Browsing by Subject "Organization theory"

This dissertation explores the conceptual frameworks, social structures, and practices that organize communities of faith during periods of adaptive change. Combining methods and theories from qualitative research, practical theology, and organizational theory, it undertakes an extended study of two cases in the Pacific Northwest that are responding to adaptive challenges through collaborative approaches to religious organization, education, and leadership. Three interrelated questions organize a descriptive and normative inquiry: (1) What are the challenges confronting communities of faith in a context marked by religious entrepreneurship and a marginal social position for religious organizations? (2) What patterns of actual communal life, organizational structure, and leadership practice (both theoretical and empirical) best support individuals’ and communities’ engagement with the challenges they face? And (3) What implications follow for the practice of leadership and the study of religious organization amid periods of institutional change? An in-depth analysis of the two cases, which are identified as ‘hubs,’ extrapolates a response to the latter two questions, noting the challenges, social structure, practical wisdom, and practices of leadership that organize each site. This dissertation argues ecclesial imagination and Christian practical wisdom order and nurture the conditions, collaborations, and forms of leadership that enable each hub’s adaptive response, thereby enabling communities to live in light of the reality and promises of God.

Four parts encompassing seven chapters advance this argument. Part I is a case description of each hub, introducing the histories, missions, partnerships, and social structures that organize them. Part II continues an in-depth analysis by presenting the challenges and organizational structure that organize their collaborative work. As developed in conversation with Ronald Heifetz’s account of ‘adaptive work,’ seven primary challenges confront these hubs: relational engagement; leadership development; Boundary Zone work; post-Christendom; financial stability; loneliness and isolation; and connection to place. Further, organizational theory provides interpretive insights to describe these hubs as a novel organizational form within a broader organizational ecology.

Part III is a critical and constructive theological account of adaptive work that draws on field-driven concepts in conversation with Craig Dykstra and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In response to each hub’s stated aim to “reimagine church,” Dykstra’s work directs attention to the diverse “places” (e.g., congregations, higher education institutions, and theological educational institutions) that support adaptive change and how a broader ecclesial ecology serves as a “prism,” refracting leaders’ and communities’ engagement. Further, as explored in conversation with Bonhoeffer’s work, a Christo-ecclesial understanding of communities and organizations provides a basis for the organizational and ecclesial transformation each hub pursues.

Part IV builds a theoretical structure to understand the Christian practical wisdom that sustains conditions for each hub’s adaptive work. Specifically, six modes of leadership offer complementary ways of being with communities, organizations, and neighborhoods: a Caretaker, a Catalyst, a Champion, a Connector-Convener, a Surveyor, and a Guide. The project concludes by drawing out the implications of this analytical and theoretical work for these hubs, for a broader ecclesial ecology, and for the changing landscape of religious life beyond the Pacific Northwest.

Although many organizations aspire to be diverse, both in their internal composition and external collaborations, diversity's consequences for organizational outcomes remain unclear. This project uses three separate studies to examine how diversity within and across organizations influences organizational outcomes. The first study uses original data from a national study of organizations to analyze how an organization's internal social composition is associated with its performance. It advances diversity-performance research by demonstrating how the mechanisms of social bridging and social bonding can work together within a diverse organization to improve its performance. The findings suggests that an organization can improve its performance by having socially diverse members who interact often and in ways that engage their social differences. The second study integrates social capital theory and network analysis to explore the relationship between interorganizational networks and organizational action. It uses cross-sectional and panel data from a national study of congregations to analyze the collaborative partnerships congregations form to provide social services. This study demonstrates that a congregation's network ties, net of the effects of its internal characteristics, are significantly associated with the number and types of social service programs it offers. The third study illustrates how an organization's external ties can shape its action by examining black churches and their responses to people living with HIV/AIDS. It uses data from a nationally representative sample of black congregations and draws on institutional theory to analyze congregations as open systems that can be influenced by their surrounding environment. This study indicates that black churches that are engaging their external environment are significantly more likely to have an HIV/AIDS program. Overall, by analyzing how individuals interact within organizations and how organizations interact with one another, these three studies demonstrate how diverse networks influence organizational outcomes.

The global diffusion of neoliberal economic policies is one of the most significant events in modern history. This research applies current knowledge on policy diffusion to the analysis of the diffusion of two major neoliberal urban policies among Chinese cities, namely land banking and privatization of urban infrastructures. Both policies are believed to have contributed greatly to the rapid growth of China's urban economy, and reflect the idea of capitalizing a city's tangible assets and utilizing market institutions to manage them so as to achieve economic gains.

Borrowing insights from existing diffusion theories developed by scholars from different background, this research explores the determinants of the policy innovation decisions by utilizing three theoretical models: (1) The internal determinants model, which presumes that the factors causing a local state to adopt a new policy are political, economic, and social characteristics of the local state. (2) The regional diffusion model, which posits that the geographical proximity affects diffusion by encouraging emulation and competition among neighboring states. (3) Institutional diffusion model, which proposes that a new policy may be adopted to prove the legitimacy of the organization, to cope with environment uncertainties by modeling others, to conform to the will of other organizations on which the adopters depend.

This study emphasizes the role of the Chinese states, both at the central and local levels, in building neoliberal market institutions. It pays particular attention to the effects of provincial governments' pressure, and shows that local states' dependency on higher level authorities has limited the effectiveness of such interventions. Moreover, I highlight the influence of horizontal intergovernmental relations, such as competition and emulation, on the diffusion processes, and argue that it is an important factor that has promoted the national-wide expansion of neoliberal policies. The results of this study enrich our understanding on how local policy makings are influenced by complex intergovernmental relations, and how do local states balance between local economic interests and political loyalty to higher levels when they formulate local development agenda.

This dissertation examines how knowledge is developed and deployed among employees inside one of the largest internal labor markets in the United States: the federal civil service. Each chapter lays out the theoretical background behind career- and capabilities-based processes, discusses the application to the federal employment context, and tests hypotheses derived from theoretical review, extension, and development. This dissertation uses data from two similar but distinct datasets, which come from the US Office of Personnel Management’s administrative records database. These datasets cover different periods of time (either 1974-2014 or 1989-2011), but both contain core information on civil servants and their employment.

The dissertation begins with a short introduction to organizational theory and sociological research on bureaucracies. The first chapter shows, contrary to standard economic and sociological theory, generalists in the federal civil service experience higher downstream pay than specialists. Several competing mechanisms are discussed, laying the groundwork for the next chapter. The second chapter explores the mechanism of coordinative capability as a key component of civil servants’ career success, finding that integration with the skillsets of co-workers positively predicts later salaries and levels of authority. This effect is most pronounced in larger divisions of the government, where the need to coordinate among employees with diverse capabilities is greatest. Thethird chapter moves from individual processes to organizational aggregates, demonstrating the influence of public-sector personnel capabilities on private-sector research and development (R&D). This final chapter evaluates the impact of the government’s geographically-bounded scientific capabilities on private R&D funding mechanisms and the downstream likelihood of patenting by federally-funded firms.

As a whole, this dissertation traces the historical dynamics of career progression for hundreds of thousands of individuals over multiple decades, elucidating both the career dynamics experienced by civil servants as well as the external influence of those collective dynamics as allocative processes that influence non-governmental outcomes.

The Evangelical Covenant Church, like so many Christian denominations, is embroiled in conflict over homosexuality and gay marriage. This small North American denomination cannot afford a split, not only due to its small size, but because doing so would fundamentally deny its very identity. Thankfully, it is the denomination’s shared identity that gives the church, and sexual minorities, hope for the future.

The ECC is a gathering of churches that covenant together for the sake of God’s mission in the world. It’s pietistic history and ethos values relational unity over doctrinal uniformity, making gracious space for theological diversity for the purpose of that mission. It’s affirmations and distinctives provide a strong DNA for the church to flourish in the midst of a rapidly changing culture.

Homosexuality and gay marriage are complex problems in the church. They challenge fundamental beliefs, values and identities, and they are inherently personal and emotional topics. In order to address this challenge, church leaders must learn new ways of leading.

This paper proposes that an adaptive leadership framework provides the tools necessary for the Evangelical Covenant Church to faithfully and fully take on the challenge without compromising its commitment to Christ and the authority of the Bible. It offers practical resources to assist local congregations in discussing the topic. And, it suggests ways that denominational leadership can support the work of the local congregation.

Since the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, many federal education policies have recommended states and districts close, restructure or open new schools in order to improve their district’s academic performance. However, few studies address the extent to which these actions can disrupt the educational landscape. In this dissertation, I employ concepts from organizational ecology, institutional theory and the neighborhood effects literature to examine whether the restructuring, closure or opening of new schools produces spillover effects for other schools or has consequences for spatial inequality within school boundaries and neighborhoods.

I use school-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data, the Private School Survey and the School Attendance Boundary Information System to estimate weighted fixed effects models and difference-in-difference models that assess whether schools located near closed and restructured schools have different organizational characteristics or structures than those not near a closed or restructured school. I also use neighborhood Internet traffic and a survey experiment to measure whether the opening and closing of schools affects the perceived desirability of neighborhoods using difference-in-differences and multilevel ordinal logistic regression. I find these actions do produce spillover effects for school boundaries and impact perceptions of neighborhood desirability in nuanced ways.

US corporations currently orient their activities to perform to the expectations of financial markets and maximize shareholder value. Corporations actively manage their earnings and accumulate financial assets to make their performance more easily quantifiable for markets. This emphasis on performing to the expectations of financial markets is a relatively modern phenomenon, and many studies have illustrated how corporations transformed as they increasingly focused on maximizing shareholder value. The collection of studies presented here expands this work by examining how some types of corporations have avoided the pressures of shareholder maximization. I analyze a panel of recent quarterly financial reports from S&P 1500 companies and supplemental data from multiple other sources to investigate how the extent of shareholder value orientations differs across US corporations. Using linear regression models for panel data, I find that (1) employee-owned companies manipulate their accruals and (2) real activities less than non-employee-owned companies, and (3) the degree a company stockpiles financial assets is partially a function of its board interlocks. Combined, these studies show that the extent corporations adhere to shareholder value orientations is partially dependent on corporate ownership structure and interorganizational relations.

In the dissertation, I study how the firms’ external technology sourcing strategies are related to their position in and the development of their capabilities. The analyses focus on the US manufacturing sectors based on comprehensive survey data or archival data on patenting firms and use regression analysis and causal inference to test a series of hypotheses. The main conclusions include: (1) Firms are more likely to focus on internal innovation if they possess valuable complementary assets (trademarks), but are likely to pursue external technology sourcing when they have the assets and are entering new markets. (2) As firms entering new markets and rely on external innovation, they often make changes and redeploy their existing complementary assets. (3) If they cannot hire from externally (thus cannot obtain the new technology and technical capabilities), they will rely more on external technology sourcing, and mostly through acquisition which brings both new technology and technical capabilities.

How do churches change? In the life of congregations, collective identity informs congregational practice which, in turn, informs collective identity, forming a reinforcing loop that artificially prevents congregations from making significant changes to their congregational practice. To change the practices would be to change the identity, and to change the identity would be to change the practices.This thesis explores the interaction of collective identity, congregational practice, and change. After a review of pertinent scholarship concerning organizational and congregational change, this study provides an in-depth analysis of three churches that have made significant changes to their congregational practice in the last decade. Employing a multiple case study methodology, the actions of these congregations are compared to one another and to existing change literature. In the end, these three congregations demonstrate how the effective use of engaging with their histories to re-story their present collective identities allowed them to meet these new changes in a way that fits with their identities. Rather than preventing them from making significant changes, the reinforcing loop of collective identity and congregational practice propelled them.