Quiet unintended transitions? Neo-Durkheimian explanation of institutional change
Journal of Organizational Change Management
ISSN: 0953-4814
Article publication date: 10 August 2015
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to resolve a puzzle in the explanation of organisational change, where change appears to be within-form but results unintendedly in a transition between forms, yet first appearances suggest the absence of “noise” of the kind expected during shifts between forms.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses qualitative analysis of primary archival and secondary sources on an historical case, analysing the data by coding using categories derived from neo-Durkheimian institutional theory. It examines the case of the cabinet, treated as an organisation, in the British government led by premier Harold Macmillan between 1959 and 1963, when a strategy for increasing hierarchy resulted unintendedly in an isolation dynamic.
Findings
It demonstrates that the neo-Durkheimian institutional approach can explain such puzzling cases. Appropriately for a special issue in honour of Mars’ work, it shows that his method of following rule violation and an adapted version of his concept of capture can provide a method of causal process tracing and a causal mechanism for resolving the puzzle.
Research limitations/implications
The argument is presented for purposes of theory development, not testing. It examines a single case study in depth.
Social implications
The findings demonstrate some of the risks which arise in changing informal institutional ordering, especially within decision-making executives, from the process by which informal institutions shape styles of judgement and decisions driven by those styles then feed back upon those executive bodies.
Originality/value
This is the first examination of puzzling unintended between-form transitions, the first to propose an adaptation of Mars’ concept of capture to resolve such puzzles and the first detailed causal process tracing analysis of such a case using neo-Durkheimian institutional theoretic tools. It therefore offers a significant advance in institutional explanation of organisational change.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (Grant No. F01374I). The author is grateful to Yochanan Altman for commissioning it for this themed issue of the journal, and to Chris Bellamy, Paul Richards, Jeroen Maesschalck, Peter John, Tony Bertelli and Brendon Swedlow for their advice on earlier drafts and on the argument. The paper itself shows the author’s intellectual debts to Gerald Mars which have been run up over many years and for which this piece is but a poor repayment.
Citation
6, P. (2015), "Quiet unintended transitions? Neo-Durkheimian explanation of institutional change", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 770-790. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-03-2015-0050
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited