1.1 Cohort doctoral preparation programs: neo-institutional  (Page 4/16)

Field Logics

Field logics, the next analytic device include the“. . . belief systems and related practices that predominate in an organizational field”(Scott, 2001, p. 139). Friedland and Alford (in Scott, 2001, p. 139) have noted that these logics provide the“organizing principles”that organizational participants use to carry out their work. Field logics vary across four dimensions–content, penetration, linkage, and exclusiveness.

Content is the meaning and interpretation field participants give to belief systems. Penetration is the vertical depth and strength with which particular belief systems are held by participants. Linkages refer to the horizontal connections participants make between different belief systems. For example the linkage between belief in the outcomes of cohorts and beliefs about the Ed.D. degree as a practice-oriented, professional degree. Exclusiveness is the extent to which one field logic predominates or competing logics vie for acceptance (Scott, 2001, pp. 139-140).

Sources of Influence

The final analytic device draws our attention to the sources from which institutionalization springs. Scott (1987) has highlighted seven different sources:

• Imposition of organizational structure. In this case agents impose common structure either by virtue of their authority or through their use of coercive power. This form of influence is comparable to the mechanism of coercion (DiMaggio&Powell, 1983).
• Authorization of organizational structure. In this situation a subordinate unit voluntarily complies with the wishes of an agent in order to obtain approval of that agent (as in choosing to be accredited when accreditation is not required to operate a program).
• Inducement of organizational structure. Another agent induces change by requiring the change as a condition of funding the organization.
• Acquisition of organizational structure. In this situation organizational actors deliberately choose to acquire structural models and employ mimetic and/or normative mechanisms to do so.
• Imprinting of organizational structure. An organization takes on particular structural characteristics for an organizational field at the time of its founding. For example, as new doctoral programs are established, a cohort structure is chosen because that structure is characteristic of the field.
• Incorporation of organizational structure. Through incremental environmental adaptation, organizations over time incorporate environmental structures into their own structure.
• Bypassing organizational structure. Within the context of strong cultural institutional structures, organizational structures may not need to be as complex and elaborate as in cases where the cultural structures are weak (Meyer&Rowan, 1977). In this case“cultural controls can substitute for structural controls”(Scott, 1987, p. 507).

Taken together the analytic devices of mechanisms, carriers, field logics, and sources of institutionalism provide a framework for critically examining how and why the field of educational leadership has chosen to use cohorts.