Symbolic Management: Governance, Strategy, and Institutions
Contents: 1:Introduction to the Symbolic Management Perspective. Section I: The Major Forms of Symbolic Management. 2:Symbolic Management of Policy and Structure. 3:Symbolic Management of Process. 4:Symbolic Management Beyond the Firm Level. Section II: The Social and Psychological Determinants of Symbolic Management. 5:The Multi-stage Social Influence Process in CEO-Board Relationships. 6:Social Network Ties and Symbolic Management. 7:Social Influence Processes In Leader-Stakeholder Relations. 8:Group-level Social and Psychological Processes that Support Symbolic Management. 9:The Social Psychological Dynamics of Symbolic Management. 10:Conclusions, Future Research Directions, and Policy Implications.
The theory of symbolic management reveals a pervasive pattern of 'symbolic decoupling' - a separation between appearances and reality - at every level of the governance system. At each level the processes of governance are less efficient or effective than they appear; from interpersonal relations within organizations such as those between CEOs and directors, top managers and lower-level employees, to relations between firm leaders and external stakeholders such as journalists and security analysts. There is even a separation between appearances and reality at the level of the governance system itself.
In this book, James Westphal and Sun Hyun Park develop symbolic management into a major theoretical perspective on governance. Not only does symbolic management provide a compelling behavioral alternative to economic perspectives such as agency theory, but it subsumes economic theory. Agency theory is reconceived as a historically contingent institutional logic that became taken for granted among corporate stakeholders for a period of time and eventually replaced by a new logic of governance. Through a body of extensive empirical research Westphal and Park demonstrate how the symbolic management activities of firm leaders have contributed to this historical shift in prevailing logics of governance, and present a warning to regulators, investors, and the general public.
