The social construction of organizational knowledge: A study of the uses of coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mizruchi, MS; Fein, LC
• 署名单位: University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
• 刊物名称: ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-8392
• DOI: 10.2307/2667051
• 发表日期: 1999
• 页码: 653-683
• 关键词: INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT; MULTIDIVISIONAL FORM; POPULATION ECOLOGY; networks; corporations; PERSPECTIVE; diffusion; adoption; industry; mandate

摘要

Arguing that knowledge in the social sciences is socially constructed through the selective interpretation of major works, we examine the fate of a classic article in organizational theory, DiMaggio and Powell's 1983 essay on institutional isomorphism. We show that one aspect of this article, the discussion of mimetic isomorphism, has received attention disproportionate to its role in the essay. A detailed examination of 26 articles in which researchers attempted to operationalize various components of DiMaggio and Powell's model shows that measures used to capture one of their concepts could have served as valid measures of one of the others. Findings show that DiMaggio and Powell's thesis has become socially constructed, as authors have selectively appropriated aspects of the work that accord with prevalent discourse in the field, and that centrally located researchers in sociology and organizational behavior are more likely than other scholars to invoke this dominant interpretation of their article.