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DOI: 10.1177/0170840610373201

2010 31: 963Organization StudiesMayer N. Zald and Michael Lounsbury

Command PostsThe Wizards of Oz: Towards an Institutional Approach to Elites, Expertise and

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The Wizards of Oz: Towards anInstitutional Approach to Elites,Expertise and Command Posts

Mayer N. Zald and Michael Lounsbury

Abstract

Over the past half century, organizational studies scholarship has increasingly driftedaway from addressing broader societal and political issues, as well as an interest in devel-oping policy-relevant recommendations. In this paper, we argue that the time is ripe fora systematic re-engagement with how the dynamics of economy and society are funda-mentally shaped by various elites, new forms of expertise, and their command posts centers of societal power that regulate, oversee, and aim to maintain social order. Recallingearly efforts by C. Wright Mills and his contemporaries, we call for the development ofan institutional approach to the study of elites and command posts that draws on con-temporary theories of power and culture to inform the creation of a new body of knowledgeto inform our understanding of policy making and implementation. Drawing on a diversearray of sociological literatures and examples, the institutionalist agenda we lay out requiresresearch that goes beyond a focus on any particular nation-state; a cumulative research

program that embraces cross-national comparative studies and the study of internationalelites and command posts that operate across nation-states is crucial.

Keywords: power elites, public policy, command posts of organizations andinstitutions, expertise, institutional theory, power

Since the mid-20th century, organizational theorists have increasingly distanced

themselves from the study of core societal power centers and important policy

issues of the day. This has been driven by a shift away from the study of organi-

zations, politics, and society with a big S (Michels 1949; Selznick 1965 [1949];

Gouldner 1954; Stinchcombe 1965) and towards a more narrow focus on instru-mental exchange and performance as witnessed by the prominence of network

and population ecology approaches as well as subfields such as that of strategic

management (see Lounsbury and Ventresca 2003). While it may be facile to

explain this shift as a result of the rise of business schools as the center of orga-

nizational scholarship (Stern and Barley 1996), and the concomitant severance of

the umbilical cord to sociology, these same general trends are paralleled in

sociology especially in North America. Newer theoretical approaches tend to

neglect or provide a limited and impoverished conceptualization of power,

authority and domination (Clegg et al. 2006; Courpasson et al. forthcoming).

Even the concept of legitimate rule was abandoned for a concept of legitimacyas passive acceptance (e.g. Meyer and Rowan 1977). In sociology, the turn to

history and culture also led away from the study of organizational centers of

article title

OrganizationStudies31(07): 963996ISSN 01708406Copyright TheAuthor(s), 2010.Reprints and

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Mayer N. ZaldUniversity ofMichigan,USA.

Michael LounsburyUniversity of AlbertaSchool of Business &

National Institute forNanotechnology,Canada.

www.egosnet.org/os DOI: 10.1177/0170840610373201

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power and elites. These intellectual moves did not necessitate such an abandonment,

but that is what in the main happened. This shift was reinforced by increased

specialization in the field students of occupations and professions, organiza-

tions, and social stratification barely talk to each other today, whereas in an ear-

lier period the linkages were more visible and apparent to many scholars. As aresult, our discipline as a whole has become a fragmented set of inward gazing

communities, increasingly impotent as a critical voice of contemporary societal

institutions and contributor to policy and public debate.

For a contemporary example, witness our inability to make sense of or sensi-

bly comment on the recent US mortgage meltdown and concomitant global

financial crisis (but see Davis 2009; Lounsbury and Hirsch forthcoming). As a

result, we continue to play handmaiden to the discipline of economics, provid-

ing marginal insights into the error terms of econometric models. Even though

current trends towards socialization and corporatism in the US portend a possi-

ble apex in neoliberal hegemony, economists still wield great influence despitemany examples that illustrate that they do not know what they are doing. While

Alan Greenspans weak (to non-existent) oversight and regulatory posture as

Federal Reserve chairman, that enabled the 20089 financial melt-down, pro-

vides an obvious touchstone, we need not limit ourselves to recent events. In

reflecting upon the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Paul Krugman

(1998), one of the leading international economists of the day, said that none of

the precipitating factors for that crisis was accounted for in the leading textbook

on international economics he should know since he had co-authored it! He

also said that the economists running the IMF and the Treasury Department were

as good as you could get, but that the remedies they proposed had much more todo with psychological reassurance of Wall Street than they did with implement-

ing economic theory.

In order to become more relevant to policy design, regulation and its imple-

mentation, a good first step may be to develop a better understanding of how

such expert worlds function and effect economy and society. That is, we must

look behind the metaphorical curtain in the Emerald City to demystify the wiz-

ardry of experts. In this essay, we ruminate about the opportunities for students

of organizations to become more active in addressing important and pressing

policy issues, and encourage a reengagement with fundamental questions about

elites and the organizational infrastructures they operate in and use to wield

influence what we label as command posts. By Command posts, we refer to

traditional centers of societal power (e.g. varied governmental agencies, the mil-

itary, and other formal bodies of governance such as NATO, United Nations,

World Bank etc.) that regulate, oversee, and aim to maintain social order in soci-

ety and economy, both at regional, nation-state and inter-state levels.

From an organizational lens, command posts include a host of bureaucratic

offices and their staffs that have an interest and some jurisdiction over critical

policy domains, even though at first glance their occupants do not appear to qual-

ify as elites in the traditional sense (for a re-engagement with theories of bureau-

cracy see Courpasson and Clegg 2006; du Gay 2005). While much of the staffing

of these offices is with technocrats (Thoenig, 1973), we suggest a broader ana-

lytical conceptualization of command posts that embeds such bureaucracies

964 Organization Studies 31(07)



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within and amidst a wider field of organizations, cultural beliefs, and critical

interests that shape policy formulation, key decisions and actions associated with

command posts what Greenwood (2008) refers to as the asteroid belt of var-

ied elites and experts often connected to large corporations, sundry lobbyist orga-

nizations, law firms, social movement organizations, NGOs, etc. (see also Barley2007; Bourdieu et al. 1998; McCarthy and Zald 1977). The field conceptualiza-

tion calls into question conventional state-centered approaches to power and

command posts, highlighting how power is variably dispersed across a wider set

of actors who are unified by shared interests, issues or discourse. In this regard,

cross national studies that focus attention on variation in state-society relation-

ships and policy formulation, and what counts as expertise can be particularly

illuminating (e.g. Djelic and Sahlin-Anderson 2006; Djelic and Quack 2003;

Dobbin, 1994; Maclean et al. 2006; Morgan et al. 2004; Whitley 2000).

Since command posts and elites are often drawn from professions and their

training grounds, the production and reproduction of elite expertise and worldviews becomes part of the analysis of command posts (see e.g. Fourcade and

Khurana (2009) on the linkages between the transformation of financial eco-

nomics and schools of business administration). A field approach to command

posts is especially important in trying to understand the role of new forms of

expertise in the context of phenomena such as transnational policy-making in the

European Union (e.g. Fligstein and Mara-Drita 1996), world intellectual prop-

erty law (Carruthers and Ariovich 2004), environmentalism (Haas 1997),

finance (Knorr Cetina and Preda 2004), multinational corporations (Schienstock

1992), and other issues of contention (Della Porta and Tarrow 2004). As many

scholars have noted, the power of individual nation-states has waned amidst var-ied developments related to globalization especially the rise of internet tech-

nologies and the growing interconnectedness of financial markets (Evans 1995).

However, despite the need for a broad scope of analysis, we argue that it would

be especially fruitful to focus on the new breed of international experts, such as

the leaders of central banks, key financial institutions, and various policy bodies

and NGOs, who coalesce into more informal collective communities of expert

discourse and can shape command post outcomes in more subversive ways. We

believe that such communities of expertise have increasingly become a key

international policy and rule making engine, and for our discipline to be in a

position to contribute to important policy debates and issues, it would be help-

ful to know much more about who is involved, how they become involved, how

key decisions are made, and how the nature of command posts shifts over time.

Such a research direction would be facilitated if organizational scholars would

more openly engage with a wider range of scholars interested in cultural, histor-

ical, political and economic sociology as well as political science, stratification

and social movements (see Courpasson et al. 2008 for a similar invocation).

In support of this call to arms, we revisit some key scholarship on elites and

command posts from around the mid-20th century, highlight how intellectual

trends in important segments of sociology and organizational theory have led

away from a contribution on these issues, and suggest how current lines of

inquiry provide hope for a re-flowering of a more politically-inflected, and

societally-relevant, organizational theory. While important in its own right as

Zald & Lounsbury: The Wizards of Oz 965



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a scholarly project, we also believe that a more penetrating focus on experts,

elites and their command posts can usefully increase the relevance of our field

and importance of our top public intellectuals. Our field has produced too few

in England, Anthony Giddens was a major voice in the Blair administration;

Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour have been sometimes seen as leading publicintellectuals in France; and the former President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique

Cardoso, was a sociologist. However, in North America, the valorization and

celebration of public intellectuals outside of economics seems rare. And the few

who, to our knowledge, are not known for their use of organizational theory. By

developing a more policy-relevant agenda for sociology and organizational

analysis, we may be able to, in turn, produce more public intellectuals that can

draw on our body of scholarship to usefully contribute to and shape policy

processes and outcomes.

The Study of Elites and Command Posts

By the end of the Second World War, there was widespread recognition of the

fact that organizations had become powerful actors in society that, over the

course of the 20th century, had increasingly become the central drivers of capi-

talism (Perrow 2002). The post-war era became dominated by large conglomer-

ates that gave rise to elaborate bureaucracies (e.g. the M form) and middle

management. This was well documented in the media and popular culture as

exemplified by movies such as The Man with the Gray Flannel Suit (1956). In

academia, the multi-disciplinary field of organizational theory exploded in the1960s as various scholars began to focus more intently on the dynamics of these

actors (e.g. Blau and Scott 1962; Crozier 1964; Stinchcombe 1965; Thompson

1967; see Scott and Davis 2007 for a review). Much of this work took off from

the writings of Max Weber on bureaucracy, Chester Barnard, on organizations

as cooperating systems, and others that developed richly textured accounts of

organizational contexts such as labor unions, schools, firms, government bureaus,

social movement organizations, advocacy groups, nonprofit agencies, and a variety

of other kinds of organizations (see, e.g., March 1965).

The emergence of organizations as powerful actors also led to the study of

how important policy processes and decisions were influenced by the new cor-

porate elite, and how the command posts of economy and society operated and

were staffed. This agenda was prominently signaled over 50 years ago when C.

Wright Mills published The Power Elite (1956). To some extent, this treatise

reads as an indictment of sociology for not focusing enough on the fundamental

role of institutions and corporate leaders, as well as a forceful call for an expanded

analysis of elites including those who dominated large corporations and held

top political and military offices. While Mills emphasized the role of elites at

the national level, some of his contemporaries concentrated on the role of elites

at more local levels. Floyd Hunter (1953), for instance, argued that it was the

combined block of corporate elites and real estate developers that dominated

community politics and policy. G. William Domhoff worked on the role of

the ruling class at both the national, organizational and community levels (e.g.

Domhoff 1974, 1978, 1990, 2006; Domhoff and Dye 1987). However, from our




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point of view, his work tends not to probe the broader cultural and institutional

components of command posts enough.

Attention was also directed towards the staffing of command posts in works

such as The Professional Soldier (Janowitz 1960; see also Janowitz 1975).

Michael Schwartz and colleagues concentrated attention on the power of largefinancial organizations in directing the economy in ways that served their inter-

ests (e.g. see Glasberg and Schwartz 1983; Mintz and Schwartz 1985). Although

it did not focus as relentlessly on elites, the old institutionalism of Phil Selznick

and his followers focused upon the control and functioning of organizations that

tied them to the values and ideologies of the dominant coalitions in organiza-

tions (see especially Selznick 1965 [1949]). This focus was supported by the

writings of economists such as John Galbraith that looked to the techno-struc-

ture of organizations for the determination of policy.

However, the study of the power elite and command posts, as Mills and his

fellow travelers conceived it, neither gained widespread nor enduring attention.G. William Domhoff (e.g. 2006) has provided extensive studies of the com-

position, orientation and integration of the American upper class. That is an

important topic, but is only part of the study of institutional and societal com-

mand posts. In addition, there developed a more anthropological strain of work

on elites (Nader 1969). Building on Daltons (1959) Men Who Manage that pro-

vided a nuanced view of the fragmented and dynamic world of managerial

elites, some scholars focused on the details of how power functioned inside cor-

porations (e.g. Jackall 1988; Morrill 1995). Concentrating attention on how

decisions are made and how disputes are resolved, this work tried to shed light

on the moral and normative dimensions of corporate elite thought worlds.While this work has been incredibly illuminating, very little effort has been

done to harness ethnographic approaches in the pursuit of a more integrative

study of command posts and elite expertise writ large. However, as we suggest,

the work of Bourdieu (e.g. 1977, 1984; see also Golsorkhi et al. 2009) provides

a useful foundation for such an integration of macro and micro approaches via

the concept of field.

In organizational theory, absence of efforts in this direction occurred partly

because the study of organizations became increasingly disconnected from core

questions stemming from the corpus of Max Weber, and instead focused more on

cataloging the factors that influenced organizational efficiency and effectiveness

(Clegg et al. 2009; Lounsbury and Carberry 2005). This line of organizational

analysis was promoted by the Aston School and subsequent work on organiza-

tional design and structure, contingency theory, and related exchange theoretic

approaches. While some of this work connected into a more or less progressive

human relations tradition, a clear tension emerged between broader sociological

approaches to organizations that focused on power and broader societal relations,

and managerially-oriented studies of organizing that aimed to improve the work-

ings of individual organizations. The drive towards the narrow study of organi-

zational efficiency and performance was, of course, enhanced by business

schools which multiplied in the second half of the 20th century (Khurana 2007).

And the valorization of narrower issues related to instrumental exchange and per-

formance led to the reframing of some sociological approaches to organizations

as critical management studies (e.g. Alvesson et al. 2009; Wilmott 2008).




7/35

And even though organizational studies began to splinter off into specialty

journals (Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review,

Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Studies) and associations (e.g.

Academy of Management, EGOS), organizations continued to provide an

important focal point for theorization and empirical analysis in sociology.However, sociological analysis of organizations also drifted away from broader

concerns about the power elite and command posts. This was partially promul-

gated by pluralistic critics of Mills and Hunter, who argued that elites were more

often in competition with each other than united in a common front to perpetu-

ate a class hierarchy (e.g. Dahl 1961). This dovetailed with subsequent scholar-

ship on the decline of very powerful corporate conglomerates (Davis et al. 1994)

and the general shift towards the growing role of finance, financial markets, and

shareholder conceptions of value as key drivers of capitalism (e.g. Fligstein

1990; Davis 2009). The shift from corporations to shareholder capitalism cre-

ated ever more ambiguity about traditional class based arguments.Many scholars have continued searching for the possibility of class unity in

studies of interlocking directorate, but this line of research produced inconsis-

tent results (see Mizruchi 1996). In addition, the contributions of this research

tended to be pitched as technical advances in network analysis and the dynam-

ics of corporate governance, as opposed to investigations of how the corporate

elite shaped society. More generally, the dominant directions of intellectual

change in much of organizational sociology have been to downplay the role of

elites and hierarchical power in analysis, and turn away from the pressing pol-

icy choices and problems facing contemporary society.

This is epitomized by the main line developments in population ecology andneo-institutionalism beginning in the 1970s and dominating American sociolog-

ical approaches to organizations for the rest of the century. Drawing on biolog-

ical analogies to formulate elegant mathematical modeling of the dynamics of

organizations, population ecology scholars most clearly shied away from a

broader engagement with state-society dynamics and the study of elites (Hannan

and Freeman 1977; but see Carroll et al. 1989). While this paradigm has cer-

tainly been generative of a great deal of knowledge about industry processes,

especially the birth and death of small organizations as well as the dynamics of

niches, the narrow emphasis on material resources as the deux et machina seems

to have aligned this scholarly apparatus closer to the concerns of economists

than sociologists. While there have recently been some interesting developments

in using this approach to study social movement dynamics (e.g. Carroll and

Swaminthan 2000; Minkoff 1997; Soule and King 2008) and the study of iden-

tity and related cultural processes (Hsu and Hannan 2005), the role of power and

command posts continues to be vastly underappreciated.

The verdict on neo-institutional scholarship is more sanguine, but has still

contributed more to a shift away from rather than an engagement with the study

of power and elites (Clegg et al. 2009). This became explicit when DiMaggio

and Powell (1991) highlighted how the new institutionalism differed in empha-

sis from the old institutionalism of Selznick and colleagues that emphasized

more concrete forms of power. Resonating with the cultural turn that flow-

ered across the social sciences and humanities in the late 1970s and 1980s




8/35

(Friedland and Mohr 2004), new institutionalists emphasized the superordinate

role of symbolic meaning systems and cultural rules in shaping the behavior of

actors, thus countering then dominant rational actor models. This perspective

points to a conception of institutions as generative of interests, identities and

appropriate practice models that take shape in wider socio-cultural contexts(Dobbin 1994; Meyer et al. 1987), facilitating isomorphism in organizational

fields (DiMaggio and Powell 1983) or in world society (Meyer et al. 1997).

While we find seeds for a re-engagement with more traditional issues of power,

elite dominance and command posts in some strands of contemporary institutional

scholarship (see, e.g., Greenwood et al. 2008), by and large, neo-institutional

research through the 1980s and 1990s tended to downplay or altogether bracket

these issues (DiMaggio 1988; Hirsch and Lounsbury 1997). Some of the writ-

ings of Frank Dobbin and his collaborators represent an exception to this gen-

eralization. For instance, in The Social Construction of the Great Depression:

Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain, and France,Dobbin (1993) examines how policy was shaped by the preferred national

repertoires of these countries. Each of these nations experimented with all kinds

of innovations to address the crises they faced; but, in the end, the innovations

that survived were those closest to each nations cultural-political epistemes.

This shift from the old to new institutionalism and concomitant emphasis on

culture at the expense of actors paralleled developments in cognate areas such as

the sociology of culture that similarly shifted away from an old institutional

focus on issues of organizational control and domination in the production of

culture (e.g. Hirsch 1972; Peterson 1977; see Peterson and Anand 2004 for a

review). Similar to neo-institutionalism, the central tendency has been to detachculture from institutions understood as powerful clusters of organizations with

oversight of major value domains. A shift in focus towards the routine grounds of

everyday cognition as well as attention to the Foucauldian micro dynamics of

power increasingly made both elites and non-elites subject to the same epistemic

discipline. Representations, discourse, and narratives move to center stage.

Stratification, power and domination became secondary considerations, although,

oddly, much of neoinstitutional research (especially from the 1980s and 1990s)

replicates a resource dependence logic in its emphasis on contagion (Lawrence,

2008). Of course, there are good possibilities to draw on Foucault in service of a

field approach to command posts that de-centers power yet focalizes the role of

elite actors (e.g. Mitchell 1991), and we encourage efforts in this direction.

This brief excursus does not do justice to the more nuanced treatments by

practitioners of these approaches as well as the diversity of discourse across

North American and European scholars regarding the study of elites and com-

mand posts. Of course, we recognize that there are many traditions that have

maintained a focus on the study of elites and power structures and their recon-

figuration, but much more needs to be done to cultivate a more systematic and

cumulative research program. In the remainder of this essay, we aim to draw on

some of this work to argue two points. First, by combining some of the insights

across contemporary sociology, we can reinvigorate some of the larger questions

about power and elites and the shaping of economy and society, giving them an

analytic and historical depth that brings them into the 21st century. We argue that




9/35

a contemporary analysis of command posts must attend to the critical and

expanded role of experts and communities of expertise especially the interna-

tional dimension. Thus, our arguments echo but also aim to add more depth to

the recent statement by Courpasson and colleagues (2008) regarding opportuni-

ties for scholarship in Organization Studies. Second, there is in fact a lot of goodcontemporary work that, although disconnected from an explicit attachment to

the mid-century sociological agenda, can be seen as carrying it out. We want to

draw attention to some of these efforts as we believe they provide a platform

to develop a contemporary field approach to command posts.

Elites and Expertise: A Field Approach to Command Posts

Central to the mid-20th-century sociological agenda and to the scholars con-

cerned with command posts and the distribution of power was an analysis of therecruitment, socialization and career patterns of elites. However, the focus was

on a limited set of positions or offices in large corporations, the military and pol-

itics that provided a scarce resource to shape elite socialization and grooming

(e.g. Mills 1956). But much has changed since that time, requiring a broader

approach to command posts. For instance, over the past half century, many

scholars and popular writers have reflected on the shift away from a Fordist

manufacturing-based socio-economic system to one that is increasingly post-

industrial (Bell 1973; Block 1990; Davis 2009). Daniel Bell (1973) argued that

post-industrialism entailed a shift from manufacturing to services, the growing

importance of science and technology, and the emergence of new kinds of tech-nical elites or experts. These observations have been subsequently extended to

include the fact that the emergence of a post-industrial order is organized more

around finance as a model and tangible set of institutions (e.g. Davis 2009). This

goes beyond the rise of a financial conception of control within corporations

(Fligstein 1990) as the very nature of corporate life has been transformed as var-

ied forms of expertise (especially financial) have become a core driver of soci-

etal stratification processes (Weeden and Grusky 2005).

While this shift has not necessarily made Mills concern about a power elite

anachronistic, it seems that the power of corporate leaders is less robust than it

used to be. Building on a more pluralistic conceptualization, scholars such as

Block (1987) and Evans (1995) have argued that state actors still have substan-

tial policy-making autonomy. In addition, given the growing importance of

expertise, a wider array of professionals and experts are able to influence and

shape policy formulation and implementation; it no longer seems that there is a

scarce supply of offices from which the power of elites can be expressed.

Indeed, the very notion of elite seems to be in flux.

Certainly, wealthy individuals such as George Soros or Bill Gates can wield

great influence via their charities and general control of resources. But fame is

another important source of elite recognition. For instance, the Bohemian

Grove, the hallowed refuge for the old power elite (Domhoff 1974), invited

Grateful Dead band members Mickey Hart and Bob Weir to their annual retreat

in 2004. As we have suggested, expertise has also become a key source for elite




10/35

recognition. An interesting case can be seen in the career of the current Secretary

of the Treasury in the United States. Historically, the Secretary of Treasury has

come from the elite of the investment and banking community, and academic

credentials or background in governmental affairs mattered little. The academic

background of the current Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, was in Asianstudies and international economics. He has spent almost all of his career as a

civil servant or in non-profit organizations and his father is a program officer for

the Ford Foundation. Geithner has become a household name and celebrity in

fact, in April 2009, he was named to the People Magazine 100 Most Beautiful

list. In addition, his expertise in finance and financial markets has enabled him

to expand the role and responsibility of the Department of Treasury; he is seen

as one of the key leaders of the effort to reshape American banks and corpora-

tions via lending and bailouts, while also taking up the populist agenda of limit-

ing executive salaries and perks. The Geithner example highlights the twining of

expertise and elites, as well as the shifting nature of command posts. To studysuch reconfigurations of elites and command posts, a more fluid and multidi-

mensional approach to power may be required (e.g. see Clegg and Haugaard

2009; Clegg et al. 2006; Courpasson et al. forthcoming; Lukes 2004).

To begin to understand the contemporary fluidity of elites and expertise, we

need a more detailed and updated understanding of expertise as a foundation for

power and stratification. Sociological inquiry into expertise has long been

embedded in the study of professions. The professions have been traditionally

understood by their high status in the occupational hierarchy that results from

the ability to monopolize a body of relatively esoteric technical knowledge and

develop credentialing mechanisms, often supported by the government, torestrict access of individuals to membership in a profession (Brint 1994; Caplow

1954; Freidson 1970; Larson 1977; Starr 1984). While prototypical examples of

professionals were doctors and lawyers, as early as 1964, Harold Wilensky

prominently noted that varied occupational actors have actively tried to increase

their standing via professionalization. This growth of professionalization pro-

jects has led to a shift in focus away from a narrowly defined concept of profes-

sion as rooted in ethical and public responsibility, and towards a broader

understanding of how specialized knowledge enables claims making about sta-

tus and relevant expertise (Brint 1994; Derber et al. 1990; Freidson 2001;

Waring andCurrie 2009).

In turn, researchers have moved away from the study of professions as a

static hierarchy, and towards a much more dynamic and ecological approach to

varied professionalization projects and the structuring of expertise (Abbott 1988,

2005). In the study of fields of scientific expertise, researchers have built upon

this ecological imagery, explicitly focusing politics, contestation, ideologies and

values that affect differences in the relations of expertise to authorities (Frickel

and Moore 2006; see also Collins and Evans 2007; Kleinman 1995; Selinger and

Crease 2006). These new directions are evidenced in research on the structuring

of expertise within or outside of organizations (e.g. Powell 1985; Lounsbury

2007; Scott et al. 2000) as well as on how professionals consequentially shaped

the development of organizational forms and fields (Brint and Karabel 1991;

DiMaggio 1991; Larson 1995). Extending the work of Bourdieu (e.g. 1984, 1988),




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which focuses on the cultural layering of power as embedded in field discourse,

categories and relationships, a crucial contribution of this shift is the develop-

ment of the notion of field as a core concept and level of analysis.

Since DiMaggio and Powell (1983) introduced the notion of organizational

field, a concept that parallels other concepts such as sector, a growing numberof organizational theorists have employed the field concept to study a variety of

empirical domains that include state actors, organizations, and experts that inter-

act in the context of particular kinds of issues or practices (Wooten and Hoffman

2008). Rather than just focusing on a focal organization, say, for instance, the

Federal Reserve Board, the study of command posts must see key organizations

as embedded in networks of relationships and how the normative/cognitive

expectations of relevant environmental actors constrain and demand organiza-

tional action. These fields are themselves constructed over time and change in

their guiding assumptions. New actors come into being and develop field power

as professions and trade associations establish new normative expectations andcertifying capabilities, as the state and international bodies develop regulations

and regulatory bodies, as the clientele or constituencies of organizations develop

expectations and modes of enforcement. Field construction also has implications

for the careers of elites. To the extent that the redefinition of normative expec-

tations is tied to changes in technology, knowledge and expertise, the require-

ments for elite positions change (Fligstein 1990; Janowitz 1960, 1975; Scott

et al. 2000). Whether we are talking about the recruitment of the top figures for the

health care system, the military, the monetary system, corporations, or investment

bankers, there have been significant changes in the skill bases and career

experiences required for ascendancy to top institutional positions. Some of thesedynamics have been well documented in the context of the new public manage-

ment (e.g. Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson 2000; Meyer and Hammerschmid

2006; Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall 2002).

It is important to emphasize that the social organization of fields has both

horizontal and vertical dimensions (Bourdieu 1984, 1988, 1996; Scott 2008).

Horizontal forms of social organization involve network ties among producers

as well as forms of cultural classification, modes of justification and conven-

tions that segregate different kinds of actors and practices in a field (Boltanski

and Thvenot 1991). The vertical dimension focuses more on authority relations

in a field, addressing the distribution of power and authorized agents such as the

state and professions that have legitimate authority to sanction or use violence

to maintain order. Variation in these dimensions indicates variation in the struc-

turation of expertise and command posts. For instance, in radically decentralized

systems (e.g. idealized neoclassical market), there is low differentiation among

producers and little possibility for elite emergence and coordination via pow-

erful command posts. Other decentralized systems, such as in higher education

(e.g. Riesman 1965), may have elites and experts, but they are often widely

dispersed and order is maintained by university and college reputation. In the

United States, the control of higher education has mixed provenance. Many pri-

vate non-profit universities operate under independent boards. The public system

is controlled by state and local governments, with professional associations

providing certification of institutional standing. The Federal Government plays




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a role in research funding and some financial programs for students, but the

social organization of such systems is quite different from those with central,

authoritative command posts such as in the military, or where the national state

provides all of the funding of higher education. Drawing on Bourdieu, many

contemporary researchers have suggested that varied forms of network analysismay be employed to measure and track such multidimensional field level

dynamics in a way that is attentive to how practice is culturally structured and

embedded in logics and broader forms of cultural classification (see Breiger and

Mohr 2004; Lounsbury et al. 2003; Mohr 1998).

While all institutional systems in a society are subject to social control, the

imagery of command posts may not be useful for all of them. For instance,

although families and households are subject to a range of legal and normative

controls, the language of command posts may be relevant for only specific kinds

of behavior. The state and judicial systems enforce rules about age of school

attendance, parent-child relationships, and as a result, command posts for thefamily are dispersed and variegated. In such cases, field analyses of command

posts may be useful, but segmented. On the other hand, some fields, though not

as hierarchical as the military, may well be subjected to command post analysis.

By way of example, let us briefly sketch the shifting nature of command posts

in the US field of finance over the course of the 20th century. Towards the end of

the 19th century in the US, there was a steady increase in concentrated industrial

activity that required ever larger amounts of long-term capital, well beyond the

means of the wealthiest families. This led to the emergence of finance capitalism

and a small handful of powerful banks such as the National City Bank of

New York and investment houses such as J.P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn Loeb & Co.,and Kidder Peabody & Co. Note that these latter organizations also acted as

commercial banks as they provided general banking services such as accepting

deposits, trading in foreign exchange, issuing letters of credit, and dealing in

acceptances of commercial paper. In turn, this facilitated an incredible concen-

tration of wealth and a restricted set of powerful financial organizations, all of

which contributed to the late 1920s speculative bubble that led to the dismantling

of this money trust in the 1930s (Roe 1994). In that era, there was little regula-

tion of financial markets. The Federal Reserve was not created until 1913 and the

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the main regulator of financial

markets today, was not created until 1934. Thus, industrial growth and implosion

of the money trust gave rise to key command posts such as the SEC Commission

and the growing importance of nascent ones such as the Federal Reserve.

And while a regulatory logic, and active SEC, dominated the US financial

markets from the 1930s up until the 1960s, the potency of these regulatory com-

mand posts became slowly undone as a market logic, rooted in theories of finan-

cial economics, gained ascendency (Lounsbury 2002). In the 1930s, economics

and econometrics began to gain in prestige and influence as Keynesian ideas

about the aggregate demand management of the economy were in vogue. At the

same time, finance began to grow as a specialized academic field of inquiry that

could extend economic ideas more directly to practical managerial and business

problems (Smiddy and Naum 1954). The American Finance Association (AFA),

founded in 1940, created of the Journal of Finance in 1945, the first and most




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prestigious publications for the dissemination of financial knowledge. This

growth and valorization of economic and financial expertise was a global phe-

nomenon, although it became socially organized very differently in Europe than

America (Fourcade 2009).

Prior to the 1960s, articles in the Journal of Finance were mostly descriptiveand practitioner oriented, and finance-related courses in business schools focused

largely on technical problems related to corporate investment and the raising

of capital (Gordon and Howell 1959). However, by the 1970s, the study of

finance became more closely affiliated with the mathematical modeling and

highly abstract theorizing of microeconomics, essentially transforming business

finance into a branch of neo-classical economics (Durand 1968). The develop-

ment of theories of market efficiency and asset pricing, that connected finance

more closely to the discipline of economics, led to the growth of finance as a

high status intellectual pursuit (Blume et al. 1993) and transformed the more

practitioner-oriented business finance into the more prestigious and academically-controlled financial economics (Whitley 1986).

As a result, market-based capital formation through the issuance of securities

steadily gained share over commercial bank loan financing, and the centrality of

commercial banking declined (Carruthers and Stinchcombe 1999; Davis and

Mizruchi 1999). New professionals such as money managers gained ascendancy

(Lounsbury and Crumley 2007). Conversely, the power of regulatory command

posts began to wane, and they increasingly eased up on Depression era regula-

tion. In 1980, commercial banks were deregulated and, over time, financial

organizational forms such as mutual funds, life insurers, commercial and invest-

ment banks were allowed to blend (Davis 2009). This growing free marketneoliberal approach to financial market regulation and financialization

(Krippner 2005) was thus enabled by the rise of financial economics as a val-

orized body of knowledge as well as the growing role of financial expertise. For

instance, Lounsbury (2002) showed that between the Second World War and the

early 1980s, the number of professional finance associations in the US approx-

imately doubled. The growing prominence of such expertise became a key dri-

ver of reconfigurations of power, organizational forms and command posts. As

the post-mortem on the 20089 global financial collapse indicates, regulatory

command posts seemed to vacate their responsibilities as envisioned in the

1930s. And while central bank independence continued to grow in sync with

globalization processes in most nations (Polillo and Guillen 2005), their will or

ability to arrest speculation was effectively neutered.

This brief example provides some illustration about the value of a field

approach to command posts. While the contours of the example are obviously

broad and far ranging, opportunities for more penetrating accounts of elites,

experts and command posts are indicated. What a field approach does, in con-

trast to older approaches to the professions or power elite, is to emphasize the

historical contingency and fluidity of power, expertise, and the staffing and

operation of command posts. This suggests the need for a more nuanced and

multidimensional approach to power, as well as efforts to measure how actors

and practices are embedded in broader cultural structures that take shape in the

context of fields (Bourdieu 1984; Clegg et al. 2006; Lukes 2004; Mohr 1998).




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As Bourdieu suggests, this requires reflexivity on the part of researchers (see

Golsorkhi et al. 2009). In addition, it highlights the importance of accounting for

the growing role of expertise as a key foundation for stratification and the trans-

formation of economy and society.

Foundations for Further Development and Elaboration

Even though broader intellectual trends in sociology and organization studies

have led away from a focus on power elites and command posts, there are sev-

eral areas of empirical investigation that address aspects of these issues and can

provide grist for the development of a broader field approach to command posts.

We want to celebrate and highlight some of these contributions, but at the same

time encourage scholars to become more ambitious with their research aims, and

more aggressively pursue more integrative theoretical approaches that cross nar-row sub-disciplinary specializations. As we have suggested, we believe that this

requires the development of a field approach to command posts that is attentive

to the multifaceted ways power becomes manifest in cultural rules as well as

material exchange (Bourdieu 1984, 1988; Bourdieu et al. 1998; Lukes 2004;

Clegg and Haugaard 2009; Clegg et al. 2006; Courpasson et al. forthcoming).

Boards of directors. Ever since the Berle and Means (1932) thesis about the

rise of managerial capitalism, the issue of corporate control has been on the

scholarly agenda (e.g. see Glasberg and Schwartz 1983). In the 1970s and 1980s,

organizational scholars began to explore these issues in more depth by focusing

on issues of corporate governance and how interlocking directorates shapedorganizational behavior (Davis 1991; Fligstein 1985; Mizruchi 1982; Mizruchi

and Stearns 1994; Haunschild and Beckman 1998; Palmer 1983; for a review,

see Mizruchi 1996). For example, Davis (1991) showed how interlock networks

among Fortune 500 firms facilitated the adoption of poison pills, enabling con-

tinued managerial dominance. Haunschild and Beckman (1998) contextualize

the role of interlocks in flow of information, showing that some interlock part-

ners are more influential than other interlock partners. And studies of boards of

directors and interlocks continue to be prominent focal points for organizational

theory scholars in Europe and North America (e.g. Greve 2005; Leveson et al.

2009; Maitlis 2004).

However, as we suggested earlier, this research became increasingly discon-

nected from issues of wealth and power (Mintz and Schwartz 1985; Zeitlin

1974; Zald 1969) as it devolved into the more technical study of diffusion path-

ways (Strang and Soule 1998). Part of this shift had to do with waning debates

around Marxism and the silent acceptance of a more functional, pluralistic

model of Capitalism (Dahl 1961). Even though there have been some efforts to

address the coherence of the power elite in research tracking the interpenetration

of banks, institutional investors and corporations (e.g. Davis and Mizruchi 1999;

Useem 1996), now dominant emphases on relatively apolitical mechanisms by

which information and practices flow have minimized the impact of this work.

This line of research must go beyond the narrow study of interlocking directorates

to analyze the various interlinkages between elites, experts, and command posts,




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including the circulation of elites across institutional spheres, in order to

reinvigorate the study of stratification and economic organization (e.g. Bourdieu

et al. 1998; Harvey and Maclean 2008).

The corporation and its evolution. While the study of director interlocks and

corporate governance issues provided some insights into the plumbing of con-temporary organizing, it also sheds light on the nature of the corporation as a

historical form. On this score, economic historian Alfred Chandler (1962, 1977)

provided an important set of arguments linking corporate form and the rise of

managerialism to scope and differentiation of markets, and to administrative

problems following from strategic commitments. His thesis has served as a

lightning rod for sociologists who question his functionalist/internalist explana-

tion, and alternatively link the rise and transformation of the corporation more

to broader institutional changes, the state, policy cultures, and to capital sources

and competition (e.g. Dobbin 1994; Fligstein 1990; Perrow 2002; Roy 1997).

Focusing on the rise of big business from 1830 to 1920, Roy (1997) arguesthat a sole emphasis on technological change and market opportunity is mis-

leading; instead an explanation of the rise of the modern corporation requires

attention to the politics of property relations, ideology, and the state. Perrow

(2002) argues that the emergence of the corporation was not at all inevitable and

that there was a great deal of resistance to its hegemonic rise. Echoing Piore and

Sabel (1984), he also makes the normative claim that small, community-based

capitalism is better than large corporate capitalism that ignores a variety of local

social impacts including wealth concentration at a distance. While there exists a

cottage industry of business and society studies, much of that work remains dis-

connected from this broader intellectual project of understanding the dynamicsof the corporation and alternative forms of organizing in the context of particu-

lar communities, social movements, and contestation over economic and soci-

etal governance. Some recent work by Schneiberg (e.g. Schneiberg, 2007;

Schneiberg and Bartley 2001) on cooperative forms of organizations and asso-

ciationalism is exemplary on this score, and highlights how collective action

around practice-based expertise can provide a foundation for successful claims-

making and alternative organizational arrangements.

Regulatory arenas. Guided by a core theory iron triangle theory the inter-

section of industry and special interest groups, Congressional committees, and

regulatory agencies was earlier a thriving area of study in political science and

the juncture of law and administration (e.g. Adams 1981; Allison and Zelikow

1999; Pulitzer 1919). This theoretical approach was often employed to explain

regulatory capture, the revolving door between business and politics, and pork-

barrel legislation (e.g. Laffont and Tirole 1991; Levine and Forrence 1990).

Contemporary work by Baumgartner and Jones (e.g. 2005, 2009) and earlier

work by Paul Sabatier (1975) showed how iron triangles were disrupted by

social movements and broad public debates. Large changes in the public agenda

may result in the transformation of public policy, and in turn, reshape the regu-

latory arena. In organizational sociology, work on the social control of industries

in the 1970s (e.g. Zald 1978) began to address these concerns. This was picked

up by Campbell, Hollingsworth and Lindberg (1990) in their studies of industry

governance processes, as well as studies of business systems (Ailon and Kunda

2009; Morgan et al., 2004; Whitley 2000, 2007).




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Growing attention to the dynamics of rules (e.g. March et al. 2000; Jennings

et al. 2005) and institutional fields (e.g. Scott et al. 2000) has also stimulated

wider interest in the role of the state, policy development, and how the sources

and spread of new practices and forms in bound up in the law and various regu-

latory arenas. For example, Dobbin (1994) showed how different policy stylesin France, the UK, and America led to divergences in how railroads developed

in those countries. This is related to a broader stream of research at the interface

of organizational theory, law and society. While much of organizational studies

treats changes in the law as an exogenous event that demarcates distinct periods

of organizational field evolution (e.g. Fligstein 1990), the law and society liter-

ature has sought to bring the role of elite experts to the fore to probe the endoge-

nous nature of law creation and implementation (Sutton et al. 1994; Edelman

et al. 1992; Edelman and Suchman 2007).

For instance, in their examination of equal employment opportunity (EEO)

grievance procedures, Edelman, Uggen and Erlanger (1999) argue that profes-sionals skillfully respond to ambiguous legal mandates by creating structures

(e.g. EEO offices and related procedures) of symbolic compliance to the law

that then become recognized by the courts as indicators of fairness, often with-

out probing examinations of the substance of such structures (see also Kalev

et al. 2006). Dobbin and Sutton (1998) argue that such endogenity of law in the

US results from the nature of the state a weak state in the case of the US. In

turn, this empowers professional experts to define how law and public policy

shapes organizational life (e.g. Dobbin and Dowd 1997; Dobbin and Kelly

2007) as well as how organizational dynamics and law co-evolve (e.g. Kelly

and Dobbin 1998, 1999).Even though we applaud this line of work, its impact could be even bigger to

the extent we could show how various aspects of our legal institutions, includ-

ing legal professionals, have become interpenetrated with the corporate elite to

shape policy and legal dynamics in ways that favor large corporations or at least

buffer the corporation from legislative intrusion. The work of Lauren Edelman

(e.g. Edelman et al. 2001) on how affirmative action law is interpreted by legal

counsel within corporations represents one direction for such work. While more

subtle than typical examinations of regulatory capture, such an inquiry could shed

light on the extent to which various kinds of professional experts

(un)knowingly have become handmaidens to the corporate elite (see Larson

1980) and whether/how the most powerful are able to more subversively manip-

ulate key command posts in the courts and other regulatory apparati.

Labor, capital and state structure. Extending perspectives on the social con-

trol and governance of industries to a higher level, socio-economic approaches

to governance have sought to develop a body of comparative cross-national

knowledge about business systems, approaches to welfare, and the nature of

state-society relations (e.g. Campbell 2004; Crouch 1997; Hollingsworth and

Boyer 1997; Streeck, 1992; Streek and Schmitter 1985; Whitley, 2007). The

great insight of Streeck and Schmitter (e.g. 1985) was to recognize that corpo-

ratism was alive and well in many countries and that the anti-corporatist ideol-

ogy of the US led to a misunderstanding by American scholars of how modern

economies were regulated how labor, capital and the state were intertwined in

a mostly cooperative system. This work can be seen as a companion to late




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Marxist work on regulation theory, although the two are usually treated quite

separately. Regulation theory treats the welfare state, mass commodity markets,

and education as part of a system intertwined with forces of production and

social relations of production. Contradiction and tendencies of the system lead

to a breakdown in the system, generating movements and realignments and for-mation of the system. In contrast to Marxist theories and approaches that

emphasize regulatory capture and the iron-triangle, socio-economic approaches

aim to demystify conventional conceptualizations of state and market as an

oppositional dichotomy, and highlight the need for more careful studies of soci-

etal governance arrangements. However, this work could be usefully extended

by bringing conflict processes to center stage by focalizing processes within

societal command posts where key regulatory and welfare policies are designed

and implemented.1

Financial systems. Organizational scholars have a real opportunity to con-

tribute to our understanding of the workings of core capitalist financial institu-tions. Some economic sociologists have produced some interesting studies of

the network structure and local cultures of financial markets that highlight the

limitations of neoclassical economic models (e.g. Abolafia 1996; Baker 1984).

We also know about the importance of commensuration and the symbolic impor-

tance of money (Espeland and Stevens 1998; Zelizer 1995). We also have many

studies on the cultural and social dynamics of financial institutions such as

life insurance (Zelizer 1979), mutual funds (Lounsbury 2007), stock exchanges

(Weber et al. forthcoming), institutional investors (Useem 1996), investment

banks (Podolny 1993), central banks (Krippner 2007; Polillo and Guillen 2005),

credit derivatives (Huault and Rainelli-Le Montagner 2009), and commercialbanks (Marquis and Lounsbury 2007; Mizruchi and Stearns, 1994).

However, much less attention has been paid to the policy implications of our

studies and how sociological insights could generate credible solutions to press-

ing problems such as in times of financial distress, speculative bubbles, and

other forms of market failure (Davis 2009). Fred Block (1990) made some

valiant strides in this direction in his development of a qualitative growth

postindustrial paradigm as an alternative to neoclassical economics. But the

development of a broader, sociological approach to financial systems has not yet

emerged. A more committed focus to understanding the design and implemen-

tation of policy at key command posts such as central banks, treasury depart-

ments, the IMF and World Bank could usefully enhance our ability to participate

in the debates that matter for structuring society and economy. Greta Krippners

(2005, see also 2010) work on the financialization of the American economy led

her deep into the working of the Federal Reserve Board, allowing her to trace

the organizational and political dilemmas that shaped the Feds decision-making

process. And while the democratization of and access to financial markets in

wealthy countries has enabled a shift away from a focus on the role of the power

elite a la J. P. Morgan in the early 20th century, the notion of a power elite is not

necessarily irrelevant. In the context of global financial markets, experts in orga-

nizations such as the IMF, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the

World Trade Organization have become a new kind of cosmopolitan, expert-

based power elite that, however well-intentioned, often create policies that have




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had the effect of reinforcing the divide between wealthy countries and those that

are impoverished.

Globalization. To understand key issues having to do with contemporary finan-

cial markets, one must appreciate their global nature. However, our understand-

ing of globalization processes remains limited. At a macroscopic level offormulation, world systems theory examines the rise and fall of nations and soci-

eties as they compete for dominance (e.g. Wallerstein 1979). Whether nations or

civilizations are the fundamental units, strength comes from the domination of

political, military and economic resources and the ability to set the terms of trade

between units. In a less macroscopic form, analysis turns to classes and elite

groups situated in nations at different positions in the world economy. While this

approach has aimed to critique the dominant globalization development paradigm

(McMichael 1996), it works best for understanding peripheral and semi-peripheral

societies, often having little to say about the institutions, governance and classes

of core nations. In addition, because world systems theorists pay little attention tostate structures (including command posts) and their creation and destruction, it

misses the declining relevancy of the state in a period in which states are less able

to buffer economic transactions. However, recent work on commodity chains has

begun to provide some guts to world system analysis, providing more attention to

governance systems and mechanisms of global social reproduction (e.g. Gereffi

and Korzeniewicz 1994). Nonetheless, world systems theory continues to have

difficulty shedding light on contemporary globalization because it treats it as

merely an extension of past world-system dynamics, ignoring how financial

markets have really changed in speed and impact.

In contrast to the world systems realist/functionalist conceptualization ofnation-states as rational actors, world society theorists alternatively conceptu-

alize nation-states as culturally constituted actors that adopt practices that have

achieved worldwide legitimacy via mechanisms such as International Non-

Governmental Organizations (e.g. Meyer et al. 1997). Scholarly work in this

tradition has documented the rise of a world polity (e.g. Boli and Thomas 1999)

and has demonstrated world cultural effects on nation-states by tracking

legitimacy-driven isomorphism in mass education (Meyer et al. 1992), decolo-

nization (Strang 1990), and the natural environment (Frank et al. 2000). While

this stream of work acknowledges a kind of global power elite linked to profes-

sional expertise, it tends to gloss over important sources of cross-national

variation that persist due to the existence of multiple varieties of capitalism as

well as indigenous forms of stratification (e.g. Djelic and Quack 2003; Dobbin

1994; Hall and Soskice 2001; Hamilton and Biggart 1988; Hollingsworth and

Boyer 1997). Similar to world systems research, world society researchers also

fail to provide penetrating accounts of the workings of command posts such as

international regulatory bodies. Some of the essays in Marie-Laure Djelic

and Kerstin Sahlin-Andersons excellent 2006 edited collection, Transnational

Governance: Institutional Dynamics of Regulation, provide penetrating descrip-

tions and analyses of specific global policy networks and committees that develop

global standards.

In developing an understanding of global command posts, we need to update

our understanding of the role of financial markets (see Knorr Cetina and




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Bruegger 2002; Knorr Centina and Preda 2004) and how internet technologies

and reconstituted flows of knowledge, information and resources are altering

our notion of place (see Florida 2002; Sassen 2003, 2007; Sassen and Lantham

2005). We need to critically re-examine our conceptualization of world system,

state and corporation (Evans 1995), and appreciate the role of trans-nationalepistemic communities that are reshaping policies, rules, and legal, financial

and corporate institutions (see, e.g., Haas 1997). In an era of the declining power

of states, expertise and other specialized skills are increasingly being organized

internationally. For instance, over the past few decades, there has been a

marked increase in the use of private military corporations (e.g. Blackwater)

that provide mercenaries and other specialized scientific and technological

expertise on a contract basis to supplement or replace normal nation-state mil-

itary operations (Baum and McGahan 2009). Dezalay and Garth (1996) showed

how the work of international lawyers shaped global commercial dispute reso-

lution, highlighting how power is constituted via the assumptions of law andprocedural legitimacy. Such placelessinternational forms of expertise go beyond

the construction of world society models of appropriate behavior, providing a

foundation for a new kind of cosmopolitan power elite.

Social movements, politics and command posts. It is important to emphasize

that we believe an adequate approach to the study of command posts requires

treating them as part of larger systems of cultural, ideological, economic and

political control. In some authoritarian and centralized societies, the alliance

between ruling elites, the military and police makes command posts unitary; or

at least the differentiation of sectoral command posts is somewhat opaque to

outside observers. Even in these societies, however, demographic changes, newtechnologies, changes in the modes of communication (e.g. development of tele-

vision, creation of the internet) and transnational developments create opportu-

nities, problems and constraints on their functioning.

In both pluralistic and corporatist societies, the internal dynamics and

external linkages of command posts to social and political processes are easier

to observe. Earlier, we drew attention to research on regulatory arenas, much

of it conducted by political scientists. In the last two decades, sociological

research on social movements, originally focused largely on political move-

ments aimed at changing state policies, has increasingly focalized their impact

and infiltration of institutions and organizations. Schneiberg and Lounsbury

(2008) provide an overview of the literature linking movements and institutions;

Gerald Davis and his collaborators (2005) present a set of articles that explore

the usefulness of examining the relevance of social movement theory for under-

standing organizational/institutional issues and, conversely, the relevance of

institutional and organizational theory for understanding social movements. A

variety of scholars have begun to study the relationship between movements and

the creation or transformation of markets and industries (e.g. Lounsbury et al.

2003; Sine and Lee 2009; Weber et al. 2008), how movements can foment

change to individual corporate policies and practices (den Hond and de Bakker

2007; King 2008; King and Soule 2007; Soule forthcoming; Weber et al. 2009),

and the varied linkages between markets, contentious politics and broader institu-

tional change (King and Pearce forthcoming; see also Schneiberg and Soule 2005;




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Schneiberg et al. 2008). Armstrong and Bernstein (2008) make a convincing

theoretical case that movements must be considered as impacting and operating

at multi-institutional and diverse levels of political authority. The question we

need to raise here is: do movements and their dynamics have relevance to

command posts and elites?We think they do, and they do so through several mechanisms. First, and most

generally, movements raise issues and problems that have not had a large space

on the public agenda. They make visible and re-value and re-categorize values,

identities, and goods and services that the public at large, and elites and experts

in particular, are forced to confront. Just think about how much impact the

womens movement and the civil rights movement had upon a wide variety of

organizations and institutions from national and local politicians, to elites in

various institutions such as business, the military, religious denominations and

philanthropic endeavors.

Second, they contribute to the emergence of new polyarchic structures andassociated elites. In a classic book, Dahl and Lindblom (1953) argued, among

other things, that pluralist societies did not eliminate hierarchy, but rather cre-

ated new hierarchies and polyarchies within and across the multiple interests,

organizations and institutions. Thus, movement grievances can be transforma-

tive in creating broader, more pluralistic discourses, new policy agendas, and

novel polyarchic formations. Recall, in 1955, before Rosa Parks refused to

change seats in a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, Martin Luther King could not get

the time of day in Montgomery, Atlanta, or Birmingham. Just a couple of years

later, he consulted with the President in the Oval Office. In addition, subsequent

to passage of civil rights legislation, all varieties of organizations strove tobecome more polyarchic by enabling a more diverse array of voices to be heard

in their bureaucracies (e.g. Soule and King 2005). Thus, movements can shift

broader political and organizational regimes as well as the vocabulary of motives

that elites draw upon to structure and deploy authority (Courpasson 2008; see

also Clegg et al. 2006: 320340).

Finally, movements can work their way into organizations themselves to chal-

lenge extant authority relations and enable the emergence of new statuses and

dimensions of polyarchy (Lounsbury 2001; see also Zald and Berger 1978). That

is, to the extent that movements are even somewhat successful, the issues they

raise and the policies they challenge are incorporated into the personnel, decision

structures and premises of elites and command posts. Boards of directors now

actively seek out female and minority candidates, new positions are created to

implement environmentally correct policies, and the consciousness and behavior

of elites become transformed by new governance rules and state interventions.

Note that the reconfiguration of command posts can be promulgated by move-

ments that are either overt or covert; more covert forms involve more tacitly (or

subversively) coordinated efforts that unite actors that are not banded together

in a formal social movement organization (see Morrill et al. 2003). Most of our

research has been on overt movements, but it seems that much more attention

should be directed to more covert, or less obvious and in your face, forms of

mobilization that are more likely to germinate in communities of expertise that

shroud change efforts in discourses of technique and formal rationality.




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Logics, goals, and performance curves. Using the term command posts

might lead readers to think that we believe in a unified elite with clear ideas

about what they are attempting to achieve. We reject those possible interpreta-

tions. Participants in command posts may have divergent interests and goals,

and employ or argue for conflicting logics. Early formulations of neo-institutionaltheory seemed to imply that where there were no clear and precise technologies,

institutions could employ symbolic and rhetorical strategies that had little

relation to the actual practices and performance of institutions. Stated in extreme

fashion, statements about aims were cynically employed to reassure detached or

ignorant audiences. Actors in the system could be cynical, and so could be the

scholars who studied them. By treating institutional claims in this way, neoin-

stitutionalists constructed an extreme opposition out of an earnest view of goals

in which official statements and pronouncements by organizational and institu-

tional goals were taken at face value.

This has begun to be redressed by work on multiple logics that emphasizesthe existence of various kinds of goals and means-ends relations linked to

different kinds of constructed rationalities (e.g. Friedland and Alford 1991;

Lounsbury 2007; Reay and Hinings 2009; Thornton 2004; Thornton and Ocasio

1999; Townley 2008; for a review, see Thornton and Ocasio 2008). It is useful

to underscore that logics can be competing or co-existing, as well as marginal-

ized, submerged or suppressed. Michael Lipsky (1968) has demonstrated how

political protest can be supported by elites and reference elites, or suppressed

and ignored. This is obviously apparent in political systems when democratic or

socialist ideals become hijacked by authoritarian regimes. But it is also the case

in many industries where the dominance of market logics suppresses alternativevoices and forms linked to professional expertise, bureaucracy, or more sub-

stantive goals. For instance, the recent allure of nanotechnologies for military

applications and economic development has led to a global rush to create and

apply such technologies with virtually no funding allocated for assessment of

toxicological effects.

It is important to neither reify goals nor to treat all expectations that cannot be

clearly linked to performance criteria as mere institutional justifications. Various

stakeholders, with different degrees of influence, have varying expectations and

desires in relation to institutional performance. The notions of logics of action

and performance curves help us to see how elites inside and outside of focal

organizations develop expectations of performance and respond to perceptions

of institutional failure, adequacy, and superior performance. Some performance

curves may leave little room for variance, as material and social technologies are

standardized, routinized and viewed as efficacious, or are shaped by coercive

and fiscal incentives.

Other performance curves of focal organizations may allow great variance in

product and brand definition, clientele served, and logic of organization. There

may be performance curves so loose that hardly any focal organizations fail or are

heavily sanctioned. Many organizations may survive with low expectations. At the

upper end, however, some organizations or units may be defined as exemplary.

These organizations, too, are subject to pressures to change, from both internal and

external sources, as key stakeholders and regulatory agencies and external threats

or shocks create pressures for adaptation (Zald 1978; Riesman 1965).




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Conclusion

In this paper, we have reflected on the impoverished treatment of power and

the study of elites and command posts in organization studies, and called for

the development of a contemporary institutional approach to these issues. Whilemany of these issues were on the agenda of mid-20th-century scholars, research

on organizations as well as sociology more generally drifted away from these

core concerns, increasingly adopting more functionalist and instrumentalist

lenses that are unable to provide adequate leverage in addressing major societal

and policy issues. However, for all the strengths of the mid-20th-century socio-

logical tradition represented by Dahl, Mills, Janowitz, Moore, and Bendix, it

was characterized by what Jonathan Reider (1990, 1994) has referred to as

earnest sociology. It took values and ideology as kind of natural things, as hav-

ing an existence out there. It neither adequately problematized the values and

world views of elites nor the cultural assumptions embedded in and constitutinginstitutions (see Meyer et al. 2009). Moreover, the historical sociology employed

earlier was a broad brush sociology, more interested in large meta narratives and

themes, and less interested in critical choices and events. On the organizational

side, it was more likely to focus on specific organizations and their elites, and

less likely to focus on organizational/institutional fields, sources and impact of

expert knowledge, and the interconnections and contradictions within fields.

Contemporary sociology may help us do better.

While our agenda is ambitious, it is best understood as a fitful programmatic

attempt to flesh out an institutionalist approach that we believe is the most pro-

ductive way forward. It is fitful because there are many loose ends; program-matic because it at best sketches a research direction. We have argued that for all

its strengths, many of the exciting developments in contemporary organizational

sociology have not taken up the challenge posed by the leading sociologists of

the previous generation to develop policy-relevant knowledge about the func-

tioning of command posts and the elites and experts that shape key policy

dynamics. We have argued that we may usefully redirect our various scholarly

communities towards such policy-relevant issues by developing a field perspec-

tive on command posts that engages with the contemporary dynamics of elites

and expertise. In doing so, it is particularly important to develop a better under-

standing of how broader trans-national communities of expertise shape the prac-tices of elites and command posts, as well as how new kinds of expertise and

elites become valorized and command posts get transformed.

We highlighted many useful avenues for development and indicated how cur-

rent lines of research may be expanded and conjoined to invite a more synthetic

approach and broader dialogue. While we have not fully worked out a conceptual

architecture, we believe that scholarship in this direction will require the devel-

opment of more sophisticated treatments of power in its various guises, especially

the cultural embeddedness and contingency of power (Bourdieu 1984, 1988;

Clegg and Haugaard 2009; Clegg et al. 2006; Lukes 2004; Courpasson et al.

forthcoming). The field approach we advance aims to challenge more popular,functionalist state-centered approaches to power and command posts by empha-

sizing how power is variably distributed across a wider set of actors in systems

that gain coherence and have impact via shared interests, issues and discourses.




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It is important to note that even though we have highlighted a narrow range of

command posts for expository purposes, we would like to emphasize the need to

build cumulative knowledge by studying a broad range of elites, expert commu-

nities and command posts. Command posts and elites of varying cohesion exist

in a vast range of institutions, from primary and secondary education, to thepolice and military, to hospitals and health, to foreign policy and to religion. To

build a research program that addresses command posts and the structuring of

elites and expertise in variegated fields, it will also be necessary to bridge across

otherwise fragmented sub-disciplinary boundaries and reunite organizational

studies with cognate scholarly developments in cultural, political, historical and

economic sociology, as well as with research communities focused on inequality,

social movements, and civil society. In addition, we encourage a diversity of

methods, integrating more ethnographic approaches with broader (as well as

more structural) field analyses to address local dynamics as well as institutional

process

enfoque institucional elites

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