Implementing affirmative action and organizational compliance: The Case of Universities

This article develops a conceptual model of organizational compliance using affirmative action as an example. The model is applied to universities that are both highly professionalized and loosely coupled. The article explores the dynamics of the process by which organizations with weak hierarchical links attempt to respond to demands that are sometimes unclear or changing and that make a valued resource contingent upon compliance with goals that are externally imposed. The article then attempts to show how the model could be operationalized empirically and the results used to determine whether or not an organization is making a good-faith attempt to comply with affirmative action.