We'd like to alert you to the following PDW.
PDW: Rethinking the Role of Technology in Institutional Theory
Friday, August 8, 1-3 p.m., Anaheim Convention Center, 202A.
Organized by:
Sarah Kaplan
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Michael Lounsbury
University of Alberta School of Business
Neoinstitutionalists have aptly demonstrated how cognitive, normative and regulative forces facilitate organizational isomorphism across a wide variety of contexts (e.g., see Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). However, the development of much this body of work relied on a sharp distinction between technological/material factors and more cultural/institutional processes (Scott, 2001). This conceptual break is particularly vivid in neoinstitutional research on diffusion that emphasizes a two-stage process whereby early adopters are driven by technical considerations and later adopters imitate each other in a way that is decoupled from rational calculation (e.g. Tolbert & Zucker 1983). In many ways, this conceptual apparatus was reflective of the scholarship at the time that understood technology as a kind of obdurate, exogenous force that consequently shaped organizational structure (e.g., Woodward, 1965; Thompson, 1967).
However, more recent ethnographic accounts inside organizations have tried to provide more endogenous, structurationist accounts of technology that emphasize the social processes by which technologies emerge and become socially organized (e.g., Barley, 1986; Kaplan, 2007; Orlikowski, 2000). In this PDW, we aim to initiate a conversation about how institutional research can usefully contribute to and extend such contemporary efforts by shifting the level of analysis to the field in order to develop an understanding of how the development of technology importantly shapes and is shaped by broader institutional actors and processes (e.g., Lounsbury, Ventresca & Hirsch, 2003; Munir & Phillips, 2004; Zilber, 2006). By doing so, researchers may contribute to the development of a conceptualization of institutional dynamics that eschews a separation between technology and rationality on the one hand, and institutional and cultural processes on the other (see also Garud and Karnoe, 2001; Garud and Rappa, 1994; Hargadon & Douglas, 2001; Kaplan and Tripsas, 2008; Lounsbury, 2007; Zilber, 2002). We hope to highlight key opportunities and tensions in making this integration and use these to outline a research agenda.
This 2 hour PDW session will include comments by Raghu Garud, Andrew Hargadon and Tammar Zilber who will present some provocative ideas as thought starters for our discussion. Introductory talks and discussions will focus on identifying the key questions for research on technological and institutional dynamics. The aim is to be generative, facilitating the identification of important research questions, the construction of a new research program and set of collaborations.
Our tentative schedule is as follows:
Introduction to session (5 minutes)
Opening Remarks on Technology and Institutional Theory (3 people, 10 minutes each)
Roundtable discussions (45 minutes)
Reporting of Roundtable discussions (20 minutes)
Final Group Discussion (20 minutes)