Are Priests Employees? The State, Professional Networks, and Change in Religious Organizations
Event history data from US Catholic dioceses are used to examine the determinants of an organizational change by which priests are treated as employees rather than as independent contractors, as indicated by whether income is reported using W-2s or 1099 forms. In 1986, only 4% of dioceses treated priests as employees; today, 56% do so. Both qualitative accounts & network variables incorporated into the event history analysis show that the rate at which dioceses switch to the W-2 system jumps immediately after key events dramatizing changes in Internal Revenue Service regulatory practice, & is strongly predicted by diocesan exposure to the relevant professional network & proximity to other dioceses already using the W-2 system. Dioceses with more recently consecrated bishops also are more likely to switch. Results strongly support a neoinstitutional account of this organizational change, & suggest that mundane instances in which religious organizations embrace institutional patterns promoted by the state & carried by professionals rival instances of resistance & opposition in their sociological importance. New lines of research are thereby opened on the extent to which both religion & society are shaped by religious organizations' adaptation to state-driven institutional change.
