Sociology has recently witnessed a rapprochement between research on organizations and
research on law. This essay reviews a number of central developments and tendencies in
this emerging literature, with a particular emphasis on the characteristics of law as an
element of the organizational environment. We begin by distinguishing two metatheoretical
perspectives on law and organizations: the materialist perspective, which portrays
organizations as rational wealth-maximizers and sees the law as a system of substantive …