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Abstract
This article draws on the concept of ‘strategic action fields’ to examine the interaction of law and organisations in the nineteenth-century United States. Focusing on the emergence of savings banking, it analyses how new legal rules were created to define the actors, actions and relationships that constituted the organisational field. The article develops three conceptual claims about the dynamics of institutional contexts: (a) the configuration of state fields shaped the nature and timing of legal rule making vis-à-vis organisational fields; (b) state actors engaged in ‘inter-field framing’ by applying analogies from the legal field to define social order in the organisational one; and (c) the legal and organisational fields were mutually constituted through these interactions. The article concludes by elaborating on the broader value of the theory of fields in business history.
Notes
This article was originally published with error. This version has been corrected. Please see Corrigendum (https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2018.1432458).
1. Roy Suddaby, William M Foster, and Albert J Mills, ‘Historical Institutionalism’; Michael Rowlinson and John Hassard, ‘Historical Neo-Institutionalism or Neo-Institutionalist History? Historical Research in Management and Organization Studies’.
2. Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited’; W. Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations; John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, ‘Institutionalized Organizations’.
3. Ronald H. Coase, ‘Nature’; Oliver E. Williamson, Markets.
4. Sven Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism’; Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science’.
5. Kathleen Ann Thelen, ‘The Explanatory Power of Historical Institutionalism’; Kathleen Ann Thelen and Sven Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics’; Marc Schneiberg, Marissa King, and Thomas Smith, ‘Social Movements and Organizational Form: Cooperative Alternatives to Corporations in the American Insurance, Dairy, and Grain Industries’.
6. Michael Loundsbury, Marc Ventresca, and Paul Hirsch, ‘Social Movements.’ Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism’.
7. On assumptions, Suddaby, Foster, and Mills, ‘Historical Institutionalism.’ On methods, Kathleen Ann Thelen, Institutions; Marc Ventresca and John Mohr, ‘Archival Research Methods’.
8. Pierson and Skocpol, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science’; Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism’.
9. Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism’; Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam, A Theory of Fields; Pierson and Skocpol, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science’.
10. DiMaggio and Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited’.
11. Fligstein and McAdam, A Theory of Fields, 18.
12. M. Tina Dacin, Jerry Goodstein, and W. Richard Scott, ‘Institutional Theory and Institutional Change: Introduction to the Special Research Forum,’ 49.
13. Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Ann Thelen, Beyond; Thelen, Institutions; Pierson and Skocpol, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science’.
14. Marc Schneiberg, ‘What’s on the Path? Path Dependence, Organizational Diversity and the Problem of Institutional Change in the US Economy, 1900–1950’; Schneiberg, King, and Smith, ‘Social Movements and Organizational Form: Cooperative Alternatives to Corporations in the American Insurance, Dairy, and Grain Industries’.
15. Suddaby, Foster, and Mills, ‘Historical Institutionalism’.
16. Doug McAdam and Richard Scott, ‘Organizations and Movements,’ 10.
17. Meyer and Rowan, ‘Institutionalized Organizations’; DiMaggio and Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited’.
18. Scott, Institutions and Organizations.
19. Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca, and Eva Boxenbaum, ‘How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship’.
20. Thomas Lawrence, Roy Suddaby, and Bernard Leca, Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations.
21. McAdam and Scott, ‘Organizations and Movements’.
22. Nelson Phillips, Thomas Lawrence, and Cynthia Hardy, ‘Discourse and Institutions’.
23. Roy Suddaby and Royston Greenwood, ‘Rhetorical Strategies of Legitimacy’.
24. Patricia Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Loundsbury, The Institutional Logics Perspective.
25. Fligstein and McAdam, A Theory of Fields.
26. Coase, ‘Nature’; Williamson, Markets; Henry Hansmann, The Ownership of Enterprise.
27. Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel Raff, and Peter Temin, ‘Economic Theory and Business History’.
28. Pierson and Skocpol, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science’; Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism’; Thelen and Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics’.
29. Orfeo Fioretos, ‘Historical Institutionalism in International Relations’.
30. Fligstein and McAdam, A Theory of Fields; Schneiberg, King, and Smith, ‘Social Movements and Organizational Form: Cooperative Alternatives to Corporations in the American Insurance, Dairy, and Grain Industries’.
31. Neil Fligstein, Transformation of Corporate Control; Frank Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age. .
32. Pierson and Skocpol, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science’; Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism’.
33. Thelen and Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,’ 6.
34. Ibid., 20.
35. Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, ‘Introduction’.
36. Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism,’ 127.
37. Pierson and Skocpol, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science,’ 3.
38. Fligstein and McAdam also acknowledge that they are drawing on Bourdieu.
39. Fligstein and McAdam, A Theory of Fields, 9.
40. Ibid., 18.
41. Ibid., 19.
42. Jurgen Mura, History of European Savings Banks; R Daniel Wadhwani, ‘The Institutional Foundations of Personal Finance: Innovation in US Savings Banks, 1880s–1920s’; Duncan Ross, ‘Penny Banks in Glasgow, 1850–1914’; Peter Gosden, ‘Great Britain’.
43. Mura, History of European Savings Banks; Michael Moss and Iain Russell, An Invaluable Treasure: A History of the TSB.
44. Oliver Horne, A History of Savings Banks.
45. Robert Wright, Wealth of Nations Rediscovered; Robert Wright, ‘Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831’.
46. Winifred Rothenberg, ‘The Emergence of a Capital Market in Rural Massachusetts, 1730–1838’; Duane Ball, ‘Dynamics of Population and Wealth in Eighteenth-Century Chester County, Pennsylvania’.
47. R Daniel Wadhwani, ‘Citizen Savers: The Family Economy, Financial Institutions, and Social Policy in the Northeastern US from the Market Revolution to the Great Depression’; R. Daniel Wadhwani, ‘Small-Scale Credit Institutions’.
48. Mura, History of European Savings Banks.
49. Horne, A History of Savings Banks; Moss and Russell, An Invaluable Treasure: A History of the TSB.
50. Mura, History of European Savings Banks; Wadhwani, ‘The Institutional Foundations of Personal Finance: Innovation in US Savings Banks, 1880s–1920s’; Eoin McLaughlin, ‘‘Profligacy in the Encouragement of Thrift’: Savings Banks in Ireland, 1817–1914’.
51. Horne, A History of Savings Banks; Moss and Russell, An Invaluable Treasure: A History of the TSB; Gosden, ‘Great Britain’.
52. Antoine Moster and Bernard Vogler, ‘France’.
53. Wadhwani, ‘The Institutional Foundations of Personal Finance: Innovation in US Savings Banks, 1880s–1920s’.
54. R Daniel Wadhwani, ‘Organisational Form and Industry Emergence: Nonprofit and Mutual Firms in the Development of the US Personal Finance Industry’.
55. Gosden, ‘Great Britain’; Moster and Vogler, ‘France’.
56. Robert Wright, Corporation Nation.
57. Wadhwani, ‘Organisational Form and Industry Emergence: Nonprofit and Mutual Firms in the Development of the US Personal Finance Industry’; Emerson W. Keyes, History of Savings Banks in the United States.
58. Morton Horwitz, Transformation of American Law.
59. Alan Olmstead, ‘New York City Mutual Savings Bank Portfolio Management and Trustee Objectives’.
60. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of the Philadelphia Savings Institution, Report.
61. Horwitz, Transformation of American Law; William Novak, The People’s Welfare.
62. Christopher Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology.
63. Herbert Hovenkamp, Enterprise and American Law, 1836–1937.
64. Keyes, History of Savings Banks in the United States; Willis Paine, Laws of New York Relating to Banks, Banking, Trust Companies, Loan, Mortgages, and Safe Deposit Corporations.
65. Paine, Laws of the State of New York Relating to Banks; Emerson W. Keyes, A History of Savings Banks in the State of New York; Theodor Sedgwick, ‘Trustees as Tort-Feasors Ii’.
66. Wadhwani, ‘Citizen Savers: The Family Economy, Financial Institutions, and Social Policy in the Northeastern US from the Market Revolution to the Great Depression’.
67. Eugene White, The Regulation and Reform of American Banking.
68. Elmus Wicker, Banking Panics of the Gilded Age.
69. Keyes, History of Savings Banks in the United States; Paine, Laws of New York Relating to Banks, Banking, Trust Companies, Loan, Mortgages, and Safe Deposit Corporations.
70. Matthias Kipping and Behlül Üsdiken, ‘History in Organization and Management Theory: More Than Meets the Eye’.
71. Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey, and Stewart Clegg, ‘Conceptualizing Historical Organisation Studies’.
72. Michael Rowlinson, John Hassard, and Stephanie Decker, ‘Research Strategies for Organizational History: A Dialogue between Historical Theory and Organization Theory’.
73. R Daniel Wadhwani and Stephanie Decker, ‘Clio’s Toolkit: The Practice of Historical Methods in Organizational Research’.
74. Matthias Kipping, R. Daniel Wadhwani, and Marcelo Bucheli, ‘Analysing and Interpreting Historical Sources’.
75. Paine, Laws of New York Relating to Banks, Banking, Trust Companies, Loan, Mortgages, and Safe Deposit Corporations.
76. Keyes, History of Savings Banks in the United States.
77. McAdam and Scott, ‘Organizations and Movements’.
78. Christian Stutz and Sybille Sachs, ‘Facing the Normative Challenge: The Potential of Reflexive Historical Research’; Kipping, Wadhwani, and Bucheli, ‘Analysing and Interpreting Historical Sources’.
79. Wadhwani and Decker, ‘Clio’s Toolkit: The Practice of Historical Methods in Organizational Research’.
80. McAdam and Scott, ‘Organizations and Movements’.
81. Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, ‘Research Strategies for Organizational History: A Dialogue between Historical Theory and Organization Theory’.
82. Thomas Wharton, ‘The Case of the Philadelphia Savings Institution’; ‘Sheren V. Mendenhall’.
83. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of the Philadelphia Savings Institution, Report.
84. Naomi R. Lamoreaux and William Novak, Corporations and American Democracy.
85. Morton Horwitz, ‘Santa Clara Revisited’; Herbert Hovenkamp, ‘The Classical Corporation in American Legal Thought’.
86. ‘Dartmouth College V. Woodward’.
87. Ibid.
88. Lamoreaux and Novak, Corporations and American Democracy.
89. ‘Johnson V. Ward’; ‘Sheren V. Mendenhall’; ‘Mitchell V. Beckman’.
90. ‘Huntington V. Savings Bank’.
91. ‘[No Name in Original]’.
92. ‘Johnson V. Ward’.
93. ‘People V. Binghamton Trust Company’.
94. Ashbel Green, Seward Brice, a Treatise on the Doctrine of Ultra Vires.
95. Ibid.
96. Hovenkamp, Enterprise and American Law, 1836–1937; Horwitz, ‘Santa Clara Revisited’.
97. Green, Seward Brice, a Treatise on the Doctrine of Ultra Vires.
98. ‘Jemison V. Citizens’ Savings Bank’.
99. ‘Pratt V. Short’; ‘Paine V. Peter Barnum Et Al’; ‘Franklin Company in Equity V. Lewistown Institution for Savings’.
100. ‘Paine V. Mead Et Al’.
101. Paine, Laws of the State of New York Relating to Banks..
102. ‘Greeley V. Nashua Savings Bank’.
103. ‘Bradleee V. Warren Five Cents Savings Bank’; ibid.
104. Paine, Laws of the State of New York Relating to Banks.
105. Peter Dobkin Hall, ‘Resolving the Dilemmas of Democratic Governance: The Historical Development of Trusteeship in America, 1636–1950’.
106. ‘Spering’s Appeal’.
107. Paine, Laws of the State of New York Relating to Banks.
108. Sedgwick, ‘Trustees as Tort-Feasors Ii’.
109. ‘Mutual Building Fund and Dollar Savings Bank V Bosseux and Others’; ibid.
110. Sedgwick, ‘Trustees as Tort-Feasors Ii’.
111. ‘Mutual Building Fund and Dollar Savings Bank V Bosseux and Others’.
112. Ibid., 78.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid. ‘Marshall V F & M Savings Bank’.
115. ‘Marshall V F & M Savings Bank’.
116. ‘Paine V. Peter Barnum et al.,’ 303.
117. ‘Paine V. Mead Et Al.,’ 318.
118. Paine, Laws of the State of New York Relating to Banks.
119. Frank Dobbin and John R. Sutton, ‘The Strength of a Weak State: The Rights Revolution and the Rise of Human Resources Management Divisions’.
120. Gary G. Hamilton and John R. Sutton, ‘The Problem of Control in the Weak State: Domination in the United States 188–1920,’ 16.
121. Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology; Novak, The People’s Welfare.
122. Loundsbury, Ventresca, and Hirsch, ‘Social Movements’; Klaus Weber, K.L. Heinze, and M. DeSoucey, ‘Forage for Thought’.
123. Loundsbury, Ventresca, and Hirsch, ‘Social Movements’.
124. Ibid.; Weber, Heinze, and DeSoucey, ‘Forage for Thought’.
125. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
126. Ibid.
127. Lauren Edelman, Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights.
128. Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology.
129. Marianne Dahlen and Mats Larsson, ‘Business History and Legal History’.
130. Lars Engwall, Matthias Kipping, and Behlul Usdiken, Defining Management.
131. Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology; Horwitz, Transformation of American Law; Lawrence Friedman, A History of American Law.