Conclusions 93
signifi cant, productive, or equitable. Corporations and public agencies compete
for the government-sponsored Balderidge Awards, which include highly ques-
tionable criteria, such as benchmarking (benchmarking is actually copying the
innovations of others rather than being innovative oneself).
One aspect of diff usion theory is particularly interesting. Paul DiMaggio and
Walter Powell (1983), in their research of the diff usion of innovation in Amer-
ican businesses, found what Max Weber long ago called “the iron cage.” In his
brilliant early descriptions of bureaucracy, Weber argued that in the modern
world the organizational and managerial characteristics of bureaucracy are so
universal and compelling that these bureaucracies can become iron cages that
are hard to change. DiMaggio and Powell found “iron cages of isomorphism” in
corporate America in which fi rms were infl uenced by crisis, proximity, prestige,
and the other forces of diff usion and, over time, came increasingly to resemble
one another. Institutions, they found, will borrow from, copy, or mimic the
technology, management style, and structural qualities of other institutions per-
ceived to have either greater success or greater prestige. Th erefore, in the iron
cage of isomorphism, institutions increasingly begin to resemble each other or
to homogenize.
DiMaggio and Powell also found little association between the propensity of
fi rms to change or adapt, on the one hand, and their productivity, on the other.
Research on the patterns of structural change in American cities and the results
of those changes runs counter to DiMaggio and Powell’s claim that there is lit-
tle or no association between the propensity to change and outcomes or results.
Th e history of structural changes associated with the American municipal reform
movement and the results of that reform indicate that a diff usion of municipal-
reform-driven changes to American cities did result in signifi cantly altered be-
havior in cities (Frederickson, Johnson, and Wood 2003).
Conclusions
Th e biggest and easiest criticism of institutional theory is essentially the same
as the critique of organization theory. Both lack parsimony, and both include
dozens of variables, dozens of hypotheses, and a singular lack of a simplifying
core premise, such as the rational pursuit of self-interest. Th ese criticisms also
carry with them methodological preferences and biases, particularly having to
do with competing views of social science. Undoubtedly, those parts of modern
institutional theory that trace to the evolution of public-sector applications of or-
ganization theory are more than a little vulnerable to these criticisms. Such con-
cepts as sense making and appropriateness are fuzzy and subject to wide-ranging
interpretations. Field-based empirical testing of these concepts has tended to
be observational, interpretative, case based, and qualitative—falling short of the
methodological rigor to which many in the social sciences aspire. At the core of
the dustup between Bendor, Moe, and Shotts and their rational choice critique