No concept in the field of organization studies has been more promising than that of institutional logics and no concept has been more elusive, at times to the point of evanescence. The authors bring institutional logics down to earth, unpacking the concept, tracing its history and exploring its ambiguities, identifying its component parts, and giving each the close attention it deserves. This much-needed and well-conceived volume provides an invaluable service to students of institutions and organizational fields. (Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University )
The Institutional Logics Perspective is an essential road map to and program for the future development of theories of institutional logic. Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury offer a host of uncharted, under-theorized, unthought, and unexplored causal mechanisms linking the macro and the micro, practice and interaction, value and identity. The authors lay out the inter-institutional system, the doubleness of rationality, the cultural contingency of interest, the ideality of material practice, and the ways in which we have mistakenly assumed that institution effaces agency and hence politics. We are going to have to think and work this text for a while. (Roger O. Friedland, University College Santa Barbara )
Over the past generation, neoinstitutional theory has become perhaps the dominant perspective in the sociology of organizations. The institutional logics perspective has became an intriguing alternative that seeks to encompass and extend the insights of neoinstitutionalism to both lower and higher units of analysis. This book goes farther than any prior work in advancing the institutional logics perspective. (Gerald F. Davis, University of Michigan )
This book is a must-read. Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury take stock, in a poised and systematic manner, of what has been achieved so far by the Institutional Logics perspective. They also point to what remains to be done. Building on a rich heritage, the Institutional Logics perspective threads the path to new and exciting frontiers a multi-levels theory of institutions, the stabilization of solid micro-foundations, a refreshing return to history and the exploration of the dynamics of identities. The agenda is attractive and this book develops a highly useful road map. (Marie-Laure Djelic, ESSEC Business School )
Personnel economics, the use of economics for studying human resource issues, is becoming a standard course in business and economics departments around the world. Indeed, after being successfully introduced in North American business schools, the teaching of personnel economics is now growing in Europe and in the rest of the world. Yet, most of the traditional analysis of personnel economics assumes a perfectly competitive labour market, a situation in which wages are fully flexible and dismissals can take place at no cost. Such a setting is inappropriate for most European markets, where wage rigidity and wage compression are widespread phenomena, and where employment protection legislation is very stringent. Personnel Economics in Imperfect Labour Markets aims to describe key personnel issues when firms and human resource managers act in highly regulated labour markets. Written to be accessible to students, the book provides original answers to questions which have previously been left to specialized academic journals. Should hiring take place under temporary or permanent contracts? How can we provide compensation related incentives when minimum wages are binding?How de we solve the employment/hours trade-off? These questions and more are discussed within the text.
A New York roofer requests payment in cash. A Bogota car mechanic sets up "shop" on a quiet side street. Four Mexican immigrants assemble semiconductors in a San Diego home. A Leningrad doctor sells needed medicine to a desperate patient. All are part of a growing worldwide phenomenon that is widely known but little understood. The informal or underground economy is thriving today, not only in the Third World countries where it was first reported and studied but also in Eastern Europe and the developed nations of the West. The Informal Economy is the first book to bring together studies from all three of these settings and to integrate them into a coherent theoretical framework. Taking an international perspective, the authors dispel a number of misconceptions about the informal economy. They make clear, for instance, that it is not solely a province of the poor. Cutting across social strata, it reflects a political and economic realignment between employers and workers and a shift in the regulatory mission of the government. Throughout, the authors' theoretical observations serve not only to unify material from diverse sources but also to map out directions for further research.
This is the authoritative, compelling account of one of the most famous, consummate, and effective Senate investigations in modern Congressional history. From 1956 to 1959 the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (chaired by Sen. McClellan and guided by chief counsel Robert Kennedy) heard more than 1500 witnesses and uncovered a shocking story, proving that labor leaders, management, the underworld, and public officials, sometimes in combination, sometimes separately, had worked to cheat and intimidate the rank-and-file union members. These revelations resulted in convictions, tough labor reform legislation, and a public awareness of organized crimes insidious and corrosive influence. Writing crisply, with indignation but also with humor, Kennedy focuses on how unions are bought, sold, and sometimes stolen; how democracy actually operated in Jimmy Hoffas captive unions and what happened to the men who dared to oppose him; how Hoffa was tried on charges of attempting to plant a spy in the McClellan Committee; how an investigating committee works; how the Committee resisted external pressures, threats, and ploys to derail its efforts; and more. The Enemy Within is illuminated by firsthand knowledge and charged with the fire of personal conviction. With a new introduction by the chairman of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, this book remains a vivid testament to Robert Kennedys early commitment to equal justice for leaders and laborers alike.
Work and Authority in Industry analyzes how the entrepreneurial class responded to the challenge of creating, and later managing, an industrial work force in widely differing types of industrial societies: the United States, England, and Russia. Bendix's penetrating re-examination of an aspect of economic history largely taken for granted was first published in 1965. It has become a classic. His central notion, that the behavior of the capitalist class may be more important than the behavior of the working class in determining the course of events, is now widely accepted. The book explores industrialization, management, and ideological appeals; entrepreneurial ideologies in England's early phase of industrialization; entrepreneurial ideologies in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia; the bureaucratization of economic enterprises; and the American experience with industrialization. This essential text will interest those in the fields of political science, industrial relations, management studies, as well as comparative sociologists and historians.
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This collection of work by Lawrence Summers and colleagues Kim Clark, James Poterba, Gregory Mankiw, Julio Rotemberg, and Olivier Blanchard explores new theories of joblessness that could eventually explain why unemployment remains high despite relatively healthy economic growth. It is based on the notion that joblessness is an important, measurable, and definable concept of pervasive importance in modern economies. Understanding Unemployment contains a number of articles that have changed the way economists think about unemployment. These examine the burden of unemployment, the extent to which normal measures understate its consequences, its relationship to supply and demand factors, and the role of unions. Substantial introductory and concluding chapters present new and original material on the crucial facts that any theory of unemployment must grapple with, and the types of theories needed to accommodate the empirical facts of today's unemployment. Lawrence H. Summers is Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is editor of the series Tax Policy and the Economy.
Tim Field shares his unique insight into bullying, a major cause of stress and the common denominator of harassment, discrimination, prejudice, abuse, conflict and violence.
In "The System of Professions" Andrew Abbott explores central questions about the role of professions in modern life: Why should there be occupational groups controlling expert knowledge? Where and why did groups such as law and medicine achieve their power? Will professionalism spread throughout the occupational world? While most inquiries in this field study one profession at a time, Abbott here considers the system of professions as a whole. Through comparative and historical study of the professions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England, France, and America, Abbott builds a general theory of how and why professionals evolve.
Commercial sex is the occupation of a significant portion of the women of the world, providing economic support for millions of people and their families. Working at the Bar is the first-ever, long-term, longitudinal, in-depth study of a large sex work industry--and Thailand, the most prominent nation in the rapidly growing sex tourism industry, makes for an excellent case study. While previous works have provided brief glimpses of one group of workers studied from a particular point of view, author Thomas Steinfatt examines considerations of health, behavior, economics, morality, religion, and worker safety. The result of data gathered from thousands of workers and customers in Thailand over a period of twelve years, Working at the Bar covers all aspects of an industry that, although it does not conform to various Western ideals, is nevertheless enormously significant.
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