Discipline-making and Organizational Permeability of the University: Discussing the Notion of Organizational Field

Abstract

Close interaction between universities, industries, and governments has given rise to hybrid organizations incorporating economic development alongside scientific research and higher education. We will approach this phenomenon and the related organization-theoretical problems by looking at two cases of discipline making to discuss the potential of the concept of organizational field introduced by the neoinstitutionalist school of organization theory. As this concept presumes the Bourdieusian theory of social fields, we will consider possibilities of reflective contesting of the states of doxa in discipline making in regard to organizational aspects of disciplinary boundaries in the university-centered system of higher education, its demarcation to business and schooling, as well as to the related ideology of professionalism and science policy. We will also comment on the Bourdieusian conceptuality inscribed in the neoinstitutionalist metaphor of organizational field from the perspective of systems theory inspired by Luhmann. This is because we believe that further development of the semantic focus in the problem of disciplinary boundaries would benefit from Luhmannian tools designed to grasp organizations as social systems that facilitate interrelations of differentiated function systems relevant for discipline making in current technoscience.

Citation

Kantasalmi, K. and Tuunainen, J. (2018), "Discipline-making and Organizational Permeability of the University: Discussing the Notion of Organizational Field", Toward Permeable Boundaries of Organizations? (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 57), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 331-359. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20180000057013