Browsing by Author "Ruef, M"

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Open Access
A Multidimensional Model of Organizational Legitimacy: Hospital Survival in Changing Institutional Environments
(Administrative Science Quarterly, 1998) Ruef, M; Scott, WR
Using data on 143 hospital organizations, this article examines the antecedents and effects of two forms of organizational legitimacy (managerial and technical) over a 46-year period. Results show that both the managerial and technical forms provide notable improvements in organizational survival chances but that the strength of each effect varies over time depending on the nature of the institutional environment. Variation also appears in the antecedents of legitimacy - for example, the ability of a hospital to secure approval for its managerial practices depends on the correspondence between its mission and the logic of the surrounding institutional environment. The results suggest that a multidimensional model can reveal nuances of organizational legitimacy that are missed by more unitary conceptions.•.
Open Access
A Sociological Perspective on Strategic Organization
(Strategic Organization, 2003) Ruef, M
Open Access
A Structural Event Approach to the Analysis of Group Composition
(Social Networks, 2002) Ruef, M
Since Simmel's early work on forms of association, the processes guiding group composition have commanded considerable attention in structural sociology, but have not led to a general methodology for examining compositional properties. By introducing a structural event approach, this study offers a new technique that is not restricted to analysis of dyads or triads nor post hoc analysis of those structural arrangements that are observed in a given sample. The approach is illustrated using data on 745 organizational founding teams. Structural event analysis separates choice behavior guiding team composition (with respect to ascribed and achieved characteristics of members) from structurally-induced behavior based on contact opportunities. Results suggest that the strong impact of ascriptive homophily may be tempered when functional considerations of group composition are addressed. However, many of the other arrangements that ostensibly pass as 'functional' are in fact induced by opportunity structures. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Agents with Principles: The Control of Labor in the Dutch East India Company, 1700-1796
(American Sociological Review, 2017) Wezel, F; Ruef, M
Principal-agent problems plagued early modern corporations. The existing literature emphasizes the potential benefits provided by private trade in aligning the interests of company agents to those of their principals. We contribute to this line of work by analyzing the organizational and social mechanisms that may help address principal-agent problems in the presence of private trading opportunities. Drawing on personnel records of more than half a million seafarers employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) over nearly a century, we show that monitoring was effective in reducing desertion when private trade was conceived as a market activity subordinated to hierarchy. Social bonds were more effective in preventing desertion when the company elevated private trade above hierarchy. Our analysis clarifies how early corporations could maintain control over a geographically dispersed and diverse labor force in the absence of modern tools of organizational governance.
Open Access
Agrarian Origins of Management Ideology: The Roman and Antebellum Cases
(Organization Studies, 2009) Ruef, M; Harness, A
Drawing on archival materials from the Roman Republic and US antebellum South, this paper challenges the distinction between research on 'modern' and 'pre-modern' management thought, where the former commonly entails a critical analysis of management thinking within a social context and the latter offers documentation of past knowledge and practices. Contrary to this division, we offer a critical analysis of management discourse taking place in agrarian societies based on chattel slavery. In the late Roman Republic and early empire, the patrician elite confronted challenges to their large-scale land ownership, run by hired managers upon the landlord's absence. In the antebellum South, following the Nat Turner revolt, plantation owners staved off threats from abolitionism and Northern political activists. These challenges led to a considerable effort devoted to the elaboration of principles regarding the private management of unfree labor. Texts not only provided practical managerial advice, but also promoted an ideology supportive of the labor arrangements in dispute. We conclude by pointing to the relevance of these case studies from both an historical and a contemporary perspective. © The Author(s), 2009.
Open Access
At the Interstices of Organizations: The Expansion of the Management Consulting Profession, 1933-97
(2002) Ruef, M
This book describes and analyzes this worldwide flow of management ideas and the key carriers of these ideas.
Open Access
Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600-1757
(Contemporary Sociology, 2015) Ruef, M
Open Access
Boom and Bust: The Effect of Entrepreneurial Inertia on Organizational Populations
(Advances in Strategic Management, 2006) Ruef, M
Although recent public attention has focused on boom-and-bust cycles in industries and financial markets, organizational theorists have made only limited contributions to our understanding of this issue. In this chapter, I argue that a distinctive strategic insight into the mechanisms generating boom-and-bust cycles arises from a focus on entrepreneurial inertia - the lag time exhibited by organizational founders or investors entering a market niche. While popular perceptions of boom-and-bust cycles emphasize the deleterious effect of hasty entrants or overvaluation, I suggest instead that slow, methodical entries into an organizational population or market may pose far greater threats to niche stability. This proposition is explored analytically, considering the development of U.S. medical schools since the mid-18th century. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Boundary Formation in Emergent Organizations
(Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2007) Xu, H; Ruef, M
An extensive literature in organizational theory discusses how established organizations shape and maintain their boundaries but offers little guidance as to how organizational boundaries emerge in the first place. This paper examines boundary formation in business startups using a nationally representative dataset of U.S. nascent entrepreneurs. We propose several distinct roles for individuals entering into entrepreneurial activity, distinguishing between "insiders" (owner-managers) who commit both time and financial resources to these startups and "outsiders" (including passive investors and advisors) who offer more limited resource commitments. Two important criteria demarcating organizational insiders and outsiders in emergent organizations are functionality and perceived trustworthiness. Our results suggest that boundary formation is more often based on a potential member's trustworthiness, as perceived by peers, than functionality, emphasizing considerations such as transaction cost minimization and uniqueness of resource contributions. We propose several mechanisms that may account for this result among nascent entrepreneurs, including a lack of economic sophistication, calculative trust, and the importance of social solidarity for founder recruitment. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Business Owner Demography, Human Capital, and Social Networks
(2009-01-01) Ruef, M; Bonikowski, B; Aldrich, HE
While early work on the topic of entrepreneurship tended to portray entrepreneurs as heroic individuals (e.g., see Raines & Leathers, 2000, on Schumpeter’s description), more recent perspectives have come to recognize that new business activity is often initiated by groups of startup owners. Starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new generation of scholars in the entrepreneurship field called for a systematic program of research that would document the prevalence of startup teams, describe their properties, and assess their impact on business performance (e.g., Gartner, Shaver, Gatewood, & Katz, 1994; Kamm, Shuman, Seeger, & Nurick, 1990). In a review of developments in entrepreneur research and theory, Gartner et al. (1994) noted that “the ‘entrepreneur’ in entrepreneurship is more likely to be plural, rather than singular” (p. 6). They offered an expansive definition of startup teams, which included owners, investors, organizational decision-makers, family members, advisors, critical suppliers, and buyers as possible candidates for the role of “entrepreneur.”
Open Access
Constructing Labor Markets: The Valuation of Black Labor in the U.S. South, 1831 to 1867
(American Sociological Review, 2012) Ruef, M
In the U.S. South, a free labor market rapidly-although, in some cases, only nominally-replaced the plantation system of slave labor in the years following the American Civil War. Drawing on data comprising 75,099 transactions in the antebellum period, as well as 1,378 labor contracts in the postbellum era, I examine how the valuation of black labor was transformed between the 1830s and the years of emancipation. I trace the process of valuation through four markets for labor, moving from slave purchases and appraisals within the plantation economy, to the antebellum system of hiring out, to wage-setting for black labor under the auspices of the Freedmen's Bureau. Comparative analysis of labor pricing across these markets reveals systematic differences: slave markets placed price premiums on children and young women, and occupational skills emerged as the most salient influence in the pricing of wage labor. I conclude by theorizing how transvaluation of labor occurs when markets for unfree and free workers are governed by distinct institutional conditions. © American Sociological Association 2012.
Open Access
Credit and Classification: The Impact of Industry Boundaries in 19th Century America
(Administrative Science Quarterly, 2009) Ruef, M; Patterson, K
In this article, we examine how issues of multi-category membership (hybridity) were handled during the evolution of one of the first general systems of industrial classification in the United States, the credit rating schema of R. G. Dun and Company. Drawing on a repeated cross-sectional study of credit evaluations during the post bellum period (1870-1900), our empirical analyses suggest that organizational membership in multiple categories need not be problematic when classification systems themselves are emergent or in flux and when organizations avoid rare combinations or identities involving ambiguous components. As Dun's schema became institutionalized, boundaries between industries were more clearly defined and boundary violations became subject to increased attention and penalty by credit reporters. Our perspective highlights the utility of an evolutionary perspective and tests its implications for the salience of distinct mechanisms of hybridity. © 2009 by Johnson Graduate School, Cornell University.
Open Access
Ecological and Rational Choice Models of Endogenous Change
(Rationality and Society, 2017) Ruef, M
Open Access
Economic Inequality among Entrepreneurs
(Research in the Sociology of Work, 2009) Ruef, M
Purpose - Drawing from social psychology and economics, I propose several mechanisms that may affect ownership stakes among entrepreneurs, including norms of distributive justice, negotiation constraints, and network constraints. The processes are explored empirically for a representative dataset of entrepreneurial teams. Methodology/Approach - Between 1998 and 2000, entrepreneurial teams were sampled from the U.S. population for the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics. I analyze the distribution of ownership stakes at both the individual and group levels. Findings - The results suggest that principles of macrojustice, affecting the distribution of resources in teams as a whole, deviate considerably from principles of microjustice, affecting the resources received by individual entrepreneurs. While aggregate inequality increases in teams that have a diverse set of members, the effect is not reducible to discrimination on the basis of individual status characteristics. Instead, the relational demography of teams - characterized in terms of the degree of closeness in network ties and homogeneity in demographic attributes - serves as a uniquely social predictor of between-group variation in economic inequality. Originality/Value of the paper - Empirical research on inequality has paid little attention to the process of group exchange in organizational start-ups, where entrepreneurs pool resources and skills in return for uncertain or indirect payoffs. This paper offers both theoretical frameworks and empirical analyses to shed light on economic inequality among entrepreneurs.
Open Access
From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession
(Administrative Science Quarterly, 2008) Ruef, M
Open Access
Introduction: The Sociology of Entrepreneurship
(Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2007) Ruef, M; Lounsbury, M
The sociology of entrepreneurship is a blossoming field of research, but its scholarly contribution has been critiqued for its lack of coherence and intellectual distance from the sociological mainstream. In this article, we critically examine the theoretical presuppositions of the field, trace its historical origins, and attempt to situate the sociology of entrepreneurship within the sociological canon. We place special emphasis on the contribution of Max Weber, whose early work provides a useful template for a comprehensive approach to understanding the context, process, and effects of entrepreneurial activity. We conclude by locating contemporary approaches to entrepreneurship - including the contributions in this volume - within this neo-Weberian framework. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Jim Crow, Ethnic Enclaves, and Status Attainment: Occupational Mobility among U.S. Blacks, 1880-1940
(American Journal of Sociology, 2018) Ruef, M; Grigoryeva, Angelina
Demographic and ecological theories yieldmixed evidence as to whether ethnic enclaves are a benefit or a hindrance to the status attainment of residents and entrepreneurs. This article provides one possible theoretical resolution by separating the positive effects that may emanate among co-ethnic neighbors from the negative effects that may resultwith the concentration of racial or ethnic groups. The theory is tested by analyzing occupational wage attainment and entrepreneurship among African-Americans between 1880 and 1940, a historical context in which Jim Crow laws imposed segregation exogenously. Drawing on crosssectional and panel census data for representative samples of blacks in theUnited States, the results suggest consistent upward occupational mobilityamong residents with same-race neighbors, accompanied with downward mobility among residents who are concentrated in larger racialized enclaves. Both patterns are also observed in the distribution of entrepreneurial activity among blacks during the Jim Crow era.
Open Access
Neighborhood Associations and Social Capital
(Social Forces, 2016) Ruef, M; Kwon, SW
In the United States, the past 50 years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of formal associations in residential neighborhoods, including homeowners associations, condo associations, crime watch groups, tenant associations, and special-interest neighborhood coalitions. Despite their prevalence and growing role in neighborhood governance, the relationship of these associations to interpersonal trust and networks among residents and outsiders remains understudied. Drawing on the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS), we estimate the impact of neighborhood association membership on bonding and bridging social capital in a nationally representative sample of residents. Among non-homeowners, our findings suggest that neighborhood association membership is linked to bonding social capital (such as a propensity to socialize and cooperate with neighbors and a positive perception of impact on community conditions), as well as bridging social capital (such as a greater likelihood of trust in racial out-groups). These benefits from neighborhood association membership are attenuated or reversed among homeowners. The results underscore the need for social scientists to consider the inherent tension in neighborhood associations, as institutions that ensure the protection of property values, on the one hand, and that promote neighborhood cooperation and quality of life, on the other.
Open Access
Organizations and Local Development: Economic and Demographic Growth among Southern Counties during Reconstruction
(Social Forces, 2009) Ruef, M; Patterson, K
Under conditions of uncertainty, we predict that development will be tied to the idiosyncrasy of organizational forms represented within local regions. Our investigation applies this theory to data on 342 counties and 43, 352 businesses in the U.S. South during Reconstruction, finding support for the thesis that organizational idiosyncrasy generally dampens growth and challenges taken-for-granted norms of community structure. The causal effect varies somewhat depending on whether the underlying mechanisms entail increases in the production of local goods, the accumulation of fixed capital, or the attraction of new residents and retention of existing ones. We conclude by considering if the theory may generalize to other settings, including locales that depart markedly from the close-knit agrarian culture of the postbellum South. © The University of North Carolina Press.
Open Access
Origins of Organizations: The Entrepreneurial Process
(Research in the Sociology of Work, 2005) Ruef, M
This chapter combines insights from organizational theory and the entrepreneurship literature to inform a process-based conception of organizational founding. In contrast to previous discrete-event approaches, the conception argues that founding be viewed as a series of potential entrepreneurial activities - including initiation, resource mobilization, legal establishment, social organization, and operational startup. Drawing on an original data set of 591 entrepreneurs, the study examines the effect of structural, strategic, and environmental contingencies on the relative rates with which different founding activities are pursued. Results demonstrate that social context has a fairly pervasive impact on the occurrence and sequencing of founding processes, with one possible exception being the timing of legal establishment. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Browsing by Author "Ruef, M"

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