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Over the past decade, a new structuralism has begun to emerge in organizational theory. This exciting new research program draws inspiration from the social structural tradition in sociology, but extends that tradition by more broadly conceptualizing social structure as comprised of broader cultural rules and meaning systems as well as material resources—revealing the subtleties of both overt and covert power. Building on the insights of Bourdieu and related work in social theory and cultural sociology, new structuralist empirical research focuses on concrete manifestations of culture in everyday practice and has pioneered the measurement of cultural aspects of social structure using a variety of relational methods. In this essay, we revisit mid-century social structural approaches to organizations, review the development of organization theory as a management subfield that increasingly focused on instrumental exchange, highlight key aspects of the new structuralism in organizational theory, and discuss promising new research directions.

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.

Experimentation is key in wicked situations; it provides small wins while keeping several options open for the future. The literature is, however, scarce on how experimentation is framed, a crucial aspect to the understanding of how actors identify and pursue experiments in situations that are constantly changing and lack a clear resolution. We address this gap by drawing on the concept of 'action frames' and deploying a comparative case study of nine cases in diverse contexts in which activists experimented with wicked problems. We find that activists pragmatically shy away from pursuing a permanent solution to focus instead on achieving small wins, diagnosing 'symptoms' rather than 'root causes' of problems, and 'working around' institutional constraints instead of directly 'confronting' them. This pragmatic action frame prompts them to initiate pilot experiments that involve trial-and-error and collective learning, and that sometimes scaffold into cumulative small wins. Reflecting on our findings, we build a model of how pragmatic action frames fuel distributed possibilities to experiment in wicked situations. Our model contributes to the literature on wicked problems by revealing how activists 'welcome' complexity instead of 'taming' it. We contribute to the literature on action frames by demonstrating how multiple viable pragmatic action frames are constructed iteratively without threatening an alternative, dominant frame. Lastly, we contribute to the literature on robust action by demonstrating how pragmatic action frames pave the way for distributed experimentation and by unpacking the core attributes that make 'robust actors' accepting of open-ended wayfinding journeys.