Organizational Response to Legal Change

组织如何应对法律变化并塑造这种变化的意义，对于理解复杂的现代社会中的社会和经济生活至关重要。尽管这个问题很重要，但许多当代科学研究都将重点放在个人行为上，并将个人作为分析单位，即使在考虑制度背景时也是如此。直到最近，学者们才将注意力转向考察组织的社会、政治和法律环境，以及组织作为社会控制和社会监管实体的功能。埃德尔曼博士对民权法律的机构反应的研究提供了一种创新的方法来阐明组织作为法律与其实施之间的调停工具的作用。埃德尔曼博士将在各组织设立平等就业机会和平权行动办公室及其对处理申诉和传播规范的影响作为一项制度化进程进行审查。这项研究的设计要求对300家公司(200家专有公司、50家联邦机构和50所学院和大学)的关键告密者进行6项详细的案例研究和全国性的电话/邮件调查，按规模、年龄和行业分层。分析包括使用事件历史方法对平等就业机会结构和申诉程序的采用率进行建模。埃德尔曼博士试图解释这样的问题：组织中这类结构的自主性不同，内部纠纷解决程序是否转移了法院的申诉，以及这种程序在多大程度上导致了关于雇用和晋升的正式规则的制定。这项工作特别有希望。从实质上说，它将为我们理解各组织遵守机会均等/平权行动条例的情况开辟新的天地。从理论上讲，它将法律理论与组织理论以及有关组织遵从的文献相结合。有价值的是，它侧重于重要但往往被忽视的问题，即正式采用的创新对组织实践的影响。在方法上，使用事件历史模型来研究组织适应是创新的，它们在这一背景下的应用尤其恰当。

How organizations respond to legal change and shape the meaning of such change is crucial to understanding social and economic life in complex, modern societies. Despite the importance of this issue, much of contemporary scientific research focuses on individual behavior and the individual as the unit of analysis even when institutional context is being considered. Only recently are scholars turning their attention to examining organizations in relation to their social, political, and legal environments and the functioning of organizations as entities of social control and social regulation. Dr. Edelman's study of institutional responses to civil rights laws offers an innovative approach to illuminating the role of organizations as a mediating instrument between law and its implementation. Dr. Edelman examines the establishment of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action offices in organizations, along with their consequences for the handling of grievances and the diffusion of norms, as an institutionalization process. The design of the research calls for six detailed case studies and nationwide telephone/mail surveys to key informants in 300 companies (200 proprietary firms, 50 federal agencies, and 50 colleges and universities), stratified by size, age, and industry. The analysis includes use of event history methods to model rates of adoption of EEO structures and grievance procedures. Dr. Edelman seeks to explain such issues as variation in the autonomy of such structures in organizations, whether internal dispute resolution procedures divert complaints from the courts, and the extent to which such procedures lead to the development of formal rules governing hiring and promotion. This work is especially promising. Substantively it will break new ground in our understanding of organizations' compliance with equal opportunity/affirmative action regulations. Theoretically, it integrates legal theory with organization theory and the literature on organizational compliance. As valuably, it focuses on the important, but often neglected, issue of the impact of ceremonially adopted innovations on organizational practice. Methodologically, the use of event history models to study organizational adaptation is innovative and their application in this context especially apt.