Although a central construct for sociologists, the concept of institution continues to elude clear and full specification. One reason for this lack of clarity is that about 50 years ago empirical researchers in the field of sociology turned their gaze downward, away from macro-sociological constructs in order to focus their attention on middle-range empirical projects. It took almost 20 years f...

Gabriel Vélez-Cuartas (PhD in Social & Political Sciences) is an Associate professor of sociology and Director of the Research Center in Social Science and Humanities at the University of Antioquia in Colombia. He belongs to the research group Social Networks & Actors subscribed to National System of Science Technology & Innovation in Colombia. He has worked in collaboration with the team of th...

According to a specialized research area within environmental sociology – ecological modernization theory – the shift towards seeking to protect the environment constitutes a broadly emergent sociological phenomenon: the radicalization of modernity. The understanding of the fundamentals of such phenomenon is, therefore, crucial for both the practice and theorization of organization and environm...

Phenomenological assumptions—assumptions about the fundamental qualities of the phenomenon being studied and how it relates to the environment in which it occurs—affect the dissemination of knowledge from subfields to the broader field of study. Micro-process research in organizational studies rests on implicit phenomenological assumptions that vary in the extent to which micro-processes are vi...

Three ideas—a complex division of labor, an organic structure, and a highrisk strategy—provoke consistent findings relative to organizational innovation. Of these three ideas, the complexity of the division of labor is most important because it taps the organizational learning, problem-solving, and creativity capacities of the organization. The importance of a complex division of labor has been...

Demographic heterogeneity is a central theoretical construct in organizational demography research. The most commonly used measure of demographic heterogeneity is the coefficient of variation. I critically evaluate the rationale for using this measure and show that the use of the coefficient of variation raises a number of methodological and interpretive problems. Empirical analyses of turnover...

social network theory, we examine how the structure of relations among organizational populations affects differences in rates of foundings across geographic locales. We hypothesize that symbiotic and commensalistic interpopulation relations function as channels of information about entrepreneurial opportunities and that differing access to such information influences the founding rate. Empiric...

culture is one of the basic concepts of organizational behavior in macro level which has been borrowed from anthropology and organizational sociology. this concept is the result of interpretative paradigm in organization and management studies and is one of the morgan’s organization metaphors. the purpose of this research is to identify the challenges of organizational culture in governmental s...

The article uses a longitudinal qualitative analysis of key transitions in the relationship between Fiat Auto and a major supplier to challenge conventional approaches to the study of activities at the boundary between organizations. It shows, in particular, that scholars focused on the importance of “modular” product designs, on the spread of “learning by monitoring,” or that documents the rol...