Chapter 3 - Power Relations across Organizations and Fields: Building on Selznick’s Concepts of Co-Optation and Institutionalization

Summary

Introduction

The tale of Philip Selznick's profound influence on organizational theory has been told many times (Blau and Scott [1962] 2003; Scott and Davis 2007; Ansell, Boin, and Farjoun 2015; Hinings and Greenwood 2015). In the conventional telling, his contributions follow a dual trajectory closely tied to his two most-cited works, TVA and the Grass Roots (1949, hereafter TVA), and Leadership in Administration (1957, hereafter Leadership). One trajectory emerged from TVA, inspiring scholars to explore organizations as sites of political struggles among different interest groups vying for control. A second trajectory flowed from Leadership and laid the conceptual foundations for institutional organizational theory. As Scott (2014, 24) notes, “The leading early figure in the institutional analysis of organizations was Philip Selznick.” Contemporary organizational scholars often relegate the first trajectory to “old” institutional analysis while elevating the second as the historical backdrop to “new” institutional analysis in organizations (DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Selznick 1996; Hirsch and Lounsbury 1997; Scott and Davis 2007).

In the first part of this chapter, I sketch Selznick's earliest forays into organizational theory and trace his ideas into TVA and Leadership. The dualtrajectory narrative of Selznick's influence belies an underlying theoretical unity in these books. This unity rests in Selznick's concern with what Krygier (2012, 85) calls the “real practical significance” of the “continuity of means and ends.” In no context is this practical significance more important than in organizational power relations and institutionalization, for the way organizations and their leaders exercise influence is inextricably bound up in the goals they hope to achieve. Selznick (1948, 1949) identified co-optation as a pernicious method through which organizational leaders invite power sharing and cooperation, yet seek to reproduce entrenched power while signaling legitimacy. I build on Selznick's concepts of co-optation and institutionalization to suggest a theoretical framework for studying what I call “institutionalized cooptation.”.Such a framework can facilitate understanding how organizational power is actively reproduced in contemporary democratic, authoritarian, and transitional political contexts.