Structural Dynamics

within and between

Organizations
Charles J. Fombrun
New York University

Theories of structure have artificially segregated various

streams of research on intraorganizational and interorganizational relations. This paper recasts the concept of
structure as an instantaneous correspondence between an
infrastructure, a sociostructure, and a superstructure
three manifestations of collective life joined through a dynamic juxtaposition of technological solutions, political exchanges, and socfai interpretations in and around organizations. These levels are shown to describe reflexive yet
partially autonomous realms whose progressive interrelatedness is governed by processes of convergence and
divergence, thereby supporting both stability and change
in socia) relationships within organizations, populations,
and communities. Ultimately, it is argued, structuring can
be understood as a dialectical unfolding of relations between embedded sociai actors that translates individual action into societal consequences.*
INTRODUCTION
Despite a common concem with capturing the essence of sociai structure, current interpretations of organization as adaptation, as power, and as culture suffer from three basic failings:
(1) they have anificiaWy segregated complementary manifestations of collective life; (2} they have promoted a microanalytic
orientation that underplays the embeddedness of individuals in
organizations, organizations in populations, and populations in
communities; and (3) they have unduly stressed the short-run
stability of structures at the expense of the long-run dynamic
process of structuring. In so doing, they have encouraged a
parochial allegiance of researchers to perspectives rooted in
either ecoiogicaf, sociological, or anthropological thinking
that overemphasize either static, cross-sectional analyses of
fit or longitudinal studies of convergence {Drazin and Van de
Ven, 1985) at the expense of punctuated and contradictory
interpretations of change (Heydebrand, 1977; Miller and
Friesen, 1983).
To engage a dialogue between perspectives, this paper recasts
the concept of structure in terms of three interactive but partially autonomous levels that exist within every social collectivity: infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure. Structure is understood to be an instance in a dynamic process of
structuring that coheres individual actions by animating processes of convergence and contradiction across these three
levels. Over time, the levels of structure crystallize as layers of
constraints on human action (Clegg, 1981) and thereby translate social relationships within organizations into environmental
consequences.

1986 by Cornell Universtty.

0001-8392/86/3103-0403/$! .00.

\ am grateful to many colleagues for their

comments on previous versions of thjs
manuscript. Speciai thanks \o Eric Abrahamson, R. Kabaliswaran. Michael Rosen,
and the reviewers and editors of/!\SQ for
helpful discussions along the way. The development of this paper was supported in
part by a grant from the Tenneco Fund Program at the Graduate School of Business
Administration, New York University.

The environment of any single organization, however, is itself

made up of other organizations (DIMaggio and Powell, 1983).
Over time, it too develops a degree of structure. Both sociologists and economists have endeavored to specify the constitution of that environment, sociologists by focusing on the multiplex network of exchanges in which organizations are
embedded (Cook, 1977), and economists by stressing the relations between organizations in homogeneous populations
(Caves, 1977). Despite their common concerns, however, little
has been done to bridge the gap between them. This paper
takes a step in that direction. Specifically, the multitiered inter403/Administrative Science Quarterly, 31 (1986): 403-421

Smicturai Dynamics

pretation of structure is shown to apply to both the internal

structuring of organizations and the external patterning of relations between organizations. Single organizations cohere into
populations {Caves, 1977), while networks fuse populations
themselves into communities (Astley and Fombrun, 1983b; Astley, 1985; Astley and Fombrun, 1986). This makes both populations and communities potentially valuable mediating contexts for analyzing the relationship between micro-level
organizational activities and macro-level societal outcomes.
Finally, extant organizational research has overemphasized the
study of stability rather than change, thereby paying greater attention to processes of convergence rather than divergence
(Benson, 1977b; Heydebrand, 1977; Markovic, 1979).Toovercome these limitations, an analytic model is proposed in which
structuring develops in two directions: (1) it promotes a dynamic convergence of the three levels of structure within collectivities that favors stability and (2) it translates individual action into social consequences by building up contradictions
within and between embedded collectivities that animate
change. Structuring is therefore interpreted as a resolution of
forces favoring convergence with forces provoking contradiction that tends to propel episodic, punctuational, and metamorphic transformations in the social relations within and between organizations.
THE STRUCTURING OF ORGANIZATIONAL
COLLECTIVITIES
Prevailing theories of structure are indebted to one of three intellectual strands: f 1) Parsonian adaptations of Durkheim's
functionalist sociology that emphasize overarching goals and a
collective imperative (societal need: Parsons, 1951); (2) a
Nietzschean extoltation of power as the underlying impetus of
social dynamics (Weber, 1947); or (3) an understanding of
structure as socially constructed through the interactions of human actors (Berger and Luckmann, 1967). The first drives various formulations of contingency theory (e.g., Lawrence and
Lorsch, 1967; Thompson, 1967) which, though they differ in
their specifics (Drazin and Van de Ven, 1985), are logically consistent with explanatory frameworks derived from population
ecology and institutional economics that interpret the structuring of organizations as a consequence of either selection processes (Hannan and Freeman, 1977) or market failure (Williamson, 1975,1981).
The second approach to structuring fuels neo-Weberian theories that diagnose social configurations as manifestations of political interests whose institutionalization results in various
forms of social domination (Selznick, 1957; Perrow, 1970,
1972). In this view, actors manipulate systems to perpetuate
their ability to achieve parochial ends, and individual action
translates into forms of corporate governance that ultimately
promote the emergence of distinct social classes (Useem,
1982).
The third approach takes its cue from anthropology in analyzing
social collectivities as systems of signification that simultaneously enable and constrain the behavior of participants
(Pettigrew, 1979; Smircich, 1983). Here, actors are seen as intrinsically involved in the production and reproduction of social
404/ASQ, September 1986

reality through the propagation of symbols, rituals, myths, and

ultimately language itself, and structure can only be understood
as a vehicle for interactive sense making.
Jointly, these three perspectives disagree on the root forces
that propel the structuring of social collectivities, claiming primacy for either (1) survival, achieved through the adoption of a
technology that enables efficient resource acquisition and disposal, {2) power, asserted by a controlling elite, or (3) meaning,
arrived at through ongoing social construction.
If these three perspectives refiect fundamental aspects of
structuring, it may be useful to recast them as disaggregated
facets of a more comprehensive concept of structure. Thus,
the structure of any social collectivity could be said to consist of
three layers of constraint on individual and organizational action: (1)an infrastructure of productive activities, to which is
coupled {2) a sociostructure of exchange relationships, itself
overlaid by (3) a superstructure of shared values (Homans,
1950; Harris. 1979). In this view, structure is understood to be
a temporary configuration of infrastructure, sociostructure, and
superstructure an instance in a dynamic process of structuring that embues action with meaning. Thus, within organizations, structure is an edifice resting on the infrastructural foundation of a technological solution to the production problem,
framed by a sociostructure of interactions, around which crystallizes a set of superstructural norms and values.
Additionally, organizations exist in a field of other organizations
that also attains a degree of structure {DiMaggio and Powell,
1983). in an analytical sense, individual action is tied to social
consequences through three collectivities: the organization.
the population of commensals the organization is embedded in,
and the community of symbiotically related organizations to
which transacting populations themselves belong.^ Through
aggregation, individual action within organizations is transformed into coalitional activity and such orgahizational outcomes as goals and strategies {Sllverman, 1970; Bacharach
and Lawler, 1980). In turn, the strategic pursuits of single organizations cumulate across like organizations to fuel the competitive dynamics of whole populations and the distribution of
profits and opportunities between firms (Caves. 1977; Scherer.
1980). The aggregate impact of these strategic pursuits and industry dynamics across interdependent populations of organizations ultimately congeals as the infrastructure, sociostructure. and superstructure of the collectivity the structure of
the organizational community {Astley and Fombrun, 1983b; Astley. 1985; Astleyand Fombrun, 1986),
Organizational Structure
Although the focus in this paper is not on
the societal level, obviousty the superstructures of organizations are partially condttioned by their embeddedness in society
as a whole (Granovetter. 1985i. The entrepreneunal founder of an organization, coworkers, managers, and employees are all
drawn from an institutional context that
powerfuliy shapes beliefs and cognitions.
Since this has been discussed elsewhere
(Heydebfand. 1977; Benson, 1977a,
1977b). this paper dwells on the mediating
levels of population and community.

Within organizations, infrastructure defines the underlying map

of interdependencies (Thompson. 1967) that an organization
confronts as it struggles to engage in and maintain its activities
overtime. In formal organizations, infrastructure embodies the
constraints of technology, competition, and market context. It
defines the feasible set of technological solutions to the production problem {i.e., alternative capital/labor combinations)
that constrains the workflow and delimits the various configurations of tasks that specific organizations draw upon at will
(Perrow, 1970; HackmanandOldham, 1980).
405/ASQ, September 1986

Structural D^anucs

Sociostructure encompasses both the administrative structure

of the organization and Its socia) architecture of exchange relationships. Three dimensions of a work organization's sociostructure are frequently distinguished: (1) the division of labor
and its attendant grouping of activities (differentiation: Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967); (2) the formal control systems designed to coordinate social activity (integration: Galbraith,
1977); and (3) the emergent pattern of social relations (the informal organization: RoethlisbergerandDickson, 1939) resulting from exchange relationships that generate and modify the
distribution of power between individuals and groups in the organization (Fombrun. 1983; Brass, 1984; Hackman, 1985),
Finally, superstructure distinguishes the ideational side of the
organization, the symbolic representations and interpretations
of collective life that come to be widely shared by participants.
The recent emphasis on the dynamics of organizational cultures and subcultures, for instance, is clearly intended to compensate for the relative neglect of superstructural elements in
previous analyses (Smircich, 1983; Riley, 1983). Belonging to
the superstructure, then, are both the emic (i.e,, self-perceived)
norms and values and implicit ideologies of members, which
manifest themselves in the ongoing etic (i.e., externally observed and induced) cultural practices and rituals of the
organization.
Such a conceptualization may be valuable because it recognizes that structure is a complex construct whose disaggregation in extant research has artificially compartmentalized complementary aspects of organization. It therefore encourages
the simultaneous analysis of organized behavior in terms of infrastructural constraints, political domination, and social signification. Consensus seems to be building around such an approach. Thus. Hanson, Hinings, and Greenwood (1980)
proposed a framework in which structuring emerges from an
interaction of three interdependent realms: "provinces of
meaning." "dependencies of power." and "contextual constraints." Clegg (1981) proposed that structuring is akin to a
process of sedimentation that layers constraints on individual
behavior, Riley (1983) built on Giddens' (1979) structurationist
theory to analyze the specific relationship between sociostructure and superstructure in two professional organizations. As
she reported, superstructural symbols are used by governing
elites to legitimate and thereby perpetuate their domination
over organizational participants, Rosen (1985) also saw the administrative structure of an advertising agency as a reflection of
domination from its controlling overlayer, Superstructural rituals, he argued, serve to couple administrative phenomena in
the sociostructure to organizational performance. Jointly these
authors clearly agree that organizations should be viewed as a
complex patterning that progressively interrelates the three
levels of structure, with each levet seen as a distinct manifestation of organizational life.
Interorganizational Structure
Beyond its applicability to the analysis of single organizations,
however, such a multitiered understanding of structuring also
seems relevant to the study of organizational populations,
fields, and communities. Benson (1975), in fact, makes a related distinction between substructure and superstructure to
406/ASQ, September 1986

analyze the developnnent of interorganizational networks.

Though the twofold distinction was suitable for his purposes,
the ability to further untangte administrative phenomena from
cultural representations seems desirable in a more general
mode! of structuring. Furthermore, recent analyses have demonstrated how work organizations are embedded in organizational populations and communities (Carroll, 1984). To better articulate the relationship between organizational action and
collective consequences, it should therefore prove useful to
specify the structural properties of these two mediating fields.
Population structure. The infrastructure of a set of like organizations is typically defined by the resource base the population
collectively draws on in terms of technology, personnel, and
other material inputs and the product markets to which it sells.
Hannan and Freeman (1977) and Brittain and Freeman (1980),
for instance, proposed measures of resource abundance that
draw on bioecology to typify environmental spaces. Similarly,
microeconomists stress the degree of competitive rivalry in an
industry as the principal factor responsible for inducing market
structure (Porter, 1980; Scherer, 1980). Such measures of infrastructure as the number of competing firms are used to explain the resulting size distribution of firms in the industry
(Nelson and Winter, 1982) and the concentration of economic
activity (Caves, 1977).
As an overlay on the population infrastructure, the sociostructure represents the degree of collective administration in the
population, Astleyand Fombrun (1983a) proposed that distinct
administrative mechanisms emerge across a set of ideal types
of population. Like the structures of organizations, these sociostructural relationships vary in terms of their degree of centralization and formality. Thus, trade associations are coordinating bodies that seem to prevail in fragmented populations,
while informal leadership and tacit collusion tend to appear in
more oligopolistic, confederated populations.
In turn, however, the administrative mechanisms of the population's sociostructure are regulated by implicit sanctions for noncompliance that can be described by a population superstructure. Norms and institutionalized practices create focal points
(Schelling, 1970) for population activity that limit the range of
behaviors of member firms. Indeed, to neoclassical economists, social institutions themselves are merely rules of thumb
guiding the behavior of actors in the collectivity rules whose
emergence is fueled by efficiency considerations (Schotter,
1981),
Jointly, then, the strategic actions of similar organizations are
both constrained by and cumulate into a population structure that defines the conditions of life for members of the population. As for single organizations, the collective structure of a
population, it would seem, can also be apprehended in terms of
a correspondence between an infrastructure, a sociostructure,
and a superstructure.
Community structure. PopuiationsthemseWes, however,
also develop relationships with other populations that bind
them into organizational communities. Astley and Fombrun
(1983b) suggested that underlying technologies create the horizontal and vertical interdependencies (Pfeffer and Salancik,
1978) between populations that appear as transactions in the
407/ASa September 1986

Structural D^Miniis

input-output matrix (Leontief, 1966). Since tied to every technology is a set of resource consumption patterns that induce
such transactions (Pfeffer and Satancik, 1978), an input-output
matrix can therefore be used to describe the infrastructure of
the national community of firms.
In turn, administrative relationships come to modify the quantity and quality of the transactions between neighboring populations in the community. As individual firms struggle either to
increase their autonomy (Burt, 1980) or stabilize their interdependence, they develop relationships with other firms in those
neighboring populations. The resulting pattern of social interlocks across populations in the community partly serves to define the community's sociostructure.
Simultaneously, the sociostructure itself unfolds within a set of
institutionalized thought patterns (Warren, Rose, and
Bergunder, 1376). These shared understandings of work, product, efficiency, competition, cooperation, growth, market
share, and the like are manifestations of the community's superstructure. Few researchers have investigated the normative
properties of organizational communities. However, if, as Sahal
(1981) has suggested, industrial innovations are characterized
by technological insularity that creates a bunching effect, it can
readily be conjectured that such a clustering of innovations results, in fact, from the embeddedness of specific technologies
within different organizational communities whose social separation impedes the free transfer of know-how across the industrial landscape. This kind of social dislocation would obtain if
technological islands are akin to invisible colleges (Crane, 1972)
in bringing together professionals with distinct work practices,
beliefs, norms of conduct, and idiomatic linguistic practices.
Taken jointly, then, the structures of both organizational populations and communities can be described as homologous to the
structures of single organizations. Figure 1 diagrams the suggested correspondence between infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure ir\ these three embedded organizational collectivities.
In Figure 1, different forms of interdependence are used to
characterize the infrastructure of collectivities. Within organizations, workflow interdependence induced by existing technology is the counterpart of the degree of task differentiation induced by the societal division of labor. Between organizations,
horizontal interdependence binds organizations into populations, while vertical interdependence is the basis of a community's infrastructure.
Against this infrastructural background, Figure 1 juxtaposes
various components of sociostructure and superstructure. Principal elements of the sociostructure include the following:
within organizations, individuals come together through a political hierarchy, while in populations and communities various administrative mechanisms link organizations into an emergent
political configuration. Finally, at the superstructural level,
norms and shared values come to characterize distinct organizational cultures, industry cultures, and community cultures.
White Figure 1 suggests that any social collectivity can be analyzed in terms of an instantaneous correspondence between
the three ievels of structure, a more complete understanding of
408/ASQ, September 1986

Figure 1 Th structunng of organizational collectivities.

ORGANIZATION

POPULATION
CONTRAOICTKJN

INFRASTRUCTURE

Workflow I nterdependence
Task Differentiation

Horizontal Interdependence
Niche Differentiati on

VerticBl Interdependence
Venica! Disinlag rati on

SOCIOSTRUCTURE

Hierarchy
Core'Pen pheiv Jobs

I ndUBtry Associatio ns
Strgtagic Groups
Core'PetiphorvCompanies

Tectinotogicsl Islands
Business Clusters
Dual Economy/Dual Labor Market

Shared Values
OrganizalionCulture

Regulation
tndustrv Norms

SUPERSTRUCTURE

PROCESSOF
CONVERGENCE

social structure can only be achieved by explicating the dynamic, embedded unfolding of relationships across levels and
between collectivities. To this end. Figure 1 therefore proposes
that the process of structuring is animated by two sets of
forces: (1) forces that promote a convergence between the leveis of structure within collectivities and (2) forces that stimulate
a build-up of contradictions between collectivities.
STRUCTURAL CONVERGENCE WITHIN COLLECTIVITIES
The orthodoxy of organizational analysis interprets structunng
as a process of convergence through which organizations establish order, achieve stability, and maintain themselves in a
state of homeostatic equilibrium vis-a-vis the environment
(e.g., Katz and Kahn, 1978). In this view, structures are institutionalized in an incremental fashion, change is evolutionary, and
organizations develop over time. Research in this mode has
emphasized the convergence of social relationships within
both organizational and interorganizatlona! collectivities.
Convergent Relations within Organizations

Such a view of structure as convergent

across levels is not consistent v^rth the
plea of critical theorists that organization
structures be understood as tools of managerial elites (Braverman, 1974; Edwards,
1979. Fischer and Sirianni, 1984). The integrated correspondence between infrastructure, sociostructure. and superstructure is seen to originate in an initial pattern
of domination whose "sedimentation," as
Clegg (1981: 552) argued, accumulates
into tayers of social rules that constrain behavior and reproduce the existing organizational configuration

Three research traditions suggest that structuring provokes a

progressive correspondence between infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure toward a stable organizational
configuration: institutional theory, external control theory, and
evolutionary theory. They differ in their relative stress on the
primacy of either inf rastructural or superstructural elements in
inducing convergence.
Institutionatists analyze the process through which the particularistic interests of a group within the organization come to
be widely shared by organizational participants. In so doing,
they typically assert that the early history (and prehistory) of the
organization sets in motion interactions and processes in the
sociostructure that ultimately become institutionalized to secure the commitment of lower-level participants to a reified culture, vision, or purpose in the superstructure (Pettigrew,
1979).2
409/ASQ, September 1986

Structural Dynamics

In emphasizing convergence, institutionalists actually assume

the existence of legitimating forces from the environment, a
form of approval that stems from either (1) the relative effectiveness of the firm in the wider competitive population context
in which it must maintain adequate input-output relations
(Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978) or (2) external societal support for
its continued existence (Meyer and Rowan, 1977), Under these
circumstances, patterns that worked well for the first generation of participants (i.e.. that proved capable of generating satisfactory outcomes for a minimal subset of participants) tend to
get reproduced across subsequent generations in the organization, Clark (1972), for instance, described this process of intergenerational convergence in his institutional analysis of two
New England colleges (cf. also Kimberly, 1980).
In unstable environments, however, organizations may prove
incapable of maintaining external legitimacy, in which case they
soon face crisis conditions that may require radical change
{Starbuck, Greve, and Hedberg. 1978). Culture, in fact, can itself become a source of inertia that supports convergence between the levels of structure but inhibits adaptation. Fueled by
declining levels of performance or legitimacy, rival coalitions
within the structure rise up to challenge the existing dominant
coalition (Thompson. 1967), and convergence is disrupted in
favor of a new, albeit fundamentally homologous configuration
in which goals may be altered and a different set of players
dominate.
But institutionalists are not the only ones to emphasize convergence. External control {Thompson. 1967; Pfeffer and Salancik. 1978) and transactions cost theories (Wiiliamson. 1975)
also propose that structuring propels a convergence between
infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure, one that
culminates in an enduring orgahizational configuration. In this
view, an infrastructure of workflow interdependehcies sets the
stage for an internal distribution of power (Hickson et al..
1971), manifest in the relative centrality of individuals in the
communication networks (Fombrun. 1983; Brass, 1984) and
their mobilization into a form of collective governance in the sociostructure (Scott. Mitchell, and Peery. 1981; Fombrun, 1984).
Alternatively, infrastructural cost considerations are said to induce an efficient administrative configuration whose purpose is
to mediate the uncertain market transactions that would otherwise obtain (Chandler. 1962; Williamson. 1975). Ultimately, the
continued competitiveness and growth of the organization promote organizational learning, and the emergence of ideational
elements and rituals that subsequently become identifiable
themes (Opier, 1945) of the organization's superstructure.
These remembered routines, in a way. act as the organization's
collective memory (Nelson and Winter, 1982), one that supports convergence and can inhibit adaptability {Hannan and
Freeman, 1984).
Finally, proponents of life-cycle theories, by highlighting the
predictable developmental stages through which structures
are elaborated, also take the position that growth involves a dynamic convergence of the different levels of structure (Kimberly, Miles, and Associates, 1980). Though little is said of the
specific interaction between the levels of structure, they do
suggest that a universal process of growth progressively inter4T0/ASQ, September 1986

relates administrative systems, structures, and behaviors that

eventually crystallize into discrete organizational configurations
(Haire, 1959; Miller and Friesen, 1983),
Hence, institutionalists, externalists, and evolutionists ultimately posit a dynamic convergence of the three levels of
structure. Although they differ in the factor to which they ascribe primacy (whether material conditions, political ascendency, or an institutional context), they all propose that structures crystallize through a dynamic interaction of environment
and organization that supports an enduring convergence between infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure within
organizations.

Convergence in Populations and Communities

A homologous process can be said to obtain in higher-order collectivities, and researchers often see the unfolding structure of
populations and communities of organizations as a process of
convergence.
For populations, ecologists view single organizations as random variations struggling for survival in an environment
(Hannan and Freeman, 1977; McKelvey, 1982). Byoutcompeting rivals in the acquisition of resources, one of these variations
gets selected as the population form, thereby setting the stage
for the subsequent diffusion of the form across the population
through a process of imitation (Alchian, 1950) and the progressive institutionalization of systems and practices inside the
organization (Hannan and Freeman, 1984).
As these organizations vie for scarce resources with competitors, however, the population fragments into progressively narrower differentiated niches (Freeman and Hannan, 1983)
vertical disintegration occurs (Stigler, 1951), A sociostructure
therefore comes into being as firms struggle to manage their
common fate, Astley and Fombrun (1983b). for instance, argued that sociostructural relationships emerge to cope with underlying horizontal interdependence in the infrastructure of
populations. Similarly, economists typically rationalize the evolution of social institutions as either the consequence of market
failure (Williamson, 1975, 1981) or the outcome of repeated encounters (or supergames) between competing organizations in
a population (Schotter. 1981). Similarly, Cook (1977) relied on a
general exchange theory to discuss the impact of an infrastructure of transactional dependencies between organizations on
the evolution of network relations in the sociostructure.
Ultimately, the growing correspondence of a population's infrastructure of niches and its sociostructure of relationships
across differentiated niches could conceivably foster the emergence of dominant beliefs across the population whose progressive institutionalization would point to the elaboration of a
population superstructure. Although anecdotal evidence
abounds, few studies systematically analyze either the emergence of shared values or their institutionalization as industry
cultures, save for relatively superficial studies of price leadership and tacit collusion in various industrial settings (Scherer,
1980). Yet populations are known to deveiop such superstructural commonalities. McKelvey (1982) alluded to them when he
suggested that populations draw from a common competency
411/ASQ, September 1986

Structural Dynamics

pool of skills. The transfer of personnel within a population is an

element of sociostructure that doubtless contributes to the diffusion of shared interpretations in the population's superstructure. As Granovetter (1985: 504) pointed out, they are an important context that conditions the economic relations
between organizations. Like single organizations, then, it may
be that a population develops a correspondence between its infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure that in turn
constrains the dynamic unfolding of specific organizational
structures.
But populations are themselves embedded in organizational
communities in which convergence is also sometimes said to
result. DiMaggio and Powell (1983), for instance, argued that
isomorphic processes provoke increased structural homogeneity in organizational fields a set of highly connected or
structurally equivalent firms, Zucker (1983) documented the
mimetic process through which the corporate form spread
through American industry, while Astley and Fombrun (1986)
proposed that community-wide stability grew out of unfolding
infrastructure! interdependencies between U.S, industries in
the twentieth century. Moreover, Piore and Sabel (1984) traced
this emerging stability of U.S. industry to its epicenter in the
adoption, community-wide application, and eventual institutionalization of mass-production technology. As they suggested, parallel to the adoption of an inf rastructural technological solution (mass production), there unfolded a sociostructure
of oligopolistic interlocks between industries, supported by
government-industry relations that were themselves legitimated by a superstructure of more or less shared societal beliefs about individualism, laissez-faire, and entrepreneurship.
While microanalytical, Sahal's (1981) finding that innovations
themselves occur in technological islands may itself be a consequence of the social insulation that develops from the convergence of superstructure, sociostructure, and infrastructure
within organizational communities.
Thus, just as single organizations are thought to develop a progressive correspondence between their infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure, it is often hypothesized that populations and communities elaborate a homologous process of
structuring that brings the three levels of structure into coincidence. Such a process of convergence within collectivities may
be opposed, however, by a process of rationalization across
collectivities that stimulates contradictions in the relations between organizations and creates a potential for change.
STRUCTURAL DIVERGENCE, CONTRADICTION, AND
CHANGE
Contemporary organization theory, it has been argued, favors a
convergent interpretation of organizational and interorganizational dynamics that produces a homeostatic equilibrium (Parsons, 1951), In such a model, change is invariably provoked by
exogenous forces. Wilmott (1981) took Ranson, Hinings, and
Greenwood (1980) to task on this issue, since, despite their
analysis of the interrelatedness of infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure, they appeared wedded to a homeostatic interpretation of structuring that saw exogenous forces
as the ultimate source of social change. Similarly, Perrow
412/ASQ, September 1986

(1985) challenged Langton (1984) for his application of a narrow

evolutionary logic that claimed primacy for exogenous developments affecting the infrastructure of England in the late eighteenth century and discounted considerations of power in the
progressive bureaucratization of the Wedgwood factory.
The problem presents itself as well in the structuring of organizational populations and communities. For populations, it is a
question of how industries are transformed over time. Do all industries go through growth stages whose properties are more
or less defined by exogenous developments that affect the resource base of the population, or are population dynamics at
least partially controlled by the collective strategies of member
firms, as Astley and Fombrun (1983a) suggested? Similarly, if in
organizational communities interorganizational relationships
tend toward stability (Cook, 1977), what drives the transformation of these communities if not exogenous forces traceable to
technology?
A number of recent commentaries have proposed a view of
change as revolutionary rather than incremental, disruptive
rather than harmonious, quantum and metamorphic rather than
homeostatic in the structuring of relations within organizations,
populations, and communities of organizations (Miller and
Friesen, 1983; Tushman and Romanelli, 1985; Astley, 1985).
They have claimed that a collectivity's history is characterized
by long periods of stability, punctuated by intervals during
which the collectivity faces severe crises (Starbuck, Greve, and
Hedberg, 1978) and either disintegrates or undergoes dramatic
structural change. Like them, this paper makes a case for conceptualizing the evoiution of sociai relations within and between organizations as a discontinuous process. Unlike them,
however, a diaiectical interpretation of structuring is advanced,
one that takes its cue not from exogenous environmental
forces but from a metamorphic transformation of the collectivity's structure. Fueled by developing contradictions between
infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure that work to
negate the process of convergence, structuring moves forward
in fits and starts. Indeed, in an analytical sense, it can be said
that structuring is propelled by two sets of endogenous forces:
(1) contradictions induced by structural relations within collectivities; and (2) contradictions induced by structural reiations
between coilectivities (Benson, 1977a; Heydebrand, 1977;
Markovic, 1979).
Emerging Contradictions within Collectivities
Structuring can be interpreted as a dialectical process involving
the resolution of contradictions between outcomes and the activities mandated by the production of these outcomes (Benson, 1977a, 1977b; Fischer and Sirianni, 1984). Rather than
consider structure as purely integrative (e.g., Lawrence and
Lorsch, 1967; Galbraith, 1977), organizations are viewed as
sites of developing contradictions that come to light when the
researcher disaggregates the sectoral interests of social groupings within the collectivity and isolates the group whose objectives are best served by maintaining and reproducing the existing structure (Goldman and Van Houten, 1977). Divergent
forces are brought into being as structures crystallize over
time, forces that oppose the particularistic interests best
413/ASQ, September 1986

Structurai Dynamics

served by a convergence of infrastructure, sociostructure. and

superstructure, against those interests not served by the collective structure. These interests clash fundamentally, the sociostructure is polarized, convergence is threatened, and the
structure may be forced into radical realignment.
Profits and job opportunities, for instance, are two classes of
outcomes resulting from productive activity that are frequently
said to come into contradiction within work organizations (Goldman and Van Houten, 1977). The unbalanced allocation of
profits and opportunities born of a skewed distribution of property, itself powerfully legitimated by a societal superstructure,
defines social relations that gradually oppose management and
labor. As Heydebrand (1977: 63) suggested, policies designed
by management to increase efficiency in the organizational infrastructure result in a division of labor that comes into opposition with the sociostructure of authority relations designed to
control labor in the interests of the owners of the firm's capital.
In this way, the process of convergence that aligns infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure within work organizations simultaneously fosters a divergence of interests that
drives a wedge through the sociostructure. These divergences
may or may not become apparent, of course, depending on the
relative ability of the subgroups to marshal the forces of convergence and thereby mask the emerging contradiction. In this
light, attempts to promote the identification of the individual
with the organization through socialization and acculturation
can be understood as managerial strategies for diffusing the
forces of divergence engendered by the contradiction between
control and productivity. Similarly, the human relations emphasis on improving the quality of work life retains its manipulative managerialist aura (Perrow, 1972), as do recent admonitions to manage the corporate culture to better implement
corporate strategies (Smircich, 1983) or to develop union-free
organizations (Fossum, 1984), A union is a visible expression of
subgroup mobilization, one that remains counterculturai and
hence anathema to the process of convergence that favors the
status quo's distribution of rights and privileges.
In this way, convergence and divergence appear as temporally
separate aspects of the same process of structunng (Giddens.
1979), Any convergence of the levels of structure Itself builds
up social tensions through contradiction that destabilize or
negate the convergence, leading to periodic revolutions and a
forced shift to a new configuration.
Though it agrees with a punctuated interpretation of organizational history, this dialectical view departs substantially from
that advanced by Miller and Friesen (1983), Tushman and Romanelli (1985), and Astley (1985), who suggest that organizations periodically move out of phase with their environment
and require dramatic realignment. The quantum leaps they describe, in fact, result precisely from a successful convergence
of superstructure, sociostructure, and infrastructure that inhibits adaptation. Change, in their view, is wholly induced by
exogenous factors that can be traced to either technological
disruptions or messianic leaders, and the process by which the
exogenous change itself is generated remains unexplained. In
contrast, the dialectical process interprets these forces as an
integral part of the organizational transformation, born of a fun414/ASQ, September 19B6

damental polarization of interests that drives a wedge through

the sociostructure.
Contradictions can also be made salient in the structuring of relations in interorganizational collectivities. Zeitz (1980), for instance, proposed that networks unfold through a dialectical
process whereby contradictions are fueled by unbalanced exchanges between organizations that gain momentum from the
skewed distribution of outcomes. His argument can be clarified
by specifying the population and community as distinct subsets
of interorganizational networks and focusing solely on the economic outcomes of structuring. The contradiction could
emerge in the following sequence. The progressive fragmentation of populations into niches encourages the emergence of a
collective sociostructure charged with coordinating activities
between niches (Astley and Fombrun, 1983a). By fostering
above-normal profits, however, the collusive sociostructure
also weakens the competitive fibre of the industry (Caves,
1977), Mobility barriers come to stratify the industry into strategic groups, some of which earn higher profits than others (Porter, 1979). Yet this only encourages rivalry between groups,
since ancillary free-riders are motivated to chisel away steadily
at these profits (Stigler, 1964) while public-interest groups and
other stakeholders increasingly petition for government regulation of the population's activities (Caves, 1977). This evolving
contradiction between the economic interests served by the
existing population structure and their social relations with bypassed groups could conceivably splinter the sociostructure
and propel a dialectical realignment of the population structure
to a new configuration. BresserandHarl (1986). in fact, proposed that just such an economic contradiction animates the
relationship between competitive and cooperative strategies in
populations of competing organizations.
Finally, endogenous forces favoring divergence could also
blossom in organizational communities. The pursuit of structural autonomy and profitability by individual organizations
(Burt, 1980) is achieved through a sociostructure of board interlocks, personnel transfers, contracts, and joint ventures. These
linkages aggregate into patterned interactions between vertically interdependent populations {Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978)
whose purpose is to favor only the interests of network members, at the expense of nonparticipating firms and interest
groups. In turn, these disenfranchised groups can be expected
to splinter the sociostructure of the community by petitioning
public opinion and governmental bodies for legislative intervention designed to regulate the distribution of economic outcomes across the community (Zeitz, 1980).
Systematic support for such macroscopic contradictions in organizational communities is difficult to locate. Evidence of
them in American industry can be adduced from the swings in
political sentiment from pro-business to antitrust and back
again as measured by the founding of governmental agencies and
legislative activity in the U.S, in the twentieth century (Chatov,
1981). The dialectic between the creation of consensus networks (such as the Federal Reserve System for the coordination of banks, the Federal Radio Commission for radio, and the
Civil Aeronautics Board for airlines) and the creation of conflict
networks {such as the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton
Act) was partially induced by dramatic shifts in the unfolding so415/ASQ, September 1986

Structural Dynamics

ciostructure and infrastructure of the U.S. national economy itself, evident in the emergence, first, of large-scale horizontally
consolidated trusts in the late 1890s and, second, of vertically
integrated oligopolies in the early twentieth century (Chandler,
1977). Far more detailed research is needed to clarify the dialectic in this case.
Altogether, as the contradiction between strategic pursuits and
collective outcomes fragments the sociostructure and brings
dominant and ancillary interest groups into conflict, organizational communities, like populations (Bresser and Harl, 1986)
and organizations (Benson, 1977a), may be forced into a
periodic adjustment of their structures. Such an interpretation
presents a challenging and viable alternative to the developmental models relying on exogenous triggers of change that
have been emphasized to date.'
Emergent Contradictions across Collectivities
White the dynamic process of structuring can stimulate change
that is analytically rooted in forces endogenous to a collectivity,
change can also be traced to the dialectic induced by contradictions born of the embeddedness of organizations within populations and of populations within communities (Benson,
1977b). These contradictions are important because they
speak to the process by which organizational action is transformed into societal consequences.
Analytically, aggregative contradictions emerge as the forces of
convergence spread from single organizations outward into
populations, through communities, and ultimately into society
as a whole. While infrastucture, sociostructure, and superstructure are pushed into alignment within organizations, the impact
of these isolated convergences on the population is to promote
organizational insularity, competitive rivalry, and hence increased horizontal interdependence between organizations,
Porter(1979), for instance, found evidence that industries are
stratified into strategic groups separated by mobility barriers
(Caves and Porter, 1977), Higher profitability obtains for a group
that consists of the largest firms in the industry. However, not
coincidentally, the largest firms are those that tend to develop
internal labor markets (Doeringer and Piore, 1971), are the
oldest firms in the industry, and hence are ideal sites for a prior
convergence between the levels of structure. Hence, intraorganizational convergence may well be tied to both economic
and social outcomes that increase interdependence in the infrastructure of the populations and communities in which these
organizations are embedded.

Morgan (1986: 236) has suggested that organizations could also be imagined as autopoietic systems iiving systems that progressively internalize environments and
transform themselves through selfreferentiat processes. In this view, environments do not exist organizations are
coproduced with populations, populations
with communities. In emphasizing closure
and convergence, however, such a model
is forced to refy on an unexplained source
of random variation to explain change.

Heightened interdependence, however, has two effects: (1) it

tends to destabilize the internal configuration of the organization by fueling rivalry between political coalitions that may lead
to an upset of the dominant coalition and delay the process of
convergence (Thompson, 1967; Bacharach and Lawler, 1980);
(2) it also creates an incentive for organizations to develop a
population or community sociostructure capable of coping with
the heightened infrastructural demands firms confront individually (Oliver, 1980).
As a result, a population sociostructure may be crafted to manage infra structural interdependence manifest either in the elaboration of administrative relations with competitors or their di416/ASQ, September 1986

rect absorption through merger (Chandler, 1962; Edwards.

1979). Collusion and consolidation, however, tend to increase
rather than decrease interdependence between competing
members in the population, thereby exacerbating their interdependence. This obtains because collusion builds a free-rider
and chiseling incentive into the strategies of individual organizations (Stigler, 1964), while consolidation, by reducing the number of players in the population, enhances their vulnerability to
one another (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Scherer, 1980). Hence
the population sociostructure, though it addresses popu/af/on
infrastructurai concerns, generates a solution that ultimately
contradicts organizational purposes (Oliver, 1980; Bresserand
Harl, 1986).
In this oligopolistic or confederated population context, single
organizations are therefore driven to search for profitability in
the increasingly salient vertical interdependencies they experience with neighboring populations in the community (Burt,
1980). Here again, two sets of sociostructural mechanisms at
the community level result from individual organizational responses to the progressive fragmentation of the community;
(1) networking strategies and (2) absorption strategies (Astley
and Fombrun, 1983b). Indicative of the first are the proliferation
of joint ventures and board interlocks (Pfeffer and Salancik,
1978; Pennings, 1981). Indicativeof the second is vertical integration (Chandler, 1962).
Unfortunately, as fruitful as these strategies may be for promoting the interests of single organizations and resolving their
individual infrastructurai problems, the resulting communitywide proliferation of interorganizational linkages only works to
enhance the complexity of the community structure as a
whole, rendering single organizations increasingly vulnerable to
the actions of others and creating what Emery and Trist (1966)
referred to as environmental turbulence. In so doing, the individual actions of organizations generate the very conditions
that they were intended to redress, namely the exacerbation of
interdependence in the population infrastructure and an increase in the volatility of an already volatile environment (Terrebery, 1968; Schon, 1971). Hence the structuring of organizational populations and communities could also reflect a
dialectical resolution of contradictions between organizational
strategies intended to suppress interdependence, and the
cumulative heightening of interdependence across the population and community infrastructure.
While the preceding analysis emphasized contradictions born
of the differential distribution of economic outcomes across
subgroups within collectivities, contradictions may also develop from the impact of structural convergence on social outcomes (Baron and Bielby, 1980,1984). Insomuch as the process of convergence promotes a stratified work structure that
separates core from periphery jobs in the infrastructure of single organizations, the cumulative impact of these isolated convergences is to foster a stratification of labor markets in industries, communities, and society as a whole (Edwards, 1979;
Baron, 1984), Faced with lower outcome distributions in terms
of earnings, advancement opportunities, and status (Tolbert,
Horan, and Beck, 1980), job incumbents in periphera! activities
are motivated to mobi!ize and collectively respond by resisting
organizational initiatives, unionizing, or appealing to govern417/ASQ, September 1986

Structural Dynamics

mental regulation. Furthermore, if these peripheral jobs are

themselves concentrated In the less profitable peripheral industries of organizational communities, as Averitt (1968) and
Edwards (1979) claimed, then contradictions should emerge
that progressively favor a radical realignment of both the internal structures of organizations and the sociostructure of the
community that links business, government, and labor. In fact,
Heydebrand (1983) suggested that this contradiction is increasingly obscured by an emerging system of technocratic
corporatism that blends occupational and organizational controi
and fuses corporate interests with those of government and
organized labor. Concentrating on the manufacturing sector,
Piore and Sabel (1984: 6, passim) also argued that such a radical realignment is now underway as U.S. industry moves
through the "second industrial divide" and develops a new epicenter in information technologies. Clearly detailed research is
needed to establish whether the proposed contradiction between economic profitability and labor market segmentation
actually holds at more than a metaphorical ievel.
Altogether, it does seem possible that contradictions are set in
motion by the very process of convergence that supports stability in the relationships within and between organizations.
These contradictions create a build-up of social tensions both
within and between collectivities that may or may not be apparent in the short run (Markovic, 1979: 37). Overtime, divergent
forces lead to a progressive splintering of the sociostructure
that propagates from organizations into populations and communities, provoking radical changes in these collectivities consistent with a punctuationa! interpretation of organizational histories. It remains for future research to investigate the relative
explanatory power of such an approach beyond the analytic
level.

CONCLUSION
Students of structure have long sought to develop generalizabie properties of organization. In so doing, they have been
forced to assume that (Dan equilibrium relationship between
the three levels of structure exists, and (2) the equilibrium combination is necessarily the most effective (Drazin and Van de
Ven, 1985). As this paper argues, neither need hold. First, since
structure is produced and reproduced through human interactions, it is both the medium and the outcome of a dynamic interaction between infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure (Giddens, 1979: 70). Therefore, the structural
properties of organization can never be divorced from the experiences of participants (Fischer and Sirianni, 1984).
Second, human action is itself conditioned by the complex embeddedness of individuals in organizations and wider coilectivities (Granovetter, 1985). Equilibrium structures are thus unlikely to obtain and, when attained, are at best fleeting
moments in a dynamic process of structuring through which
meaning is increasingly intertwined with action, and action is
transformed into social consequences (Silverman, 1970). Thus,
to claim effectiveness for surviving organizations is simply to
ignore the process of contextualization through which effectiveness is itseif defined and rationalized.
418/ASQ, September 1986

Ultimately, this paper has argued that structuring involves a

resolution of the twin polarities of convergence and contradiction. If so, then the development of organizational collectivities
could conceivably take many forms, from pure convergence to
recurrent crisis. Ratherthan debate the supremacy of convergence or contradiction, perhaps future research in this area
could endeavor to elucidate the conditions under which contradictions are masked by processes of convergence, and vice
versa. This would better serve to define the domain of applicability of alternative explanatory frameworks for understanding the structuring of organizational collectivities.

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