WHO GETS AHEAD IN THE SEARCH FOR SUCCESS? COMPARING PUBLIC, NON-PROFIT, AND PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS

摘要

Organizational learning, defined as rational and experience-based change in actions, is a central concept to scholars who study adaptive organizational processes. The core premise of the organizational learning theory is that learning is routine-based, path-dependent, and successoriented. This rational theory of organizational learning assumes that all organizations and the managers in them are the same. A rich literature on the differences between public-private organizations, however, challenges this homogeneity assumption and identifies important distinctions between organizations. This research bridges these two literatures by theorizing how managers in different sectors make adaptive decisions. In theory, organizations adapt to market and political forces as well as their own performance experience. Public, non-profit, and private organizations, however, respond differently to market and political forces. Non-profits, furthermore, rely most on reproducing success and thus are more sensible to their own past experiences than public and private organizations. We motivate an empirical design to test our theoretical propositions by comparing management behavior in public, private, and non-profit hospitals in the United States.