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This work brings together empirical research and thematic commentaries which chart out research directions for politically-inflected studies of organizational and institutional change. The chapters give practical voice to the theoretical questions and research designs of an emerging agenda for organization theory that engages questions about broader social structure and organizations with theory in cultural analysis, stratification, and entrepreneurship. Cases include historical studies of the evolution of the fire insurance industry in the 19th century, studies of the organizational vitality of contemporary evangelical Protestantism, the emergence of gay and lesbian identity organizations, challenges in the institutional structuring of the mutual fund industry the post-Soviet Russia, stratification and status organizing processes in entrepreneurial organizations, studies of social movements and organizations, both external to and inside of organizations

The global economic, political and social landscape underwent a remarkable transformation in the latter half of the twentieth century (Giddens 1984, 1990; Hirst & Thompson 1996; Boli and Thomas, 1999; Crori et al 2003; see also Foucault 1970, 1979 on general epistemic shifts). These changes had an impact on many aspects of economic and social life. One of the most profound developments has been the proliferation of transnational organizing through formal structures. The extraordinary growth in global voluntary associations, in particular, and the timing of the emergence of these associations in the global sphere have not yet been adaquately explained by existing theories in organizational analysis and other social sciences. Therefore, an alternative theoretical approach is required to understand how and why associational forms of organization of economic and social activiry have moved into the transnational space. In this chapter we shall address these concerns by looking at the historical emergence of global finance governance organizations and note the existence of archipelagos of agencies that govern finance in different ways. These voluntary associations include legally incorporated associations that exist within local legal jurisdictions as well as loosely structured networks and movements that are disembodied entities that exist and coordinate using electronic media. Incorporated assoviations display local rootedness with implications such as legal liability of its members, the right to own property and enter contracts, and the right to open a bank account and officially lodge a complaint. Much of the earlier work on understanding global organization focused on particular factors related to technology, knowledge or expertise, and worked within the framework of existing nation-state jurisdiction. However, the heterogeneirty within this global space reveals how, through the governance mechanism of global associetions, finance has evolved into a global concern embodying particular logics and following a specific historical trajectory.

This article uses a mid-century text to reengage a late-1970s concept to answer a new century question. The authors return to Alvin Gouldner's classic (1954) study Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy to reexamine the "coupling" concept in contemporary institutionalism in a way that engages the following question: How do new institutional forms emerge? Based on Gouldner's detailed observations of work in a gypsum mine, the authors argue that coupling processes are key mechanisms in the emergence of institutional forms. Examining coupling as a dynamic process and activity helps us to understand how the institution of bureaucracy emerged in the gypsum mine and interacted with previous social orders of authority and control. Gouldner's account of coupling at the mine is a story of formal and informal power struggles and active conflict over meaning, bringing the process of local institutional formation into sharp relief.

This paper develops the argument that institutional mechanisms support changes in organizational strategies in ways that contrast with the standard interpretation of institutional "iron cages" that pressure organizations to conform. We specify three institutional process mechanisms that support organizational change" dominant logic-consistent activity, external charters, and peer emulation" and we test these claims with longitudinal data on the emerging strategies in early U.S. intercollegiate athletics. We argue that the supporting institutional mechanisms affect the incorporation patterns of intercollegiate programs in basketball, ice hockey, and lacrosse over the period from the late nineteenth century to the present. The research strategy of examining the spread of three different sports programs, each a proxy for different strategies of resources and visibility, provides evidence on the comparative pattern of effects of the three institutional mechanisms. Results indicate that all three institutional support mechanisms affect the incorporation of the intercollegiate programs. Differences in the pattern of incorporation across the three strategies provide robust evidence for alternatives to a prevailing "iron cage" view of institutional pressures and constraints. These findings also reinforce the importance of specifying field-level mechanisms to supplement a focus on organization-level mechanisms.

By framing the economics versus environment debate as a mixed-motive situation, opportunities become visible that allow greater benefits to all interests in the debate. Yet, social, cultural, and institutional arrangements frame how these interests see these opportunities, creating a barrier to mixed-motive analyses. In this article, the authors use an institutional perspective to analyze how the economics versue environment debate emerges from institutions as presently structured. They present an analysis of its present framing based on three aspects of institutions—regulative, normative, and cognitive—and consider the prescriptive implications they expose at the managerial and organizational level of action. The authors conclude with an analysis of possible solutions to overcome them.

The authors motivate social capital arguments at the world-system level through the analysis of world-trade flows and nation status, 1965 to 1980, with specific attention to contextual changes in global trade and stratified effects on participation in trade within it. They generate measures of structural autonomy based on world-trade data from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Index and incorporate these measures into robust regression models of the determinants of nation status. The authors find support for the overall positive effects of structural autonomy on nation status in 1965 and 1970 but find that these effects dissipate by 1980. They then use quantile regressions to find that only high-status countries experience significant returns on structural autonomy in any of the 3 observation years. The authors combine network and institutional perspectives on trade to argue that changes in the context of world trade between 1965 and 1980 affect the benefits that social capital can reap and for whom.