Abstract
Few organizational scholars would contest a central premise of this book, that organizations “have an enormous impact on social life” (p. 1), given that we all decided to make careers out of studying them. And although we might quibble about the extent of their power, few would disagree that organizations’ impact lies in their “tremendous power” to distribute resources and opportunities and thereby inflict “enormous damage” (p. 1). But despite the title, Haveman’s sharp and information-rich book isn’t so much about power as it is about how organizational theory seeks to understand the power that organizations wield. The Power of Organizations follows a tradition of organizational scholars who seek to summarize the field of organizational theory, but in this case Haveman is not offering a single, unifying perspective, as some of her predecessors have done. Rather, her goal is to report, as an “impartial rapporteur” (p. 52), on how organizations have evolved historically and how theorists have chosen to study them. As a result, the book offers a comprehensive, detailed glimpse of what contemporary organizational theory has become.
Anyone familiar with Haveman’s research, which is deeply indebted to historical methods and archival research, will respect her choice to begin the book with a chapter tracing the historical evolution of organizational forms. A key takeaway from this chapter is that even as organizations shifted from being communal to associative, their existence depends on legitimation from higher authorities such as the church or state. She then shifts to examine the historical progression of organizational theory, which she posits began in the founding of sociology by people like Weber, Marx, and Durkheim, whose interest in explaining societal dynamics led them to organizations as intermediaries of resources, authority, and culture. To the list of early influences she adds Georg Simmel, the German philosopher who many consider to be the intellectual forebear of network analysis, a choice that makes sense as the book progresses. She then traces the history of organizational theory from scientific management to contemporary times.
The book’s major intellectual contribution is the use of a new categorical scheme to summarize contemporary organizational thought. Rather than dive into each perspective and use their respective labels (e.g., institutional theory, resource dependence), Haveman instead categorizes them by the key theoretical mechanism that binds different theories together. Those categories are demographic, relational, and cultural. She justifies these categories by reasoning that each represents a different way of conceptualizing how social structure shapes the agency of organizations. Relational structure, for example, consists of the ways in which organizations are situated in webs of interactions and relationships.
The subsequent three chapters delve into both the primary theoretical claims and major empirical findings from each category. Graduate students trying to make sense of the various theoretical strands that make up organizational theory will find these chapters valuable. I was particularly struck by the clarity and cohesiveness of her chapter on the demographic perspective, which nicely takes us through frequency-based studies of employees, to the early days of population ecology, to more-contemporary research on demographic diversity. In a fourth theoretical chapter, Haveman talks about hybrid approaches that combine two or all three of the theoretical categories. Although each perspective may have risen as its own unique take on organizations—for example, early network researchers saw relational mechanisms as primary to other social forces—scholars increasingly derive mechanisms from one theoretical perspective to solve a puzzle germane to another perspective. For instance, it is not uncommon for scholars interested in organizational culture to use relational methods and concepts to explain how cultural elements hang together.
These four theoretical chapters are the core of the book and the reason that I expect many instructors of doctoral seminars on organizational theory will want to use Haveman’s book as a text. Her updated, clear view of the field has been greatly needed for some time. Still, at times I found myself wanting to hear more of her own distinctive voice, which she infrequently sprinkles throughout the chapters. These nuggets of Haveman’s insights are usually about significant tensions in the field. She could have written entire chapters about these insights. For example, when discussing organizational ecology’s normal science approach to research, she writes that “some find it too narrow to interest anyone except ecologists themselves” (p. 108). She encourages those with this perspective to embrace qualitative methods as a way to develop a more nuanced take on organizations’ lives. While I don’t necessarily disagree with this recommendation, I think the same could be said of much organizational research, which has seemed to enter a normal science phase in which theoretical returns have become increasingly narrow.
In another passage about the cultural perspective, she refers to the proliferation and ubiquity of concepts related to institutions and institutionalization, and she critiques cultural theorists for engaging in “unproductive feuds about definitions and concepts, rather than substantive arguments about logic or evidence” (p. 158). To correct this tendency, she urges cultural scholars to “develop tighter theory” (p. 158). (Readers who want more advice about how to write theory will have to turn to Appendix A: Advice for PhD Students, a very useful guide to writing theory, which might be overlooked because it is buried at the end of the book.) I would have liked to hear more of Haveman’s thoughts about the parallel trends of normal science, which is common in demographic and relational research, and the concept of proliferation, which is common in cultural theory, as well as the tradeoffs associated with each approach.
Haveman concludes her book with two ambitious chapters that are ultimately about the future of organizational theory. The first delves into the changes that organizations are undergoing in a digital age. Much of the chapter describes various ways that artificial intelligence is streamlining and accelerating organizational processes, such as employee recruitment or forecasting. If the use of AI was obvious to Haveman at the time she wrote this book, it is even more obvious now after the recent explosion of AI technology and its availability through platforms such as ChatGPT. We are experiencing a transformative moment in the organizational world, as AI is incorporated into and sometimes even replaces human decision-making in organizations. We need theoretical narratives that explain the rapidly evolving organizational environment. But just as important, Haveman points to ways in which AI is being incorporated into our methods for organizational research. Like Haveman, I am optimistic about the latter and believe that we are on the cusp of a massive scaling up of analytical capabilities due to the increased availability of AI technology.
The final chapter deals with the impact of organizations on society. Returning to the main theme of the book, she makes the case for why organizational scholars ought to use our theoretical tools to help explain the power of organizations in shaping and accentuating the big problems that society faces today. She notes three problems of particular importance: economic inequality, politics (including the preservation of democracy), and environmental degradation. She writes that the world has never needed organizational scholars’ expertise more than it does now. Organizations helped create these problems, and organizations will also be part of the solutions. Taking on these grand challenges, as they are sometimes called, by doing research that has policy relevance and public impact ought to be one of the goals of the next generation of organizational theorists. I couldn’t agree more.