Intertwined Cultural and Relational Environments of Organizations

I examine fundamental elements of the cultural and relational environments of the organizations that produce electoral forecasts in the Spanish parliamentary elections. The analysis reveals how these elements shape the interests and decisions in a collectivity of organizations that share a common technology. I investigate the reasons for the coincidence of incorrect forecasts across the polling firms by considering neoinstitutional propositions about the social construction of institutions and isomorphism by mimesis. The coincidence of forecasts contributes to preserving the firms' individual and collective social legitimacy despite repeated forecasting failures. To reach coincidence, the firms' decisions about what forecast to present is decoupled from the ineffective technological process that legitimates the forecasts. Cultural conceptions about the production and technology of the forecasting activity generate interdependence among the polling firms. This relational aspect compels firms to conform their forecasts to those of other firms.