Looking behind the curtain: categories, status and the burden of proof in organizational fields
Transcript of Looking behind the curtain: categories, status and the burden of proof in organizational fields
Looking behind the curtain Categories, status and the burden of proof
in organizational fields
Giuseppe Delmestri & Beth Goodrick
WU Vienna & Florida Atlantic University
Historical Analysis
• 2 cases in 2 countries: beginning 1900s & 1960s– Italy: • parliamentary debates• pharmacy history books• Interviews with pharmacy historians
– USA:• Court rulings• Pharmacy history books• Newspapers, pharmacy journals,
Research question
How do background assumptions affect the dynamics of categories and their associated logics within and between organizational fields?
Case 1: Chain stores (beg. 1900s)
Retail business category
Health care category
?Corporate
vs. Professional
logic
Case 1: USA (beg. 1928)
Retail business category
Health care
Pharmacists’ attempt to protect category by moving it towards the health care category
Failed
Case 1: Chain stores (beg. 1900s)
‘[Limiting ownership to pharmacists] creates an unreasonable and unnecessary restriction upon private business [and] is a clear and arbitrary invasion of the appellant’s property rights. … [M]ere stock ownership in a corporation, owning and operating a drug store, can have no real or substantial relation to the public health’ (Ruling of U.S. Supreme Court, 1928).
Case 1: Italy (1913)
Retail business category
Health care category
State protects pharmacy by emphasizing its professional character
Case 1: Chain stores (beg. 1928)
‘No legislation, unless imposing high punishments, is able to abolish greed for profit, which is natural and incoercible.” … “[F]ree trade has only one advantage: that of reducing prices. But are we sure in such a vital issue like public health, the possibility to save a couple of cents should be the basis on which we should choose which system to establish? Human life is worth more than two or three cents saved thanks to competition.’ (Italian Parliamentary Debates, 1913).
Case 1: Chain stores (beg. 1900s)
Retail business organization
Health care organization
Corporate vs.
Professional logic
Mar
ket lo
gic State logic
Background institutions place the BURDEN OF PROOF
and adjudicate visible ‘duel’
Case 2: Mass-manufacturing of medications (1960s)
– Risks transforming community pharmacists into shop keepers
– Pharmacists attempt to re-professionalize
– US: conflict professional vs. market logics– Italy: conflict professional vs. state logics
Case 2: USA (1960s)
Retail business category
Health care category
Pharmacists’ remained a special occupational category in retail, but lost organizational category status
Case 2: Italy (1968)
Retail business category
Health care
category
State protects pharmacy again by emphasizing its professional character
Contributions
• To institutional logics perspectiveRole of background in adjudicating foreground conflictsRole of nestedness: field, national and global
• Category researchOrganizational fields as industry categoriesClass membership of categories societally specific