Organizational Field

Organizational field has been employed widely in organization studies to define a set of organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life, including key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services or products. On the basis of this definition, developed by DiMaggio and Powell in 1983, DiMaggio has called attention to the fact that the structure of an organizational field must be defined on the basis of empirical investigation because such a structure exists only to the extent that it is institutionally defined.

Within the organizational literature, the concept of organizational field may be seen as similar to Scott and Meyer's concept of societal sector, defined as a collection of organizations operating in the same domain and offering similar services, products, or functions. These authors also included those organizations that critically influence the performance of the focal organizations, such as major suppliers and customers, owners and regulators, and funding sources and competitors.

One relevant aspect connected to the concept of societal sector is that this level of analysis is likely to stretch from local to national or even international actors. It is wider than the level of analysis employed by the old institutionalism, which concentrated attention on the community level. Some could say that when Philip Selznick wrote TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization about the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1949, the community would have been the more appropriate level of analysis.

Scott (in Scott and Davis) refined the concept by associating it with communities of organization involving the same meaning systems, defined by similar symbolic processes, and subject to common regulatory processes. As he pointed out, organizational field is built on the more conventional concept of industry, but it adds to that restricted concept those organizations that critically influence the performance of organizations in an industry. Thus, fields are defined by Scott in terms of shared cognitive or normative frameworks or a common regulative system.

Czarniawska and Wolff analyzed the constructing of new identities in established organization fields. They noticed that it is not necessary for the concept to apply that organizations in the same field interact with each other; they might interact with organizations outside their fields, opening the possibility of understanding change processes, even in spaces where rules and practices are well stabilized. Coalitions that comprise members of different fields can introduce a new logic into a given field. Organizational field analysis thus fits well with social network analysis.

The dynamic view of organizational field conceives of it as a battlefield combining the role of structure, institutional logics, and power relationship in understanding field-level change. Bourdieu defined field as a social arena in which people maneuver and struggle in pursuit of desirable resources. Taking into acount Bourdieu's concept of field, DiMaggio emphasized both common purpose and conflict in explaining change. As highlighted by Fligstein, this stream of thinking, emphasizing power disputes, is now being developed as a part of the institutional agenda.

Reay and Hinings have added that conceiving fields as battlefields enables one to connect structure (how actors are allied), institutional logics (values and beliefs held by actors), and power relationships (degree of dependence or autonomy of actors) to understand fieldlevel change. Reay and Hinings put emphasis on the competing institutional logics inherent in organizational fields, which can be temporarily resolved but remain full of dynamic potential. Reay and Hinings also explained that actors within a field recognize the dominance of a specific institutional logic at different times. Relative stability does not mean that actors agree with the dominant logic.

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