Prelims

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SOCIOLOGICAL THINKING IN CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP

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RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS

Series Editor: Michael Lounsbury

Recent Volumes:

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RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS ADVISORY BOARD

Series Editor

• Michael Lounsbury

  University of Alberta, Canada

RSO Advisory Board

• Howard E. Aldrich, University of North Carolina, USA

• Shaz Ansari, Cambridge University, UK

• Silvia Dorado Banacloche, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

• Christine Beckman, University of Southern California, USA

• Marya Besharov, Oxford University, UK

• Eva Boxenbaum, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

• Ed Carberry, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

• Lisa Cohen, McGill University, Canada

• Jeannette Colyvas, Northwestern University, USA

• Erica Coslor, University of Melbourne, Australia

• Gerald F. Davis, University of Michigan, USA

• Rich Dejordy, California State University, USA

• Rodolphe Durand, HEC Paris, France

• Robert Eberhart, University of San Diego, USA

• Fabrizio Ferraro, IESE Business School, Spain

• Peer Fiss, University of Southern California, USA

• Mary Ann Glynn, Boston College, USA

• Nina Granqvist, Aalto University School of Business, Finland

• Stine Grodal, Northeastern University, USA

• Markus A. Hoellerer, University of New South Wales, Australia

• Ruthanne Huising, emlyon business school, France

• Candace Jones, University of Edinburgh, UK

• Sarah Kaplan, University of Toronto, Canada

• Brayden G. King, Northwestern University, USA

• Matthew S. Kraatz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

• Tom Lawrence, Oxford University, UK

• Xiaowei Rose Luo, Insead, France

• Johanna Mair, Hertie School, Germany

• Christopher Marquis, Cambridge University, UK

• Renate Meyer, Vienna University, Austria

• William Ocasio, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

• Nelson Phillips, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

• Prateek Raj, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India

• Marc Schneiberg, Reed College, USA

• Marc-David Seidel, University of British Columbia, Canada

• Paul Spee, University of Queensland, Australia

• Paul Tracey, Cambridge University, UK

• Kerstin Sahlin, Uppsala University, Sweden

• Sarah Soule, Stanford University, USA

• Eero Vaara, University of Oxford, UK

• Marc Ventresca, University of Oxford, UK

• Maxim Voronov, York University, Canada

• Filippo Carlo Wezel USI Lugano, Switzerland

• Melissa Wooten, Rutgers University, USA

• April Wright, University of Warwick, UK

• Meng Zhao, Nanyang Business School & Renmin University, China

• Enying Zheng, Peking University, China

• Tammar B. Zilber, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Title Page

RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS - VOLUME 90

SOCIOLOGICAL THINKING IN CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP

EDITED BY

STEWART CLEGG

The University of Sydney, Australia

MICHAEL GROTHE-HAMMER

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

and

KATHIA SERRANO VELARDE

Heidelberg University, Germany

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2024

Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Stewart Clegg, Michael Grothe-Hammer, and Kathia Serrano Velarde.

Individual chapters © 2024 The authors.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this work (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83549-591-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-588-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-590-2 (Epub)

ISSN: 0733-558X (Series)

Dedication

Vale Barbara Czarniawska (December 2, 1948–April 7, 2024) organization scholar and ethnographer, who will be greatly missed by researchers in the sociology of organizations community, especially those who knew and loved not only her work but also the person.

Contents

About the Editors

Stewart Clegg is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Management and Organization Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, as well as Professor of Project Management at the University of Sydney. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant contemporary theorists on both power relations and organization studies.

Michael Grothe-Hammer is Associate Professor in Sociology (Organization and Technology) at the Department of Sociology and Political Science of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. He is also President of the Research Committee on Sociology of Organizations of the International Sociological Association.

Kathia Serrano Velarde is Professor of Sociology at the Max-Weber-Institute of Sociology at Heidelberg University, Germany. She is also Vice-President of the Research Committee on Sociology of Organizations of the International Sociological Association.

About the Contributors

Nadine Arnold, PhD in Sociology, is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Theory at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research centers on the organization and valuation of sustainable development efforts, paying particular attention to the role of standards and waste. Her recent work has been published in journals such as Critical Sociology, Environmental Policy and Governance, and International Sociology.

Christof Brandtner is an Assistant Professor of Social Innovation at EM Lyon Business School, a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar, and a Senior Research Fellow at Stanford’s Civic Life of Cities Lab. His research examines how institutions and organizations shape the emergence, diffusion, and implementation of social innovations in cities and their civil society. It has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Sociological Theory, Organization Studies, Socio-Economic Review, Urban Studies, Nature Energy, and the Journal of Business Ethics, among others. He received his PhD in Sociology from Stanford University in 2019 and was a Postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation.

Fagner Carniel is Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the State University of Maringá, Brazil. He has a PhD in Political Sociology from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil and the Professional Master’s in Sociology in National Network, Brazil. His expertise lies in the field of sociology of education, with a focus on themes related to the teaching of sociology, diversity, and educational inclusion. He has also investigated topics related to disability, biosociabilities, and biopower.

Grégoire Croidieu is Professor of Entrepreneurship at emlyon business school. He recently published a special issue in Strategic Organization on category and place co-edited with Candace Jones and Robert David.

Barbara Czarniawska was Professor Emerita at GRI, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Doctor honoris causa at Stockholm School of Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Helsinki School of Economics, Aalborg University, and Turku School of Economics. She was a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Royal Engineering Academy, the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg, Societas Scientiarum Finnica, and British Academy. She took a feminist and processual perspective on organizing, recently exploring such phenomena as the future of the welfare state, the robotization of work, and personnel management of spies. She was interested in methodology, especially in techniques of fieldwork and in the application of narratology to organization studies. She wrote in Polish, English, Swedish, and Italian; her texts have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Danish, German, and Russian.

Paul du Gay is Professor in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School, Professor and Director of Research Impact in the School of Business and Management at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. He has a particular interest in bureaucracy and public service, the ethics of public office-holding, and the history and continuing significance of “classical” organization theory. He is the author of, inter alia, Consumption and Identity at Work (Sage), In Praise of Bureaucracy: Weber/Organisation/Ethics (Sage), Organizing Identity: Persons and Organisations “After Theory” (Sage), For Formal Organisation: The Past in the Present and Future of Organisation Theory (Oxford University Press, with Signe Vikkelsø), and For Public Service: State, Office and Ethics (Routledge, with Thomas Lopdrup Hjorth). His current research focuses on reason of state as a political morality for the present.

Fabien Foureault is a Sociologist, Associate Researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Organizations (Sciences Po) and a Consultant for works councils (Syndex). He specializes in economic sociology, organizations, and social networks. He has published on the financialization of the French economy and on financial elites in two books, several book chapters, and journal articles.

Jorid Hovden is Professor Emerita at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Her research has a main focus on the gendering of sport organizations, how gender power relations are done in sport policy and coaching, and the ways these discriminate and marginalize women.

Brayden G King is the Max McGraw Chair of Management and the Environment and a Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His research focuses on how social movement activists influence corporate social responsibility, organizational change, and legislative policymaking. His recent studies examine the change processes leading to improved corporate environmental and social sustainability. He has published research in the American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Organization Science, and numerous other scholarly journals. From 2012 until 2022, he was a Senior Editor at Organization Science. He has been a Guest Editor at Organization Studies and Research in the Sociology of Organizations.

Annelies Knoppers is Professor emerita at Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research focus is on the ways gender is done and undone in sport organizations, how these processes shape how women navigate these organizations, and how this gendering marginalizes them in many ways.

Krystal Laryea is a PhD candidate at Stanford University, where she is a member of the Civic Life of Cities Lab and the Ethnography Lab. Her research interests lie at the intersection of culture, identity, and institutions. She uses qualitative methods to examine the microfoundations of inclusion, integration, and equity in organizations and cities. Her work can be found in American Sociological Review, Sociological Theory, Mobilization, Qualitative Sociology, NVSQ, and Global Perspectives.

Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth is Associate Professor in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School. His research interests include the history of organization theory as well as contemporary and historical problematizations of bureaucratic expertise and the state. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Organization, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, Journal of Cultural Economy, Foucault Studies, and Ephemera. His most recent work is For Public Service: State, Office and Ethics, a book co-authored with Paul du Gay.

Bruno Luiz Americo, PhD in Management (UFES), including a period as a visiting research student (UTS), holds a Tenure-Track Professor position at the Academic Department of Management Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). He is also part of the faculty at the School of Government and Public Policy and at the Doctorate in Strategic Management at PUCP. His interests lie in the social sciences and organization studies.

Lucy V. Piggott is an Associate Professor within the Department of Sociology and Political Science (ISS) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Her research interests are broadly centered around equality, diversity, and inclusion in and through sport. This work has had a particular focus on various forms of sport organizations, including national and international sport organizations, esports organizations, and sport for development and peace organizations.

Walter W. Powell is Jacks Family Professor of Education (and) Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science, and Engineering and Communication at Stanford University, and an External Faculty Member of the Santa Fe Institute. His recent books include The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, with John F. Padgett (Princeton University Press) and The Nonprofit Sector, co-edited with Patricia Bromley (Stanford University Press).

Leopold Ringel is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University. Focusing on the relationship between institutions, fields, discourses, and practices, he has explored themes such as transparency, performance metrics, or expertise. His work has been published in Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, Ephemera, Higher Education, Organization Studies, and Politics and Governance.

Werner Schirmer works at the Brussels Institute for Social and Population Studies (BRISPO) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels VUB. He holds a PhD in Sociology from LMU Munich and a Docent title from Uppsala University. At BRISPO, he teaches courses on classical and contemporary social theory as well as modules on the link between digital technologies and social relations. He has written several articles, book chapters, and books applying Luhmannian systems theoretical thinking to topics such as organizations, interethnic relations, social work and social problems, inclusion/exclusion, international relations, priority setting in healthcare, and loneliness among older people. His current research focuses on the digitalization of everyday lives of older people. A special aspect of his research is the role of emotions in technology adoption and the possibilities and limitations of experiencing a sense of community online.

Mikaela Sundberg is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, and Director of Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research. She is the author of Fraternal Relations in Monasteries: The Laboratory of Love (Routledge), A Sociology of the Total Organization: Atomistic Unity in the French Foreign Legion (Routledge), and numerous articles in both general and specialized sociological journals, such as Sociology, Current Sociology, and Social Studies of Science. Her present research project “The trajectory of cause of death data: How certainty concerns shape knowledge on causes of death” explores the production of register data from cause of death determination and certification by physicians to registration at the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare.

Foreword: Research in the Sociology of Organizations

Research in the Sociology of Organizations (RSO) publishes cutting-edge empirical research and theoretical papers that seek to enhance our understanding of organizations and organizing as pervasive and fundamental aspects of society and economy. We seek provocative papers that push the frontiers of current conversations, that help to revive old ones, or that incubate and develop new perspectives. Given its successes in this regard, RSO has become an impactful and indispensable fount of knowledge for scholars interested in organizational phenomena and theories. RSO is indexed and ranks highly in Scopus/SCImago as well as in the Academic Journal Guide published by the Chartered Association of Business schools.

As one of the most vibrant areas in the social sciences, the sociology of organizations engages a plurality of empirical and theoretical approaches to enhance our understanding of the varied imperatives and challenges that these organizations and their organizers face. Of course, there is a diversity of formal and informal organizations – from for-profit entities to nonprofits, state and public agencies, social enterprises, communal forms of organizing, non-governmental associations, trade associations, publicly traded, family owned and managed, private firms – the list goes on! Organizations, moreover, can vary dramatically in size from small entrepreneurial ventures to large multinational conglomerates to international governing bodies such as the United Nations.

Empirical topics addressed by RSO include the formation, survival, and growth of organizations; collaboration and competition between organizations; the accumulation and management of resources and legitimacy; and how organizations or organizing efforts cope with a multitude of internal and external challenges and pressures. Particular interest is growing in the complexities of contemporary organizations as they cope with changing social expectations and as they seek to address societal problems related to corporate social responsibility, inequality, corruption and wrongdoing, and the challenge of new technologies. As a result, levels of analysis reach from the individual to the organization, industry, community and field, and even the nation-state or world society. Much research is multilevel and embraces both qualitative and quantitative forms of data.

Diverse theory is employed or constructed to enhance our understanding of these topics. While anchored in the discipline of sociology and the field of management, RSO also welcomes theoretical engagement that draws on other disciplinary conversations – such as those in political science or economics, as well as work from diverse philosophical traditions. RSO scholarship has helped push forward a plethora of theoretical conversations on institutions and institutional change, networks, practice, culture, power, inequality, social movements, categories, routines, organization design and change, configurational dynamics, and many other topics.

Each volume of RSO tends to be thematically focused on a particular empirical phenomenon (e.g., creative industries, multinational corporations, and entrepreneurship) or theoretical conversation (e.g., institutional logics, actors and agency, and microfoundations). The series publishes papers by junior as well as leading international scholars and embraces diversity on all dimensions. If you are scholar interested in organizations or organizing, I hope you find RSO to be an invaluable resource as you develop your work.

Professor Michael Lounsbury

Series Editor, Research in the Sociology of Organizations

Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurship & Innovation

University of Alberta