Institutionalised Organisations: Formal Structures as Myths and Ceremony

Author(s): John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Student Id 1551282

1. INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND

In order to Organisations become part of the society and to be recognised they

have to be incorporated to complex businesses environment, and these
structures have to follow highly institutionalized rules. This is because the
complex network of organisations follow specific procedures, coming from
regulating entities, and the organisations have to control and coordinate their
activities by considering changes in marketing. In (Zucker, 1987), this
environmental behaviour is seen to institutional theories of organisations that
refer the adoption of legitimated elements, leading to isomorphism with the
institutional environment as great as the providence of great condition to
survive.

In todays complex network organisations, Social behaviour has to be included

as being an important component if institutional organisations intend to enrol
effectively and rationally formal structures. In fact the author had considered
that rational formal rules are crucial to generate other formal organisations
structures of controlling and coordination, although this can be considered as a
bureaucratic perspective of management.

2. LITERACTURE REVIEW

First of all, based on (Webers, 1930, 1946, 1947) the origins of bureaucratic
organisations as a result of markets centralised states were explored. And then
institutionalised rules as the classifications built in the modern society were
reflected on (Berger and Luckmann, 1967 p.54) which it was possible to identify
a potential gap about the exclusion of social behaviour and technological
potentials between formal and informal organisational practices.

The author also agreed with (Scott, 1975) that institutionalised organisations
theory can differ day-to-daily practices. This means that the incorporation of
rules ceremonially as myth to their structure can drastically offer them an illusion
becoming unsuccessful. In this context, the terms ceremony comes while
organisations adopt naturally these rules without excitation. Controversially,
from the convectional theory of institutional organisations, the adoption of these
legitimated elements leading to isomorphism with the institutional environment
can increase the probability of survival if and only if institutions consider the
development of new complex components from the global environment context.

The article reflects contexts about practices coming from social behaviours that
may return to more pragmatic actions. Recently, institutions are facing
problems with the technological development and social behaviours suggesting
randomly proposing changes to their approaches. Actually, the author refers
that an increase number of uncertainty environments is a reflection of pour
coordination as a result of the (non)-powerful institutional networks. Inspection
and evaluation are two fundamental functions that permit moving from classical
bureaucratic to modern and organic institutionalised organisations. In fact, the
article reflect about a gap between formal and informal organisations in which
the bureaucratisation process does not cover coordination and control on real-
time.

Because the need for coordination increases under these conditions, and
because formally coordinated work has competitive advantages, organizations
with rationalized formal structures tend to develop (Thompson 1967).

3. METHODOLOGY
The author conducted a conceptual research based from pioneer to modern studies
about bureaucratic process in formal organisations. Sequentially, he created and
managed 6 prepositions and he made some assumptions. Sequentially, some of the
prepositions were extended or crossed as follows on the expression: Preposition 1 to
Preposition 6, where Preposition 1b from Preposition 1, and Preposition 2a and 2b
from Preposition 1 and Preposition 2.

4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In general terms:

1. Different types of entities in the market have to be coordinated by

institutional rules, and the bureaucracy process is always varying as a
result of changes in global issues.

2. The activities organised by business domains tend, to survive from

uncertainty environments, create and maintain sub-domains.

3. Bureaucracy is proved as being the best model in order to launch new

centralised policies. Furthermore, organisations tend to construct an
effective competitive business environment.

Theoretically, these three points can contribute to organisational and

technological studies that include the social-side as a potential element to
analyse changes.

In Practice, centralised institutions may engage to a complex organisational

networks and continuously improve their internal and external processes.

5. REFLECTIVE CONCLUSION

5.1. Quality and Strength of the arguments

This can be considered as being an abstract concept that needs to be applied

to specific business domains. At this point of view, the term rationalized formal
structures might being seen as a result of the application of rational rules to
specific business domain or subdomain, as the author mentioned,
Institutionalised myths define new domains of rationalised activities. Firstly,
this assumption provides a reflection in how rational rules based on institutional
myths may generate or maintain an environment of competitive advantage.
Secondly, this also helps organisations to elaborate more precisely their
strategies and auto-evaluate their specific processes by comparing them to the
rational rules provided. The strategies provided may act as a guideline to the
specific business domain as a day-to-day routine. And thirdly, segmented social
behaviours easily contributes to specific business domains.

Rationalised institutional structures arise as a result of the society

modernisation. In this case, a tendency was identified by author in which
rational rules are positively correlated to the society expansion, the more social
aspects and innovations emerge, the more institutionalised organisations would
become. Some writers has considered this interaction between organisations
and the society as a part of an innovative process, where organisation can be
seen as a relational system of rules and the society as being a complex network
of users behaviours (community). (Geels, 2004), argued that societal
behaviour is a fundamental component of a systems of innovation. In fact, the
adoption of rational rules as being proposed as an innovation process by
institutionalised structures, can permit the conceptualisation or analysis of an
organic organisation.

Organisational control and coordination prosper and improve, as the author

referenced The idea here is that the more highly institutionalized the
environment, the more time and energy organizational elites devote to
managing their organization's public image and status. Furthermore,
environmental activities can improve in their performance and isomorphic
structures can be auto-replicated to a complex organisational network.

5.2. The style

Concepts of Information Systems and sociological were merged in order to
design the appropriate methodology to achieve the goals. This form of
conceptualisation is also useful to conduct researches that involve
technological and social science aspects in order to measure how specifics
behaviours can impact on specifics Information systems.
 5.3. The structure
The author started showing how institutional organisations can assume myths
and then how this might be adopted by other organisations ceremonially.

Firstly, the author explored chronologically from primordial to modern theories

about bureaucratization, and he identified a gap between formals structures
theory, and changes process in environmental context.

Secondly, he had to show that in order to coordinate and control activities it is

important to consider specifics business-domain whose might be affected by
specifics change process. In this session, a list of assumptions and prepositions
(Preposition1n) were presented to return the outcomes.

Thirdly, arguments showing that organisations assume institutionalised rules

and their anomalies between their structure and the daily-daily activities.

And lastly, the author summarised the main arguments and came out by
reflecting about research implications.

5.4. Objectives achieved

The relation between institutionalised organisations, rational regulations and
specific social context were provided (achieved). Although the application of
rational regulations depend on specific environment, social effectiveness of
isomorphic organisations were not explored.
References
Geels, F.W., 2004. From sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical
systems: Insights about dynamics and change from sociology and institutional
theory. Research policy, 33(6), pp.897-920.
Selznick, P., 1996. Institutionalism" old" and" new". Administrative science
quarterly, pp.270-277.
Zucker, L.G., 1987. Institutional theories of organization. Annual review of
sociology, 13, pp.443-464.