Structure and Agency: A Response to Felin and Foss

11 September 2006 at 10:20 am Nicolai Foss Leave a comment

| Nicolai Foss |

In 2005 Strategic Organization published a paper by Teppo Felin and me, “Strategic Organization: A Field in Search of Micro-foundations.” The paper has caused quite a stir, and the editor of SO! told me at the recent Academy Meetings that he had been contacted by several authors and author teams who wanted to write responses. Our argument? The — apparently provocative — one that notions of capabilities, routines, etc. are collective-level constructs that do not have any clear (and clean) micro-foundations (as well as definitions, measures, etc.).The August issue contains an article that is clearly a response to the Felin and Foss paper, namely John Steen, Catelijne Coopmans, and Jennifer Whyte’s “Structure and Agency? Actor-Network Theory and Strategic Organization. They see “… the sociology literature as a useful resource for refining our understanding of the relationship between the strategic actor and the organizational setting in which s/he operates” (p.304). Specifically, they highlight “actor-network theory” which, however, the authors refrain from describing in any detail, arguing that it may be a “language” rather than an “explanatory framework,” it is not a “singular thing,” and is “pluralist,” “constantly evolving,” and a “strange beast.”

After this kind of start, one is left wondering what actor-network theory (if indeed is a theory) is good for. One thing is clear, however, namely “… that actor-network theory does not see individuals and their intentions as foundational to strategic organization. What is foundational (in the sense of empirical grounding) instead, is the myriad of traceable processes by which a variety of actors connect together” (p.307). So actor-network theory is not methodologically individualist, although one is also left wondering why exactly “individuals and their intentions” are not important to the understanding of the “traceable processes by which a variety of actors connect together”? Similarly, because of the authors’ defaitism with respect to describing actor-network theory, their arguments that the theory (or approach or whatever it is) is particularly well-suited for analyzing strategic alliances and networks remains unconvincing.