Organizational Fields Past, Present and Future

Abstract

The central construct of neo-institutional theory has been the organizational field. Strictly speaking, the field is 'a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field.' It may include constituents such as the government, critical exchange partners, sources of funding, professional and trade associations, special interest groups, and the general public – any constituent which imposes a coercive, normative or mimetic influence on the organization. But the concept of the organizational field encompasses much more than simply a discrete list of constituents; and the ways in which the institutional literature has sought to capture this complexity has evolved over the past decades, and continues to evolve. In this chapter, we present this evolution, discussing the past, present and future of this important construct. We illustrate its early conceptualization and present its progression in a way that invites scholars to both consider their work within this historical trajectory and contribute to its further development.