About the Course:

Organizations provide the context for most of our daily lives - just think of all the organizations to which you belong or under whose domain you fall. As a result, much of sociological inquiry either implicitly or explicitly involves organizations: social movements spawn voluntary organizations, the criminal justice system coordinates prisons, health care is delivered via hospitals and clinics, and socialization takes place in schools. The purpose of this course is to provide students with an overview of the sociological study of organizations and will begin with an overview of organizational theory. We will then examine a "micro" approach focusing on the behaviors and experiences of individuals and the division of labor within productive organizations. Our level of analysis will gradually become more "macro," moving up to the internal structure of organizations, to organizations within their social contexts including environments, other organizations, and social institutions. The last section of the course will emphasize recent social network perspectives in organizational analysis by examining relationships both within (" intra-") and between ("inter-) organizations.

Course Requirements:

The course will be organized as a graduate seminar: the point to read, think and discuss topics in depth. To have a successful seminar, everyone must be prepared and participate. (Keep in mind that it is perfectly acceptable to participate in class by asking questions about the readings. If you always understand everything you read the first time through, then you're a lot smarter than I am!)

To ensure that everyone is prepared, every week I will give you a question about the readings for the following class session (twelve in total). You will then write a short paper (2-3 pages) discussing the question, which must be typed, double-spaced, and include appropriate citations. There will be a total of twelve of these papers, and they are due at the beginning of class: both you and your paper must be in the room or you will not get credit. Late papers will not be accepted. In other words, you will not get credit if you come to class without your paper already written nor if you skip class to write the paper and then turn it in.

Depending on the number of students enrolled, you will each also lead class discussion at least once during the semester. This means presenting a brief summary (5 minutes or less) of the readings at the beginning of class and preparing a list of questions to provoke discussion of the readings.

Each paper will be worth 8% of your final grade, but I will drop your lowest paper grade, so eleven papers are worth 88% total. (Note that this means you can miss one paper without hurting your grade.) Leading discussion(s) as scheduled will be worth 8% of your final grade, with the remaining 4% for participation in class. You are not required to write a long seminar paper. (Thank you gifts may be delivered to Faner 3425! tee hee)

Texts and Other Readings

Two required texts:

Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1990. Information and Organizations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Knoke, David. 2001. Changing Organizations: Business Networks in the New Political Economy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

One optional text:

Clegg, Stewart R. and Cynthia Hardy, eds. 1999. Studying Organization: Theory & Method. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Additional required readings:

Bielby, William T. and Denise D. Bielby. 1999. "Organizational Mediation of Project-Based Labor Markets: Talent Agencies and the Careers of Screenwriters." American Sociological Review 64(1):64-85.

Braverman, Harry. 1974. "Labor and Monopoly Capital, Chapters 3, 4 and 9." Pp. 70-123, 187-235 in Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

Burt, Ronald S. 1997. "The Contingent Value of Social Capital." Administrative Science Quarterly 42:339-65.

Carroll, Glenn. 1985. "Concentration and Specialization: Dynamics of Niche Width in Populations of Organizations." American Journal of Sociology 90:1262-83.

DiMaggio, Paul. 1977. "Market Structure, the Creative Process, and Popular Culture: Toward an Organizational Reinterpretation of Mass-Culture Theory." Journal of Popular Culture 11:436-52.

Emerson, Richard M. 1962. "Power-Dependence Relations." American Sociological Review 27:31-41.

Fligstein, Neil. 1985. "Spread of the Multidivisional Form." American Sociological Review 50(3):377-91.

Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology 78(6):1360-80.

Granovetter, Mark S. 1985. "Economic Action and Social Structures: The Problem of Embeddedness." American Journal of Sociology 91(3):481-510.

Hannan, Michael T. and John Freeman. 1977. "The Population Ecology of Organizations." American Journal of Sociology 82(5):929-64.

Hirsch, Paul M. 1972. "Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industy Systems." American Journal of Sociology 77(4):639-59.

Jepperson, Ronald L. 1991. "Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism." Pp. 143-63 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Leblibici, Huseyin, Gerald Salancik, Anne Copay, and Tom King. 1991. "Institutional Change and the Transformation of Interorganizational Fields: An Organizational History of the U.S. Radio Broadcasting Industry." Administrative Science Quarterly 36(3):333-63.

Mizruchi, Mark S. 1996. "What Do Interlocks Do? An Analysis, Critique, and Assessment of Research on Interlocking Directorates." Annual Review of Sociology 22:271-98.

Peterson, Richard A. and David G. Berger. 1975. "Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music." American Sociological Review 40(2):158-73.

Popielarz, Pamela A. and J. M. McPherson. 1995. "On the Edge or in Between: Niche Position, Niche Overlap, and the Duration of Voluntary Association Memberships." American Journal of Sociology 101(3):698-720.

Powell, Walter W. 1990. "Neither Market Nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organizations." Pp. 295-336 in Research in 0rganizational Behavior, vol. 12, eds. Barry M. Staw and Larry L. Cummings. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Powell, Walter W. and Paul DiMaggio. 1991. "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields." Pp. 63-82 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1959. "Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production." Administrative Science Quarterly 4(2):168-87.

Uzzi, Brian. 1997. "Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness." Administrative Science Quarterly 42:35-67.

Walsh, John P. 1993. Supermarkets Transformed: Understanding Organizational and Technological Innovations. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Williamson, Oliver E. 1981. "The Economics of Organization: the Transaction Cost Approach." American Journal of Sociology 87:548-77.
 

Schedule of Readings and Topics

8/20	Course Introduction
Reading	Stinchcombe: Chapter 1 Knoke: Chapters 1, 2, 3
8/27	Organizations and Their Environments Summary of Organization Theories
Reading	Stinchcombe: Chapter 2 Braverman: Chapters 3, 4, 5, 9
9/10	Work and the Division of Labor
Reading	Stinchcombe: Chapter 7 Knoke: Chapter 5 Williamson 1981
9/17	The Labor Contract
Reading	Stinchcombe: Chapters 4 Stinchcombe 1959 DiMaggio 1977
9/24	Structures Within Organizations
Reading	Stinchcombe: Chapter 3, 6 Hirsch 1972 Emerson 1962
10/1	Organizational Fields
Reading	Stinchcombe: Chapter 5 Peterson and Berger 1975 Walsh: Chapter 1
10/8	Innovation and Organizations
Reading	Walsh: Chapters 3,4 Stinchcombe: Chapters 9, 10
10/15	Case Studies: Higher Education and Supermarkets
Reading	Hannan and Freeman 1977 Carroll 1985 Popielarz and McPherson 1995
10/22	Organizational Ecology
Reading	Jepperson 1991 Powell and DiMaggio 1991 Fligstein 1985 Leblibici et al 1991
11/5	Institutional Theory
Reading	Knoke: Chapter 6, Appendix Granovetter 1973 Burt 1997
11/12	Intra-Organizational Networks
Reading	Knoke: Chapter 4 Powell 1990 Bielby and Bielby 1999
11/19	Inter-Organizational Networks
Reading	Mizruchi 1996 Granovetter 1985 Uzzi 1997
11/26	Embeddedness
Reading	??????????
12/3	??????????