DiMaggio and Powell (1983)

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DiMaggio and Powell (1983) - The Iron Cage Revisited

In Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he warns of the “rationalist spirit ushered in by its asceticism had achieved a momentum of its own and that, under capitalism, the rationalist order had become an iron cage in which humanity was, save for the possibility of prophetic arrival, imprisoned”

He contended that, “bureaucracy, the rational spirit’s organisational manifestation” was very efficient and powerful, controlling all of humanity.

Bureaucraticisation, the product of capitalist market economies, is causing firms to be more homogenous, without necessarily becoming more efficient

In the early states of a lifecycle, organisational fields will more likely be diversified until they become more established, which is when they become more homogenised.

“Once disparate organisations in the same line of business are structured into an actual field, powerful forces emerge that lead them to become more similar to one another.” The goals and objectives may vary, but the long-term, the decisions made revolve around similar things, as their environment constrains their ability to change.

Strategies that are rational for an individual organisation are not necessarily good to be adopted by lots of organisations. Everyone does what everyone else is doing, because everyone else is doing it (see corruption of Korean top management)

Hawley’s description (1968) of isomorphism is “a constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions” (Thus isomorphism isn’t sufficient an explanation for Korean chaebols, as some of the firms they imitate do not face the same conditions as them, for they are in another country, such as the US).

Three types of Isomorphism

Various hypotheses