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How Organizations Act Together: Interorganizational Coordination in Theory and Practice. - book reviews

Administrative Science Quarterly, March, 1998 by Stephen Ackroyd

From being seen, as in classical conceptions, as a type of socio-economic structure firmly subordinated to the influences of society, or, more recently, as an entity that is highly adapted to a distinct external environment, the organization tends now to be viewed simply as a constituent of a set of similar elements. Increasingly today, the world of the organizational analyst is made up entirely of organizations: it is seen as populations of organizations (as in population ecology), as a set of reticulated links between "actors" (as in actor network theory), or as groups of calculating "contractors" making transactions with others (as in transaction cost economics). Society as a whole, elements of social structure, and everything else have become nominal entities of little relevance to consider. Culture, should it appear as a reference point at all, is reduced to something that allows discussion of the limited discourses of organizational members.

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Because the book under review concentrates exclusively on interorganizational relationships, then, it can be argued, it is in the forefront of developments in the field of organization analysis. In this volume, we have interorganizational relations brought into a new and, for the most part, pin-sharp focus. The author's alleged purpose is to consider the ways in which organizations act in relation to each other. But, in fact, the author's interest is much more specific than this. The bulk of his book actually is concerned with documenting and classifying positive examples of coordination between organizations. Hence, Alexander gives this subject (abbreviated to IOC throughout the book) a special meaning. The author is not concerned about making basic distinctions between types of coordination, as Weber (1968: 50-52) does when he distinguishes between as "consensual" and "imposed" order, or "administrative" and "regulative" order, and so on. Nor is it his purpose to draw attention to fields of social and economic power within and between organizations (Weber, 1968: 53-56). For Alexander, coordination in markets is a basic idea. He begins his substantive analysis in chapter 4 with this as a model. Other situations are not seen in sharp contrast to this, but as variations on a theme. In this scheme, some elements of hierarchy are unavoidable, but that is the limit of the extent to which all supra-organizational structures are recognized. Hence, for Alexander, there are situations in which there are some limited impediments to "coordination without hierarchy," where the market does not quite reach, but all social structures are to be seen in generally this same de-centered sort of way. The focus is on the positive aspects of the links between elements rather than the overall properties of systems.

What the author achieves by adopting this approach is considerable. In the best traditions of American scholarship, he amasses relevant empirical studies, classifies and discusses them, and seeks to generalize from them by drawing attention to practically relevant points. For the most part, this book makes a great deal of sense of the material that it treats. It also has considerable practical value. In many parts of the world today, getting things done is a matter of coordinating organizations. Whether the purpose in view is sending a mission to the moon, completing a civil engineering project, making an urban transport system more effective or welfare programs more functional, the need to coordinate organizations is often present. And it is growing. From the point of view of the average public or private sector manager, or, more importantly, the person responsible for public policy, the successful discharge of their tasks often depends on others, over whom there is no possibility of direct control. The successful realization of projects is not simply a matter of managing the resources and personnel under an individual's own command. It also depends crucially on the way that other organizations and their managers choose to act. In these circumstances, an interest in coordination between organizations, and how to promote it, is likely to be endemic. What the forms of coordination are and how to develop them are likely to be high on the list of the concerns of managers. When you look systematically, as Alexander has done, there is actually a mountain of existing research into organizations, which, even if it was not conceived as being concerned with interorganizational coordination in the first place, does in fact refer to this and even makes such things central to discussion and diagnosis. Alexander does what many will find sterling work when he documents much of this material and points out the opportunities for improvement that arise from a knowledge of interorganizational connections. If all this is true, why is it not possible to end the review at this point? This is a useful new book: end of message. The answer is that there are some limitations built into the approach.

The extent to which the analysis of this book applies to all parts of the world is instructive to consider. The review copy was produced and published in Europe, and, clearly, so far as the author is concerned, the book is expected to have universal appeal. Certainly from the point of view of the coverage of the research included in it, this is not a parochial work. There are many instances in which the findings of research are cited from other continents than North America. The analysis is certainly applied to what are, culturally speaking, some very exotic locations. There is a discussion of the patterns of coordination in use in Japanese corporate groups, for example. But there are distinct limits of ambition here. Despite the inclusion of some historical examples in the introduction, the study generally lacks historical depth. The omission of significant consideration of large areas of the world - Russia, China, and other continents - is also noticeable. While this might be excused - or is perhaps only to be expected, given the scale of the potential task - there is room for considerable doubt as to whether this kind of analysis can and should be applied universally. Although this reviewer is familiar with some of the British research referred to in this book, it was sometimes an effort to see it as the same work when re-framed to illustrate Alexander's particular ideas. When examples of organizations further from the cultural epicenter are considered, the difficulty of what is being undertaken starts to become palpably apparent. The Japanese business group is not a minor variation on a market principle and cannot be understood very adequately in these terms. In short, while reading this book it gradually becomes clear that there is an active homogenization of organizations and organizing processes going on when their discussion is shoe-horned into the fashionable but tight footwear constituted by Alexander's conception of IOC. Behind his approach to organizations there are some clear theoretical and cultural preferences. If this is so, the question then becomes, how far do these biases extend and how important are they?

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How Organizations Act Together: Interorganizational Coordination in Theory and Practice. - book reviews

Administrative Science Quarterly, March, 1998 by Stephen Ackroyd

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