Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony on JSTOR
American Journal of Sociologyjstor.orgSaved by Jay Matthews
Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony on JSTOR
...we’ve been trained to think of organizations as homogenous and mechanistic, with a clear set of rules, a command-and-control structure, and the ability to leverage hierarchy to get things done quickly by issuing top-down directives to reallocate resources to meet objectives.
Aric Wood • The Organization as a Machine: An Outdated Concept - XPLANE | Organizational Change Management Consulting
The school system today performs the threefold function common to powerful churches throughout history. It is simultaneously the repository of society’s myth, the institutionalization of that myth’s contradictions, and the locus of the ritual which reproduces and veils the disparities between myth and reality. Today
Ivan Illich • Deschooling Society (Education)
Institutions usually remain inscrutable to those operating within them—like water to fish.
Joseph Henrich • The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
institutional theory. According to this theory, the process of legitimation is shaped by imitation. We observe others who we think are like us to decide what is acceptable behavior for us.
Marcus Collins • For the Culture
whenever a spiritual revelation is enshrined in an institution invented to carry its meaning through time, it is easy to understand how its guardians can become overprotective of the treasure they are responsible for, especially if their access to the original vision is theoretical rather than experiential, something they read about, rather than so
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