What is power? Silence as a position, source of power? How institutions organize power?

1. What is power? • Silence as a position, source of power? • How institutions organize power? • Constant contestations • What does taken-for-granted mean? • Political-structural change and cognitive change • Cases from outside ‘domesticated’ western cases? • Pragmatics of action: structures and cognitive and action • Motives for differential action? • Identity and categorization process • Blending and segregating (Hannan &Freeman 1986); Mary Douglass 1986 • Representations of the actor • Forms of domination and action routes ‘accepted’ and others not taken, self-censorship. How to see and make empirical this process? • What distinguishes challengers – position, power, who are challenges and how arrived in this location? • Endogenous change, and the transformation of incumbents into challenges (stratification, loss of privilege) • How do institutions react to challenges to own authenticity? • Strategic responses to inst pressures. What opportunities, limits to ‘resource’ dependence conceptions? How to challengers get into position? • How do institutions respond to entrep? Conceptions and costs of ‘failure’ • Empirics, research design, methods • Who has the power to enforce ‘isomorphism’ (costs, models, appropriateness? Who arbitrates? Formal conception of institutions relies on power and modes of sanctions. Is this necessary? What form does this take in institutional analysis? • AGAINST isomorphism. What are we really interested in when we inquire into isomorph? Ambiguity, conformity, lack of alternatives? • Martin/Hirsch: What structures in academic professional life constrain/facilitate ‘power’ in institutional theory?

2. Questions How many theories of power have I examined? Questions driven by theory and by phenomenon: inst advantage is multi-level analysis – inst arguments may help us envision the inevitable multi-level How to manage the ‘institutional’ politics of journal terrain, publishing, special issues? – how to build relevant, useful professional network for your sustainable career? Re-read J. Martin’s OMT distinguished scholar essay – she addresses in personal and professional ways these profound issues ‘Power’ as relational concept – relationships, not agents Empirical implications Focus on dynamics (design – longitudinal, social movements) – design studies that can find, ‘see’, make visible ‘change’ – conceptualize change in institutionally interesting ways – design in (meaningful) controls – empirical or theoretical. Which are the ‘standard’ accounts? – Look at and critique existing review accounts of variables, methods. – Know your audience, know your journal editors. Ask them what they want the journal to do? Focus on relational data