This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Wright, A. L. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Domination in Organizational Fields: It’s Just Not Cricket

UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, a.wright{at}business.uq.edu.au

This article demonstrates how deep engagement with Bourdieu’s theory of the field enriches scholarly understanding of institutional processes. A historical narrative of institutional formation and change in firstclass County cricket in England as a field of restricted cultural production is presented. The narrative illustrates how focusing attention on the position of agents within the field, the relations of production within the field, and the social context, which includes social class, provides a path for analysis of institutional processes which is dynamic, multi-level and nuanced. Bourdieu’s conception of fields as a struggle for capital between agents strategizing to improve field position illuminates the importance of social class to institutional processes, an effect that has been under reported by the most popular approaches to institutionalization in the extant literature.

Key Words: fields • institutional change • symbolic capital

Organization, Vol. 16, No. 6, 855-885 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1350508409337582


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?