This article proposes some specific new guidelines for organizational taxonimizing that deliberately circumvent the problems of previous attempts, discusses the problem of selecting subgrouping dimensions for the formation of a taxonomy of organizations and proposes one possible set of such dimensions. (Author)

This paper proposes a methodology for selecting organizational decision strategies, including a new "heuristic" decision-making model. References included. (MD)

The purpose of this paper is to present the elements of a radical humanist critique that suggests that the discipline of organization theory has been imprisoned by its metaphors and to stimulate an awareness through which it can begin to set itself free. (Author)

Most adaptation theories assume that effective learning requires a balance between exploration and exploitation, but that such a balance is threatened by these qualities' self-reinforcing tendencies. This article celebrates the struggle of students of organizational action to balance openness and discipline. The result is an effective mixing of…

"Rationality,""legitimacy," or "authority" are structures of consciousness as well as features of face-to-face settings; as such, their construction can be reinterpreted phenomenologically as the praxiological foundations of organizational life, the organizing out of which organizations are constituted (Author)

Noting that organizational analysis needs to account for the complexities of organizational phenomena and that organizational research has been evolving toward complex, even contradictory modes of understanding, this article introduces papers focusing on culture as an interpretive framework for sense making in organizational settings and suggests…

This review examines assumptions underlying different ways the concept of culture has been used in current organization studies, including work in comparative management, corporate culture, organizational cognition, organizational symbolism, and unconscious processes and organization, concluding that a cultural framework is promising and…

After a review of semiotic theory, this paper describes an ethnosemantic study of a funeral home that demonstrates how semiotically identical codes structure a funeral director's understanding of his work and how semiotic research can reveal rules by which members of an occupational culture generate meaning. (MJL)

Using event-history analysis techniques, a longitudinal study of the semiconductor industry found that substantial technological innovation lengthens development times and reduces the speed with which first products reach the marketplace. Organizations that undertook lower levels of technological innovation had relatively lower monthly…

Examines how formal analysis is actually practiced in 3 different organizations. Identifies 4 main groups of purposes for formal analysis and relates them to various hierarchical relationships. Formal analysis and social interaction seem inextricably linked in organizational decision-making. Different structural configurations may generate…

Shows some ways in which the progressive bureaucratization of an organization may transform the structure of its mobility channels by emphasizing different mixes of the organizing principles of merit and seniority. (Author)

Using educational organizations as a case in point, it is argued that the concept of loose coupling incorporates a surprising number of disparate observations about organizations, suggests novel functions, creates stubborn problems for methodologists, and generates intriguing questions for scholars. (Author)

Applying the language of exchange theory, this paper analyses how organizational culture emerges out of the institutional arrangements developed to regulate the transactions between members. Transaction costs of social exchange, the characteristics and etiology of those institutional arrangements, and three ideal-typical cultural forms are…

Suggests five footnotes to organizational change, emphasizing the relation between change and more generally adaptive behavior, the routine nature of organizational change, change in response to simple environmental events, the surprises produced by ordinary changes occurring in a confusing world, and the implicit altruism of organizational…

Explores the new institutionalism's ethos and direction. Drawing a sharp line between old and new inhibits the contribution of institutional theory to major issues of bureaucracy and social policy. Problems of accountability and responsiveness, public and private bureaucracy, regulation and self-regulation, and management and governance will…