INSTITUTIONAL ISOMORPHISM AND INFORMAL SOCIAL-CONTROL - EVIDENCE FROMA COMMUNITY MEDIATION CENTER

Widespread satisfaction among users of community mediation, but low vo luntary usage, provides a context within which institutional isomorphi sm between state and informal social control organizations can be empi rically investigated. Data drawn from a triangulated ethnography of a single community mediation center suggest that community mediation cen ters come to be isomorphic with more established governmental social c ontrol agencies in order to manage resource uncertainties and assure o rganizational survival. These findings are relevant to an understandin g of linkages between community mediation centers and the state, the s truggle for autonomy from the state by mediation practitioners, instit utional constraints on community mediation centers generating voluntar y users, tensions between staff members' and volunteers' framing of or ganizational premises and practices, and community mediation's limitat ions as a vanguard of private alternatives to legal dispute settlement .