Speaker A
Welcome back. Now we're going to talk about isomorphism and organizational fields. To understand the relationship between isomorphism and organizational fields, it's important to understand what an organizational field is. Let's draw a very simple stakeholder map. I always like to use oil companies as examples because they're so big and they're so diverse, and pretty much everybody knows something about oil companies. So let's take a company like Chevron. CVX, I believe, is their stock symbol. Okay, if you look at it and if you don't know what a stakeholder map is, by the way, check out my channel or all post links or something like that so that you can watch my videos on the stakeholder model, and I think that will help you understand what a stakeholder map is. Let's look at Chevron, CVX. Okay, Chevron probably has the US government as somewhat an organization that supervises them, so probably a primary stakeholder. Customer base? Well, they definitely have US customers. And if you were to look at their suppliers, I believe Halliburton, stock symbol I believe is HAL, there's a lot of the oil pipelines and things like that. Let's think of one more primary stakeholder potential. Oh, and of course, they're going to have very similar stockholders, same kinds of hedge funds, same kinds of major holders that you find at CVX. Okay, so they've got some more. Of course, there are many more. I'm just doing this for purposes of discussion. Okay, now let's erase this here because I need just a little more room. Let's take another company like ExxonMobil. XOM, I believe, is their stock symbol. You can, yeah, you can see that there. Okay, so ExxonMobil, of course, answers to the US government. They use the same suppliers, Halliburton. In fact, a lot of the major stockholders are the same, the same hedge funds, the same major investors, and they've got the same US customers. Huh, so starting to get interesting, isn't it? And what if we take another one like BP? Okay, I'll be darned, they also answer the US government quite a bit. They also have a lot of US customers. They also answer to Halliburton. They probably have the same major stockholders. This is interesting. Okay, so what does this tell us about isomorphism? Yeah, for example, if they have the same suppliers like Halliburton, Halliburton is going to dictate to them that they use, for example, Halliburton standard order forms. So guess what? If you work in logistics for ExxonMobil and you switch over to work for Chevron, well, since you've already been used to dealing with Halliburton, there's probably not much difference in switching over between ExxonMobil and Chevron or even working for BP. And in fact, let's say you're a lawyer for ExxonMobil and you do some sort of work. Well, guess what? It's the same US government laws. So whether you went to any of these firms, you would kind of have a similar sort of a job. And it goes the same if you're entertaining the same customers. You appeal to the same customers in the same way irrespective of which firm you work for. And guess what? Stockholders or owners of these firms are going to exert similar kinds of pressures on each of the firms. So what you see is that yes, these are different firms, but there are a tremendous amount of similarities between those firms, and that stems in many ways from external pressures. Okay, who their owners are, who their major stakeholders are. So they tend to look the same. And of course, these pressures over time result in employees behaving the same, structures looking the same. And I can guarantee you there are executives that have moved from ExxonMobil to BP, and guess what? They do at BP what they do at ExxonMobil. And when they move from BP to Chevron, guess what happens? They still do it the ExxonMobil way. And this can go for sources, so the firms kind of look the same. And you see how messy these lines are? The messier these lines are, you're going to notice that this is how you can tell that you're in the same organizational field. Okay, now let me take another oil company, different. Let's take Gazprom. It's a Russian oil company. Okay, well, they don't really deal with the US government that much. They don't have US customers at all. Maybe they get some supplies from Halliburton. Maybe we want to bet the stockholders are even different because a lot of their stockholders tend to be Russians, right? So not US stockholders even. And so they probably have Russian stockholders. So we're Russian stockholders. I'm saying owners here because I authorized stockholders. Okay, they probably also deal with the Russian government, and they probably also have some Russian suppliers too. We're not sure whether they are. Okay, so what you can interpret from this is you see this is exactly in the same organizational field. You know, maybe if you went from BP to Gazprom, you'd be familiar with how to work with Halliburton, so there'd be some similarities. But if let's say you were a lawyer, you'd have to know Russian law, so that'd be quite different. And you'd have Russian owners having different kinds of pressures on the firm than American stockholders were. So you'd see that working at Gazprom, I think, would be quite different from working with Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil. Right? There'd be a little bit of similarity but not much because again, you're saying that it's a completely different organizational field or almost completely different. Now let's say you really want to do something crazy like you wanted to work for ExxonMobil and you switched over to Wendy's fast-food joint. You're going to work for Wendy's. Well, I'd be willing to bet you the stockholders are going to be different. Halliburton? No, because again, Halliburton is all supplies. They have their own suppliers. So they have their own owners, their own suppliers, and Wendy's customers, while they are both American customers, I would think it would be a different kind, a different subset of US customers that buys oil in bulk versus the kind that goes to Wendy's for a hamburger. Right? So it's different customers, but they still have to answer to US government regulations. Okay, so you can see Wendy's is in many ways even more different, probably, than working for Gazprom because again, their dealings with the US government would also be in a very different capacity. You know, one is selling hamburgers, one is selling oil, so very different kinds of legal issues that you have. So you'd almost have to learn a totally new job if you switched off and started working at Wendy's because Wendy's is clearly outside this particular oil organizational field. Okay, so what I want you to take away from this video is that firms within the same organizational field tend to resemble each other because of a common group of stakeholders. That's what helps make them so similar, whereas firms outside a given organizational field may have some similarities, but they won't have as many similarities as they would if they were in the same field. Great. So I hope you enjoyed this video. If you liked it, please give me a like, like one of those thumbs-up things. Subscribe. Definitely trying to build my subscriber base. If you have any questions or comments, post them down below, and I normally respond to comments within 24 hours. Thanks for watching. In our next video, we're going to talk about legitimacy versus efficiency in organizations. Look forward to seeing you then.
