• DOI:10.1093/JOPART/MUH028
• Corpus ID: 154837970

Institutional Isomorphism and Public Sector Organizations

@article{Frumkin2004InstitutionalIA,
  title={Institutional Isomorphism and Public Sector Organizations},
  author={Peter Frumkin and Joseph Galaskiewicz},
  journal={Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory},
  year={2004},
  volume={14},
  pages={283-307}
}

• Peter Frumkin, J. Galaskiewicz
• Published 1 July 2004
• Political Science
• Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

Although public sector organizations have long been seen as driving the institutionalization of business firms and nonprofit organizations, government agencies themselves have only occasionally been studied as subjects of institutional pressures. This research examines whether public sector organizations, when compared to organizations in the business and nonprofit sectors, are more or less as susceptible to mimetic, normative, and coercive pressures. Using data from the National Organizations Study (Kalleberg, et al., 1996), we discover that governmental organizations are in fact more vulnerable to all three types of institutional forces than other organizations, while the effect of institutional variables on for-profits and nonprofits is more sporadic. The susceptibility of public sector organizations to institutional pressures raises important questions for the field of public administration and has consequences for nonprofits and business firms, which are funded and regulated by government. Institutional Isomorphism and Public Sector Organizations Though it has not penetrated deeply into the public administration literature to date, the new institutionalism in organizational analysis has made significant contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of organizations. It has moved research away from overly rationalistic explanations of organizational behavior toward explanations that recognize that organizations are embedded in larger cultural and political contexts. It has shifted the focus of research from explaining why organizations are so heterogeneous to why organizations are so similar. Over the past decade, as its reach has extended across different topics, institutional theory has focused often on nonprofit organizations, such as art museums (DiMaggio 1991), colleges and universities (Kraatz 1998; Brint and Karabel 1991), humanitarian groups (Christiansen and Molin 1995), associations (Halliday 1993), and drug abuse units (D'Aunno, Sutton, and Price 1991). A number of studies has demonstrated the relevance of the institutional approach to for-profit organizations, including large corporations (Haunschild and Miner 1997; Davis and Greve 1997; Galaskiewicz and Wasserman 1989; Holm 1995), railroads (Dobbin 1995), law firms (Tolbert 1988), and high-tech companies (Suchman 1995; Powell 1998). Some research has also looked at public sector organizations (Tolbert and Zucker 1983; Meyer, Scott, and Strang 1987; Meyer et al. 1988.).