John W. Meyer

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John W. Meyer (* 1935 ) is an American sociologist and Emeritus Professor of the Department of Sociology at Stanford University .

Life

He earned a BA in Psychology from Goshen College , Indiana in 1955 , an MA in Sociology from the University of Colorado in 1957, and a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1965 .

plant

Meyer is the main developer of the theory of sociological neo-institutionalism . This theory has its origins in organizational sociology, but in its further development it also plays an important role in political science discourses on globalization. It is based on the sociological classics, in particular on Max Weber's thesis of Occidental rationalization, i.e. a social order in which an efficient bureaucracy creates legitimacy for state power . Meyer, however, rates the social function of the organization's form of generating legitimacy more important than its actual function of increasing efficiency.

From the neo-institutionalist theory he derived his concept of the world polity , often referred to in Germany as “world culture”. The basis for this were empirical studies on the worldwide distribution of institutions in the education system, which Meyer has meanwhile also been able to demonstrate for other social functional areas. He deduced from this that there are shared values ​​of a western character around the world. Here, too, the organization plays a decisive role, as it can generate legitimacy, whereby it must be taken into account that Meyer also sees states as organizations. Meyer sees world society as a reality, since his concept of world society only envisages an institutionalized system of rules and values. This system development results from the transfer of western values ​​- Meyer describes this process as isomorphism. Christel Adick shows a reception for international educational science . (compare also → diffusionism )

Meyer is often criticized for his world culture thesis. It stands too much in the tradition of the empirically often untenable modernization theories of the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, she overestimated the homogeneity of a society, since in world society a unity-oriented concept of society is no longer viable, but society is largely determined by difference.

Meyer was Niklas Luhmann visiting professor at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University in 2006 , which awarded him an honorary doctorate in the same year. He received the same honor a year later from the University of Lucerne .

Publications

  • World culture. How Western Principles Pervade the World . Suhrkamp Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-518-41651-0 .
  • Institutional environments and organizations: structural complexity and individualism . Thousand Oaks, Calif .: Sage Publications, 1994, ISBN 0-8039-5667-3 .
  • Organizational environments: ritual and rationality . Newbury Park, Calif .: Sage Publications, 1992, ISBN 0-8039-4469-1 .

literature

  • Julian Dierkes / Dirk Zorn: Sociological Neo-institutionalism . In: Current Theories of Sociology . Edited by Dirk Kaesler . Munich: CH Beck 2005, pp. 313–331. ISBN 3-406-52822-8
  • Sowa, Frank: Meyer, John W./Boli, John / Thomas, George M. (1987): Ontology and Rationalization in the Western Cultural Account. In: Thomas, George M./Meyer, John W./Ramirez, Francisco O./Boli, John (eds.): Institutional Structure. Constituting State, Society, and the Individual. Newbury Park: Sage, pp. 12-37 . In: Kühl, Stefan (Ed.): Key Works of Organizational Research, Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2015, pp. 467–470.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ University of Lucerne: Honorary doctorates - University of Lucerne. Retrieved August 21, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, John W.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH 1935