制度主义组织研究中的行动者——一种梳理制度主义组织理论的可能

Social Agents in Organizational Study of Institutionalism Schools——Review of the Institutionalist Theories of Organization Studies

"行动者之间合作制度如何可能"这一问题构成了老制度主义社会学的研究中蕴含的一个重要理论议题。该学派分析了社会行动者共享的社会文化和组织成员利益多元化两个方向突围代表理性化"铁笼"困境的组织科层化问题。新制度主义的社会学研究在承接、发展了老制度主义将社会文化因素引入分析,描画了多个组织构成的组织场域中的社会文化因素,行动者不再处于显著的理论位置。经济学的制度主义以行动者利益的分析思路搭建其组织分析框架,但将老制度主义的分析传统中的基于社会情境的中利益关系转化为了市场交易情境的利益关系。将制度视为社会符号系统是社会学的组织重新将社会行动者置于研究的核心地位的可能的选择。

＂ The possibility of cooperative institutions＂ was one of the most critical concerns of the old institutionalism school of sociology. The scholars from this school sought to break free from the ＂ iron cage＂,and the representative of the Weberian theory of rationalization,by analyzing the social-culturally shared social agents and the plural interests of agents within social groups. New institutionalism sociological research developed the social-culture factor analysis of old institutionalism,and illustrated how social-cultural factors were operated in the organizational field,a broader unit consisting of related organizations rather than a single organization. However,social agents no longer appeared in new institutionalism theory. Institutional research in economics built its analytical framework for organizational study on the basis of the interests of individual agents. Yet,it transformed the analytical tradition of old institutionalism,with its basis in agents’ interests within their social circumstances,into a theory based on pure market exchange interests. Building on these three schools of organizational theory,this article argues that a focus on the institution as a system of social symbols is one possible way to bring social agents back to the center of organizational studies.