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Institutional Environments And Resource Dependence: Sources Of Administrative Structure In Institutions Of Higher Education, Pamela S. Tolbert
Institutional Environments And Resource Dependence: Sources Of Administrative Structure In Institutions Of Higher Education, Pamela S. Tolbert
Pamela S Tolbert
Two theoretical perspectives are combined to explain the pattern of administrative offices in public and private institutions of higher education. The first perspective, resource dependence, is used to show that the need to ensure a stable flow of resources from external sources of support partially determines administrative differentiation. The second perspective, institutionalization, emphasizes the common understandings and social definitions of organizational behavior and structure considered appropriate and nonproblematic and suggests conditions under which dependency will and will not predict the number of administrative offices that manage funding relations. The results of the analyses indicate that dependence on nontraditional sources of …
Institutional Sources Of Organizational Culture In Major Law Firms, Pamela S. Tolbert
Institutional Sources Of Organizational Culture In Major Law Firms, Pamela S. Tolbert
Pamela S Tolbert
[Excerpt] A large body of research has been generated within the last few years on the forms and functions of organizational culture and on the consequences of culture for organizational control and effectiveness. Surprisingly little attention has been given, however, to the sources of organizational culture and, in particular, to the features of organizations that affect its maintenance and transmission. This chapter uses an institutionalization perspective to explore these issues.
The Institutionalization Of Institutional Theory, Pamela Tolbert, Lynn Zucker
The Institutionalization Of Institutional Theory, Pamela Tolbert, Lynn Zucker
Pamela S Tolbert
[Excerpt] Our primary aims in this effort are twofold: to clarify the independent theoretical contributions of institutional theory to analyses of organizations, and to develop this theoretical perspective further in order to enhance its use in empirical research. There is also a more general, more ambitious objective here, and that is to build a bridge between two distinct models of social actor that underlie most organizational analyses, which we refer to as a rational actor model and an institutional model. The former is premised on the assumption that individuals are constantly engaged in calculations of the costs and benefits of …
Institutionalization And Structuration: Studying The Links Between Action And Institution, Stephen R. Barley, Pamela S. Tolbert
Institutionalization And Structuration: Studying The Links Between Action And Institution, Stephen R. Barley, Pamela S. Tolbert
Pamela S Tolbert
Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because their models of institutionalization as a process are underdeveloped. Structuration theory, on the other hand, largely remains a process theory of such abstraction that it has generated few empirical studies. This paper discusses the similarities between the two theories, develops an argument for why a fusion of the two would enable institutional theory to …