Lynne G. Zucker

The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence

Traditional approaches to institutionalization do not provide an adequate explanation of clultural persistence. A much more adequate explanation can be found in the ethnomethodological approach to institutionalization, defining acts which are both objective (potentially repeatable by other actors without changing the meaning) and exterior (intersubjectively defined so that they can be viewed as part of external reality) as highly institutionalized. Three levels of institutionalization were created in the autokinetic situation to permit examination of the effects of institutionalization on three aspects of cultural persistence: generational uniformity of cultural understandings, maintenance of these understandings, and resistance of these understandings to change. Three separate experiments were conducted to examine these aspects of cultural persistence. Strong support was foundfor the predictions that the greater the degree of institutionalization, the greater the generational uniformity, maintenance, and resistance to change of cultural understandings. Implications of these findings for earlier approaches to institutionalization are discussed.

Institutional Sources of Change in the Formal Structure of Organizations: The Diffusion of Civil Service Reform, 1880-1935

The authors are jointly responsible forthe theoretical argumentand analysis. M. Craig Brown suggested the topic of civil service reform. Maureen J. McConaghy, Nancy Brandon Tuma, Glenn R. Carroll, and P. Y Liu provided methodological advice, Sharon Stevens aided early computational work. Both of us are grateful to Phillip Bonacich for his advice throughout the research, and to Marshall W. Meyer, John W. Meyer, William G. Roy, Herman Turk, Richard A. Berk, David McFarland, Oscar Grusky, and Jeffrey Pfeffer fortheir helpful comments on an eariner draft. This paper investigates the diffusion and institutionalization of change in formal organization structure, using data on the adoption of civil service reform by cities. It is shown thatwhen civil service procedures are required bythe state, they diffuse rapidly and directly from the state to each city. When the procedures are not so legitimated, they diffuse gradually and the underlying sources of adoption change overtime. In the lattercase, early adoption of civil service by cities is related to internal organizational requirements, with city characteristics predicting adoption, while late adoption is related to institutional definitions of legitimate structural form, so that city characteristics no longer predict the adoption decision. Overall, the findings provide strong support for the argument that the adoption of a policy or program by an organization is importantly determined by the extent to which the measure is institutionalizedwhether by law or by gradual legitimation.

Present at the biotechnological revolution: transformation of technological identity for a large incumbent pharmaceutical firm

Abstract Management of successful incumbent firms experience difficulty in recognizing the need for, and effecting change in the firms technological identity after an externally generated shift in the industrys technological trajectory. Nonetheless, some large pharmaceutical firms have transformed their technological identity in drug discovery from a chemical/random screening to biological/drug design model. We report how one of the worlds most successful incumbents transformed. Technically sophisticated senior management championed the transformation. It was achieved primarily through hiring many new scientists embodying biotechnology; existing personnel acquired the expertise or left. Continual self-transformation is part of the corporate ethos. Some differences in incumbent and entrant technology remain: incumbents use a wider range of techniques consistent with their complementary assets. Publication and incentive compensation policies are driven by the need to attract and retain the best scientists. Professor-firm collaborations are ubiquitous, often non-public, and best identified in quantitative analyses by co-publishing. Collaborations with new biotechnology firms are used primarily to substitute for developing internal expertise judged of marginal value. No drug-discovery collaborations exist with other major incumbents. We identify another seven or eight incumbents similarly transforming as indicated by top scientific talent and patenting success.

Star Scientists, Innovation and Regional and National Immigration

We follow the careers 1981-2004 of 5401 star scientists listed in ISI HighlyCitedSM as most highly cited by their peers. Their number in a US region or a top-25 science and technology (S&T) country significantly increases the probability of firm entry in the S&T field in which they are working. Stars rather than their disembodied discoveries are key for high-tech entry. Stars become more concentrated over time, moving disproportionately from areas with few peers in their discipline to many, except for a countercurrent of some foreign-born American stars returning home. High impact articles and university articles all tend to diffuse. America has 62 percent of the worlds stars as residents, primarily because of its research universities which produce them. Migration plays a significant role in some developing countries.

Microinstitutionalism: Mapping a Research Agenda

Recently, scholars have begun to transform and expand institutional theory to a multi-level approach that explicitly incorporates the role of micro-processes. Although the emerging research stream ...

Permanently Failing Organizations.

Foreword - Paul DiMaggio Introduction Four Cases of Permanent Failure Performance and Persistence in Organizational Theory Performance and Persistence The Results of Research Toward a Theory of Permanent Failure Organizational Responses to Permanent Failure Permanent Failure and the Sociology of Organizations