Towards an Interaction Theory of Organizational Actors

Organizations can be conceptualized as social actors capable of interacting with each other as well as with individual actors. A correlative interaction theory has to take into account the many ways in which organizations are different from human individuals. First of all, organizations are constituted by actions; they have no existence and identity apart from their activities, and they are held strictly respon sible for almost everything they do. Second, organizations are transparent actors; their internal structures and proces ses can be observed by outsiders so that they can be submitted to external supervision and social control. Finally, organizations are differentiated actors; they can make use of their internal segmentations by participating simultaneously in many different interaction processes and by committing different sub-units to contradictory values and rules.