RESPONSES WANTED: External Influences on Progressive Organizations

Howdy!

I am a UT Austin student working on my senior thesis under Professor Paul Green--a former Morning Star colleague and one of the "pioneers" on this site. I am studying the impact of third-party actors--regulatory agencies, professional organizations, suppliers, etc.--on progressive organizations. Essentially, I want to look at the various ways, both direct and indirect, subtle and explicit, that third-party actors impact the ability of progressive organizations like the ones on this site to adopt and maintain their unique organizational practices.

I want to tell the stories of how organizations have felt pressure from third parties to change their non-traditional organizational practices, how this pressure was manifest, and how the organization or individual responded. Further, I am particularly interested in the subtle ways that third-party actors influence organizational decisions. Maybe it's a financial disclosure that requires someone in the organization to assume a disproportionate amount of individual liability, disrupting the internal power dynamics, or maybe it's the simple fact that a supplier gets a little squirmy when a nominally "low-level" employee--to use a grotesque term--is empowered to make important purchasing decisions.

If you are interested in sharing your story for research purposes or even just chatting about your experience of third-party influence with an interested individual, please comment on this topic or contact me at wesdodson2731@gmail.com.

Thanks in advance!