ABSTRACT
This chapter examines, on the one hand, state-enterprise experimental reforms developed under the Modern Enterprise and Group Company systems, and, on the other, the effects of the successive rounds of workforce downsizing that have accompanied them. In so doing we develop a line of analysis in concert with both the ‘old’ (DiMaggio and Powell 1991) and ‘new’ (Nee 1998) paradigms of institutional theory in sociology and organization theory, in that we explore the ways in which institutions serve to constrain or encourage organizational action, using an empirical case study to examine particular processes and outcomes.
