WalterW. Powell:

About

Woody Powell is Jacks Family Professor of Education, and Professor of Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science and Engineering, and Communication at Stanford University. He is also an External Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. He was a founding co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) in 2006, where he heads the Civic Life of Cities Lab, which studies civil society organizations in the SF Bay Area, Seattle, Shenzhen, Sydney, Taipei, and Vienna. Powell has received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in the School of Humanities and Sciences for 2018-19, and has served as director of SCANCOR at Stanford from 1999 to 2010, continuing his involvement through supervising postdoctoral fellows and running the annual PhD workshop in Europe. He has received honorary degrees from Uppsala University, Copenhagen Business School, and the Helsinki School of Economics, and is a foreign member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science and The British Academy. His research interests focus on the processes through which ideas and practices are transferred across organizations, and the role of networks in facilitating or hindering innovation. His recent publications include books such as 'The Emergence of Organizations and Markets' with John F. Padgett and 'The Nonprofit Sector' co-edited with Patricia Bromley.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Art
• Mathematics
• Art history
• Cognitive psychology
• Media studies
• Engineering
• History
• Management
• Aesthetics

Selected publications

• The Iron Cage Redux: Looking Back and Forward

  Organization Theory · 2023 · 31 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This seems an opportune time to reflect on our paper, The Iron Cage Revisited, some 40 years after its original publication. In this essay, we recall the influences on us at the time, speculate on factors that shaped its subsequent reception, and assess selective strands of work that it may have influenced. By today’s standards, it was a relatively short paper, only 14 pages, yet it has had a long life and a generous audience (68,624 citations according to Google Scholar on Oct. 15, 2023). We di…

  PublisherDOI

• Serve or Conserve: Mission, Strategy, and Multi-Level Nonprofit Change During the Great Recession

  VOLUNTAS International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations · 2018-01-16 · 29 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Change is frequently afoot in the nonprofit sector, both in the wider institutional environment in which nonprofits operate and within the organizations themselves. Environmental transformations—funding sources, supply and demand for collective goods, and administrative norms—create the circumstances in which organizations operate. Internally, change involves the alteration of goals, practices, and personnel. To explore how multiple aspects of change intersect across levels, we ask how…

  PublisherDOI

• 25. Nonprofit Mission: Constancy, Responsiveness, or Deflection?

  Yale University Press eBooks · 2017-12-31 · 23 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• 3. Seeing Like a Philanthropist: From the Business of Benevolence to the Benevolence of Business

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020 · 21 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• THE IRON CAGE REVISITED:

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021 · 20 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jason Owen‐Smith

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  35 shared

• Paul DiMaggio

  29 shared

• Achim Oberg

  9 shared

• Celeste Diaz Ferraro

  Pennsylvania State University

  8 shared

• Kenneth W. Koput

  University of Arizona

  8 shared

• Forrest Briscoe

  Cornell University

  8 shared

• Patricia Bromley

  Stanford University

  8 shared

• Barbara Gray

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• 2019 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Exce…
• Honorary degrees from Uppsala University, Copenhagen Busines…
• Member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science
• Member of The British Academy
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Similar researchers at Stanford University

• Eric Hanushek:h-136
• A Polinsky:h-79
• Mark Lemley:h-53