Exhibit 1189 ยท Journal article
Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
Structures are decoupled from each other and from ongoing activities. In place of coordination, inspection, and evaluation, a logic of confidence and good faith is employed.
Argues that organizations adopt formal structures that signal conformity to institutional rules and then decouple those structures from daily work, replacing inspection with a "logic of confidence and good faith". Full text read (JSTOR copy hosted on a Brazilian university site).
- Source
- Meyer and Rowan, American Journal of Sociology 83(2):340-363
- Date
- September 1977
- Quoted from
- Abstract, p. 340
- Grade
- Peer-reviewed
- Document
- https://doi.org/10.1086/226550
- Accessed
- 2026-11-10
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- Standing note: canonical theory, not a causal estimate. Decoupling is documented in school and hospital studies; its link to deliberate concealment is not claimed by the authors.