Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. 17. - book reviews

Administrative Science Quarterly,  Sept, 1997  by Elaine Romanelli

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In their preface to this volume, Cummings and Staw praise the contribution of the chapters for their promotion of "multi- and cross-level constructs in theory building and the incorporation of time as a central concept in explanations of organizational behavior." Indeed, these themes are prevalent. Five chapters explicitly examine concepts of persons or groups in larger organizational context. House, Rousseau, and Thomas-Hunt, in "The Meso Paradigm: A Framework for the Integration of Micro and Macro Behavior," set a broad stage for multilevel research in their argument that multilevel studies should be not merely controlling variables at several levels of analysis; nor should multilevel studies be idiosyncratic to particular organizational phenomena. Rather, they argue that the meso argument presents a separate and unique theoretical perspective that, alone, can elucidate the simultaneous and dynamic interplay of events and decisions over different levels of analysis.

Chapters by Van Dyne, Cummings, and Parks, "Extra-Role Behaviors: In Pursuit of Construct and Definitional Clarity (A Bridge over Muddled Waters)," and Ashforth and Humphrey, "Labeling Processes in the Organization: Constructing the Individual," reveal the importance of a meso perspective by exposing problems that can develop from overly strict separation of the individual from the organizational context in which he or she behaves. Van Dyne, Cummings, and Parks tackle the problem of distinguishing behavior that is expected, given occupancy of a given position or job, from extrarole behavior, which is discretionary and at least intended to benefit the organization. Thus, the organization and its interests must be explicitly taken into account. Ashforth and Humphrey consider how individuals in organizations come to be perceived on the basis of categorical frames of reference that are, in large part, products of organizational context, role, and task demands.

Arrow and McGrath explore the group level of analysis in "Membership Dynamics in Groups at Work: A Theoretical Perspective." In a detailed examination of the origins and effects of both continuity and change in group membership, Arrow and McGrath emphasize the importance of both temporal and organizational contexts in the dynamics of group interactions, expectations, and responses.

Finally, Ocasio, in "The Enactment of Economic Adversity: A Reconciliation of Theories of Failure-Induced Change and Threat Rigidity," and Miles and Creed, in "Organizational Forms and Managerial Philosophies: A Descriptive and Analytical Review," draw links between processes of human cognition and sensemaking, on the one hand, and organizational responses and forms, on the other. Ocasio applies multilevel theorizing to address a recalcitrant problem in theories of organizational change, i.e., the "unjoined debate" between theories proposing problemistic search and learning in response to adversity and those proposing persistence or rigidity. He develops the idea that responses to economic adversity are enacted through the social construction of mental models that are influenced by complex cognitive, structural, and institutional processes that affect attention to stimuli. Building on these ideas, Ocasio proposes boundary conditions that will lead to either increased persistence or change. Taking a broader view, Miles and Creed explore the historical development of managerial philosophies and their effects on forms of organization that will be adopted.

Cross-organizational phenomena and comparisons are explored in two chapters. In "Population Level Learning," Miner and Haunschild explore how the nature and mix of routines in a population of organizations dynamically develop as an outcome of interactions and experiences of population members with particular routines. Their paper significantly extends institutional models of innovation diffusion by exposing learning and experience with routines as a key mechanism in the dynamics of adoption and by exploring effects of inexact copying and chance events on the trajectory of population-level learning. Lytle et al., in "A Paradigm for Confirmatory Cross-Cultural Research in Organizational Behavior," present both a conceptualization of culture and a rigorous research agenda to support testing the generalizability of midrange theory across cultures.

And last, though it appears first in the volume, Albert's chapter, "Towards a Theory of Timing: An Archival Study of Timing Decisions in the Persian Gulf War," presents an innovative view of the unfolding of organizational events and decisions within a framework of plot and temporal opportunities for action that influence both the nature of the decision that may be taken at the time as well as possibilities for future decisions. In contrast to much recent theory, which treats time as mainly a temporal dimension, having an effect either the closer or further away in time that events occur, Albert's framework focuses on the timing of decisions, and failure to time decisions properly, over a temporally organized panoply of unfolding development.