社会学引用最高论文来自组织学：制度同构与集体理性 | 理论志

原创 理论志 Political理论志

巨浪60620！社会学引用最高论文来自组织学：制度同构与集体理性

本文作者之一的 Walter Powell

编辑按

是什么使各种各样的组织如此相似？

Paul DiMaggio与Walter Powell认为，理性化和官僚化的引擎已经从竞争性市场转移到了国家和行业。一旦一个组织出现在一个领域，就会产生一个悖论：理性的行为者使他们的组织在试图改变它们时变得越来越相似。

Paul DiMaggio与Walter Powell描述了导致这种结果的三个同构过程：强制，模拟和规范性，导致了组织的同构。然后，我们指定关于资源集中化和依赖性、目标歧义性和技术不确定性以及专业化和结构化提出组织同构变迁的几个假设。

原文来源

DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. (1983) The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality. American Sociological Review, 48, 147-160

本文作者之一的 Paul Dimaggio执教于普林斯顿大学

本文作者之一的 Walter Powell执教于斯坦福大学

Paul DiMaggio与Walter Powell一直以来都是社会学界属于高引用的两位学者。迄今为主，两位学者分别的总引用量均超过12万。

其中最高的一篇就是1983年发表于ASR上的大作：THE IRON CAGE REVISITED: INSTITUTIONAL ISOMORPHISM AND COLLECTIVE RATIONALITY IN ORGANIZATIONAL FIELDS.

这篇论文的引用量达到了60620。

60620是什么概念？一位伯克利的博士生告诉我，这篇文章不仅在社会学与组织学内广泛流传，凡是和Business，Management相关的学科，也绕不开它。

上图分别是Paul DiMaggio与Walter Powell的Citations

我们今天就解读一下这篇大作：The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality

简要而论

是什么使各种各样的组织如此相似？

Paul DiMaggio与Walter Powell认为，理性化和官僚化的引擎已经从竞争性市场转移到了国家和行业。一旦一个组织出现在一个领域，就会产生一个悖论：理性的行为者使他们的组织在试图改变它们时变得越来越相似。

Paul DiMaggio与Walter Powell描述了导致这种结果的三个同构过程：强制、模拟和规范性，导致了组织的同构。然后，我们指定关于资源集中化和依赖性、目标歧义性和技术不确定性以及专业化和结构化提出组织同构变迁的几个假设。

这篇文章的研究问题很简单，就是：

What makes organizations so similar?

组织的官僚化与理性化

Weber早在PESC中就警告了资本主义精神中理性主义的诞生：

Max Weber warned that the rationalist spirit ushered in by asceticism had achieved a momentum of its own and that, under capitalism, the rationalist order had become an iron cage in which humanity was, save for the possibility of prophetic revival, impris- oned "perhaps until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt" (Weber, 1952:181-82).

继而，Weber在ES中指出了理性主义驱动的官僚制形成与不可逆转。

Contending that bureaucracy……once established, the momentum of bureaucratization wasirreversible (Weber, 1968）

官僚制兴起的三个原因：

市场中资本主义企业之间的竞争（这个最重要）；

国家之间的竞争，增加了统治者控制其工作人员和公民的需求；

资产阶级要求在法律上给予平等的保护。

为什么组织同质化？

我们试图解释同质性，而不是异质性。在其生命周期的初始阶段，组织领域在方法和形式上显示出相当大的差异。但是，一旦建立了一个良好的领域（Field），就必然会推动同质化。

我们在每种情况下都看到的是，第一，由于各种组织活动的结果，一个组织领域的出现和结构化。第二，一旦建立了这个领域，这些组织以及新进入者的同质化。

Strategies that are rational for individual organizations may not be rational if adopted by large numbers. Yet the very fact that they are normatively sanctioned increases the likelihood of their adoption.

Thus organizations may try to change constantly; but, after a certain point in the structuration of an organizational field, the aggregate effect of individual change is to lessen the extent of diversity within the field.

最好的捕捉同质化过程的概念是同构。在Hawley（1968）的描述中，同构是一个约束过程，迫使一个种群中的一个单元类似于面对相同环境条件的其他单元。在Population一级，这种方法表明，朝着与环境特征增加可比性的方向修改了组织特征；Population中的组织数量取决于环境承载力；组织形式的多样性与环境多样性同构。They argue that isomorphism can result because nonoptimal forms are selected out of a population of orga- nizations or because organizational decision makers learn appropriate responses and adjust their behavior accordingly. Hannan and Freeman's focus is almost solely on the first process: selection

组织不仅要争夺资源和客户，还要争夺政治权力和机构的合法性，争夺社会和经济适应。制度同构的概念是理解普遍存在于现代组织生活中的政治和礼仪的有用工具。

制度同构变化的三个机制

We identify three mechanisms through which institutional isomorphic change occurs, each with its own antecedents:

1)强制同构：coercive isomorphism that stems from political influ- ence and the problem of legitimacy;

2)模仿同构：mimetic isomorphism resulting from standard re- sponses to uncertainty;

3)规范同构：normative isomorphism, associated with professionalization；

然而，尽管这三种类型在经验环境中混杂在一起，但它们往往来自不同的条件，并可能导致不同的结果。

强制同构

强制同构是由其他组织所依赖的正式和非正式压力以及组织所处的社会对文化的期望所产生的。

这样的压力可能被认为是力量、说服力或邀请参加共谋。在某些情况下，组织变革是对政府命令的直接反应：制造商采用新的污染控制技术来符合环境法规；非营利组织维持帐户并雇用会计师，以满足税法的要求；组织也雇用平权行动官员来抵制歧视指控。学校将特殊学生主流化，并聘请特殊教育老师，培养与他们相处的PIA和管理人员，并发布符合州标准的课程（Meyer，1981）。这些变化很大程度上是仪式性的，并不意味着它们是无关紧要的。正如Ritti和Goldner（1979）所论证的那样，从长远来看，员工参与其功能的宣传可以改变组织内部的权力关系。

As a result, organizations are increas- ingly homogeneous within given domains and increasingly organized around rituals of conformity to wider institutions. At the same time, organizations are decreasingly structurally determined by the constraints posed by technical activities, and decreasingly held together by output controls. Under such circumstances, organizations employ ritualized controls of credentials and group solidarity.

模仿过程

但是，并非所有的制度同构都来自强制权威。不确定性也是鼓励模仿的强大力量。当对组织技术的了解不多时（March and Olsen，1976年），目标不明确或环境造成象征性不确定性时，组织可能会以其他组织为模板。

Modeling, as we use the term, is a response to uncertainty. The modeled organization may be unaware of the modeling or may have no desire to be copied; it merely serves as a convenient source of practices that the borrowing organization may use.Models may be diffused unintentionally, indirectly through employee transfer or turnover, or explicitly by organizations such as consulting firms or industry trade associations. Even innovation can be accounted for by organizational modeling.

规范过程

同构组织变革的第三个来源是规范性的，主要来自专业化。 继Larson（1977）和Collins（1979）之后，我们将职业化解释为一种职业成员的集体斗争，他们定义了工作条件和方法，以控制“生产者的生产”（Larson，1977：49-52），并建立认知他们的职业自治的基础和合法性。 正如Larson指出的那样，专业项目很少能取得圆满成功。 专业人士必须与非专业客户，老板或监管者妥协。这些职业的最新主要增长来自组织专业人员，特别是大型组织的经理和专业员工。专业化的两个方面是同构的重要来源。One is the resting of formal education and of legitimation in a cognitive base produced by university specialists; the second is the growth and elabora- tion of professional networks that span organi- zations and across which new models diffuse rapidly. 最后，非常值得注意的是，Paul DiMaggio与Walter Powell提出了两组组织同构的未来预测。

同构变化的预测

首先是组织层面的预测：

Hypothesis A-1: The greater thedependence of an organization on another organization, the more similar it will become to that organization in structure, climate, and behavioral focus.

Hypothesis A-2: The greaterthe centralization of organization A's resource supply, the greater the extent to which organization A will change isomorphically to resemble the organizations on which it depends for resources.

Hypothesis A-3: The moreuncertain the relationship between means and ends the greater the extent to which an organization will model itself after organizations it perceives to be successful.

Hypothesis A-4: The moreambiguous the goals of an organization, the greater the extent to which the organization will model itself after organizations that it perceives to be successful.

Hypothesis A-5：The greaterthe reliance on academic credentials in choosing managerial and staff personnel, the greater the extent to which an organization will become like other organizations in its field.

Hypothesis A-6: The greaterthe participation of organizational managers in trade and professional associations, the more likely the organization will be, or will become, like other organizations in its field.

首先是领域（Field）层面的预测：

Hypothesis B-1: The greater the extent to which an organizational field isdependent upon a single (or several similar) source of support for vital resources, the higher the level of isomorphism.

Hypothesis B-2: The greater the extent to which the organizations in a field transact withagencies of the state, the greater the extent of isomorphism in the field as a whole.

Hypothesis B-3: The fewer the number ofvisible alternative organizational models in a field, the faster the rate of isomorphism in that field.

Hypothesis B-4: The greater the extent to which technologies areuncertain orgoals are ambiguous within afield, the greater the rate of isomorphic change.

Hypothesis B-5: The greater the extent ofprofessionalization in a field, the greater the amount of institutional isomorphic change.

Hypothesis B-6: The greater the extent ofstructuration of a field, the greater the degree of isomorphics.

原创|李致宪

一核|云磊

复审|小艾

原标题：《巨浪60620！社会学引用最高论文来自组织学：制度同构与集体理性 | 理论志》

阅读原文