Mimetic Processes Within an Interorganizational Field: An Empirical Test

This paper is a revision of a paper entitled An Approach to the Study of Structural Change presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, August 30-September 3, 1986, New York, NY. We are grateful to Dawn lacobucci for her research assistance, and we thank Gloria DeWolfe for typing the manuscript. We also thank Marshall W. Meyer and three anonymous ASO referees for their helpful comments. Support for this research was provided by National Science Foundation grants #SES 80-08570 and #SES 83-19364 to the University of Minnesota and #SES 84-08626 to the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Support was also provided by the Program on Nonprofit Organizations, Yale University. The paper explores DiMaggio and Powell's thesis that under conditions of uncertainty organizational decision makers will mimic the behavior of other organizations in their environment. We add to their discussion by positing that managers are especially likely to mimic the behavior of organizations to which they have some type of network tie via boundary-spanning personnel. Data are presented on the charitable contributions of 75 business corporations to 198 nonprofit organizations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in 1980 and 1984. Using logistic regression models, we found that a firm is likely to give more money to a nonprofit that was previously funded by companies whose CEOs and/or giving officers are known personally by the firm's boundary-spanning personnel. Firms are also likely to give greater contributions to a nonprofit that is viewed more favorably by the local philanthropic elite. We also found that a nonprofit is likely to receive more money from a corporation that previously gave money to nonprofits whose directors sitzon the nonprofit's board. We concluded that managers utilize the information gathered through extraorganizational, interpersonal networks to make decisions on how to relate to other organizations in their task environment and achieve organizational ends.'