Sociology of Organizations

1. Sociology of Organizations Institutional Processes & Organizational Fields: Understanding Culture

2. Organizational Fields • What do we mean by “field”? *The term is designed to clarify or to make “visible” what could be referred to as the “environment” of an organization

3. The Organizational Field • The concept of the Organizational field is used to make sense of how an organization is a part of a larger group of actors/participants who operate within a system of rules of competition or cooperation that produce ongoing social relationships

4. The “field” • Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1971, 1984) used the concept of field to refer to : “both the totality of actors and organizations involved in an arena of social or cultural production and the dynamic relationships among them”(DiMaggio, 1979: 1463) Bourdieu also suggests that “to think in terms of field is to thinkrelationally *for Bourdieu fields are arenas of conflict in which all players seek to advance their interests; some are able, for longer or shorter periods to impose their conception of the “rules of the game” on others

5. The Organizational Field • Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell were among the first (1983) to use the term “organizational field” to refer to : “organizations that in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies and other organizations that produce similar services or products” (1983:148)

6. Organizations and Culture: What is Culture?? • Culture is Dynamic • Culture is variable • Culture exhibits regularities that permit its analysis by the methods of science

7. Defining Culture • Culture is the instrument whereby the individual adjusts to his total setting, and gains the means for creative expression

8. Defining Culture • Extrasomatic and somatic means of adaptation passed on primarily (though not exclusively) through symbolic learning