Organizing and Reorganizing Markets

Organizing and Reorganizing Markets brings organization theory to the study of markets. The difference between markets and organizations is often exaggerated. Organizing exists in addition to other processes and phenomena that form markets: the mutual adaption among sellers and buyers as described in mainstream economics, and the institutions described in institutional economics and economic sociology. Market organization can be analysed with the same type of theories used for analysing organization within formal organizations. Through the use of many empirical examples, the book demonstrates how this can be done. The authors argue that the way a certain market is organized can be understood as the (intermediate) result of previous organizing processes. Questions discussed include: 'What drives market organizing and reorganizing processes? What makes various organizations intervene as market organizers? And, how are the specific contents of market organization determined?' The answers to these questions help to analyse similarities and differences among organizing processes in formal organizations and those in markets. Arguments are illustrated by in-depth studies of many types of markets. The book will open up markets as a field of study for scholars of organization.

Nils Brunsson is Professor of Management at Uppsala University and Score (Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research) at the Stockholm School of Economics, and Stockholm University. He has held chairs in management at the Stockholm School of Economics and at Uppsala University. Brunsson has published almost 30 books in the field of organization studies as well as numerous articles. He has studied topics such as organizational decision-making, administrative reform and standardization. His current research interests include the organization of markets, partial organization, meta-organizations and the construction of competition. Brunsson is an honorary member of the European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS). Mats Jutterström is a researcher at Score and SIR (Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research), and teaches at the Stockholm School of Economics. His research concerns organizations and markets. In his dissertation about the construction of actorhood in complex decision processes he reported from studies of how firms carried out lobbying in the EU. He has studied the diffusion and implementation of corporate social responsibility and compared it to other management fashions. His current research interests include the organization of markets and the encounter of different institutional logics.