Organizations and their Effectiveness (2016)

This is a page to collect resources, links, and supplementary information related to the 2016 Summer Institute on Organizations and their Effectiveness held at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.

Please create an account (reload the page if it gives you a hard time), be bold, and add/organize/discuss as you see fit.

If you need help with wiki-markup or anything else, feel free to email Aaron.

Workshop Information

• The workshop website has more detailed information about (note that a login is required to access some resources).

Our esteemed leaders

Papers

Rules Versus Statutes and Type I versus Type II Incomplete Law

This is a random selection. More of the important ones coming.

• Baier, Vicki Eaton, James G. March, and Harald Saetren. "Implementation and ambiguity." Scandinavian Journal of Management Studies 2, no. 3 (1986): 197-212.
• Pistor, Katharina, and Chenggang Xu. "Law enforcement under incomplete law: Theory and evidence from financial market regulation." LSE STICERD Research Paper No. TE442 (2002).
• Funk, Russell, and Daniel Hirschman. "Beyond nonmarket strategy: market actions as corporate political activity." Academy of Management Review (2015): amr-2013.

Standards and Standard-Setting Organizations

• Bonatti and Rantakari (2016) on Standard-Setting Organizations, The Politics of Compromise (from Bob)
• Timmermans and Epstein's (2010) review article on sociological research on standards: A World of Standards but not a Standard World
• Ahrne and Brunsson's (2008) theory of Meta-Organizations, an organization with organizations as members
• Bromley and Meyer's (2015) book on hyper-organization, and an article (2013) that summarizes the main argument

Definitions

Network

Romain

Definition: a network is a collection of nodes and a collection of ties among these nodes.

Types of networks: Several common distinctions are often made when talking about networks. A network can be directed or undirected (tie from $i$ to $j \neq$ tie from $j$ to $i$), and weighted or unweighted. One can also consider static vs. dynamic networks (ties or nodes are created/disappear over time), or multiplex networks (there are several types of ties).

When talking about networks, one should always define: (1) what type of network are we talking about, (2) what is a node, (3) what is a tie. Examples: friendship network [type = undirected, unweighted network, node = person, tie = $i$ and $j$ are friends], airport traffic [type = weighted, directed network, node = airport, tie = number of daily flights from airport $i$ to airport $j$]

(Theoretical) network models: Two broad distinctions: (1) network formation vs. process on a network, (2) non-strategic [no game theory] vs. strategic [game theory].

Examples:

Non-strategic game of network formation: Barabassi and Albert's model of preferential attachment. Question: Why do networks often exhibit a hub and spoke structure [few nodes with many connections, many nodes with few connections]? Model: start with one node. At each time period, a new node is created and forms 1 tie with some old node selected at random. Old nodes with more connections are selected with higher probability.

Strategic game of network formation: Matt Jackson's coauthor's model. Question: how does a population of scholars pick coauthors? Authors choose whether to form ties with other authors. Two authors with a tie are coauthors. Players' utility increases with the number of coauthors, but busy coauthors (ie coauthors with many connections) give less benefits less than non-busy coauthors.

Non-strategic process on a network: probabilistic diffusion model. Some disease diffuses on a network. Question: which structures lead to a pandemic (everybody is infected), which do not? On a network, an initial node is infected (the seed). She infects her neighbors with some probability. At each time period, newly infected nodes infect their neighbors with some probability.

Strategic process on a network: Chwe's model of social movements. Question: which network structures lead to a revolution (every node protests)? On a network, each node has a threshold. A node protests if the number of her neighbors who protest is above that threshold.

Utility

Romain

Real-valued function representing preferences over choices. That is, suppose there are many alternatives $x_1, ..., x_n$. Suppose I have well-defined preferences over those choices (that is, for each pair of choices, I can say which one I prefer). A utility function is a function over those choices is function such that if I prefer $x_i$ to $x_j$, then $u(x_i) \geq u(x_j)$.

Rationality

Romain

I am rational when I select the choice that maximizes my utility.