When we think about organizations—businesses, NGOs, universities—we often imagine them as machines, designed to achieve specific goals. But Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology invites us to see them differently: as fields of struggle, where individuals and groups compete for capital, influence, and legitimacy. This perspective reveals why organizations are not simply efficient structures but contested arenas where power is constantly negotiated.
Organizations as Fields
For Bourdieu, a field is a structured social space with its own rules of the game. Organizations are no exception. Inside a company, school, or nonprofit, people vie for positions, resources, and recognition. The “stakes” may be profits, promotions, or symbolic prestige. What matters most is that organizations are not neutral spaces—they are shaped by ongoing struggles between actors with different forms of capital.
Capital at Work
Within organizations, the classic forms of capital—economic, cultural, social, and symbolic—take on organizationally specific meanings.
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Economic capital may appear as budgets, salaries, or financial performance.
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Cultural capital might be credentials, expertise, or professional language.
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Social capital is the network of alliances, mentors, and team relationships.
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Symbolic capital manifests as authority, legitimacy, or reputation.
Success in organizations depends not only on skill but also on the ability to mobilize these forms of capital in line with the rules of the organizational field.
Struggles and Change
Bourdieu’s framework highlights that organizations are dynamic. Newcomers challenge established leaders, managers compete for authority, and external pressures—such as regulation or cultural change—reshape the rules of the game. Conflict is not a sign of dysfunction but a sign that the organizational field is alive.
Consider a university: professors struggle for prestige through publications and grants, administrators seek legitimacy through rankings and budgets, and students navigate the field by accumulating cultural and social capital. Or take a tech company: engineers, marketers, and executives all compete to define what counts as valuable—innovation, revenue, or brand image.
Why This Matters Today
Viewing organizations as fields sheds light on why change is so difficult. Policies or reforms succeed only if they align with the distribution of capital and the underlying logic of the field. At the same time, it shows why organizations can be engines of transformation: when new actors bring fresh resources, they can shift the balance of power and redefine the rules.
Rethinking Workplaces
Bourdieu’s theory encourages us to look past official charts and mission statements. The real life of organizations happens in the struggles for recognition, influence, and control over the stakes. By seeing organizations as fields, we gain a sharper lens on why they reproduce inequality—and how they can be reimagined as spaces of innovation, fairness, and change.
