Research on the relationship between non-profit organizations (NPOs) and the public sector has been dominated by predictions of isomorphism where change and tensions in NPOs are attributed an imposing institutional setting. This article argues that research represents a selective perspective on organizational life due to its portrayal of organizational change as synonymous with an isomorphic, linear trajectory. The purpose of this article is to illustrate different sources and characteristics of change and tension. The article presents an analytical framework comprising of four components: evolving change, episodic change, inherent dilemmas, and conflicting logics, facilitating an understanding of the organization as movement. The analysis of a case study organization suggests that by identifying different dimensions of changes and tensions we can gain a richer understanding of the complexity of processes underpinning the organization as movement. The analysis reveals how multiple, parallel processes related to change and tensions generate reflections that drive integrity and identity formation at individual and organizational levels.

This paper examines the organizational structures of nonprofit organizations in Australia and the United States. Using random samples of nonprofits drawn from the two organizational populations, the analysis compares the extent of structural resemblance or isomorphism in each. It detects similar levels of isomorphism for several structural characteristics. The paper interprets this finding as reflecting expectations for nonprofit organizations that stretch worldwide.

Several challenges, external and internal, to the identity and position of civil society organizations exist today. Organizations may be tempted or coerced into closer cooperation with the state. There are also incentives to become more market oriented. This article deals with such struggles in Swedish study associations and how these organizations attempt to gain legitimacy. The tradition of the organization is an important legitimating aspect and so is efficiency. These two aspects can complement each other but may also collide. The article demonstrates how civil society organizations handle an influx of market logics and trends of professionalization when these clash with a civil society identity. The findings indicate that different isomorphic processes are at work. Cultural resources are used to handle conflicting myths, leading to varied discursive strategies and incidences of decoupling.

Structural similarity or isomorphism is expected among organizations in the same organizational field. Such a field matures with increasing interaction among the organizations in it. Using a random sample of Australian organizations, this paper compares isomorphism among nonprofit organizations regardless of industry with that among organizations in the same industry regardless of legal form. The results point to isomorphism especially in the healthcare industry, regardless of legal form. This finding adds weight to earlier research that questioned the operation of the nonprofit sector as an organizational field with enough interaction to produce isomorphism.

The article describes the recent evolution of the Italian third sector, focusing particularly on its changing role in relation to welfare policies and on its contribution to the development of the provision of social services. In contrast with those considering the emergence and development of the sector solely, or mainly, as a consequence of decisions made by external actors, especially public institutions, the article shows a more complex and dynamic picture. The article demonstrates that the Italian third sector, although at the present time largely engaged in contractual services with the public sector, has maintained a level of autonomy that allows for continuous innovation both within and external to the social service sector. The Italian case supports the need for further debate on the role of the third sector in modern society.

This paper assesses the extent of structural similarity or isomorphism among nonprofit organizations in Australia. Based on neo-institutional theory, the paper explains such isomorphism in terms of these organizations’ subordination and dependency, the uncertainties they face, and the networks of experts of which they are a part. The analysis uses the nonprofit component of a 2001-2002 random sample of Australian employment organizations. It finds surprisingly little isomorphism in this subsample and few differences in isomorphism according to the level of the factors thought to produce similarity. The discussion of the findings focuses on the suitability of the nonprofit sector as the appropriate organizational field within which isomorphism involving these organizations is likely to be produced. Industries, which include all organizations that produce the same product or service, be they nonprofit, for-profit, or government, may be more appropriate interactional fields for the development of isomorphism.

China’s growing development finance gives rise to the speculation that Beijing is creating a new model of foreign aid. There are also efforts to socialise China and change Chinese-led development finance institutions (DFIs) from within. Are Chinese DFIs convergent with/divergent from traditional DFIs? What are the mechanisms that drive their convergence/divergence? This article answers the questions with the three mechanisms of isomorphism, namely the coercive, mimetic, and normative mechanisms. We focus on the prominent Chinese DFIs of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank, and the two policy banks (the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China), examine their isomorphic pressures, and compare their resemblance to the traditional donors. We find that the AIIB, subject to high pressures from all of the three mechanisms, displays a strong resemblance to its Western counterparts; the NDB, subject to medium pressures, shows a less significant resemblance; the two Chinese policy banks, not subject to significant pressures, demonstrates a faint resemblance.

Language variation (specifically: optionality between different ways of saying the same thing, as in check out the places vs check the places out) tends to be considered abnormal, suboptimal, short-lived, dysfunctional and needlessly complex, especially in functional or cognitive linguistic circles. In this contribution, we are assessing these assumptions: does grammatical optionality increase the relative complexity (or: difficulty) of language production? We use a corpus-based psycholinguistics research design with a variationist twist and analyse SWITCHBOARD, a corpus of conversational spoken American English. We ask if and how grammatical optionality correlates with two symptoms of production difficulty, namely filled pauses (um and uh) and unfilled pauses (speech planning time). Our dataset covers 108,487 conversational turns in SWITCHBOARD, 22 grammatical alternation types yielding 57,032 optionality contexts, 589,124 unfilled pauses and 43,801 filled pauses. Analysis shows that overall optionality contexts do not make speech production more dysfluent – regardless of how many language-internal probabilistic constraints are in operation, or how many variants there are to choose from. With that being said, we show how some alternations in the grammar of English are more prone to attract or repel production difficulties than others. All told, our results call into question old dogmas in theoretical linguistics, such as the Principle of Isomorphism or the Principle of No Synonymy.

We revisit the result that, in laboratory independent private values auction, the first-price sealed bid and descending clock (or Dutch) implementations are not isomorphic. We investigate the hypothesis that this arises from framing and presentation effects. Our design focuses on a careful construction of subject interfaces that present the two environments as similarly as possible. Our sessions also consist of more auction periods to test whether any initial framing effects subsequently decrease over time. We find the difference between the implementations persists. To further investigate the difference, we report on an intermediate implementation which operates like the Dutch auction, but in which the clock continues to tick to the lowest price without informing bidders when others have bid on the object.

We study the $\kappa $-Borel-reducibility of isomorphism relations of complete first-order theories by using coloured trees. Under some cardinality assumptions, we show the following: For all theories T and T’, if T is classifiable and T’ is unsuperstable, then the isomorphism of models of T’ is strictly above the isomorphism of models of T with respect to $\kappa $-Borel-reducibility.

We prove a strengthened version of Shavrukov’s result on the non-isomorphism of diagonalizable algebras of two $\Sigma _1$-sound theories, based on the improvements previously found by Adamsson. We then obtain several corollaries to the strengthened result by applying it to various pairs of theories and obtain new non-isomorphism examples. In particular, we show that there are no surjective homomorphisms from the algebra $(\mathfrak {L}_T, \Box _T\Box _T)$ onto the algebra $(\mathfrak {L}_T, \Box _T)$. The case of bimodal diagonalizable algebras is also considered. We give several examples of pairs of theories with isomorphic diagonalizable algebras but non-isomorphic bimodal diagonalizable algebras.