Session 08

Topics

Organizations are highly dependent upon on multiple stakeholders in their environment for resources. As Emerson described, organizational power is the opposite of dependence; an organization is more powerful the less it is dependent on external constituencies in its task and institutional environment for critical resources. This resource dependence perspective has been the basis for many early studies of organization-environment and inter-organizational relationships, but was most clearly articulated by Pfeffer and Salancik in their now-classic 1978 book on the External Control of Organizations. We focus this week on this book and some subsequent research in this area.

Required Readings

  • Emerson (1962) “Power-dependence relationships,” ASR, 27: 31-41.

  • Pfeffer & Salancik (2003 reissued) External Control of Organizations, Stanford: Chapters 1, 3, 4 & 10.

  • Granovetter (1985) "Economic and Social Action: The Problem of Embeddedness," AJS, 91, 3: 481-518

  • Gulati & Sytch (2007) “Dependence asymmetry and joing dependence in IORs,” ASQ, 52: 32-69.

  • Casciaro & Piskorski (2005), “Power imbalance, mutual dependence, and constraint absorption: A closer look at resource dependence theory,” ASQ, 50: 167-199.

Supplementary Readings

    • Scott & Davis (2007), “Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems,” Chapter 9, pp 220-244.

    • Blau (1964) Exchange and Power in Social Life, NY: Wiley.

    • Pfeffer (1997) “Mechanisms of Social Control,” Chpt 5 in New Directions for Organization Theory, NY: Oxford, pp. 100-135.

    • Clegg (1989) "Radical Revisions: Power, Discipline and Organizations," Organization Studies, 10, 1: 97-115.

    • Kilduff (1993) “Deconstructing Organizations,” AMR, 18: 12-31.

    • Kilduff & Mehra (1997) “Postmodernism and Organizational Research,” AMR, 22: 453-481.

    • Hardy & Clegg (1996) "Some Dare Call it Power," Chapter 3.7 in Clegg, Hardy, & Nord, "Handbook of Organization Studies,” London: Sage, pp. 622-641

    • Fiol, O'Connor, & Aguinis (2001),"All for One and One for All? The Development and Transfer of Power across Organizational Levels," AMR, 26, 2: 224-242.

    • Cardinal, Sitkin & Long (2004) “Balancing in creation & evolution of org. control,” Org Science, 15, 4: 411-431.

    • Kuwabara (2011) “Cohesion, cooperation, and the value of doing things together…” ASR, 76: 560-580.

    • Van de Ven, Villanueva & Sapienza (2011), “Resource mobilization in entrepreneurial firms, Jrnl of Bus Venturing, (forthcoming)