HOORCOLLEGES ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIETY
Hoorcollege 1: Introduction
What are organizations?
- Purposefully created entities
o (common) goal
o (relatively) continuous existence
- Has internal structure (formal & informal)
- Has external boundaries
o Distinguishes itself from environment
= broad definition
‘Institutions comprise regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements that together
with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life’
(Scott).
Dus volgens Scott hebben we 3 main pillars of institutions:
1. Regulative pillar; constraining and regularizing behavior.
- Rule setting, monitoring, sanctioning (formal and informal)
- Sanctioning is supported by rules and authority
2. Normative pillar; prescriptive / evaluative
- Normative systems include values and norms. Values; what is preferred or desired
and what are the standards? Norms; how things should be done, legitimate means
to pursue valued ends
3. Cultural-cognitive pillar; shared conceptions that constitute the nature of social
reality and create frames through which meaning is made.
- Main mechanism = sense-making
- Meanings, symbols, conceptions arise in interaction and are maintained and
transformed as they are employed to make sense of the stream of happening
- Symbols exist subjectively as mental representations, but also as systems
objective and external to actors
Institutions are layered.
Institutionalization; ‘process and the outcomes of the process in which social activities
become regularized and routinized as stable, social-structural features’. Three pillars of
institutions; regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive.
3 main mechanisms of institutionalizations:
1. Increasing (economic) returns
High setup costs of new approaches
Learning and habituation
Coordination advantage
Adaptive expectations of newcomers
2. Increasing commitment
, To institutionalize is ‘to infuse with value’ beyond the technical requirements of
the task at hand
Beyond installing formal structures, the process of ‘thick’ institutionalization
(cumulative process) occurs.
3. Increasing objectification
Processes by which meanings produced in social interaction ‘come to confront the
actor as a facticity outside of himself’
o Taken-for-grantedness; not questioning or even imagining alternatives
Hoorcollege 2: Persistence
The phenomenon and theory of imprinting: → When an individual or organization has a
sensitive period and is tested by the environment.
Sensitive period
Are temporally restricted and sensitive for environmental influences.
Organizational level: foundation & organizational transition.
Individual level: role transitions (new job / new study)
Cognitive unfreezing: ‘cognitive models that are challenged are replaced by scripts and
schema that are better aligned with the new environment.’
- Vulnerability / uncertainty cause imprinting
- Limited learning in non-sensitive periods
Source of imprinting (dingen die imprinting veroorzaken)
Economic & technological conditions
Institutional factors
Individuals
Definitions of institutionalization:
1. Process and the outcomes of the process in which social activities become
regularized and routined as stable, social structural features.
2. Social patterns that, when chronically reproduced, owe their survival to relatively
self-activating social processes.
Organizational inconsistencies:
- Structural elements are only loosely linked to each other and to activities
- Rules are violated
- Decisions are often un-implemented
- If implemented, they have uncertain consequences
- Technologies are of problematic efficiency
- Evaluation and inspection systems are subverted or vague as to provide little
coordination
Cause: decoupling = organizations adapt formal practices from the environment
that decouple from what they do in practice
, Two types of decoupling:
Policy-practice decoupling
‘Elements of formal structure are manifestations of powerful
institutional rules which function as highly rationalized myths
that are binding on particular organizations.’’
- They specify in a rule-like way the appropriate means to
pursue technical purposes
- They are beyond the discretion of an individual
participant and organization; they are taken-for-granted
as legitimate, apart from evaluations on their impact on work outcomes.
Means-end decoupling
Rationalized environments: increasing pressure on organizations to implement, monitor,
and evaluate policies.
- Policies get increasingly implemented but the practices often loosely coupled to
the core production of the organization.
- Practices and activities are often loosely coupled with their intended outcomes.
Means-ends decoupling ontstaat doordat organisaties zich laten leiden door mythes van
causaliteit en controle, rationaliserende verklaringen gebruiken in plaats van
experimentele benaderingen en opereren in gefragmenteerde omgevingen met
tegenstrijdige en moeilijk meetbare doelen zoals ESG en CSR, die vaak losstaan van
kernproductiedoelen.
Consequences of means-end decoupling:
Growing internal complexity
Institutionalization
Creation of stakeholder groups who have interest
Why do organizations adopt institutional structures?
→ Incorporation of institutional elements legitimate externally
- Economic returns and commitment: confers legitimacy on the organization and
grant access to resources.
- Objectification: conformity to external elements reduces organizations’ experience
of uncertainty and violating (schommelingen)
What legitimates decoupling?
The logic of confidence and good faith:
o Maintaining face as common purpose in ceremonial management
o Participants and external constituents both cooperate
o In case discrepancies noted: strategies of avoidance, discretion and overlooking
o These strategies work and reinforce confidence in the myths that rationalize the
organization’ existence and the assumption that actors acted in good faith.
Hoorcollege 1: Introduction
What are organizations?
- Purposefully created entities
o (common) goal
o (relatively) continuous existence
- Has internal structure (formal & informal)
- Has external boundaries
o Distinguishes itself from environment
= broad definition
‘Institutions comprise regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements that together
with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life’
(Scott).
Dus volgens Scott hebben we 3 main pillars of institutions:
1. Regulative pillar; constraining and regularizing behavior.
- Rule setting, monitoring, sanctioning (formal and informal)
- Sanctioning is supported by rules and authority
2. Normative pillar; prescriptive / evaluative
- Normative systems include values and norms. Values; what is preferred or desired
and what are the standards? Norms; how things should be done, legitimate means
to pursue valued ends
3. Cultural-cognitive pillar; shared conceptions that constitute the nature of social
reality and create frames through which meaning is made.
- Main mechanism = sense-making
- Meanings, symbols, conceptions arise in interaction and are maintained and
transformed as they are employed to make sense of the stream of happening
- Symbols exist subjectively as mental representations, but also as systems
objective and external to actors
Institutions are layered.
Institutionalization; ‘process and the outcomes of the process in which social activities
become regularized and routinized as stable, social-structural features’. Three pillars of
institutions; regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive.
3 main mechanisms of institutionalizations:
1. Increasing (economic) returns
High setup costs of new approaches
Learning and habituation
Coordination advantage
Adaptive expectations of newcomers
2. Increasing commitment
, To institutionalize is ‘to infuse with value’ beyond the technical requirements of
the task at hand
Beyond installing formal structures, the process of ‘thick’ institutionalization
(cumulative process) occurs.
3. Increasing objectification
Processes by which meanings produced in social interaction ‘come to confront the
actor as a facticity outside of himself’
o Taken-for-grantedness; not questioning or even imagining alternatives
Hoorcollege 2: Persistence
The phenomenon and theory of imprinting: → When an individual or organization has a
sensitive period and is tested by the environment.
Sensitive period
Are temporally restricted and sensitive for environmental influences.
Organizational level: foundation & organizational transition.
Individual level: role transitions (new job / new study)
Cognitive unfreezing: ‘cognitive models that are challenged are replaced by scripts and
schema that are better aligned with the new environment.’
- Vulnerability / uncertainty cause imprinting
- Limited learning in non-sensitive periods
Source of imprinting (dingen die imprinting veroorzaken)
Economic & technological conditions
Institutional factors
Individuals
Definitions of institutionalization:
1. Process and the outcomes of the process in which social activities become
regularized and routined as stable, social structural features.
2. Social patterns that, when chronically reproduced, owe their survival to relatively
self-activating social processes.
Organizational inconsistencies:
- Structural elements are only loosely linked to each other and to activities
- Rules are violated
- Decisions are often un-implemented
- If implemented, they have uncertain consequences
- Technologies are of problematic efficiency
- Evaluation and inspection systems are subverted or vague as to provide little
coordination
Cause: decoupling = organizations adapt formal practices from the environment
that decouple from what they do in practice
, Two types of decoupling:
Policy-practice decoupling
‘Elements of formal structure are manifestations of powerful
institutional rules which function as highly rationalized myths
that are binding on particular organizations.’’
- They specify in a rule-like way the appropriate means to
pursue technical purposes
- They are beyond the discretion of an individual
participant and organization; they are taken-for-granted
as legitimate, apart from evaluations on their impact on work outcomes.
Means-end decoupling
Rationalized environments: increasing pressure on organizations to implement, monitor,
and evaluate policies.
- Policies get increasingly implemented but the practices often loosely coupled to
the core production of the organization.
- Practices and activities are often loosely coupled with their intended outcomes.
Means-ends decoupling ontstaat doordat organisaties zich laten leiden door mythes van
causaliteit en controle, rationaliserende verklaringen gebruiken in plaats van
experimentele benaderingen en opereren in gefragmenteerde omgevingen met
tegenstrijdige en moeilijk meetbare doelen zoals ESG en CSR, die vaak losstaan van
kernproductiedoelen.
Consequences of means-end decoupling:
Growing internal complexity
Institutionalization
Creation of stakeholder groups who have interest
Why do organizations adopt institutional structures?
→ Incorporation of institutional elements legitimate externally
- Economic returns and commitment: confers legitimacy on the organization and
grant access to resources.
- Objectification: conformity to external elements reduces organizations’ experience
of uncertainty and violating (schommelingen)
What legitimates decoupling?
The logic of confidence and good faith:
o Maintaining face as common purpose in ceremonial management
o Participants and external constituents both cooperate
o In case discrepancies noted: strategies of avoidance, discretion and overlooking
o These strategies work and reinforce confidence in the myths that rationalize the
organization’ existence and the assumption that actors acted in good faith.
