Olga Suhomlinova

Economic Independence, Economic Status, and Empty Nest in Midlife Marital Disruption.

We examine the risk of separation or divorce later in the marital career from a family development perspective. With data from the [U.S.] National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women we use a hazards framework to estimate the effects of womens economic independence couples economic status and family life course factors on the risk of middle-age separation or divorce. Several dimensions of economic independence and economic status influence the risk of midlife marital disruption. Moreover the transition to empty nest influences the risk of marital disruption but the effect of empty nest depends on the duration of the marriage. This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. (EXCERPT)

The institutionalization of distributed leadership: A ‘Catch-22’ in English public services

Distributed leadership is promoted as being well suited to public service organizations because of their multiple goals, less pronounced managerial authority and presence of powerful professional groups. Drawing on qualitative evidence we analyse the complex process of the institutionalization of distributed leadership in English schools. Our analysis suggests that competing institutional forces simultaneously foster and stymie the adoption of distributed leadership. Consequently, the school principals find themselves in a classic Catch-22 situation, which they resolve by enacting a weak form of distributed leadership. Ironically, the implementation of distributed leadership is the most difficult in the schools located in socially deprived areas, that is, the very context where policy-makers expect distributed leadership to make the most impact. Moving beyond our specific case, we argue that distributed leadership, and leadership more generally, cannot be divorced from its institutional context and that the relative influence of divergent institutional forces depends upon the immediate organizational environment.

Toward a Model of Organizational Co-Evolution in Transition Economies

The paper presents a model of organization-environment co-evolution, which portrays the joint impact of organizational and environmental characteristics on organizational survival. The four organizational characteristics included in the model are: (a) control structure, (b) product strategy, (c) exchange strategy, and (d) distance to the market. The three environmental characteristics are: (a) control structures, (b) competitive structures, and (c) exchange structures. In line with the general co-evolutionary approach, the model highlights the interrelationship between micro and meso level phenomena, specifically, between firm-level adaptation and industry-level selection of organizational forms. The paper focuses on transition economies and uses the empirical evidence from these economies to illustrate the models potential. The model, however, is sufficiently general to be applied in other organizational environments.

Funnel of Interests: The Discursive Translation of Organizational Change

In this article, the authors examine the role of discourse in the implementation of organizational change. They develop the concept of the “funnel of interests” to describe the process through which the perceived goals, concerns, and interests of different actors are aligned with change. To illustrate the argument, the authors analyze organizational change in a U.K. public—private partnership and show how the creative use of discourse helps to “funnel” the perceived interests of different groups and thereby facilitate the implementation of change. In particular, the authors examine the role of change agents as “translators,” who use discourse to actively reconstruct and realign change as congruent with the recipient’s interests. The findings suggest that change agents need to act as a mediator, interpreting and reinterpreting the change, rather than as a passive intermediary that simply diffuses a fixed set of ideas and practices, letting them pass without modification. It was through translation that the change agents in this study helped to funnel the broad range of concerns expressed by the recipients in the required direction. This study thereby opens up a new research agenda that seeks to examine how interests and interest groups are constructed through discourse, rather than viewing interests as preexisting entities that are simply expressed in discourse.

Strong legacies and weak markets : Bulgarian State-owned enterprises during early transition

The authors examine the factors affecting the performance of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) during early transition to a market economy. Data come from a longitudinal study of a representative sample of Bulgarian SOEs for the period from 1989 (the last year under communism) to 1993 (three years after major macroeconomic shifts). They investigate how changes in authority structure, work organization, technology, marketing strategy, and organizational boundaries during these years affected organizational performance in 1993. They also assess the degree of path dependence in performance and the role of competitive industry conditions. Numerous organizational changes made by SOEs during early transition had little effect on performance. Yet organizational performance from 1989 to 1993 was highly path-dependent, although this dependence was mediated by the competitive conditions : stronger markets displayed less path dependence. Overall the results favor the interpretations derived from selected neo-institutional and ecological perspectives of organizational sociology over neoclassical economic interpretations

Redistribution Under State Socialism: A USSR and PRC Comparison

In the last four decades, important theoretical arguments have been developed to explain patterns of redistribution and social inequality under state socialism. Building on this literature, we compare and contrast patterns of redistribution in the two largest state socialist societies — the USSR and the PRC — on the eve of their transitions from state socialism. Our main goal is to link the theoretical ideas in the literature with the empirical evidence and to provide a systematic examination of the multiple channels of redistribution of economic resources (income and housing) in these two societies. Our findings show that high-rank officials have a significant and larger share of redistributive benefits. High-rank professionals appear to receive similar benefits. There is little differentiation in redistributive benefits among other occupational groups. Redistribution based on economic sectors is less salient and often not statistically discernible. Returns to education and work experience vary considerably across these two societal contexts, raising questions about their relevance to the principles of state socialist redistribution.

Property rules: State fragmentation, industry heterogeneity and property rights in the Russian oil industry, 1992—2006:

The study examines the interdependence between the state and organizations and develops a proposition that the fragmentation of state structure and industry heterogeneity (defined as the number of organizations and organizational forms) are mutually conducive. The investigation focuses on property rights as an important arena of state—organization interaction and explores how, through the development of rules regarding obJect, subJect, use, enforcement and transfer of property, the state and the industry shape each other. Case study analysis of the Russian oil industry in 1992—2006 shows how the property rights relations between the state and the oil industry affected the U-shaped traJectories of change both in the state structure (from increasing to decreasing fragmentation on spatial and functional dimensions) and in the industry structure (from increasing to decreasing heterogeneity).