Organization as Transaction Set

Abstract

Over the years, sporadic efforts have been made to create grammars of social action, interaction, and organization. One of the attractions of grammatical representation is its generative capacities. First, we summarize the advantages of generative theories. We then outline a strategy for creating a grammar of organization that avoids the pitfalls of previous attempts. We then create two grammars of organization, one for transfer, and the other for exchange transactions. We discuss the work that institutions do in regulating transactions by relating them to the features of transactions that the grammars reveal. A grammar of organization is a medium for integrating micro and macro organization theory and for developing better and more testable theories of institutions and behavior. We demonstrate the advantages of thinking grammatically about organization theories by applying grammatical thinking to three well-known studies of organization.

Keywords

• organizational form
• organizational grammar
• microfoundations
• context of organization behavior
• agency-structure