Configurations in Inter-Organizational Cooperation: From Dyads to Organizational Fields

How organizations relate to one another is of key interest to various perspectives within the organization studies tradition. From network theory’s emphasis on the dyad to institutional theory’s emphasis on the field of actors, the discipline is principally concerned with understanding the consequences of such connections on organizational development. The goal of this chapter is to introduce the concept of organizational fields to political scientists. To introduce organizational fields requires giving attention to this concept’s intellectual pre-cursors—organization- and action-sets. From here, the chapter focuses explicitly on the empirical and theoretical insights gained from conceiving of organizations as members of a field and concludes with a reflection on the promise this way of thinking offers political scientists. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.