Business Success and Organizational Similarity

Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell reflected on complex information regarding the idea of similarities between organizations in their article. At the beginning, the authors pay attention to the role of bureaucracy in the development of an organization. In fact, they emphasize that bureaucratization is a result of competition between companies in the marketplace, competition on the level of states, and bourgeois requirements regarding equal protection provided by the law (DiMaggio and Powell 147). The article introduces the idea that bureaucratization did not reduce its influence on organizational performance and development, as opposed to the ideas offered by Max Weber. In this way, DiMaggio and Powell go on to discuss organizational theory and diversity in the context of analyzed bureaucracy. It becomes clear that as soon as organizations formulate in a single field, their performance becomes similar and the significant portion of unique characteristic traits starts to vanish. As soon as an industry starts its growth and development, new companies enter the field. In this way, companies continue to benchmark each other’s patterns of performance and organizational approaches. In the middle of the discussion, the authors mention three major forms of organizational transformation which include coercive isomorphism, mimetic isomorphism, and normative isomorphism. Coercive isomorphism takes on the form of external and internal pressure on an organization that encourages companies to change according to cultural expectations of consumers. Mimetic processes encourage companies to change due to the lack of confidence in development, which leads to the imitation of other organizations’ behavioral patterns. Finally, normative isomorphism causes organizations to benchmark professional organizational patterns and activities. From the point of view of social implications, the article indicates the natural response of an organization’s behavior to survival in terms of business. The lack of experience and fear of losing competitive positions encourages organizations to apply copying behavioral patterns, which help them to remain in balance with the performance of competitors.

John Mayer and Bryan Rowan, in their turn, dedicated their article to the evaluation of formal organizations and their nature of performance. The authors discuss institutionalized products, policies, and programs that arise as myths commonly accepted by organizations and adopted ceremonially. In fact, the article leads the reader to the idea that it is difficult and challenging to apply institutionalized products and services in practice according to the formal type of organization. However, institutionalized organizations have a formal framework of actions that help them to achieve success and appropriate the level of development. Similarity is the key to institutionalized organizations, which helps to predict the success of using specific departments in the fields in which they are institutionalized. The organizations performing in terms of the institutionalized environment have more chances to survive in a highly competitive one as long as they have a framework for performance (Meyer and Rowan 358). It helps the companies to focus on the internal environment by continuous evaluation and regulation of employees’ relations, which lead to the establishment of the organizational culture meeting the parameters of the institutionalized business environment. Non-institutionalized companies, in their turn, have to develop outstanding accommodation skills leading to the continuous adjustment to ever-changing conditions of the business environment. In general, the article emphasized the benefits of institutionalized organizations and their ability to survive in a highly competitive environment without spending excessive costs on the adjustment of the internal processes.

The article written by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell successfully achieved the goal of explaining the reasons of the organizational similarities. The structure of the article has a logical flow of information, which informs the reader about the major aspects of organizational transformation based on the influence of competition and consumers’ expectations. However, the authors did not consider the outcomes of organizational development if the organization continued to emphasize personal uniqueness without benchmarking performance principles of others. In fact, it is impossible to avoid similarities due to the introduction of new businesses in every field of the market. If some company refuses to benchmark the performance patterns of another organization, it does not guarantee that the new business entity will not be the one looking for the object of benchmarking in the aforementioned company. It means that the idea of similar businesses is logical as long as it becomes the core of competition and business construction. The similarity traces through not only the current article but also the article written by John Mayer and Bryan Rowan. They also managed to touch on the topic of similarity in institutionalized organizations.

Conclusion

In fact, the second article managed to analyze the topic according to its essence in the business environment and organizational growth and development. The authors used logical transitions to unite their ideas in a complex set of facts, proving that institutionalized organizations benefit from similarity in the organizational behavior. The language and the style of the article are appropriate for further integration of the material in both management and sociological concepts. It is possible to improve the article by adding business examples, reflecting on the beneficial influence of institutionalized organizational patterns that help to handle the challenges of business environment. In this way, it creates a complex link connecting the articles about similarities in organizational behavior and institutionalized organizations. However, the main difference between the articles is that the first one opposes similarity as a threat to the uniqueness of organizations. Conversely, the second one supports similarity as the only way of companies’ survival in conditions of competition.