These books provide an important perspective on two subjects where knowledge has recently stalled – policy implementation and organisational networks - reinvigorating them with a fresh set of theoretical tools. At the heart of this analysis is what the authors term ‘neo-Durkheimian institutional theory’ (NDIT), which applies and develops the thinking of the so-called ‘grid-group’ cultural theorists of Mary Douglas (e.g. Reference Douglas1970) and her school (e.g. Thompson et al., Reference Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky1990). The authors focus on the complex and contradictory ways that societal structures and processes are anchored in social institutions. The ‘static’ part of NDIT is used to define four (and no more than four) basic ‘ways of organising’ in social systems: hierarchy, individualism, enclave and isolate forms. In Durkheimian terms, hierarchy represents strong social regulation and strong social integration. This results in centrally ordered communities, for example bureaucracies. Individualism represents weak social regulation and weak social integration. This results in instrumental, entrepreneurial individuals operating, for example, through markets. The enclave form represents weak social regulation and strong social integration. This results in internally egalitarian organisations (held together by shared commitment to principle), but showing sharply marked boundaries with others. Examples include sects, movements and clubs. Finally, the isolate form represents strong social regulation and weak social integration. This results in heavily constrained individuals acting opportunistically, unable to sustain collective action, and tending towards fatalism.

‘Getting’ the theory is important. In Beyond Delivery the authors argue that ‘these basic institutional forms recur in almost any society and also at any level of organisation’ (p. 28). However, while people may tend to become institutionalised into particular ways of thinking, working and designing inter-organisational relationships, NDIT argues that the more exaggerated and extreme this institutionalisation becomes (‘self-radicalisation’), so in turn the greater the likelihood of ‘institutional failure’ becomes (p. 34). As the authors point out, ‘a central organisational weakness shared by all the elementary forms is that each will provoke counter-mobilisation from the others’ (p. 33). The authors therefore invoke the principle of ‘requisite variety’ (Ashby, Reference Ashby1957; Wildavsky, Reference Wildavsky1987), demanding that sufficient balance be given to each of the four basic forms if effective control of the social system is to be achieved (p. 38). Interactions between the basic ways of organising provide the ‘dynamic’ part of the theory, encapsulated in the notion of ‘settlements’ between the four basic institutional forms. The process of establishing effective settlements between the four basic ways of organising is therefore presented as continuous and ongoing, again taking a number of possible forms (pp. 39–45).

So what do these books aim to add to their subjects of enquiry? In Beyond Delivery (BD) Peck and 6 assert there have been few major theoretical innovations in the policy implementation literature since the mid 1980s, and that current conceptions of the policy implementation ‘problem’ seem capable of neither eliciting fresh perspectives nor providing useful advice (p.12). They present NDIT as a ‘new and distinctive’ way of thinking about things that breaks free from this impasse (p. 24). Their claim is that NDIT helps us to understand both structural processes (how settlements govern flows of resources and information), and cognitive processes (how the four basic institutional forms guide ‘sense-making’, or the making and remaking of meaning). To defend this assertion, they bring together a significant body of empirical material from their own recently conducted research. Their aim is to elucidate the policy implementation process, including some of the parts they claim other theories cannot – ‘the commonplaces of organisational life’ (p. 48). In support, Chapters 3–7 of BD consider such important aspects as organisational memory, meetings as rituals, the role and meaning of money, and the adoption of innovation. These chapters offer beguiling insights into the effects of these phenomena on institutional development, demonstrating how creative solutions might be found to address the tensions that develop between the four different ways of organising.

The final source of empirical material in Beyond Delivery is based on the authors’ research on networks. A chapter-length summary is provided here, but in Managing Networks of Twenty-First Century Organisations (MN) (co-written with Goodwin and Freeman) this subject is given the space it deserves. NDIT is used to develop an ‘integrated theory of networks’, usefully providing a taxonomy of structural characteristics, a model of network dynamics and explanations of potential network failure. The authors then draw an important distinction between the governance and management of different types of networks, and discuss learning and leading across these different types. Again the theoretical contribution of the book is subjected to detailed empirical analysis through a number of case studies. Based on research conducted for the NHS Service Delivery Organisation, these cases are as varied as defence procurement and supply, commercial biotechnology, crime, disorder and drugs and health care. The authors show that differences in relative performance have a good deal to do with the institutional form of the networks involved. In conclusion, the argument is repeated in favour of requisite variety, that the ‘most intelligent long-term strategy’ (at least for organisations and networks that expect to exist in the long term) is to develop a sufficiently mixed set of institutional styles that one can respond to the dynamics of prevailing conditions (p. 265).

Do these books succeed in their aims? Certainly they give great cause for thought. The credibility of the NDIT model is borne out by the careful theoretical and empirical analysis that is characteristic of these authors’ work. The theory is deployed in a wide range of contexts in which it always comes up with something to say. The authors acknowledge that ‘grand theories’ of this type are currently unfashionable in some quarters, and that readers will vary in the extent to which they engage with or indeed accept the theoretical basis of their arguments. In response, they mount a robust defence against the critics of the cultural theory from which NDIT derives (MN, pp. 264). However, as Peck and 6 themselves recognise: ‘Not even the two authors would necessarily agree on where on a continuum – between the theory being, at one extreme, a robust description of the reality of organising and, on the other, one more useful framework for exploring such organising – NDIT would lie’ (BD, p. 21). The shame would be, especially given the current theoretical hiatus in policy implementation and organisational network analysis, if academics and practitioners were not to at least attempt to decide for themselves by reading these rich and thought-provoking texts.