Summer 5

Reading

DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160.

Background

Woody Powell is a Professor of Education, Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science and Engineering, and Communication at Stanford University (might as well throw in history and economics ). Powell is one of the central figures in contemporary studies of organizations, contributing significantly to our understanding of institutions and how they evolve in response to, and exert influence on, an organizational field.

Powell and Paul DiMaggio collaborated on a number of seminal pieces when they were both on the faculty at Yale. DiMaggio is currently a professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton. He did his undergraduate studies just up the road at Swarthmore, before pursuing his doctorate at Harvard. His current work focuses on social capital and social class.

This article explores factors that influence isomorphism and the impact of isomorphism on organizations.

Questions

1. Contrast DiMaggio and Powell’s perspective on the causes of bureaucratization with Weber’s perspective.

2. The authors discuss three isomorphic mechanisms.

1. Define each of these mechanisms.

2. Provide examples from education for each of these mechanisms.

3. Choose one of the “A” hypotheses and describe how you might investigate its veracity in an educational setting.

4. Choose one of the “B” hypotheses and describe how you might investigate its veracity in an educational setting.

5. Describe the authors’ response to this question: “How can it be that the confused and contentious bumblers that populate the pages of organizational case studies and theories combine to construct the elaborate and well-proportioned social edifice that macrotheorists describe?” (p. 156, bottom).

Reading

Rowan, B., & Miskel, C. G. (1999). Institutional theory and the study of educational organizations. In Handbook of research on educational administration: A project of the American Educational Research Association (Vol. 2, pp. 359–383).

Background

Brian Rowan did his graduate studies at Stanford with Dick Scott, whose work we read in the first week of the course and will read again in a few weeks. He is currently a professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. Rowan’s research focuses on the organization and management of schooling, in particular the relationship between policy systems and what happens in classrooms. Cecil Miskel is a professor emeritus and former Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan. Miskel’s oeuvre includes the study of school organization, administration, and educational policy analysis. He is also the author of the most popular textbook on educational administration. Often in conjunction with Rowan, Miskel published a number of seminal works regarding reading policy—efforts that were extended in the Coburn piece we read last week.

This chapter is from a handbook that reviews the research on the administration of schooling. Handbooks of this type provide convenient summaries of a broad swath of the literature. The first part of the chapter summarizes the evolution of the organizational literature, including a number of the articles that we have already read. The authors then apply institutional theory to educational settings. [Apologies for the annotations that appear in some portions of the text.]

Questions

6. Discuss how institutional theory explicates the tension between conformity and efficiency.

7. Describe some of the evidence that the authors marshal to support the claim that the organization of education has become institutionalized. (Hint: start on page 367, right-hand column.)

8. Describe the relationship between politics and markets in education. Provide an example from your organization.

9. Describe several of the impacts of institutionalized schooling on students.

Reading

Coburn, C. E. (2004). Beyond decoupling: Rethinking the relationship between the institutional environment and the classroom. Sociology of Education, 77(3), 211–244.

Background

Cynthia Coburn is a Stanford graduate, was at University of Pittsburgh briefly, and then worked for many years at UC Berkeley, where she was my most trusted advisor and colleague. Coburn is currently a Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Her research examines a range of organizational phenomena including, in the case of this article, the fate of policies as they wend their way from federal and state policymakers to local education units to districts to schools, ultimately landing in classrooms.

This article pushes back on Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) and Orton and Weick’s (1990) arguments regarding decoupling. Coburn marshals evidence from reading policy to demonstrate that the process is more nuanced than previously described. [This is a long paper; take your time, but also feel free to skim some of the methods.]

Questions

10. Coburn reviews a large amount of literature in the opening pages—why is this necessary for this particular paper?

11. Define sensemaking.

12. Briefly describe the possible responses to institutional pressures and give examples from your own experience.

13. Examine Table 2 on p. 228. Choose one of the rows and explain it in words.