, unfair, in that the best works in each cluster acknowledge both rational and a-rational sources of behavior, as all good research must.) Under the rational/ecological rubric, we explore three of the most powerful and influential analytic approaches of the last 20 years: Williamson's transaction-cost economics; Hannan and Freeman's organizational ecology; and Ron Burt's version of strategic network analysis. Under the institutional label, we explore a couple versions of neoinstitutional theory, work on organizational culture, and organizational ethnography.

The final two weeks are more topical in focus, and will permit us to use the conceptual capital accumulated during the previous four weeks. The first of these deals broadly with technology, and offers a smattering of new and old, structural and political approaches. The second deals broadly with organizations and inequality, focussing on several approaches to thinking about gender in organizations.

Requirements. Students are expected to do the reading thoroughly in advance of the class meeting for which it is assigned, and to participate actively in class meetings. Emphasis is on mastering and responding critically and creatively to the seminar's material. No term paper or research project is required.

Each student will do two kinds of writing:

a) For two of the remaining five meetings, he or she will prepare memoranda of 2-4 pages on the readings, to be completed by the time the seminar meets. (No credit will be received for memoranda handed in thereafter.) Memoranda should be regarded as writing and thinking exercises, not as finished products. Use them to engage each week's materials and respond with questions, criticisms and new ideas that they suggest. Memoranda should be used to develop ideas informally over time and to put into words impressions that seem worth developing. Because I will read them each week, they also provide an opportunity to receive individualized feedback.

b) For the end of the course, each student will prepare a memorandum of 4-6 pages reflecting on ways in which the material may be useful in pursuing their personal research agendas.

Enrollment is open to any graduate student in Sociology, any other social-science department or the Woodrow Wilson school, and, upon application, to undergraduate sociology majors..

Readings

Week 1) Tuesday, September 16: Bureaucracy

Weber, Max. "Bureaucracy." Part 2, chapt. 7 in Gerth and Mills, eds. From Max Weber, pp. 196-244 (and in Economy and Society).
Perrow, Charles. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-46) in Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986).
Taylor, Frederick Winslow. Principles of Scientific Management. (NY:Norton, 1947).

Week 2) Tuesday, September 23: The Carnegie School

Simon, Herbert A. Chs. 1 (pp. 1-19) and 4-5 (pp. 61-110) in Administrative Behavior. (N.Y.: The Free Press, 1957).
March, James and Herbert Simon. Chs. 5-6 (pp. 113-72) in Organizations. (N.Y.: John Wiley & Sons, 1958).
Cohen, Michael D. and James G. March. Prefaces (xi-xxi), and chaps 2 (pp. 7-29), and 5-6 (pp. 81-124). Leadership and Ambiguity:The American College President, 2nd ed. (Boston.: Harvard Business School Press, 1986).
Perrow, Charles. Chapter 4 (pp. 119-56) in Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay (3rd ed.). New York: Random House, 1986.

Week 3) Tuesday, September 30: Rational and Ecological Approaches to Organizational Analysis

Williamson, Oliver. 1991. "Comparative Economic Organization: The Analysis of Discrete Structural Alternatives." Administrative Science Quarterly 36. Reprinted in The Mechanisms of Governance (N.Y.: Oxford Univ. Press), pp. 93-119.
Kathleen Eisenhardt. 1989. "Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review." Academy of Management Review 14: 57-74.
Michael Hannan and John Freeman. Chs. 1 (pp. 3-27) and 3-6 (pp. 45-144) in Organizational Ecology (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989).
Jitendra V. Singh and Charles J. Lumsden, "Theory and Research in Organizational Ecology." Annual Review of Sociology 16 (1990): 161-93.
Burt, Ronald. Chs. 1 (pp. 8-49) and 3(pp. 82-114) in Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
Davis, Gerald F. and Walter W. Powell. "Organization-Environment Relations." Pp. 315-76 in Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, ed. Marvin D. Dunette and Leaetta M. Hough. Palo Alto, Calif.: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1992.

Week 4) Tuesday, October 7: Institutional Approaches to Organizational Analysis

Meyer, John W. and Brian Rowan. "Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony," American Journal of Sociology 83, 2 (July 1977): 55-77. In Walter Powell and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991).
DiMaggio, Paul and Walter W. Powell. "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields," American Sociological Review 48, 2 (April 1983): 147-60. In Powell and DiMaggio, eds., supra.
Dobbin, Frank. "Cultural Models of Organization: The Social Construction of Rational Organizing Principles." In Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives, ed. Diana Crane. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994
Haveman, Heather A. and Hayagreeva Rao. 1997. "Structuring a Theory of Moral Sentiments: Institutional and Organizational Coevolution in the Early Thrift Industry." American Journal of Sociology 102: 1606-51.
Brian Uzzi. 1997. "Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness." Administrative Science Quarterly 42:35-67.
Kunda, Gideon. Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Technology Corporation. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1991 (selection).

Week 5) Tuesday, October 14: Technology

Perrow, Charles, "A Framework for Comparative Organizational Analysis," American Sociological Review 32, 2 (April 1967), pp.194-208.
Kelley, Maryellen R., "New Process Technology, Job Design, and Work Organ-ization: A Contingency Model," American Sociological Review 55 (1990): 191-208.
Barley, Stephen R. "The Alignment of Technology and Structure Through Roles and Networks," Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (1990): 61-103.
Perrow, Charles. Chapts. 2-3 (pp. 32-100) in Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies. N.Y.: Basic Books, 1984.
Podolny, Joel and Toby Stuart. 1995. "A Role-Based Ecology of Technological Change." American Journal of Sociology 10-0: 1224-60.
Thomas, Robert J. Ch. 2 ("Technology as a Power Tool") in What Machines Can't Do: Politics and Technology in the Industrial Enterprise. Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1994.

Week 6) Tuesday, October 21: Organizations and Inequality: Gender

Reskin, Barbara F. and Patricia Roos. 1990. Pp. 3-68 in Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads into Male Occupations. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. "Some Effects of Proportions in Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women." American J. of Sociology 82 (1977): 965-90.
Ibarra, Herminia and Lynn Smith-Lovin. 1997. "New Directions in Social Network Research on Gender and Organizational Careers." In C.L. Cooper and S.E. Jackson, eds., Creating Tomorrow's Organization: A Handbook for Future Research in Organizational Behavior. Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Biggart, Nicole Woolsey. 1990. "Introduction" (pp. 1-19) and "Family, Gender, and Business" (pp. 70-97) in Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in the United States. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990.
Elizabeth S. Clemens. 1993. "Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920." American Journal of Sociology 98: 755-98.

BACK TO SCHEDULE

Web Design