The Social Invention of Collective Actors
On the Rise of the Organization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3756326 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen (0000-0002-2332-5540, Copenhagen Business School), Frank Dobbins, Frank Dobbin (Princeton University) |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 431-443 |
| Publication date | 1997-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0002764297040004006 |
| OpenAlex | W3122849229 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 33 |
Since the middle of the 19th century, the formal organization has been constructed as a legitimate collective actor in and of itself. How did it rise to sit alongside the nation-state as one of the principal forms of collective action in modern society? The authors argue that the scientific epistemology of the Enlightenment provided a model in which the social world, like the natural world, was to be understood through the classification of forms and the enumeration of particular instantiations. Individuals deliberately created the modern organization by asserting a universal form through the symbolization of isomorphism and by enumerating individual identities through the symbolization of cultural identity. Neoinstitutional theory documents the first process, whereas organizational theory documents the second. The authors argue that these two theories highlight different aspects of a single process: the social invention of the organization as collective actor
Action (physics) · Aesthetics · Collective action · Collective identity · Collective memory · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Formal organization · Identity (music) · Isomorphism (crystallography) · Natural (archaeology) · Organizational theory · Political science · Principal (computer security) · Process (computing) · Social group · Social identity theory · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Accounting and Organizational Management · Computer Science · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy · Social Sciences and Governance
Interplay of institutional and cultural theories of organization
Die Akteure des soziologischen Neo-Institutionalismus
Optimal distinctiveness
Apologies in Racialized Organizations
Institutional processes of organizational culture
Shielding Idiosyncrasy from Isomorphic Pressures
Reflections on a Half-Century of Organizational Sociology
Social work professional organizations. Initial steps for filling a gap
Explaining Civil-Military Relations in New Democracies
In Search of Identity and Legitimation
Mission Statements and the Transformation of German Universities into Organizational Actors
International Film Festivals
Institutional structure
The second industrial divide
The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis
Meaning and Moral Order
Lineages of the Absolutist State
The fine line
The Expansion of the State
Negara
Varieties of Civil Religion
Postmodern? No, simply amodern! Steps towards an anthropology of science
Communities of Discourse
The visible hand
War and Peace
The Two Faces of Governance
How institutions think
Imagined communities
The Decline and Fall of the Conglomerate Firm in the 1980s
The Iron Cage Revisited
Primitive Classification (Routledge Revivals)
Leviathan and the Air-Pump
Organisational Theorists in a Society of Organisations
The Legalization of the Workplace
Equal Opportunity Law and the Construction of Internal Labor Markets
Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures
Market, Culture, and Authority
Institutionalized Organizations
A society of organizations
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,55 |
| Citation span | 2004 - 2026 (23) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |