Introduction to the Research Handbook on the

Sociology of Organizations
Mary Godwyn

Sociology is the study of human interaction within groups. Social change and social order are
the dual axes around which sociological inquiry revolves. Sociologists study small, intimate
groups including couples, families, and business partners, as well as large, unwieldy groups
such as nations, religious followers, and crime syndicates. Sociology of organizations is
a distinct field within sociology that examines how the structure of the group influences,
limits, and defines human interactions within a given organizational context. The literature and
schools of thought within sociology of organizations are vast and diverse. In this introduction,
I focus on the origin of the field and the continued tension between rational bureaucratic and
relational approaches.
Historically, the prioritization of organizations with rational bureaucratic structures directed
the field to analyses of large organizations such as governments and corporations. In
“Bureaucracy” (1924), Weber introduced a rational-bureaucratic perspective on organizations
and created a vehicle to apply sociological theory and methods. He postulated that the
efficiency and objectivity of formal, bureaucratic organizations was the cornerstone of
modernity: Weber writes:

Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehumanized,’ the more completely it
succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and
emotional elements which escape calculation. This is appraised as its special virtue by capitalism.
The more complicated and specialized modern culture becomes, the more its external supporting
apparatus demands the personally detached and strictly objective expert, in lieu of the lord of
older social structures who was moved by personal sympathy and favor … (Weber, 1924/1978,
pp. 214–216)

The emphasis on instrumental means-end calculation, the idea of decisions structured to

maximize benefit and minimize costs, and the assumption of an impersonal, non-emotional,
and therefore objective, basis for organizational structure implies a logical integrity and
resonates with the cultural assumptions of modern societies to such a degree that these ideas
feel familiar and seem commonsensical. Additional support for rational legitimacy comes
from the undeniable shortcomings of the other types of authority Weber discusses: traditional
and charismatic. Traditional authority emphasizes habit, convention, and established beliefs,
all anathema to the notions of individualism, progress, and mobility. Charismatic authority,
the adoration of a specific heroic individual, focuses on blind devotion and emotional rather
than cognitive assessment. The variability of traditional and charismatic authority precludes
universalization and replicability and therefore neither types can be systematized. Rather than
usher in modernity, traditional and charismatic authority evoke shadows of antiquity.
However certain Weber was that rational bureaucratic authority was the ultimate means
of control, the prospect left him pessimistic and on the verge of despair. Indeed, Weber had

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
2 Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

serious concerns about rational-bureaucratic legitimacy. One was that rationality is a contested
term. Weber writes:

It is a question of the specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture. Now by this term very
different things may be understood … there is, for example, rationalization of mystical contemplation,
that is of an attitude which, viewed from other departments of life, is specifically irrational, just as
much as there are rationalizations of economic life, of technique, of scientific research, or military
training, of law and administration. Furthermore, each one of these fields may be rationalized in terms
of very different ultimate values and ends, and what is rational from one point of view may well be
irrational from another. (Weber 1958/1904, p. 26)

Given the various definitions and meanings of rationality, Weber created a typology to capture
what he saw as two different, and opposing, kinds of rationality. Means-end rationality,
characteristic of formal and practical rationality (Clegg and Lounsbury, 2009, p. 126), is
associated with bureaucracies and similar to instrumentality: it is the means-end calculation
of how a result can be quickly and efficiently achieved (Collins, 1992, p. 5). Substantive
and theoretical rationality are holistic, reticular, value-driven rather than results-driven, and
recognize the interdependency of a wide range of objectives and perspectives (Clegg and
Lounsbury, 2009, p. 127).
Weber’s deep ambivalence about modernity is routinely de-emphasized as the association
between bureaucracy, modernity, and efficiency is consistent with the generally positive and
uncritical view of industrial progress during the early twentieth century. Similarly, Weber’s
distinction among types of rationality is often set aside by those who champion the superiority
of rational-bureaucratic organizations.
Referring to Weber’s three types of authority (rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic)
Clegg and Lounsbury argue that though “Weber is commonly construed as a theorist of
authority … in terms of the three types of Herrschaft … they are, in fact, types of domination”
(2009, p. 131). Therefore when rational-legal authority is accepted as legitimate in its
own terms, necessarily deriving its legitimacy from the ruled not from the ruling, then it is
“legitimated domination” (Clegg and Lounsbury, 2009, p. 130). Clegg and Lounsbury argue
that far from celebrating this conclusion, Weber believed that bureaucratic organizations
“would transform human interaction and behavior into a dreary, quasi-mechanization, bereft
of sensuality, spirit, and culture” (Clegg and Lounsbury 2009, p. 119).
Weber bitterly lamented the de-emphasis of the non-rational, spiritual origin of capitalism
and the seemingly inexorable rationalization and bureaucratization that came to define this
economic system and its influence on social interactions:

But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations needs its support no longer …
For this last stage of this cultural development, it might truly be said: ‘Specialists without spirit,
sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before
achieved.’ (Weber 1958/1904, pp. 181–182)

Many scholars in organizational studies cite Weber as the lead architect of the field, and,
despite his ambivalence, typically draw on the authority of his assertion that bureaucracy is
the superior organizational form. However, at most, Weber saw bureaucracy as emblematic
of a stage of cultural development associated with a particular population, and a stage he felt
could well lead to “purely mundane passions” and “mechanized petrification, embellished
with a sort of convulsive self-importance” (Weber 1958/1904, p. 182).

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
 Introduction 3

The rational-bureaucratic organizational model actively neglects the relational and

emotional aspects of organizations. In contrast to this rational paradigm, interactionist
approaches view organizations, including formal, corporate organizations, as associations
that provide members with a sense of connection, meaning, and identity. Mary Parker Follett,
a contemporary of Weber, uses the concept “circular behavior” (1925b, p. 105) and makes
a distinction between “power-with” and “power-over” (1925b, p. 101) to reject the ideas
that hierarchy and domination are inherent aspects of organizations and that efficiency is the
primary goal. Her interactionist approach perceives organizations as spaces of ongoing and
emerging relationships wherein people negotiate and construct mutually defined reality and
interdependent self-identities (Follett, 1925a). She writes:

The group must always dictate the modes of activity for the individual … The seeing of self as, with
all other selves, creating, demands a new attitude and a new activity … the fallacy of self-and-others
fades away and there is only self-in-and-through-others, only others so firmly rooted in the self and
so fruitfully growing there that sundering is impossible. (Follett, 1918, p. 7)1

The common elements among interactionist perspectives are a qualitative approach that
stresses the subjective experience of actors, an acknowledgment of an emerging, negotiated
reality, and the idea that there is no pre-social self, but a self that is continually constructed
through interactions with others. That is to say, a self that is “reflexive, that can be both
a subject and an object, and that can be an object of [study to] itself” (Collins, 1992, p. 256).
“As Goffman puts it, social interaction is a circular process in which everyone gives another an
ideal self and receives back in turn their own self from other people” (Collins, 1992, p. 256).
Follett posits a circular response at all levels of interaction, that “we are creating each other
all the time” (Follett, 1924/1995, p. 41). This mutuality of self, central to Follett’s interactionist
perspective and evident later in the work of Mead and Goffman, serves as a basis to deny
that hierarchy and domination are superior methods of achieving control in organizations.
Moreover, Follett also rejects the dualistic construction of self and other, and she explains
how a non-coercive and progressive integration of ideas can be reached on an organizational
level. Her concepts of “a third way” and “integration” replace the dichotomy of domination
and subordination. Follett therefore embraces conflict and conflict resolution as creative and
constructive forces in organizations:

Integration involves invention, the finding of the third way, and the clever thing is to recognize
this and not to let one’s thinking stay within the boundaries of two alternatives which are mutually
exclusive. In other words, never let yourself be bullied by an either-or situation. Never think you must
agree to either this or that. Find a third way. (Follett, 1949/1995, p. 189)

Both Weber and Follett concentrated on formal organizations. Michael Handel acknowledges
that the very definition of the term organization is disputed. Organizations are commonly
perceived as deliberately planned groups with specific goals that are designed to outlive the
participation of any one individual operating with a set of rules and a determined structure
(Handel, 2003, p. 1). The rational-bureaucratic approach to the study of organizations resonates

1
For those interested in more detail, the contrast between the rational and interactionist paradigms
in sociology of organizations is expounded upon in Sociology of Organizations: Structures and
Relationships (Godwyn and Gittell, 2012).

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
4 Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

with such a definition and may perhaps, inadvertently, neglect or devalue organizations that
do not fulfill those conditions. Moreover, the valuation of formal organizational structures
that manifest the rational bureaucratic approach might miss the informal, highly fluid, social
interactions that reflect the variability of power and perspectives among members, which in
turn complicates the definition and achievement of organizational goals. Handel refers to the
social interactions as a “shadow structure that has a life of its own” (2003, p. 3), but theories
undergirded with an interactionist approach hold that the informal social interactions are not
secondary to or subsumed under the formal organizational structures: instead each realm
equally defines and contributes to the other.
As in the field at large, the research in this volume represents a wide variety of ways of
studying organizations. Most contemporary researchers use an array of methodological
and theoretical approaches in their scholarship that situates current studies in sociology of
organizations far from the original dichotomy of rational and relational. In all organizations
from spontaneous pickup basketball games to highly bureaucratic governments, the complex
processes of making decisions, setting goals, and establishing organizational strategy are often
influenced by a combination of technical rational principles and relationship considerations
that transcend reductionist, two-dimensional models.
By applying mesa-level analyses, contemporary sociologists examine how organizations
create sui generis cultures that affect and are in turn affected by individuals and the larger social
context. The durability of social facts such as the gender and race pay gap can be investigated,
and potentially remediated, through examination of the institutional structures that develop
and preserve inequality. For instance, as part of her description of the challenges women
face in the workplace, Arlie Hochschild analyzes the power dynamics at play in the larger
organization of the paid labor force. She writes, “In increasing numbers women have gone into
the workforce, but few have gone very high up in it … the career system inhibits women … by
making up rules to suit the male half of the population in the first place” (Hochschild, 1989,
p. x). Here Hochschild refuses to submit to the purportedly objective, market-driven rational
authority governing organizations and instead interrogates bureaucracies on how the rules
reflect and maintain gender inequality. Similarly, sociologists Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus
Khan investigate sexual assault on college campuses using what they call an “ecological
model” (2020, p. xi). Through analysis of extensive qualitative interview data, they conclude
that inadequate sex education and lack of party spaces controlled by women, queer, and
younger students are among the organizational factors that make the high incidence of
sexual assault a predictable aspect of college life (Hirsch and Khan, 2020). These researchers
recognize that rational authority and the declaration of objective and impersonal processes, can
be the screen that protects domination manifest in subjectivity and prejudice, characteristics
that are allegedly limited to organizations governed by traditional and charismatic authority.
Organizations can be, but are not necessarily, structured and bureaucratic, long established
and resilient, with a predictable set of rules, traditions, and norms. Though sociology of
organizations has historically focused on formal organizations, contemporary researchers have
expanded the field by studying grassroots and transitory communities, which are often casual,
informal, amorphous and rapidly changing. Organizations can be tools of change, of stability,
or an emergent combination of both.
In this volume, authors examine labor relations, ethical and sustainable environmental
practices, race, gender, class, leadership, alternative economic models, politics, criminal justice
systems, and the media. Reflecting the large and diverse field of sociology of organizations, the

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
 Introduction 5

research presented here is a veritable cornucopia and overlaps a range of academic disciplinary
fields of inquiry such as organizational behavior, economics, management, philosophy, and
social psychology.
This Handbook is organized into three sections: Theory, Empirical Research, and
Organizations as Mediators for Individual and Societal Outcomes. Authors represent a diversity
of international scholars at different phases of their careers who explore an expansive range
of research topics. To guide readers, each section has a short introduction describing key
elements and contributions of subsequent chapters. For use by academics, practitioners, and
students, this volume emphasizes cutting-edge research that has evolved far past founders
such as Weber and Follett, yet continues the tradition of examining the interplay between
individuals and the organizational systems that influence their social interactions and are, in
turn, influenced by them.

PART I: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONS

In this section, authors focus on exploring, extending, critiquing, and applying various
sociological theories of organizations. Focusing on how theory defines organizational sectors,
Klarissa Lueg and Angela Graf open this section with “The Organization of Higher Education:
An Overview of Sociological Research into Universities as Organizations.” This chapter
provides an historical overview of sociology of organization theories and how they have been
applied to higher education that will inform those interested in the evolution of organization
theory as well as those wondering how theoretical frameworks can direct and underwrite the
development and contextualization of institutions.
Extending the existing literature on Social Network Analysis (SNA) in her chapter,
“Dialectical Network Analysis: A Critical Approach for Researching Networks in Management
and Organization Studies,” Martha Emilie Ehrich reviews and critiques SNA. She suggests
a combination of SNA with a grounded understanding of inter-organizational networks as
material-discursive entities in a critical political economy perspective. Ehrich advances
SNA through re-introducing the long-neglected Dialectical Network Analysis and thereby
captures four essential dimensions of inter-organizational networks in business environments:
state-industry relations, labor-capital relations, technology, and cooperation and competition.
In “Decisional Organizational Theory: Towards an Integrated Framework of Organization,”
authors Michael Grothe-Hammer, Héloïse Berkowitz, and Olivier Berthod, go beyond theory
extension to forge a new theoretical account of the role of decisions in the emergence and
continuation of organizations. Their integrated, decisional, organization theory constitutes
an important advance in that it allows analyses of the complexities of social order within and
outside organizations.
Applying a critical analysis, in “Organizational Legitimacy and Legitimizing Myths,”
Martijn Boersma explores the reliance on market forces as a justification for corporate actions
that are not consistent with the public good. After examining legitimacy theory, he uses social
dominance theory to suggest that myths uphold the idea that market forces can and do balance
social, environmental, and financial interests.
Furthering a critical perspective, in “A Critical Management Studies Approach to Big
Data,” Carl Stefan Roth-Kierkegaard, argues for supplementing Big Data Analytics (BDA)
with approaches informed by critical management studies. He advances the position that

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
6 Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

BDA alters the exercise of power inside organizations. Roth-Kierkegaard concludes that by
acknowledging and accounting for power and resistance within an organization, the oppression
caused by BDA can be mitigated.
Christopher N. Walker’s chapter, “Theory, Practice, and Bricolage: Recombobulating
Agencies and Reorienting Resistance to Neoliberalization of the (Post-) Welfare State,”
contributes to and integrates insights from community development, organizational
sensemaking, and critical humanist literatures to claim that managerialized governmentalities
have ruptured the community sector’s capacity for advocacy and resistance by reorienting
welfare services and their workers within irreconcilable ideals. He concludes that new shared
paradigms for sensemaking grounded within Marshallian citizenship ideals will be crucial to
realizing meaningful resistance. Walker proposes new directions for developing more reliably
emancipatory modes of practice-based resistance.
Jean-Pierre Chanteau combines a critical and an interactionist lens in his chapter, “Do
Organizations Have a Purpose? The Symbolic Constructivism Test.” Chanteau questions the
tendency to essentialize organizations by assuming they have a stable, immutable “raison
d’être.” Instead, he posits that power relations drive this process of believing in a unified
reason for being. As an illustrative case, he demonstrates that the orthodox notion that the
reason for the firm is to generate profit does not stand up to theoretical or empirical scrutiny.
Chanteau claims that the symbolic institutionalism approach will show why this widespread
idea has managed to become implanted for the greater benefit of managerial power.
Authors Fiona Meechan, Leo McCann, and Sir Cary Cooper also use an interactionist
approach in their chapter, “The Importance of Empathy and Compassion in Organizations:
Why There Is So Little and Why We Need More.” These authors challenge the tendency to
privilege technical, commercial, and procedural considerations and neglect the emotional
needs of organization members. This neglect leads to dehumanization, work intensification,
and suffering. They find that organizations that do employ empathy and compassion are
associated with positive individual and organizational outcomes. Meechan, McCann, and
Cooper conclude that despite durability in organizational culture, there is reason to be
optimistic that compassion and empathy can be increased.
Inviting entrepreneurship into meso-level analysis in her chapter, “Entrepreneurial
Hybridity: Concept and Context in Creative and Cultural Organizations,” author Jaleesa
Renee Wells examines the meaning of entrepreneurship within the creative industries and
how each culture affects the other. She posits meaning as being influenced by and emerging
from a grounded context and specifically explores the idea of the “female gaze” as a construct
for women’s entrepreneurial activity within the craft industry. Wells concludes that a
“community-market logics model” highlights the implications of entrepreneurial hybridity as
a method for developing sustainable communities of practice.
Two chapters in the theory section investigate aspects of the criminal justice system. In
their chapter, “The Influence of Organizational Structures on Police Decision-Making on
Stop, Question, and Frisk,” authors Muneeba Azam, Christine Sim, and Danielle S. Rudes
study how both formal and informal structures influence various decisions of organizational
members, in this case, police officers’ decision to implement stop, question, and frisk practices.
In “Carceral Goals: The Role of Corrections Officers in Organizational Goal Attainment,”
Madeline McPherson and Danielle S. Rudes document the unique role of line-level corrections
officers’ discretionary decision-making in achieving the stated goals of carceral settings.

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
 Introduction 7

Mohammad Al-Saidi interrogates World Polity Theory (WPT) as part of sociological

neo-institutionalism. Using WPT, he mines insights into institutional changes and similarities
among national organizations. In his chapter, “A World Polity View on Reorganization
and Institutional Change in Natural Resources Management,” Al-Saidi focuses on the
standardization and homogenization of national water organizations. Al-Saidi finds that on
the one hand, the application of universal principles has promoted certain best practices in
sustainability management, but on the other hand, WPT can also hinder nimble responses in
solving locally specific water issues.
Using authors such as Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques
Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Pierre Bourdieu, Dustin Garlitz demonstrates the historical
relationship between aspects of philosophical and sociological theory. His chapter, “Exploring
the Connections between Critical and Contemporary Social Theory and the Sociology of
Culture,” is a reminder that theoretical and methodological approaches in sociology of
organizations offer a range of insightful analysis that can be applied to virtually any issue.
Finally, in “Where Words Speak Louder than Actions: Values, Strategy and Action
in Globalizing Education: How Successful IB Schools are Made,” authors Alexander
Gardner-McTaggart and Tony Bush elucidate the leadership in International Baccalaureate
(IB) schools as these schools play an important role in representing the values of peace,
interculturalism, and collaboration in various influential global cultures. Gardner-McTaggart
and Bush conduct six qualitative case studies on IB directors across successful international
schools in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. They found that school leaders strategize with
a clear vision rooted in global-mindedness and internationalism deploying emancipatory
and intersubjective rhetoric to enforce strategic action. This study shows that there is a clear
professional identity of the global senior educational leader outlining the values, strategies, and
actions employed in this challenging school context. Leaders emerge as highly savvy market
agents complicit in the reification of terms to deliver success in a liberalized competitive
educational space.

PART II: EMPIRICAL RESEARCH – WORKPLACE EXPERIENCES

AND CASE STUDIES
The empirical research featured here is largely qualitative and explores a diverse range of
organizations and communities. In the first chapter, “Rationalizing Work through Occupational
Communities in Independent Games Development,” authors Adrian Wright and Dorota
Marsh elucidate the exploitation in the work experience of digital game developers. Using
self-accounts of developers, they examine how the collective values of two occupational
communities shape the beliefs and behavior of developers. The findings reveal that the
community acts as a route to further self-exploitation as the unintended consequences of
shared values of sociality, altruism, and enterprise contribute towards the acceptance and
normalization of self-exploitative practices.
In his chapter, “Religion at Work: The Quaker Paradox,” Mark Read explores religion
as lived in the twenty-first century work organization. This qualitative case study is based
on interviews with twenty British Quakers. Typically, the interviewees believed that their
worldly intentions are aligned with the espoused ambitions of their work organizations. But
outlying cases show a discrepancy in this alignment. By applying an institutional logics lens

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
8 Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

to analyze these narratives, Read argues that Quaker aspirations are situated within and by
the organizational processes. Workplace organizations set out and police the terms upon
which these Quakers sought to improve the world. This was further highlighted in discordant
contexts. In these outlying examples, tensions between religion and work became explicit as
the organizational process intimately shaped Quakers’ beliefs and social practices.
Weberian charismatic, traditional, and legal-rational authority are familiar constructs
in sociology of organizations. In her chapter, “Charisma and Charismatic Leadership in
Organizations,” Dinara Tokbaeva discusses the organizational settings and contexts in
which charismatic leadership is likely to manifest. She argues charismatic leadership is more
effective in organizations operating in chaotic economic and legal environments such as those
found in countries transitioning from one form of economy to another. Tokbaeva recommends
more studies into charismatic leadership to shed light on how companies are managed, how
leaders’ decision-making practices are perceived by employees, and how these practices
present themselves in different economic and cultural settings.
Guy Redden offers a critical perspective on the quantification of performance in his chapter,
“Organizations and Power: A Critical Evaluation of the Rise of Performance Measurement.”
Redden’s chapter traces the emergence of performance measurement in the 1980s and 1990s
and shows how developments in management accountancy and strategic management led to
a demand for better information. However, since performance measurement is a pragmatic
accountancy enterprise that has never been validated as quantitative social science, he argues
that performance measurement actually arose not because it was accurate or fair, but because
it facilitated the economization of organizations in line with increasingly influential neoliberal
economic theory. Redden then assesses how this impacts shareholder-value capitalism,
marketization of the public sector, and labor politics.
In her chapter, “Autonomist Leadership and Organizational Practice in Leaderless Street
Bands,” Meghan Elizabeth Kallman challenges the focus of the sociology of organizations
on hierarchical, professional organizations citing the neglect of organizational practices
and insights that emerge from other sites of organizing. Using ethnographic and qualitative
data from nine US street brass bands, Kallman analyzes shared leadership practices within
leaderless, democratic groups. Specifically, she theorizes that these practices qualify as
autonomist leadership that seek to understand the political and ideological values that inform
group processes and that those processes enable the bands to meet both their functional and
interpretive needs in the absence of a single leader. Kallman concludes that autonomist groups
are enabled by prefigurative organizational practices based in political principles.
Similarly, in their chapter, “Resistance and Resilience among Tattoo Workers,” authors
David C. Lane and Jacob T. Foster explain how tattooists create and sustain their social
world. Importantly, tattooists employ an anachronistic form of social organization in
a modern capitalist system. Lane and Foster interpret tattoo work as a form of resistance
to the characteristics of credentialism and formal education. They also demonstrate the
resilience of workers to develop forms of social organization that adapt to change. Finally, of
importance, this work shows how tattooists grapple with the tensions of increasing popularity
and sustaining their forms of social organization. Actors socially organize tattooing through
a localized, grassroots form of craft production. These characteristics conflict with the modern,
rational, and impersonal nature of production in capitalist systems.
In “Contemporizing the Social Organization of Parole: A Critical Assessment,” authors
Simon I. Singer and Stuti S. Kokkalera evaluate the practice of discretionary release decisions

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
 Introduction 9

by highlighting the case of juvenile lifers. They draw on organizational theory to relate how
a state’s discretionary release practices are tightly coupled to the severity of the offense. Singer
and Kokkalera illustrate the decision-making by detailing expectations for a parole candidate’s
expression of remorse, responsibility, and redemption (the 3Rs). For a segment of juvenile
lifers, they find that parole boards act less as an autonomous decision-making unit and more
on reproducing prior judicial sentencing decisions.
After every humanitarian crisis there is a call for closer collaboration between international
and local organizations. Yet, based on claims that local organizations lack technical capacity
and are overly political, international organizations are reluctant to fund them. In her
chapter, “Professionalization and the Politicization of Civil Society Organizations in Sierra
Leone,” Michelle Reddy draws on sociological institutionalism and quantitatively codes
interviews with fifty-four civil society organizations in Sierra Leone. She creates measures of
organizational professionalism and politicization. Reddy found that organizations receiving
international funding during Ebola in the capital were both highly professionalized and highly
political. Therefore, professionalism does not necessarily indicate de-politicization, at least not
in heavily aid-dependent countries.
Deborah B. Smith presents a reflective case narrative describing and analyzing the experience
of an evaluation research project for a social service worker training initiative. In her chapter,
“Getting Real about Research: Lessons Learned from a Worker Training Evaluation Project,”
she seeks to demystify the “black box” of social science research project execution by offering
researchers possible strategies to successfully adjust approaches, actions, and assessments
when circumstances require, which typically happen at the least convenient moments. Smith
hopes that continued sharing of reflections on the execution of research projects by seasoned
scientists can assist organizational and other scholars to persist through the unavoidable highs
and lows of the social science research process.
Finally, in their exploratory research project, “Career Development Opportunities:
A Sociological and Practitioner Exploration of Organizational Commitment Factors, Theories,
and Outcomes,” authors Patricia Sullivan, Andrew Creed, Ambika Zutshi, and David C. Lane
investigate employee perceived valence of a broad range of organizational career development
opportunities (CDO) and the impact that a subjective CDO, CDO valence and CDO
consultation have on job satisfaction, career satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The
results reveal that self-efficacy, valence, and outcome expectations tend to impact choice of
action. There is also a linkage between CDO perceived valence and consultation. The chapter
proposes a new conceptual map linking subjective CDO, CDO perceived valence, CDO
consultation, subjective career satisfaction, and organizational commitment.

PART III: ORGANIZATIONS AS MESA-LEVEL MEDIATORS OF

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETAL OUTCOMES

Chapters in this third section of the Handbook focus on organizations and social change.
In “Synergies between School Leaders and Communities in Challenging Urban Schools:
A Review of Its Organizational Dynamics and the Urban Schools’ Continuum,” authors
Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortíz argue that a culturally responsive school policy
enables the agency of subjects considered deficient, which allows the association between the
teaching staff and urban communities based on shared goals: the improvement of academic

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
10 Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

achievement and that of stressful urban environments. Likewise, the strengthening of a shared
vision and a sense of belonging reinforce trust between both actors, which alludes to the
leader’s importance as a channel for plural demands to avoid the atomization of interests.
Guzmán and Ortíz develop a continuum based on the educational change frames that have
shaped the category of challenging urban schools. Since these frames tend to overlap, school
leaders can rely on Complexity Leadership Theory tools to trigger innovations and promote
informal leadership.
Authors Julie Monroe, Steve Vincent, and Ana Lopes apply a critical contrastive
explanation in their chapter, “Critical Realist Metatheory and the Sociology of Organizations:
Using Contrastive Explanation to Explain Personal Internet Use at Work.” They use
contrastive explanation to describe personal internet use at work (PIUW) and address the
question: how is social theory developed from contrastive evaluation? Monroe, Vincent,
and Lopes demonstrate how to develop novel insights about gender and class from in-group
and between-group contrasts. They argue that contrasts can be used to facilitate theoretical
explanation of causal processes, in this case about PIUW.
In his chapter, “Exploring Relations of Power in Quakers’ Alternative Forms of Organizing,”
Stephen Allen considers relations of power in Quakers’ alternative (i.e. non-hierarchical,
non-managerialist, and non-capitalist) forms of organizing. The overriding principle in Quaker
organizing is that nobody is “in charge,” which includes processes of roles being rotated every
three years, and formal procedures for collective decision-making. By taking a relational
perspective to power to appreciate social and material interactions, Allen explores how three
different views on power can help to develop understanding of how things get done within
Quaker organizing and offer insights about how to consider relations of power within this
alternative form of organizing, in particular drawing upon and developing ideas of presence
and absence.
In a challenge to the standard rationalist view of corporations as maximizing profits for
shareholders, Yon Jung Choi and Connie L. McNeely investigate shifting and competing
corporate identity claims ranging from profit maximizing and wealth-seeking to socially aware,
concerned, and responsible leaders, along with the emergence of alternative organizational
forms such as “benefit corporations.” Central to their chapter, “The Dialectic of Changing
Corporate Masks: From Profit Maximizers to Predators to Socially Responsible Global
Leaders,” is the development of an analytical framework delineated in terms of ontology,
structure, and legitimacy as basic dimensions for examining corporate identity assertions in
relation to actual performance and social impact in the world polity.
Finally, in “Organizing Values: The Principles of Rationalization and Individualization,”
authors: Hannah Mormann, Raimund Hasse, and Nadine Arnold show that organizational
responses to value issues can have far-reaching external effects of transforming the meaning
of these values leading to surprising field dynamics. These effects are far from arbitrary
because organizations tend to shape the meaning of societal values by aligning them with
the organizational principles of rationalization and individualization. Mormann, Hasse, and
Arnold illustrate rationalization- and individualization-based organizational responses and
their societal effects by looking at two cases: the professionalization of human resource
experts that resulted in the reinterpretation of equal employment opportunity as a business case
for diversity, and the marketization of notions of fairness in status markets. They conclude that
the organizational principles of rationalization and individualization trace a corridor for the

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access
 Introduction 11

processing of values in organizational contexts that profoundly shapes the meaning of these
values.

REFERENCES
Clegg, S. and Lounsbury, M. (2009). Weber: Sintering the Iron Cage: Translation, Domination, and
Rationality. In P. S. Adler (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies
(pp. 118–145). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collins, R. (1992). Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology, 2nd edition. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Follett, M. P. (1918). The New State: Group Organization, the Solution of Popular Government. London:
Longmans, Green and Co.
Follett, M. P. (1924/1995). Circular Response. In Creative Experience. New York: Longmans, Green,
Chapters 3 and 4. Reprinted in Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management, A Celebration of
Writings from the 1920s, edited by Pauline Graham. Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of
Harvard College.
Follett, M. P. (1925a). Constructive Conflict. In Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary
Parker Follett (pp. 30–49). New York: Harper and Brothers.
Follett, M. P. (1925b). Power. In Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett
(pp. 95–116). New York: Harper and Brothers.
Follett, M. P. (1949/1995). Co-ordination. In Freedom and Co-ordination: Lectures in Business
Organization by Mary Parker Follett (pp. 77–89). London: Management Publications Trust.
Reprinted in Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management, A Celebration of Writings from the 1920s,
edited by Pauline Graham. Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Godwyn, M. and Gittell, J. H. (eds) (2012). Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press/Sage Publications.
Handel, M. (2003). Introduction. In P. Handel (ed.), The Sociology of Organizations (pp. 1–4). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Hirsch, J. S. and Khan, S. (2020). Sexual Citizens. New York: W. W. Norton.
Hochschild, A. (1989). The Second Shift. New York: Avon Books.
Weber, M. (1924/1978). Bureaucracy. In Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology,
edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Volume 2. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Weber, M. (1958/1904). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott
Parsons. Introduction by Anthony Giddens. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Mary Godwyn - 9781839103261

Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/03/2023 11:05:02AM
via free access