Does Institutional Theory Need Redirecting?
回应Greenwood等人对制度理论的批评，既支持其关注组织核心的主张，又警告过度聚焦正式组织可能忽视其他组织模式，并指出放弃对相似性的分析可能偏离制度研究的根本目标。
Abstract G reenwood, Hinings and Whetten (2014) present two major criticisms of current institutional scholarship, and see need for a broad redirection: institutional organization theory, they argue, has lost sight of the claim to study organizations and, with its overwhelming focus on isomorphism and similarity, has fallen short on adequately theorizing differences across organizations. In our article, we offer support as well as a riposte. First, while we agree that the organizing of collective efforts needs to be at the core of organization research, we warn that focusing on formal organization – a rationalized cultural product itself – may direct attention away from studying alternative modes of organizing, and underestimates the dynamic developments that have transformed contemporary organizations into increasingly complex objects of inquiry. Second, we are concerned that, by abandoning the analysis of similarities in favour of differences, institutional theory may eventually lose sight of its pivotal quest: to study institutions.