informs ® doi 10.1287/orsc.1050.0137 © 2005 INFORMS This paper argues that research in organization theory has seen a shift in orientation from paradigm-driven work to problem-driven work since the late 1980s. A number of paradigms for the study of organizations were elaborated during the mid-1970s, including transaction cost economics, resource dependence theory, organizational ecology, new institutional theory, and agency theory in financial economics. These approaches reflected the dominant trends of the large corporations of their time: increasing concentration, diversification, and bureaucratization. However, subsequent shifts in organizational boundaries, the increased use of alliances and network forms, and the expanding role of financial markets in shaping organizational decision making all make normal science driven by the internally derived questions from these paradigms less fruitful. Instead, we argue that problem-driven work that uses mechanism-based theorizing and research that takes the field rather than the organization as the unit of analysis are the most appropriate styles of organizational research under conditions of major economic change—such as our own era. This sort of work is best exemplified by various studies under the rubric of institutional theory in the past 15 years, which are reviewed here. Key words: organization theory; social mechanisms; organizational fields; paradigms

that enactment is a "roomy framework " that reminds people of a central fact of organizationallife: "people often produce part of the environment they face " (Pondy and Mitroff, 1979: 17). He goes on to say that enactment: suggests that there are close parallels between what legislators do and what managers do. Both groups construct reality through authoritative acts. When people enact laws, they take undefined space, time, and action and draw lines, establish categories, and coin labels that create new features of the environment that did not exist before. (Weick, 1995: 30-1) As a perspective, enactment "allows people to see and say four things about organizations that they miss when they invoke the 'modern

Although there has been some growing recognition of the role of private actors in international environmental regimes, little attention has been paid to the role of the private sector at the sciencepolicy interface. Because the automobile industry plays a crucial role in mitigation of greenhouse gases, successful policy requires not just the assent but the active cooperation of this sector. Such cooperation, however, requires some institutional acceptance that climate change is indeed a significant risk. The work of the GEA program and others suggests that formal assessments do not simply land on the desks of policy makers and drive policy; rather, a complex social and political process mediates science and policy. In a similar way, the private sector is not a simple consumer of formal assessments. In this paper, we outline the role of institutional pressures in the development of corporate perspectives of climate change. Although institutional theory generally predicts convergence, or isomorphism, among organizational actors, theoretical arguments will be developed here to account for both homogeneous and heterogeneous corporate perceptions of and responses to climate change science. We focus on two factors, multiple competitive discourses within institutional fields and the transformation of institutional pressures through organizational boundaries and lenses, to explain industry responses to climate science and scientific assessments. We then explore these theoretical arguments through the case of the response of the US automobile to the climate change issue. ROTHENBERG AND LEVY--- CORPORATE RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE TABLE OF CONTENTS ACRONYM LIST

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ten years-- has provided substantive input and other extensive support to the development, organisation, and policy direction of the regulatory reform programmes in OECD Member countries. PUMA’s emphasis is on regulatory quality--- combining both good regulation where needed to protect health, safety, and the environment, and to enhance the functioning of markets, and deregulation where free markets work better. The concept of quality regulation was the primary basis for policy recommendations that gained the support of all Member countries in the 1997 OECD Report to Ministers on Regulatory Reform. Regulatory reform is an innovative and fast-moving field. The PUMA work programme on regulation has focused on helping governments develop new capacities and identify best practices for improving the quality of their regulatory decisions. The intent is to establish a longer-term basis for efficient and responsive regulation by changing incentives, capacities, and cultures in public sector institutions, based on market, juridical, and public management principles. The PUMA work on regulation is overseen by the Regulatory Management and Reform Group of the Public Management Committee. The Group is unique in the OECD in bringing together policy officials responsible for cross-cutting and horizontal regulatory reform policies, and hence has a

Impasse is more common in our society when dealing with complex social problems than its opposite, breakthroughs. Impasse is common in diplomacy, in budgeting, and in dealing with cantankerous issues like health care and tax reform. Impasse also affects the corporate world. The movement from one set of technologies and administrative arrangements to another rarely occurs without difficulty. There are obstacles in the journey and many barriers, which have to be overcome. Incremental progress and learning may accompany a deadlock, but the hoped for progress in achieving a new managerial competence is stalled and the new competence itself is only imperfectly realized. When it comes to relations between business and government, impasse is especially irksome. A history of adversarial relations and mistrust often prevents useful reforms from being introduced. While businesses increasingly have developed new managerial competencies by working closely with their suppliers, customer, and employees, and by forming alliances and joint ventures with traditional rivals and competitors, businesses and governments have not been as successful in moving rapidly toward such mutually beneficial arrangements. Ways of relating that would make both sectors more effective

How do environmental management and corporate social responsibility strategies become relevant for the core business strategies? And how can firms effectively plan and control the implementation of their sustainability strategies? This paper provides some preliminary answers to these questions based on the findings of the SustainNovation! project, a Ph.D. research

Researchers are invited to present ideas and research results in this forum to accelerate their application and to foster interdisciplinary discussion on knowledge, strategies and tools leading to sustainable management of Canada's boreal forest. Working Papers are published without peer review. Do not cite this Working Paper without the expressed written consent of the author(s).Shades of Green:

This paper empirically measures changes in the constituency of an organizational field centered around the issue of corporate environmentalism from 1960 to 1993, and correlates those changes with the evolving institutions adopted by the US chemical industry to interpret the issue. Four stages are identified, each representing a different field membership, interaction pattern and set of dominant institutions. The beginning of each stage is marked by the emergence of a triggering event. The article develops the ideas that: fields form around central issues, not markets or technologies; within fields, competing institutions may simultaneously exist within individual populations (or classes of constituencies); as institutions evolve, inter-connections between their regulative, normative and cognitive aspects can be detected, and; field level analyses can reveal the cultural and institutional origins of organizational impacts on the natural environment. The article concludes with future research challenges in understanding the dynamics by which events influence institutional change processes and the role of institutional entrepreneurs in channeling that influence.

By framing the economics versus environment debate as a mixed-motive situation, opportunities become visible that allow greater benefits to all interests in the debate. Yet, social, cultural, and institutional arrangements frame how these interests see these opportunities, creating a barrier to mixed-motive analyses. In this article, the authors use an institutional perspective to analyze how the economics versus environment debate emerges from institutions as presently structured. They present an analysis of its present framing based on three aspects of institutions—regulative, normative, and cognitive—and consider the prescriptive implications they expose at the managerial and organizational level of action. The authors conclude with an analysis of possible solutions to overcome them. There is some very good news about the climate problem: we do not need to worry about how the climate science turns out or whether this is a real problem or not...because we ought to do the same things about it anyway just to save money....Theobstacles to achieving this profitable resolution are not technological or economic. Rather, they are cultural and procedural....Obsolete rules-ofthumb used throughout engineering practice are typically wrong by half to one