Bridging Organizational Culture and

In the late 1970s, neoinstitutional and organizational culture theorists challenged prevail-ing rationalist organizational paradigms by introducing social constructionism to the field of organizations. Despite their common foundation, these approaches built on seemingly contradictory empirical observations. Institutionalists observed that organiza-tions actively copy one another’s practices, resulting in substantial isomorphism, where-as culture theorists observed that organizations institutionalize distinctive cultures com-prising practices that set them apart from others. These seemingly contradictory findings reflect processes of organizational identity formation and interorganizational construc-tion of legitimacy as they have evolved since the rise of the corporate form in the 19th century. Formation of identity through uniqueness and construction of legitimacy through uniformity are two sides of the same coin. Research on management schools sug-gests organizations pursue individuation through uniqueness and legitimacy through commonality simultaneously and that organizations bridge the two processes in four ways, which the authors dub imitation, hybridization, transmutation, and immunization