Search

This article uses a mid-century text to reengage a late-1970s concept to answer a new century question. The authors return to Alvin Gouldner's classic (1954) study Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy to reexamine the 'coupling' concept in contemporary institutionalism in a way that engages the following question: How do new institutional forms emerge? Based on Gouldner's detailed observations of work in a gypsum mine, the authors argue that coupling processes are key mechanisms in the emergence of institutional forms. Examining coupling as a dynamic process and activity helps us to understand how the institution of bureaucracy emerged in the gypsum mine and interacted with previous social orders of authority and control. Gouldner's account of coupling at the mine is a story of formal and informal power struggles and active conflict over meaning, bringing the process of local institutional formation into sharp relief. Keywords: institutionalism; Alvin Gouldner; coupling processes; Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy

The authors motivate social capital arguments at the world-system level through the analysis of world-trade flows and nation status, 1965 to 1980, with specific attention to contextual changes in global trade and stratified effects on participation in trade within it. They generate measures of structural autonomy based on world-trade data from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Index and incorporate these measures into robust regression models of the determinants of nation status. The authors find support for the overall positive effects of structural autonomy on nation status in 1965 and 1970 but find that these effects dissipate by 1980. They then use quantile regressions to find that only high-status countries experience significant returns on structural autonomy in any of the 3 observation years. The authors combine network and institutional perspectives on trade to argue that changes in the context of world trade between 1965 and 1980 affect the benefits that social capital can reap and for whom.

By framing the economics versus environment debate as a mixed-motive situation, opportunities become visible that allow greater benefits to all interests in the debate. Yet, social, cultural, and institutional arrangements frame how these interests see these opportunities, creating a barrier to mixed-motive analyses. In this article, the authors use an institutional perspective to analyze how the economics versus environment debate emerges from institutions as presently structured. They present an analysis of its present framing based on three aspects of institutions - regulative, normative, and cognitive - and consider the prescriptive implications they expose at the managerial and organizational level of action. The authors conclude with an analysis of possible solutions to overcome them.