Between Contending Perspectives and Logics: Organizational Studies in Europe

With early characterization of the 1970s in the background, this paper examines change and differentiation within organizational studies in Europe over the last three decades. In doing so, it draws upon theories on change in scientific fields and institutional ideas in organizational analysis. The two main questions asked are (a) whether there has been change in theoretical perspectives, research practices and societal contextualization and (b) whether these have been uniform across Europe. The empirical part of the study is based on a content analysis of the articles published by European authors in the journal Organization Studies over its 30-year life-span. Overall, results show an initial movement away from US-based 'mainstream' to UK-based 'alternative' perspectives, tempered more lately by a renewed influence of the former; a marked shift towards research practices shaped by a 'subjectivist' logic; and a decline in societal contextualization. Findings also demonstrate, however, that organization studies in Europe is not as homogeneous as it is often considered to be.