The Iron Cage Revisited

This book reveals the enduring relevance of Weber's thought by challenging the notion that with the apparent triumph of freedom, contemporary Western societies have escaped from Weber's 'iron cage'.

At the start of the twentieth century, when Germany, among other nations, was undergoing industrialization, Max Weber famously characterized modern life in words that have often been translated as "iron cage." During the industrial era, that image caught on and was often used by scholars to express concerns about the extent to which the actual character of modern life contradicted its emancipatory promise. But we are living in a different time now, when the conditions under which we live seem to be quite different from the ones that pertained in Weber's day. It is a time when, in some respects at least, life seems to be freer and more conducive to experimentation, which has led some people to conclude that our societies have escaped from Weber's "cage." But is that really true? This book challenges that notion, considering the consequences for our way of life of the triumph of neoliberalism as a political force.

Long a fruitful area of scrutiny for students of organizations, the study of institutions is undergoing a renaissance in contemporary social science. This volume offers, for the first time, both often-cited foundation works and the latest writings of scholars associated with the "institutional" approach to organization analysis. In their introduction, the editors discuss points of convergence and disagreement with institutionally oriented research in economics and political science, and locate the "institutional" approach in relation to major developments in contemporary sociological theory. Several chapters consolidate the theoretical advances of the past decade, identify and clarify the paradigm's key ambiguities, and push the theoretical agenda in novel ways by developing sophisticated arguments about the linkage between institutional patterns and forms of social structure. The empirical studies that follow—involving such diverse topics as mental health clinics, art museums, large corporations, civil-service systems, and national polities—illustrate the explanatory power of institutional theory in the analysis of organizational change. Required reading for anyone interested in the sociology of organizations, the volume should appeal to scholars concerned with culture, political institutions, and social change.

There is a growing interaction between economists and sociologists engaged in the study of organizations' strategies. This volume moves the discussion to the next level by focusing the discussion, and taking a step toward systematizing some of the relationships between economic and sociological approaches to strategic management.

Foundational study of how institutions work and how leadership promotes them. Often cited in many fields and consistently assigned to classes in a variety of departments -- including sociology and business, and executive training in management and military leadership -- this book is considered to have virtually created the modern field of institutional-leadership management. It is still recognized as a lively and accessible presentation of the institutionalist school's answer to traditional "rationalist" approaches. Selznick's analysis goes beyond efficiency and traditional loyalty: he examines the more nuanced variables of effective leadership of organizations in business, education, government, the military, and labor. Quality, authorized ebook format includes linked notes and Contents and embedded pagination from print editions for continuity of referencing and classroom adoptions across all platforms.

This major study of the father of modern sociology explores the intimate relationship between the events of Max Weber's personal history and the development of his thought. When it was first published in 1970, Paul Roazen described The Iron Cage as ""an example of the history of ideas at its very best""; while Robert A. Nisbet said that ""we learn more about Weber's life in this volume than from any other in the English language.""Weber's life and work developed in reaction to the rigidities of familial and social structures in Imperial Germany. In his youth he was torn by irreconcilable tensions between the Bismarckian authoritarianism of his father and the ethical puritanism of his mother. These tensions led to a psychic crisis when, in his thirties, he expelled his father (who died soon thereafter) from his house. His reaction to the collapse of the European social order before and during World War I was no less personal and profound. It is the triumph of Professor Mitzman's approach that he convincingly demonstrates how the internalizing of these severe experiences led to Weber's pessimistic vision of the future as an ""iron cage"" and to such seminal ideas as the notion of charisma and the concept of the Protestant ethic and its connection with the spirit of capitalism. The author's thesis also serves as a vehicle for describing the social, political, and personal plight of the European bourgeois intellectual of Weber's generation.In synthesizing Weber's life and thought, Arthur Mitzman has expanded and refined our understanding of this central twentieth-century figure. As Lewis Coser writes in the preface, until now ""there has been little attempt to bring together the work and the man, to show the ways in which Weber's cognitive intentions, his choice of problems, were linked with the details of his personal biography. Arthur Mitzman fills this gap brilliantly.

Dobbin presents twenty classic, representative articles in the field of economic sociology and organizes them according to four themes. He thus introduces the field and its history to students and establishes a schema for interpreting the field based on what it hopes to achieve.