Power Through Institutional Work: Acquiring Academic Authority in the 1968 Third World Strike

Abstract

Introducing a process model of power and institutional change, I argue that actors may seek power by creating, supporting, or modifying institutions. Lacking unilateral authority to enact new institutions, actors can leverage symbolic resources into coercive resources, which may require making concessions to multiple logics and stakeholders. The emergent organizations and institutions are then subject to adjustment to stakeholder and regulator expectations. The argument is illustrated in a case study of the 1968 Third World Strike at San Francisco State College, where the college president strove to increase his authority so he could prevail in a dispute with student activists.

Legitimizing Diverse Uses for Qualitative Research: A Rhetorical Analysis of Two Management Journals

“…For example, instead of identifying a gap in the literature, Czaban and Whitley () begin by setting up the ‘conflicts’ between two different views right from the very first sentence of their paper. Similarly, Rojas (, p. 1263), instead of making a gap the feature of his first paragraph, points to a ‘central debate’ in management research.…”

Conceptualizing Historical Organization Studies

“…However, this does not mean that the potentialities of history in organization studies have gone unnoticed. Organizational theories implicated by history that exhibit historical awareness include path dependence (David, 1985;Arthur, 1989;Sydow, Schreyögg & Koch, 2009) and cognate theories such as imprinting (Stinchcombe, 1965;Johnson, 2007) and structural inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1984); the resource based view of the firm (Wernerfelt, 1984) and dynamic capabilities (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997); organizational ecology (Hannan & Freeman, 1977;Nelson & Winter, 1982;Ruef, 2004;Ruef & Patterson, 2009); institutionalism (Leblebici et al, 1991;North, 1990;Rojas, 2010;Suddaby et al, 2014); postmodernist and Foucauldian perspectives on genealogy (Foucault, 1979;Newton, 2004); organizational memory (Rowlinson, Booth, Clark, Delahaye, & Procter, 2010); and strategy and strategic change (Raff, 2000). Several prominent theoretical strands within organization studies are informed by a historical dynamic, albeit often unstated.…”

How do things become strategic? ‘Strategifying’ corporate social responsibility

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