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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 PART 2: 10111 11 POLITICS AND ORGANIZATIONS 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20111 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30111 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40111 37 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10111 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20111 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30111 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40111 1 2 3 4 2. ORGANIZATIONAL 5 6 HETEROGENEITY AND THE 7 8 9 PRODUCTION OF NEW FORMS: 10111 11 POLITICS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 12 13 AND MUTUAL COMPANIES IN 14 15 AMERICAN FIRE INSURANCE, 16 17 1900–1930 18 19 20111 Marc Schneiberg 21 22 23 24 ABSTRACT 25 26 What are the social, political and institutional conditions for organizational 27 heterogeneity and the production of new organizational forms? I address this 28 question using historical methods and time series analyses of 3145 mutual 29 fire insurers – important cooperative alternatives to markets and hierar- 30111 chies. Developing politically oriented neo-institutional arguments, I show 31 that mutuals were vehicles by which property owners and agrarian interests 32 33 resisted corporate consolidation and secured conditions for autonomous 34 economic development. Mutuals embodied a vision of a decentralized, 35 “cooperative commonwealth” of farmers, merchants and independent 36 producers. And they rested on a socio-industrial order characterized by 37 political struggles against corporations; anti-monopoly social movements; 38 immigrants and other cultural carriers of mutual organizing templates; and 39 an institutional infrastructure of protestant churches and local movements. 40111 Social Structure and Organizations Revisited, Volume 19, pages 39–89. Copyright © 2002 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0872-9 39 40 MARC SCHNEIBERG 1 INTRODUCTION 2 3 Analyzing mutual companies in American fire insurance, this chapter addresses 4 three related questions: When do new organizational forms emerge? Under what 5 conditions do alternatives to dominant organizing practices arise and proliferate? 6 When can actors institute cooperative alternatives to markets, hierarchies and 7 8 the corporate form? This analysis flows from an interest in economic form, 9 collective self-organization, and their social and institutional foundations. It also 10111 flows from historical interests in both the rise of mass markets and giant 11 corporations as the dominant organizing logics in the U.S., and the extent to 12 which cooperative alternatives emerged during the late nineteenth and early 13 twentieth centuries. A more general concern here is to move beyond the focus 14 in much neo-institutional research on isomorphism and institutional coherence 15 to identify the conditions for heterogeneity and alternative organizational forms 16 (Powell, 1991; Scott, 1995). As Jepperson and Meyer (1991) suggest, societies 17 vary in the extent to which they support organizational diversity and the 18 production of new organizations. 19 20111 Mutuals occupy an ambiguous status in organizational research. Economic 21 analyses of organization view mutuals and other alternatives to corporate or 22 state hierarchy in terms of their problem-solving capacities, their relative costs 23 and benefits, and the intra-organizational dynamics of agency, enforcement and 24 incentive (Hansmann, 1987; Weisbrod, 1988; Ware, 1989; Bonin et al., 1993). 25 This approach is quite helpful in fire insurance, where mutuals were a recognized 26 and viable alternative to joint stock companies, competing successfully with 27 corporate forms. These successes rested, in part, on the economics of organi- 28 zation, that is, on how the internal structure of mutuals altered incentives, solved 29 moral hazards, and created advantages for insureds (Heimer, 1985; Hansmann, 30111 1995). Yet, economic analyses also stress how the costs of collective action 31 32 and enforcement limit the efficacy of cooperative forms, conferring them to 33 a small role or fleeting existence. Such emphases render economic analyses 34 less useful for insurance, where mutuals faced these problems and costs, but 35 proliferated by thousands, enjoyed remarkably high rates of survival, and lasted 36 for a half-century or more. 37 Drawing on Stinchcombe’s classic 1965 essay, I confront this puzzle by exam- 38 ining how rational-adaptive solutions are socially embedded, and by analyzing 39 the social structural conditions for self-organization and new organizational forms. 40111 Cited for its treatment of founding effects and the liabilities of newness, the 1965 essay actually begins with a question that now preoccupies new institutional research: What shapes actors’ incentives or capacities to create new organiza- tions and organizational forms? Moreover, armed with the political-economy Organizational Heterogeneity and the Production of New Forms 41 1 sensibilities of classical institutionalism, Stinchcombe answers his question by 2 invoking the social structures within which actors craft new forms, and by linking 3 the construction of organizations to broad conflicts between elites and challengers 4 over dominance, dependency and social stratification. Here, producing new forms 5 rests on the presence of “organization creating organizations,” and whether actors 6 can piggyback on the resources and trust generated by existing associations. It rests 7 on social relations, including networks for learning about alternatives, and the 8 9 absence of strong ties binding consumers to old organizations. It rests as well on 10111 political factors, like whether the founders of new organizations are sufficiently 11 powerful to resist elites with vested interests in existing regimes. 12 Elsewhere, Stinchcombe analyzed organizations in terms of micro, 13 organizational-level conditions of uncertainty, incentive and information. Such 14 work yielded its own classics – from the 1959 essay on bureaucratic and craft 15 administration to the 1990 collection, Information and Organizations – so we 16 might proceed with care regarding which of “the two Stinchcombes” we invoke 17 or deny. In fact, this diversity of approaches suggests that the greatest gains 18 analytically will come from resisting the temptation to reduce institutions to the 19 purely symbolic and from carefully re-coupling organizational forms to concrete 20111 21 economic problems, politics and actors with intentions (Stinchcombe, 1997; 22 Mizruchi & Fien, 1999). But in 1965, the main focus was contextual, turning 23 from the immediate coordination problems organizations face to the social and 24 historical settings within organizations are built. 25 This chapter analyses the proliferation of mutuals as alternative organizational 26 forms using historical materials and a seven-panel data set of 3145 fire insurance 27 mutuals reported in operation from 1903 to 1929. Part I describes the types and 28 distribution of these mutuals. Parts II and III develop and partially integrate 29 economic theories of mutuals with neo-institutional arguments about the social 30111 and political embeddedness of mutual forms. Parts IV and V assess this embed- 31 dedness view, identifying the political and institutional conditions for alternative 32 33 forms via a state-level analysis of mutuals from 1903 to 1930. 34 As I show, mutuals were solutions to immediate and pressing coordination 35 problems. Yet their proliferation ultimately rested on broader political struggles 36 over economic organization, and on a supportive institutional infrastructure or 37 socio-industrial order (Herrigel, 1994; Berk, 1994). Fire insurance mutuals were 38 vehicles by which merchants, manufacturers, and agrarian interests resisted 39 economic centralization, using consumer self-organization to secure for them- 40111 selves and their local communities a measure of independence and some critical conditions for economic development. Mutuals arose from anti-company poli- tics, agrarian protest, and successful struggles against corporate consolidation in the U.S. They resulted from social movement activity, emerging in force 41 42 MARC SCHNEIBERG 1 where populist organizations like the Grange were well developed and could 2 forcefully articulate alternative models of economic order. And they were 3 imported into the fray by social, immigrant and religious groups with established 4 templates for self-organization, as part of their existing cultural repertoires of 5 organizing forms. 6 In presenting this study, I confirm our growing sense of the possibilities for 7 8 alternatives and organizational diversity in the American economy. Cooperative 9 alternatives to hierarchies and mass markets emerged in far greater numbers 10111 and were far more durable than organizational histories of the U.S. economy 11 commonly allow. In addition, I extend in directions suggested by Stinchcombe’s 12 1965 essay more recent neo-institutionalist research on institutional change and 13 organizational form (DiMaggio, 1991; Berk, 1994; Fligstein, 1996; Clemens, 14 1997; Davis & Thompson, 1994; Haveman & Rao, 1997; Schneiberg, 1999; 15 Dobbin & Dowd, 2000). Looking to political process and state policy, struggles 16 over competing models of order, and supporting conditions and coalitions within 17 fields, neo-institutionalists have begun to bring society and politics back in, 18 analyzing new organizational forms as the product of institutionalization projects 19 20111 or social movements undertaken by entrepreneurs, challengers, or aspiring pro- 21 fessionals. Infusing this work with Stinchcombe’s old institutionalist sensibilities, 22 I pursue a multi-level approach