Institutionalization and Organizational Long-term Success
Journal Title: BAR: Brazilian Administration Review - Year 2007, Vol 4, Issue 2
Abstract
Institutionalization processes have an ambivalent effect on organizational long-term success. Even though they foster organizational stability and permanence, they also bring about rigidity and resistance to change. As a result, successful organizations are likely to lose their competitive advantage over time. The paper addresses this issue through the investigation of the institutionalization processes of two long-lived companies: General Electric, a firm that has been a long-term success and its rival, Westinghouse, which was broken up after eleven decades of existence. The longitudinal, multilevel analysis of firms and industry has identified two different modes of organizational institutionalization. The reactive mode gives rise to rigidity and change resistance, much like institutional theory predicts; the proactive mode, on the other hand, neutralizes those negative effects of institutionalization processes. In the reactive mode, structure predominates. In the proactive mode, agency plays a major role in organizational institutionalization, and in managing the organization’s relations with the environment, clearly contributing to environmental institutionalization.
Authors and Affiliations
Fleck, Denise
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP40409
- DOI -
- Views 248
- Downloads 0
Productivity Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in the Brazilian Processing Industry
The increasing importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) to international production has prompted considerable interest in its real effects on host economies all over the world. The aim of this study was investigat...
Post-acquisition Changes Beyond the Dyad: Power at the Net Level in Cross-Border Acquisitions
A common feature of the literature on post-acquisition changes is its dyadic feature, i.e. the emphasis is placed on the actors directly involved in the acquisition, often represented by the acquiree and the acquirer....
Gender Differences and Professional Identities in Health and Engineering
The objective of this study was to compare the professional identity perceptions among undergraduate students enrolled in predominantly female and male courses. The research method is cross-sectional and the sample con...
Improving Consumer Decisions: The Conscious Use of Primes as Performance Enhancers
Through this article we examine ways through which consumers can take advantage of marketers’ priming attempts and make better decisions. Specifically, we investigate what happens when individuals are made aware of pri...
Auditing Government-nonprofit Relations in the Brazilian Postreformist Context
Recent decades have been marked by a rising interaction between the State and nonprofits in order to address increasingly complex public issues. Government-nonprofit relations were guided by a complex and diverse legal...