Sub‐theme 1: Back to the Future: History & Institutions Matter!

Convenors:
Giuseppe Delmestri Università degli studi di Bergamo
Luigi Moschera Università degli studi di Napoli “Parthenope”
Behlül Üsdiken Sabancı University Istanbul ‐ Turkey

Supporters:
Luca Solari
Peter Walgenbach
Filippo Wezel

Submission of papers: only through www.woa2011.it

14/03/2011 Paper Submission Deadline
18/04/2011 Notification of Acceptance and Reviews
16/05/2011 Final Paper Submission

Objectives:
World societies are shacked by unprecedented uncertainty and lack of knowledge as to which paths may pursued to support more equitable and sustainable economic recovery and growth. The idea that market incentives are the necessary and sufficient condition for economic governance has proved to be a limited “monoculture” (Ferraro et al., 2005). The needed seeds of variety in organizational forms and practices can be found along two tracks. One leads to the past, where discarded institutional arrangements can be revaluated and where the path‐dependent trajectories of the present situation can be traced. The second escorts us in places distant from the cultural and institutional features of Anglo‐American capitalism (the most studied and theorized form) to rediscover cultures and institutions considered outdated as ways to organize economic activity, like families, guilds, bureaucracies, cooperatives, or the state. We contend that the redefinition of organization theory as a realistic and pragmatic design theory (Greenwood & Miller, 2010) needs addressing the roles of history, culture and institutions as central elements in studying actors, organizations, populations of organizations and fields.

Themes and methodologies:
Some of the possible questions addressed by studies submitted to this track are:

• How can quantitative longitudinal studies be integrated with historical approaches?
• How can historical studies help us to avoid the paradox of embedded agency with regard to institutional entrepreneurship?
• What is the role of heroic individuals in comparison to wider social forces in shaping new organizational forms?
• How do routines and corporate culture interact in shaping organizational evolution?
• How do fields evolve? How do the historical conditions at their inception affect their future evolution?
• How are market constructed and how do product categories come to be taken for granted?
• How do social categories (practices, organizational forms, products, technologies) become legitimated and taken for granted?

We are interested in studies that analyze either historically or comparatively actual organizational forms and practices (Üsdiken & Kieser, 2004). We are open both to quantitative longitudinal and to case study designs, that use a variety of related theoretical lenses such as new institutionalism (Ansari et al., 2010; Temple & Walgenbach, 2007), institutional logics theory (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999), organizational ecology (Wezel & Lomi, 2003), the world polity approach (Zelner et al., 2009), path‐dependency (Sydow et al., 2009), to cite the most obvious ones.

Keywords
New institutionalism, organizational ecology, path‐dependence, longitudinal studies

Literature
Ansari, S., P. C. Fiss, and E. J. Zajac, 2010. Made to fit: how practices vary as they diffuse. Academy of Management Review, 35/1, 67–92.
Ferraro, F., Pfeffer, J. and Sutton, R. 2005. Economics language and assumptions: how theories can become self‐fulfilling. Academy of Management Review 30/1, 8‐24.
Greenwood, R., Miller, D. 2010. Tackling design anew: getting back to the heart of organization theory. Academy of Management Perspectives, November, 78‐88.
Sydow J., Schreyögg G., Koch J. 2009. Organizational Path Dependence: Opening the Black Box. Academy of Management Review, 34/4, 689‐709.
Tempel, A., Walgenbach, P. 2007. Global standardization of organizational forms and management practices? What new institutionalism and the business‐systems approach can learn from each other. Journal of Management Studies, 44/1, 1‐24.
Thornton P.H., Ocasio W. 1999. Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958–1990, American Journal of Sociology, 105, 801‐843.
Üsdiken, B., Kieser, A. 2004. Introduction: History in Organization Studies. Business History, 46, 321‐330.
Wezel, F.C. & Lomi, A. 2003. The organizational advantage of nations: an ecological perspective on the evolution of the motorcycle industry in Belgium, Italy and Japan, 1894‐1993. In Baum, J.A.C.
& Sorenson, O. (Eds.), Geography and strategy. Advances in Strategic Management, 20: 359‐392. Greenwich CT: Jai Press.
Zelner, B.A., Henisz, W.J., Holburn, G.L.F. 2009. Contentious implementation and retrenchment in Neoliberal policy reform: the global electric power industry, 1989‐2001. Administrative Science Quarterly, 54/3: 379‐412.