Scott, W. Richard

W. Richard (Dick) Scott has made significant contributions to the field of organizational theory and the application of this theory to healthcare organizations. He has conducted extensive research on professional organizations, with particular emphasis on social welfare, educational, and medical organizations. Scott is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, with appointments in the Graduate School of Business, the School of Education, and the School of Medicine at Stanford University.

Scott has spent his entire academic career at Stanford University, where he was the founding director of the Stanford Center for Organizations Research. Scott's early research focused on the sociological study of authority and control relations in organizations. Along with his colleagues John W. Meyer and James G. March at Stanford, Scott soon became a key theorist of organizational analysis within the school of neoinstitutionalism. This school examines how organizations operate in institutional and societal environments that govern behavior beyond market forces.

Scott is well-known for his historical study examining changes in the healthcare delivery system of the San Francisco Bay Area over a 50-year period. The study, which is published in Institutional Change and Healthcare Organizations: From Professional Dominance to Managed Care (2000), examines the profound transformation of healthcare organizations in the Bay Area. It charts changes since World War II in the number and types of organizations delivering healthcare services as these have been affected by changes in the resource environment—for example, demography, financing, supply of health professionals—and in the [Page 1071]institutional environment—for example, changes in institutional logics and governance systems.

Scott has authored or coauthored many books and has published over 150 scholarly articles. Specifically, he has authored three widely used textbooks on organizations, Formal Organizations: A Comparative Approach (1962), Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural and Open Systems (2007), and Institutions and Organizations: Ideas and Interests (2008).

Scott has received many awards and accolades throughout his distinguished career. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine (IOM), and was a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Scott also received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Management and Organization Theory Division of the Academy of Management as well as the Richard D. Irwin Award for a career of distinguished scholarly contributions to management. In 2000, the American Sociological Association, Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work created an award in Scott's name to recognize his contributions to the field of organizational sociology. The award is given annually to honor the most outstanding article contributing to the advancement of the field.

Scott was born in 1932 in Parsons, Kansas. He graduated from Parsons Junior College with an associate degree in 1952. He went on to receive a bachelor's and a master's degree from the University of Kansas and later completed his doctoral degree in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1961. While at the University of Chicago, he studied under Peter M. Blau, one of the founders of the field of organizational sociology. Scott has received honorary doctorates from the Copenhagen School of Business (2000) and the Helsinki School of Economics (2001).

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