Silverman1997

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Silverman1997
BibType ARTICLE
Key Silverman1997
Author(s) David Silverman
Title Studying organizational interaction: ethnomethodology’s contribution to the “new institutionalism”
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Ethnomethodology, Social interaction, Conversation, Organizational theory, Functionalism, Reference interviews, Navigation, Social structures, Research methods, Photocopiers
Publisher
Year 1997
Language English
City
Month
Journal Administrative Theory & Praxis
Volume 19
Number 2
Pages 178–195
URL Link
DOI
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Powell and DiMaggio's (1991) "new institutionalism" represents a move away from methodological individualism and functionalism's version of the social system. It represents an imaginative attempt to cut across existing debates, to find continuities with earlier traditions. Their achievement is an impressive synthesis of Durkheim, cognitive psychology, postmodernism and ethnomethodology. It clears away some dead wood and attempts to incorporate the more lively current theoretical traditions in the field. However, gains often have losses attached. Powell and DiMaggio's synthesis, like my own early text (Silverman, 1970), contains no clear guidelines for the organizational researcher, other than a pot-pourri of concepts with, at best, an unknown relation to the contingencies of data collection and analysis. Moreover, its theoretical character may, unfortunately, help to preserve a field in which "pure theory" rules. Above all, it is by no means clear that the different traditions Powell and DiMaggio identify as the "new institutionalism" sit together comfortably. In particular, their synthesis only works by attempting a Durkeimian reading of ethnomethodology. Responding to these lacunae in the new institutionalist program, I show how studies of organizational activities informed by ethnomethodology and its cousin conversation analysis are making a substantial contribution to basic issues of theory and method in the study of organization.

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