East Asia Workshop: Politics, Economy and Society

Oct 21 Workshop

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East Asia Workshop: Politics, Economy and Society Presents

 

Settling Symbolic Battles in Workplaces: The Spatial Dynamics of Organizational Responses to Institutional Demands

 

Yuhao Zhuang

Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences

University of Chicago

 

4:30-6pm, Tuesday

October 21, 2014

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

 

Abstract

The study of organizational responses to institutional demands has been a central concern of organizational sociology. This article examines the mobilization of response strategies in organizations and asks: Under what conditions would organizations fail to respond to external institutional pressures? Data from a two-year ethnography of two Chinese grassroots voluntary groups provide answers and reveal that organizational members were engaged in “symbolic battles” in which these actors perceived an external demand from a state agency differently according to their relevant previous work experiences and strengthened their own perceptions by attaching symbolic meanings to others’ viewpoints. Organizations were more likely to escalate the symbolic battles and discourage the mobilization of organizationally accepted responses when the departments of organizations were spatially isolated from each other. In this circumstance, the spatially fragmented workplace could unify opinions in each department while inhibiting effective negotiations across different departments. These findings advance current understandings of micro-level institutional change by discovering how divergence of members’ opinions and spatial arrangement of workplace may affect response-making processes within organizations.

 

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/

Student coordinator: Wen Xie (wxie@uchicago.edu)

Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang, Dingxin Zhao and Zheng Michael Song

 

This presentation is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinator in advance.

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