Jo-Ellen Pozner

Organizations Gone Wild: The Causes, Processes, and Consequences of Organizational Misconduct

AbstractAlthough research on organizational misconduct has a long history and a recent increase in popularity, important questions are still unexplored. We review and critique research on misconduct with an emphasis on organizational causes. In addition to reviewing some active areas of research, we also examine less‐trodden areas and make suggestions for their development. We find that the definition of misconduct is often implicit and the role of social‐control agents in identifying misconduct has been neglected, suggesting a need for more rigor in how researchers define the boundary of misconduct and measure the labeling of misconduct. The spread of misconduct within and among organizations has also seen relatively little attention, as has the spread of the consequences of misconduct, suggesting a need to examine diffusion of misconduct. Finally, organizational misconduct has been an effective context for testing theories on themes such as motivation, control, power, labeling, and status, and will cont...

Vox Populi: Resource Partitioning, Organizational Proliferation, and the Cultural Impact of the Insurgent Microradio Movement1

Research on social movements has emphasized the origins of cultural movements, but has said little about how they impact popular culture through the creation of new organizations. The production of culture perspective asserts that market concentration in cultural industries inhibits diversity, but is silent about how social movements challenging corporate capitalism spur organizational birth. Organizational ecology describes how market concentration triggers anti–mass production movements, but has not examined whether the diversity of new organizations alters consumer behavior. The authors integrate these literatures to analyze how low‐power FM (LPFM) radio stations arose in response to the domination of radio by corporate chains and investigate the impact of LPFM stations on radio listening. Implications for the study of social movements, organizational ecology, and the production of culture are outlined.

Fighting a Common Foe: Enmity, Identity and Collective Strategy

In this paper, we explore the conditions under which organizations that compete in both market and non-market domains might engage in collective strategy. We study low-power FM radio activists in the U.S., who employed a collective strategy both within and across geographic communities to gain the right to broadcast in low-power broadcast spectra. By comparing and contrasting two stages of the micro-radio movement, we argue that, under certain conditions, for collective strategy to be viable, organizations competing on the dimensions of both ideology and resources must recognize themselves as members of an identity group, based on their common struggle against a stronger, more salient enemy. We highlight the role of collective strategies in the processes of organizational ecology, and discuss the generalizability of our argument.

Paradise Sold: Resource Partitioning and the Organic Movement in the US Farming Industry

Resource partitioning theory maintains that in markets in which anti-mass-production cultural sentiments make producer identity relevant, there should be no direct competition between generalists and specialists. Nevertheless, anecdotal evidence suggests that after initial partitioning, such competition, and hence de-partitioning, is in some cases possible. We refine received insights of resource partitioning theory regarding the stability of niche markets, particularly those driven by identity movements, by introducing the notion that partitioning is a dynamic and even reversible process. Previous research has offered an answer to the question of why identity movements create partitioning: because they increase the dimensionality of the resource space and engender sanctioning of visible violations of the specialists’ organizational form identity. In contrast, we offer an answer to the question of how and when markets may partition in a stable way: by generating sharply defined specialist form identities whose definitional code includes limits to organizational growth. Identity movements are underpinned with mechanisms that can facilitate or inhibit market partitioning, depending on their ability to generate sharp specialist form identities. We illustrate our argument through the case of organic farming in the United States, with reference to prior work on micro-brews and micro-radio, and discuss implications for resource partitioning theory.

Vox Veritatis: Reply to Hart‐Brinson1

We have read with interest Hart-Brinson’s critical comment. We are disappointed that his comment is almost exclusively concerned with our analysis of application filing and success rates, and that he only fleetingly mentions our analysis of the cultural impact of low-power FM radio stations. A major thrust of our article was to show that a cultural social movement generates organizational density and diversity, and these products in turn alter the consumption of cultural goods. Hart-Brinson’s comment rests on the premise that we have not accounted for the regulatory power of the state, and thus our findings are flawed. This premise is iterated and reiterated as he argues that our findings are doubtful or spurious with a confidence that is inversely proportional to the evidence available to him. We are not sure why the role of the state should exclude a role for the social movement, as Hart-Brinson seems to assume. We are willing to treat it as an empirical question, however, and therefore subject his concerns to empirical tests. Tables 1– 3 (below) provide the results of our additional analyses and show that his concerns are unfounded. Hart-Brinson offers the following: (i) FCC rules severely limited opportunities to found LPFM radio stations in the largest metropolitan areas, making our findings on the applications rates spurious, (ii) the change in FCC rules between application rounds 2 and 3 makes our findings on applications and success rates spurious, and (iii) our data are contaminated by amended applications. He also raises two objections to our interpretation: (iv) applicant diversity was never a formal criterion of the FCC and could not have had any effects on success rates, and (v )L PFM applicants are not social movement participants, so discourse must be a consequence and not a cause of organization building. We start with his claims about our empirical findings and then turn to Hart-Brinson’s claims regarding interpretation.

Colin J. Bennett: The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of SurveillanceBennettColin J.. The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. 259 pp.

In the information age, most of us are aware that our movements on the Internet are easily monitored. To protect our privacy, we may set up fi rewalls, search for spyware, and remove cookies from our computers. We protect our personal information by hiding our passwords and changing them regularly, checking our credit reports for identity theft, and making sure that nobody is looking over our shoulders when we get money from the cash machine. Although such measures do a lot to make us feel safer, they remedy only a few of the issues that ought to concern us. The number of ways in which our personal data, our movements, our preferences, and our behaviors are monitored, aggregated, and marketed is stunning, according to Bennett, which should make us all grateful for the efforts of the groups he terms the “privacy advocates.” This book delves into the complex community of non-governmental organizations, governmental groups, and corporate interests that challenge the increasingly intrusive ways in which our personal lives are monitored, commoditized, and exploited for the various ends of corporate and government interests. With detailed accounts of the individuals and organizations involved in protecting our personal data, this book calls attention to and puts structure around a population of disparate organizations involved in a common cause with far-reaching implications.