The Collegial Phenomenon

The Social Mechanisms of Cooperation Among Peers in a Corporate Law Partnership
Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-19-924272-6
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 358 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 705 g

Organizations performing non-routine, innovative, often knowledge- intensive tasks - for example professional partnerships - need a rather flat, collegial, and non - bureaucratic structure. This book examines cooperation among partners in a US corporate law firm and provides a grounded theory of collective action among rival peers, or collegiality. It is first network study of such a frim. Members (partners and associates) are portrayed as independent entrepreneurs who build social niches in their organization and cultivate status competition among themselves. This behaviour allows them to fulfil their commitment to an extremely constraining partnership agreement and generates informal social mechanisms (bounded solidarity, lateral control, oligarchic regualtion) that help a flat organization govern itself: maintain individual performance, even for tenured partners; capitalize knowledge and control quality; monitor and sanction opportunistic free-riding; solve the 'too many chefs' problem; balance the powers of rainmakers and schedulers; and integrate the firm in spite of many centrifugal forces.

These mechanisms and the solutions they provide are examined using a broadly-conceived structural approach combining theory-driven network analysis, ethnography of task forces performing knowledge-intensive work, and analysis of management and internal politics in the firm. Emmanuel Lazega presents a theory of the collegial organization which generalizes its results to all kinds of partnerships, larger multinational professional services firms, and collegial pockets in flattening bureaucracies alike.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lazega, Emmanuel

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Organisationstheorie, Organisationssoziologie, Organisationspsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- 1.: A Structural Theory of Collective Action Among Peers

- 2.: Spencer, Grace, and Robbins

- 3.: Niches and Status in the Firm: A Specific Exchange System

- 4.: Economic Performance and Quality Control

- 5.: Too Many Chefs?

- 6.: Balance of Power and Organizational Integration: A Montesquieu Structure

- 7.: Pressuring Partners Back to Good Order: A Lateral Control Regime

- 8.: Multi-Status Oligarchs and the Negotiation of Precarious Values

- Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Emmanuel Lazega is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lille I, France. Previous positions have included Assistant Professor at the University of Versailles (1993-1999); Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University (1988-1991); and Researcher at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford University (1986-1988)