Silverman1997

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
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Journal	Administrative Theory & Praxis
Volume	19
Number	2
Pages	178-195
URL	Link
DOI
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Organization
Institution
School
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Howpublished
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Abstract

Powell and DiMaggio's (1991) 'hew 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 insitutionalism"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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