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Am I way off base here?

1) Correct me if I'm wrong, but to the extent that organizational research has examined social movements, it has primarily been concerned with their effect on (that holy grail of org. studies) organizational forms (cf. work by Rao, Morrill, Zald, Ventresca, Clemens, Lounsbury).

2) And isn't it also true that organizational research has paid relatively little attention to explaining the structure of organizational fields (i.e., patterns of interorganizational relations)?

3) And if that is indeed the case, would it not be important to examine the effects of emerging social movements on the structure of existing organizational fields?

This entry was posted by Jeff, on Monday, February 21, 2005. You can leave your response.

“Am I way off base here?”

  1. Blogger Jeff Says:
    February 21, 2005 1:44 PM  

    Thanks for being here, Brayden.

    Yes, of course you're right about the RM perspective. I should be more specific. Thirty years ago Mayer Zald and his organizational perspective made its way into SM research, inspiring a resource/organizational-centered way of thinking about movements. Since then, RM has developed quite apart from organizational sociology and the developments in Pop. Ecology and Neoinstitutionalism have not carried over. The authors I mention in point 1 represent a new effort to do just that, mostly by bringing new institutionism to bear on movements, and as a way to explain the emergence of new organizational forms.

    The second point takes field structure as the thing to be explained, rather than the source of explanation (as network analyses have typically done). To my mind, the organizations literature (and any other field?) has done little to explain the structure of org. fields.

    Point 3 presumes that the emergence of a movement is likely to have an impact on the structure of relations among existing organizations and their fields. For instance, they might inspire countermovements or other antagonistic coalitions, sever ties among organizations, disrupt routine patterns of exchange, etc.

    What am I missing?

  2. Anonymous Anonymous Says:
    March 04, 2005 4:58 PM  

    re question 2: one has to be able to define org fields (and their boundaries) in a non-vacuous and non-particularistic way before one can explain or model their structure. This hasn't happened yet.
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