Abstract

Introduction There is little question that two of the most active and creative arenas of scholarly activity in the social sciences during the past four decades have been organizational studies (OS) and social movement analysis (SM). Both have been intellectually lively and vigorous in spite of the fact that scholars in both camps began their projects during the early 1960s on relatively barren soil. Students of OS took up their labors alongside the remnants of scientific management, their human relations critics, and scattered studies of bureaucratic behavior. SM scholars were surrounded by earlier empirical work on rumors, panics, crowds and mobs together with a "smorgasbord" of theoretical perspectives, including the collective behavior, mass society, and relative deprivation approaches. (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1988, p. 695) In both situations, prior work provided scant theoretical coherence and little basis for optimism. Moreover, in this early period no connection existed or, indeed, seemed possible between the two fields since the former concentrated on instrumental, organized behavior while the latter's focus was on "spontaneous, unorganized, and unstructured phenomena." (Morris 2000, p. 445) OS began to gain traction with the recognition of the importance of the wider environment, first material resource and technical features, then political, and, more recently, institutional and cultural forces. Open systems conceptions breathed new life into a field too long wedded to concerns of internal administrative design, leadership, and work group cohesion. SM studies also began to revive because of increased recognition of the environment-not just as contexts breeding alienation or a sense of deprivation, but as the source of resources, including movement members and alliesas a locus of opportunities as well as constraints. In addition, SM scholars increasingly came to recognize the importance of organizations and organizing processes. 3 Resources must be mobilized and momentum maintained for movements to be successful, and both tasks require instrumental activities and coordination of effort: in short, organization. Since the onset of the modern period, then, both fields have flourished and there has been some interchange and learning. The learning to date, however, has been largely uni-directional. SM scholars have been able to productively borrow and adapt organizational ideas to their own uses; OS scholars have been far less opportunistic in taking advantage of movement ideas. (We detail this imbalance below.) Recent developments in each field, to our eyes, suggest a pattern of complementary strengths and weaknesses. If this is the case, then increased interaction of the two sets of scholars, with heightened collaboration and diffusion/adaption of ideas and methods, should be especially beneficial. Today, as we ease into a new century, we see signs of increased interest and interaction among participants in the two fields. We seek to encourage this interchange and to help to insure that the ideas flow in both directions. Both of us believe that the most interesting problems and greatest advances in the sciences often take place at the intersection of established fields of study. In section I of this paper, we outline in broad strokes the development of the two areas, paying particular attention to weaknesses in one field that might be redressed by insights from the other, and we begin to sketch a general framework that draws on recent work from both fields of study. In section II, we pursue the development of concepts designed to move from an organization or movement focus to an organizational field approach and from a static to a more dynamic examination of change processes linking movements and organizations. 4 In section III, we illustrate the power and generality-and, inevitably, point up the limitations-of our schema by applying it to two "cases" on which each of us has previously worked. The first case involves contention over health care duiring the period 1945-1995, a situation that Scott and colleagues have studied Two Bodies of Work No attempt will be made to provide detailed overviews of what have become two substantial, diverse literatures. Rather, our brief review is intended to identify broad trends as well as lacunae or weaknesses in each area that might be addressed by strengths and insights in the other. We conclude this section by noting some recent signs of convergence, Social Movements Beginning in the mid-1960s, a group of young scholars, including Gamson, Tilly, and Zald, began to formulate more explicit organizational and political arguments to account for social unrest, converting the earlier focus on "collective behavior" to one on "collective action", "social movements", and, even, "social movement organizations." 1978) A complementary political process perspective was pursued by Tilly and his associates. Though probably best known for its stress on shifting "political opportunities," (and constraints), this "external" focus on the political environment was always joined with an "internal" analysis of the "critical role of various grassroots settings-work and neighborhood, in particular-in facilitating and structuring collective 6 action" (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996, p. 4). In many situations, the seedbed of collective action is to be found in preexisting social arrangements that provide social capital critical to the success of early mobilizing processes when warmed by the sunlight of environmental opportunities that allow members to exploit their capital. Organizational Studies Foundational work by Within a decade, however, a number of alternative theoretical perspectives were developed-we focus on developments at the macro level-that shifted attention to less rational, more "natural" political and cultural conceptions of organizations. The organizational ecology perspective, applied primarily at the population level of analysis, resembled contingency theory in its focus on the material-resource environment. In sum, OS experienced a highly creative period during the past four decades that witnessed the development and testing of several somewhat conflicting, somewhat complementary theoretical perspectives. Rational system models have been joined and challenged by political and cultural models; all embraced open systems assumptions. (Scott 1998) The general trend in theoretical frameworks and research designs has been both up and out: "up" to encompass wider levels of analysis and "out" to incorporate more facets of the environment. Complementary Strengths and Weaknesses Even this brief review begins to showcase some of the obvious strengths of past theoretical work in the two areas and to suggest important differences. First, many SM 8 theorists had the perspicacity to embrace OS concepts and arguments fairly early and adapt them for use in their own theories. But, in doing so, they retained their distinctive focus on social process. They have given particular attention to phenomena such as the mobilization of people and resources, the construction and reconstruction of purposes and identities, the building of alliances, and the crafting of ideologies and cultural frames to support and sustain collective action. By contrast, OS scholars have devoted more attention to structure, both informal and formal, within as well as among organizations. While there are important exceptions that feature process approaches-e.g., case studies such as Selznick (1949 (See also, Scott and Meyer 1983; Scott 1992) The concept of field identifies an arenaa system of actors, actions, and relations-whose participants take one another into account as they carry out interrelated activities. Rather than focusing on a single organization or movement, or even a single type of organization or movement (population), it allows us to view these actors in context. Representative studies include 10 A fourth difference pertains to the treatment of power in the two literatures. SM scholars have from the outset emphasized the crucial role of power and politics in social life. These studies are replete with discussions of activitists,