Mary Douglas and Institutions Dean Pierides University of Stirling
[email protected] Graham Sewell University of Melbourne
[email protected] To be published in S. Clegg & M. Pina e Cunha (Eds.), Management, Organizations and Contemporary Social Theory, Routledge. Abstract We provide reasons why researchers of business and management who are interested in how institutions are related to organization would want to read and use the work of Mary Douglas. One of the central problems about which management and organization theorists still debate is the extent to which the structure of institutions and organizations determines the agency afforded to individuals. We show how Douglas makes space for a treatment of institutions that avoids the usual retreat to methodological individualism that characterises these debates. This holds out the promise of reinvigorating organisational analysis in a manner that is in step with calls for focusing on organization as a way of life and with calls for revisiting the classics. Keywords: Mary Douglas, institutions, rational agency, methodological individualism Dean Pierides is Lecturer in Business and Management at the University of Stirling, UK. He was awarded his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and DipEd, MEd and PhD from the University of Melbourne. He was previously a visiting scholar at Copenhagen Business School and Lecturer in Organisations and Society at the University of Manchester. His research is about how organisations deal with uncertainty, with a focus on government agencies that are responsible for emergencies and disasters, whether natural, financial or otherwise. Graham Sewell is Professor of Management and Associate Dean, Research in the Faculty of Business & Economics, University of Melbourne.