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，但当代许多科学研究都把重点放在个人行为和个人作为分析单位上，即使在考虑制度背景的情况下也是如此。直到最近，学者们才将注意力转向研究组织与其社会、政治和法律环境的关系，以及组织作为社会控制和社会调节实体的功能。埃德尔曼博士对民权法的制度反应的研究提供了一种创新的方法来阐明组织作为法律及其实施之间的中介工具的作用。Edelman博士考察了组织中平等就业机会和平权行动办公室的建立，以及它们对处理不满和规范传播的影响，作为一个制度化的过程。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）的关键线人进行6个详细的案例研究和全国性的电话/邮件调查，这些公司按规模、年龄和行业进行分层。分析包括使用事件历史方法来模拟平等就业机会结构和申诉程序的采用率。Edelman博士试图解释这些问题，如组织中这种结构的自主权的变化，内部争议解决程序是否转移了法院的投诉，以及这些程序在多大程度上导致了管理招聘和晋升的正式规则的发展。这项工作特别有前途。从本质上讲，它将在我们对组织遵守平等机会/平权行动条例的理解方面开辟新天地。从理论上讲，它将法律理论与组织理论和有关组织合规的文献相结合。同样有价值的是，它关注的是重要的，但往往被忽视的问题，即仪式上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，它们在这种情况下的应用特别合适。

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.