Frank Dobbin (Harvard Business School) will present his work on:
“Is Agency Theory to Blame for the Crisis? Shareholder Value and the Embrace of Risk.”

At the CSO (19 rue Amélie, Paris), Friday April 1st, 10:00-12:00.

This is the ninth Scancor workshop for Nordic and European doctoral students. The audience for this workshop is PhD students with an interest in recent research in institutional theory and organizational studies more generally. Previous workshops have been held at Stanford University, Copenhagen Business School, Helsinki School of Economics and IESE Barcelona.

The goal of the workshop is to enable PhD students to pursue their research more effectively, using novel research methods to examine theoretically important questions. In recent decades, institutional theory has expanded outside its origins in the United States to many settings around the world. This perspective has been valuable in explaining, among other things, the adoption of organizational structures, the incorporation of social movement ideas and goals inside organizations, and the global spread of management practice. The course provides students with a thorough grounding in the canonical works of institutional theory, an overview of recent lines of research, and an introduction to the diverse methodological tools used by scholars pursuing these ideas.

Institutional theory has been a dominant school of thought in organization theory for the past three decades.  Nonetheless, this approach faces several key theoretical and methodological challenges. This workshop brings together scholars who are developing novel solutions to these challenges, most notably to issues of change and agency, as well as measurement of institutional influences and effects. The faculty will present current research, review recent papers, and discuss new methodological tools that deepen the research agenda. We pay special attention to issues of institutional origins, persistence, and transformation. We also emphasize methods of comparative, archival, and network analysis. Finally, we tackle fundamental issues involving globalization, competing institutional logics, contestation, and dynamics.

The workshop is organized around three related features: (1) a research seminar where faculty from the U.S. and Europe present current research; (2) sessions for doctoral students devoted to discussing both classic and contemporary theoretical developments within institutional theory; and (3) sessions focusing on the research methods that advance institutional research. Students will take away new insights and tools, and a deeper understanding of how to match conceptual questions with research methods. The workshop will prepare PhD students to carry out their own individual research using the methods of institutional analysis.

The faculty for the workshop includes:

• Bruce Carruthers, Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University

• Gili Drori, Lecturer in International Relations, Stanford University, and Associate Professor of Sociology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Victoria Johnson, Associate Professor of Organizational Studies (and) Sociology and Management, University of Michigan

• Jason Owen-Smith, Associate Professor of Organization Studies and Sociology, University of Michigan

• Walter W. Powell, Professor of Education (and) Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science and Engineering, Public Policy, and Communication, Stanford University. From 1999-2010, Prof. Powell was director of Scancor at Stanford.

The Participant’s Role:

The PhD student should be working on a research project involving institutional theories. The goal of the course is to enable students to use the most up-to-date methods to explore their research projects. Students are required to attend all five days of the workshop and are expected to come to the course prepared by having completed the readings and ready with questions on them.

More information & application procedure here.