John W. Meyer

John Wilfred Meyer (born 1935/1936) is a sociologist and emeritus professor at Stanford University, located in Palo Alto, California. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present day, Meyer has contributed fundamental ideas to the field of sociology, especially in the areas of education, organizations, and global and transnational sociology. He is best known for the development of the neo-institutional perspective on globalization, known as world society or World Polity Theory. In 2015, he became the recipient of American Sociological Association's highest honor - W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award.

Meyer received his B.A. in Psychology from Goshen College, located in Goshen, Indiana in 1955; his M.A. in Sociology from the University of Colorado in 1957; and his Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University in 1965. Since 1966, he has been a professor at Stanford University (emeritus since 2001).

Most mainstream sociological perspectives are realist in orientation, building explanations around concrete actors and particular interests. By contrast, the Meyerian perspective is phenomenologically oriented. It stresses the dependence of local social organization on institutionalized models and definitions, promulgated by professionals and associations to promote collective goods. The dependence involved is more than causal influence. In the Meyerian view, institutional environments constitute local structures – establishing and defining their core entities, purposes, and interrelationships. Enacted models thus are often decoupled from local circumstances.

Meyer initially developed the general perspective in the context of schooling. Departing from conventional views, Meyer envisioned schools as embodiments of collective myth and ceremonial administration, deeply bound to Modern narratives of progress and justice. His framework, developed with Francisco O. Ramirez and others, reveals the profound extent to which local school arrangements depend on broader social institutions to supply their form and function.

He next applied his ideas to the field of organizations. He helped pioneer the sociological new institutionalism, stressing the role of loose coupling in organizational behavior and the conditions under which the diffusion of practices takes place (e.g. Organizational Environments, with W. Richard Scott, Sage 1983). A primary contention is that formal organizations incorporate institutionalized practices and procedures in order to maintain legitimacy. Organizations that align with the myths supplied by their institutional environments increase their survival prospects, even when doing so costs them internal coherence.

...
Wikipedia