Moving Beyond the Frontiers of Organization Science

This is the second installment of a two-part special issue intended to map out and advance the "Frontiers of Organization Science." We approached this project in the spirit of the journal's founding mission, seek ing to broaden the boundaries of inquiry into organiza tions, and to loosen "the normal science straightjacket" arising from premature convergence on an unchallenged set of intellectual perspectives (Daft and Levvin 1990, p. 2). Our discontent with existing theoretical perspec tives echoes that expressed recently by other scholars (March 2005, Scott 2004, Augier et al. 2005). Thus, the Frontiers of Organization Science project aspires to cat alyze the formation of a bold new theory that will inspire pioneering empirical research. Financial support from the National Science Founda tion's (NSF) Innovation and Organization Change (IOC) Program has made this project possible. We challenged the authors of the papers comprising this two-issue series to envision the kinds of organizational research that NSF ought to support in the future, and to begin the work of erecting the theoretical underpinnings for this sort of research. In keeping with the theme of theoretical rejuvenation, all of those submitting papers for possi ble publication were asked to include one senior scholar and at least one recently minted scholar as coauthors. In 2003, NSF sponsored a three-day conference at Laguna Beach California, where prospective authors presented, reappraised, combined, and revised the ideas they had been gestating. After traversing Organization Science's rigorous double blind review process, the seven papers that follow were accepted for publication in this second installment of the two-part special issue. We open Part II of the Frontiers of Organization Sci ence Special Issue with an insightful and thought pro voking paper by Alan D. Meyer, Vibha Gaba, and Ken neth A. Colwell, titled "Organizing Far from Equilib rium: Nonlinear Change in Organizational Fields." The impetus for this paper was a series of empirical research projects where a set of discontinuous changes was unex pectedly encountered in the organizational field being studied. Some will recall reading the first report of this phenomenon in a paper about "environmental jolts" in hospitals (Meyer 1982). Over a period of 20 years, three more large-scale studies were interrupted by major "jolts" whose contemplation suggests several question able assumptions about field-level change. Anchoring these is an assumption of a "general linear reality" described by Abbott (2001) as a set of deeply held causal beliefs that treat linear models as truthful representations of the actual social world. Meyer, Gaba, and Colwell contend more generally that an amalgam of mutually reinforcing beliefs, theo ries, and methods honoring the concept of equilibrium has blocked investigation of discontinuous change in organizational fields. By assessing current approaches to the study of field-level change and the major lines of research in institutional theory, the authors propose the ory and research intended to help scholars slip the bonds imposed by assumptions of linearity and equilibrium. They exhort researchers to take time seriously, conduct historical research, treat research designs as experimen tal prototypes, incorporate nonlinear concepts in theoriz ing, and study systems in flux. The second paper by Greta Hsu and Michael T. Hannan, titled "Identities, Genres, and Organizational Forms," grapples with a serious limitation in organi zational ecology (OE) theory. Hsu and Hannan point out that while the notion of organizational form plays a central and vital role in OE theory, the concept has been very loosely defined and inconsistently applied. The upshot is that boundaries of organizational popu lations have been difficult to draw with precision and