Use of the athletic conference as a wage comparison group in Wisconsin teachers' collective bargaining: Implications for institutional theory and organizational learning theory

In order to test some of the tenets of institutional theory and organizational learning theory, in this thesis I examine Wisconsin school districts' practice of using athletic conferences as wage comparison groups for teachers' collective bargaining. This thesis consists of two related studies. The first study investigates whether the parties' use of the athletic conference as a wage comparison group is institutionalized beyond its technical merits. This study presents a refined test of institutional theory. Despite the theory's important implications, institutional scholars have had difficulty demonstrating empirically that certain organizational practices are indeed institutionalized. The challenge stems largely from the fact that institutionalized behaviors are often compatible with behaviors that are driven by efficiency considerations. Using incidents of athletic conference realignment, I show that the bargaining parties reacted to conference realignment in the ways predicted by institutional theory. Since the conference realignment can be regarded as an exogenous shock to collective bargaining, the parties' reactions to conference realignment cannot be accounted for by efficiency considerations. This finding provides strong support for institutional theory.; The second study examines how the parties learned what arbitrators think is an appropriate comparison group by receiving their own arbitration decisions and by observing the decisions made in other bargaining relationships. It contributes to arbitration theory by improving our understanding of how parties form their expectations of arbitrator behaviors. This study also contributes to organizational learning theory. Despite a recent surge of interest, empirical studies of organizational learning are sparse. In addition, while the construct of organizational learning is distinct from performance, performance has been widely used as a proxy for organizational learning. This study builds on previous studies by using behavioral change instead of performance as a measure of organizational learning. My results show that the bargaining parties learned from their own experience, but I found no support for vicarious organizational learning.