Entrevista com Walter W. Powell: Redes e Instituições

Organizações em rede são uma sub-área do institucionalismo? Ou representam uma mudança fundamental no modo como compreendemos instituições? Essas e outras questões são tratadas por Walter W. Powell, autor bastante conhecido do institucionalismo organizacional, em uma entrevista concedida à Elizabeth Pontikes, vencedora do prêmio de melhor artigo de dissertação da edição de 2008 do Academy of Management.
Walter Powell é amplamente conhecido por seu artigo The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields, em co-autoria com Paul DiMaggio. Contudo, há muitos anos vem produzindo trabalhos orientados para a a consideração do conceito analítico de redes no estudo da estrtutração de campos organizacionais. Em 1987, em Hybrid Organizational Arrangements: New Form or Transitional Development?, Powell já chamava atenção de que era necessário ir além dos conceitos de mercado e hierarquias. Segundo ele, "by looking at economic organization as a choice between markets and contractual relations on one side, and at conscious planning within a firm on the other, we fail to see the enormous variety that forms of cooperative arrangements can take". A alocação e controle de recursos poderia ser tratada considerando redes, idéia posteriormente desenvolvida em seu conhecido artigo de 1990, Neither market nor hierarchy: network forms of organizations.

Mais de vinte anos após Hybrid Organizational Arrangements, Powell comenta sobre algumas das idéias que orientam seus estudos e faz reflexões sobre o campo dos estudos organizacionais

Your presentation highlighted an interesting strand of your work that you presented as the merging of your research on institutionalism and networks. I find your ideas about network forms of organization intriguing. Do you see this as a recent phenomenon among organizations, or do you think this is a new way of looking at organizational fields that have previously existed?
Well, it’s a bit of both. The paper on network forms was written almost twenty years ago. Actually, an early version of it appeared in California Management Review in 1987, so more than twenty years ago. Back then, network forms of organization appeared to combine elements of 19th century – craft based activities, ranging from construction and book publishing to cultural industries. I remember giving a talk soon after I arrived at MIT in 1985, and there were people in the room like Mike Piore, Chuck Sabel, and Tom Kochan who said that there were aspects of the emerging software industry and computer industries that looked like the artisanal examples I was using. That raised the question of whether the network form was being rediscovered, or whether it involved a new set of tools. Here I use tools broadly, e.g., was computing power allowing small enterprises to do things differently, or did novel forms of distributed communication like email enable new modes of organizing? There clearly was a transformation underway that amplified the impact of organizations that were smaller but more relationally linked. But for me, one aspect of my research on the evolution of biotechnology that has been surprising is how some large, vertically integrated multinational firms have devolved their vertical structures to also become more relational. It’s not clear whether that has, as yet, transformed their research activity, but clearly there has been a strong move in that direction.
(...)

Do you see network forms of organization as a sub-area of institutionalism? Or do you see it as more of a fundamental shift of how we understand institutions?
Well - neither. I think of networks – not network forms of organization, but networks – as an element of social structure. Networks are patterns of affiliation, both existing patterns and potential patterns in terms of how ideas and practices can develop and diffuse. I think of these as the backbone or the skeleton on which institutions are layered. So you could have very informal forms of networks, i.e. personal ties and common schooling experience, or you could have more formal affiliations, such as corporate board memberships or inter-organizational partnerships. I wouldn’t at all limit networks to just those organizations that are governed on more relational principles. The structural side of networks is the skeletal system, and the institutional side is the brain, that is the cognitive system, which shapes how ideas are formed and take shape. The cognitive system provides the framework on which networks operate. It’s a recursive relationship. But it doesn’t by any means have to be a “network form.” Look at the work that Frank Dobbin and Lauren Edelman have done on equal opportunity employment and human rights issues inside of organizations. There is a strong story you can tell regarding how a “rights” logic diffused among personnel experts, with lawyers and HR staff also playing a role. This community played a role in promulgating the new logic. Employers with ties to the government via contracts helped diffuse these ideas further. Then social emulation occurred based on proximity and other social linkages. So in my view, ideas spread through networks. The content of what spreads, however, is shaped by institutions. In that sense, this example is about a rights consciousness and how issues about diversity were redefined.

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Saiba mais:

• Powell, Walter W. (1987). Hybrid Organizational Arrangements: New Form or Transitional Development? California Management Review, v. 30, n. 1,p. 67-87.
• Powell, Walter W. (1990). Neither market nor hierarchy: network forms of organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, v. 12, p. 295-336.
• Outras publicações de Walter W. Powell 
• Pontikes, Elizabeth G. (Stanford University), Fitting in or Starting New? Invention, Constraint, and New Categories in the Software Industry - Louis R. Pondy Best Paper Based on a Dissertation, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, 2008.