William Ocasio

Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958-1990

This article examines the historical contingency of executive power and succession in the higher education publishing industry. We combine interview data with historical analysis to identify how institutional logics changed from an editorial to a market focus. Event history models are used to test for differences in the effects of these two institutional logics on the positional, relational, and economic determinants of executive succession. The quantitative findings indicate that a shift in logics led to different determinants of executive succession. Under an editorial logic, executive attention is directed to author‐editor relationships and internal growth, and executive succession is determined by organization size and structure. Under a market logic, executive attention is directed to issues of resource competition and acquisition growth, and executive succession is determined by the product market and the market for corporate control.

Attention to Attention

Organizational theory and research has increased attention to the determinants and consequences of attention in organizations. Attention is not, however, a unitary concept but is used differently in various metatheories: the behavioral theory of the firm, managerial cognition, issue selling, attention-based view, and ecology. At the level of the brain, neuroscientists have identified three varieties of attention: selective attention, executive attention, and vigilance. Attention is shaped by both top-down (i.e., schema-driven) and bottom-up (i.e., stimulus-driven) processes. Inspired by neuroscience research, I classify and compare three varieties of attention studied in organization science: attentional perspective (top-down), attentional engagement (combining top-down and bottom-up executive attention and vigilance), and attentional selection (the outcome of attentional processes). Based on research findings, I develop five propositions on how the varieties of attention in organization provide a theoretical alternative to theories of structural determinism or strategic choice, with a particular focus on the role of attention in explaining organizational adaptation and change.

Perspective---Neo-Carnegie: The Carnegie School's Past, Present, and Reconstructing for the Future

Cyert and Marchs (1963) A Behavioral Theory of the Firm and the broader Carnegie School form critical theoretical underpinnings for modern organization studies. Despite its impact, however, we suggest that researchers who rely on the Carnegie School have progressively lost touch with its defining commitment to a decision-centered view of organizations. Decision making has given way to learning, routines, and an increased focus on change and adaptation; the organizational level of analysis, although frequently invoked, has been largely supplanted by either a more micro or a more macro focus. In this paper, we argue for restoring the Schools original mission and perspective. Our proposal for how this overarching goal can be achieved encompasses three central points. First, we believe the School needs to resurrect a few select ideas that, despite their fundamental importance, have been neglected over time. Second, we believe there is a need for greater paradigmatic closure amongst the Schools central theoretical pillars. Loose coupling among such pillars might keep key insights on organizational decision making from emerging. Finally, there is the need to incorporate major developments that have been generated post-Carnegie School, both within organization theory and in the behavioral and social sciences more broadly. In particular, we point to the shift to more open systems perspectives on organizations, the conceptions of organizations being embedded in larger social contexts, and recent developments in the study of individual cognition.

The Behavioral Theory of the Firm: Assessment and Prospects

The Behavioral Theory of the Firm has had an enormous influence on organizational theory, strategic management, and neighboring fields of socio-scientific inquiry. Its central concepts have become ...

Institutionalized Action and Corporate Governance: The Reliance on Rules of CEO Succession

This paper follows an institutional theory of action in exploring the consequences of formal and informal rules on the chief executive officer (CEO) succession process. An analysis of the competing risks of insider versus outsider CEO succession in U.S. industrial corporations provides evidence that boards rely on both past precedents and formal internal labor markets for executive succession and the selection of insiders versus outsiders as CEOs. To exclude alternative explanations that view rules as epiphenomenal, I examine the moderating effects of performance, late CEO departures, the founders power, and board structure on reliance on rules. The results show substantial inertia in the rules of CEO succession, consistent with an institutionalized action perspective. The findings suggest that rules both enable and constrain board decision making.

The Circulation of Corporate Control: Selection of Functional Backgrounds of New CEOs in Large U.S. Manufacturing Firms, 1981–1992

We develop a conceptual model of the circulation of corporate control—the instability in formal authority at the top of large corporations. According to our model, chief executive officer (CEO) selection is both a political contest for the top executive position and an ideological struggle among members of the firms political coalition over defining the corporate agenda and strategy. We apply the model to analyze the selection of functional backgrounds of 275 new CEOs in large U.S. manufacturing firms from 1981 to 1992. Results show that the circulation of control adds to previous explanations based on strategic contingencies and institutional isomorphism. Furthermore, we find evidence of an ideological and political obsolescence of financial CEOs and a change in the strategic contingencies that previously favored finance and the financial conception of control. Results suggest that conceptions of control are best understood as styles, rather than institutions, as these conceptions are neither taken for granted nor isomorphic across industries or the manufacturing sector, but are subject to sectoral variation, contestation, and change.

Vocabularies and Vocabulary Structure: A New Approach Linking Categories, Practices, and Institutions

Organizational scholars have long used vocabularies, and with the rise of research on language, this work has grown. Yet the research drawing on vocabularies is wide ranging and not integrated. We review work on vocabularies from literatures on rhetoric, culture, cognition, and coordination. We integrate and extend this work on vocabularies, introducing the new concept of vocabulary structure to capture different aspects of vocabulary use that collectively explain how vocabularies yield meaningful categories. We also generate a cross-level model to link work on vocabularies at the level of social collectives with work on vocabulary use in situations. We illustrate the usefulness of vocabularies by showing how they help advance work on institutional logics. Vocabularies offer substantial opportunities for theoretical integration and novel extensions for organizational research and practice.

An Attention-Based Theory of Strategy Formulation: Linking Micro- and Macroperspectives in Strategy Processes

Macro- and microorganizational perspectives on strategy processes are typically treated as distinct lines of inquiry. This paper proposes an attention-based theory (March & Olsen, 1976; Ocasio, 1997) of strategy formulation processes to bridge both perspectives. In particular, it links evolutionary perspectives on strategy (Burgelman, 1991, 2002) and strategic choice (Child, 1972) perspectives on organizational and strategic decision making (Bower, 1970; Carter, 1971; Cyert & March, 1963; Frederickson, 1986). Our treatment of the strategy process extends theory by viewing strategy processes as assemblages of tightly and loosely coupled networks of operational and governance channels (Allison & Zelikow, 1999; Ocasio, 1997), strategy formulation as a fluid and distributed process, and environmental, organizational level and individual level forces as consequential. Like Lovas and Ghoshal (2000), we view strategy formulation as a process of guided evolution. Unlike Lovas and Ghoshal who view strategic intent as the objective function that guides evolution, we view strategy formulation processes as more fragmented and contested, with multiple foci of attention, rather than an explicit objective function, and both top-down and bottoms-up processes capable of generating changes in the strategic direction of the firm.

The Evolution of Collective Strategies among Organizations

Many organizations are made up of other organizations that have decided to act collectively as with research and development consortia, industrial alliances, trade associations, and formal political coalitions. These collective organizations can be characterized by their differing strategies: some are general in scope, while others specialize on a more narrow purpose. What explains the prevalence of generalism and specialism among collective organizations? We develop an ecological model in which collective organizations compete over member organizations. Assuming that an organization joins a collective when its objectives match that of the collective, our model predicts a generalism bias in the ecology of founding and growth among collective organizations. This outcome is predicted to be path dependent, however, emerging over time according to relatively minor differences in initial conditions. These predictions are supported in an analysis of founding and growth rates among US R&D consortia, and the model helps to account for the numbers, sizes, and strategic diversity of these consortia.

Strategy and commitments to institutional logics: Organizational heterogeneity in business models and governance

Theory and research on institutional pluralism and complexity provide an opportunity to re-examine a key question of strategy: the sources of organizational heterogeneity in the creation and capture of value. Concretely, we focus on the implications for value creation and capture in terms of organizations’ business models and governance strategies, respectively. We posit that strategic organizational choices are shaped by available institutional logics and theorize that greater institutional pluralism leads to increased heterogeneity—rather than isomorphism—in business models and governance strategies. As the mechanism for heterogeneity, we explain how pluralism leads to differentiated organizational commitments to distinct combinations and prioritizations of institutional logics. The article further examines how institutional complexity, wherein latent contradictions between logics become salient, provides opportunities for strategic change. We theorize that framing exposed contradictions as incompatible or paradoxical implies differentiated outcomes with respect to transformations in organizations’ business models and governance strategies.