Similarity or Difference? The Relation between Structure and Strategy Isomorphism in Public Organizations
研究了丹麦市政当局中支出战略同构与结构同构的关系，发现两者呈倒U型关系，即组织在一个维度上越相似，在另一个维度上可能越独特，但需达到一定同构水平。
While the organizational structures and strategies of public organizations have attracted substantial research attention among public management scholars, little research has explored how these organizational core dimensions are interconnected and influenced by pressures for similarity. In this paper I address this topic by exploring the relation between expenditure strategy isomorphism and structure isomorphism in D anish municipalities. Different literatures suggest that organizations exist in concurrent pressures for being similar to and different from other organizations in their field of action. It is theorized that to meet this challenge organizations may substitute increased similarity on one core dimension for increased idiosyncrasy on another, but only after a certain level of isomorphism is reached. Results of quantitative analyses support this theory and show that an inverse U ‐shaped relation exists between expenditure strategy isomorphism and structure isomorphism in a longitudinal quantitative study of D anish municipalities.