Business formation — a network approach

This article suggests that the key to entrepreneurial success is to be found in the ability to develop and maintain a personal network. In elaborating this proposition I regard the environment of the business venture as “enacted”. The inexperienced new entrepreneur needs support to create a personal network and to manage the enacted environment. The concept of the “organizing context”, defined as a clustered sociocentric network, is introduced to provide a tool with which the entrepreneur can deal more efficiently with the different subprocesses that create his or her reality. The approach supplies a framework within which various forms of entrepreneurship — indigenous, corporate, etc. — can be compared and analysed beyond their institutional differences. The interaction between various forms of entrepreneurship and organizing contexts is empirically illustrated from case studies.     

Knotting the action net, or organizing between organizations

This paper presents a study of a successful organizing process, namely the knotting together of different types of action by “translating” them into one another. The connections thus established were then stabilized to form a unit that can be designated as an “action net”. This instance of organizing occurred in the course of a project in the Swedish health care sector, with a view to establishing coordination between care units in three separate organizations. Different laws regulated their tasks, their operations were financed by different principals, and the everyday work of their members was undertaken at different point in time and in different places. Despite this, the participants in the studied project were able to establish a lasting net of connections that contributed, in the eyes of the environment, to an instance of “good care”. In this paper we examine in detail the creation of an action net, and offer a tentative theory of organizing in action nets.     

Managerialisation processes and performance in arts organisations: the Archaelogical Museum of Bologna

The extension of management discourse to public-sector entities in Italy comes up against a particularly interesting case in museums and art organisations. Here more than anywhere else, perhaps, the rhetoric of managerialisation faces serious problems in understanding the nature of such anomalous organisations, and defining frameworks for representing their performances. In such a context management knowledge often leads to radical conflicts with well established professional discourses (museology, museography, history of art, etc.). Rather than a simplistic, pre-defined and ready-to-use exercise in “performance valuation”, the article suggests a more modest approach, processual in nature, whereby performance representation is open to dialogue with the basic features of the substantive culture of the professionals and the central role they still occupy in the management of these kinds of organisation.     

From National Service to Global Player: Transforming the Organizational Logic of a Public Broadcaster

We present organizational logics as a meso‐level construct that lies between institutional theory's field‐level logics and the sense‐making activities of individual agents in organizations. We argue that an institutional logic can be operationalized empirically using the concept of a discourse – that is, a coherent symbolic system articulating what constitutes legitimate, reasonable, and effective conduct in, around, and by organizations. An organization may, moreover, be simultaneously exposed to several institutional logics that make up its broader ideational environment. Taking these three observations together enables us to consider an organizational logic as a spatially and temporally localized configuration of diverse discourses. We go on to show how organizational logics were transformed in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation between 1953 and 1999 by examining the changing discourses that appeared in the Corporation's annual reports. We argue that these discourses were modified through three main forms of discursive agency: (1) undertaking acts of ironic accommodation between competing discourses; (2) building chains of equivalence between the potentially contradictory discourses; and (3) reconciling new and old discourses through pragmatic acts of ‘bricolage’. We found that, using these forms of discursive agency, a powerful coalition of actors was able to transform the dominant organizational logic of the ABC from one where the Corporation's initial mission was to serve national interests through public service to one that was ultimately focused on participating in a globalized media market. Finally, we note that discursive resources could be used as the basis for resistance by less powerful agents, although further research is necessary to determine exactly how more powerful and less powerful agents interact around the establishment of an organizational logic.     

Use transnational teams to globalize your company

The authors report on their two-year study of successful transnational teams, in which they examined how such teams are designed and managed to help their firms pursue global business strategies. Based on this study, they present a comprehensive model of team effectiveness that includes the key characteristics differentiating a transnational team from other types of work teams. The model shows how transnational teams operate—how they are staffed and led, communicate across great distances, and cope with cross-cultural issues. In closing, they describe how a company's human resources department can help an “international” or “multinational” team become a “transnational” team—one that has successfully transcended the cultural, geographic, and managerial barriers to team effectiveness.     

Microworlds and Simuworlds: Practice fields for the learning organization

Management is one of the few professions, the authors note, in which members have no formal “rehearsal space” for honing their skills. In response to this need, organizations such as The Center for Creative Leadership, MIT's Learning Center, and The Stern School of Business at New York University have created a brave new world of management simulations—“practice fields” for the learning organization. Some of these new games (“simuworlds”) use computer programs to replicate an entire industry and give participants an opportunity to play out one company's strategy in that setting. Other simulations (“microworlds”) engage participants in complex behavioral role playing, based on scenarios that typically develop within a company. Still other simulations combine both approaches. The authors take their point of departure from Peter Senge's definition of the “learning barriers” that develop in any organization: solving fragmented “problems” rather than dealing with systemic issues; overemphasis on competition at the expense of cooperation; and a failure to innovate until forced to do so. The new simulations, the authors argue, are particularly useful in helping managers learn how to overcome these barriers.     

I Don't Need Leadership: An Exploration of the Societal Discourse of Leadership

Even with a myriad of definitions of leadership, we still know little about the discourse of leadership in which those of us without formal leadership education and development are embedded. Through a discourse analysis of interviews with a broad cross‐section of 12 “followers,” the current study begins exploring the idea of a societal discourse of leadership and how that discourse complements and conflicts with the academic and workplace discourses. Analysis shows that although individuals define leadership in a similar fashion to the academic discourse, they identify heroic figures as leaders, and they neither look for, nor feel they need, leadership in their own lives.     

Check But No Mate: Balancing the Rights of Employees and Employers Under the National Labor Relations Act—The Ongoing Saga

Prior to 1995, employers had enjoyed significant success in asserting management prerogatives over organized labor in cases heard under the National Labor Relations Act. However, at that time, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling which essentially leveled the playing field by affirming the rights of union organizers and supporters to employ an aggressive organizing strategy called “salting.” Employers have subsequently attempted to counter the effects of salting through the use of a variety of practices that potentially disrupt salting activities. These strategies have received mixed support with the courts and the National Labor Relations Board. This paper examines the current state of permissible union organizing and management behaviors under the National Labor Relations Act.     

Spatial strategies of the “haredi” population in Jerusalem

The purpose of this article is to discuss the strategic behavior—spatial and social—of the “Haredi” (ultra-orthodox) Jewish population. This behavior is associated, in essence, with self-segregation and social isolation accompanied by spatial expansion.

This study deals with these processes in one of the largest concentrations of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community—the northern neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The Jewish ultra-orthodox community is characterized by its special interpretation of Jewish law (halacha) and by its high degree of cohesiveness. It tends to segregate itself from the Israeli population for two main motives. The positive one is the desire to create and maintain “cultural dominance” in a specific area in which the community lives and functions. This includes considerations of scale economies and concentration economies in the provision of the special goods and services which it consumes. The second motive, a negative one, is the desire to avoid some kinds of contacts and interactions with the various groups which do not observe Jewish law according to the orthodox conception. This is done in order to prevent the transfer of secular cultural values of western society into their domain.

The high communal cohesiveness, coupled with high population growth and a strong desire for self-territorial segregation, results in increased pressure on the urban residential space. The fear of social relationship—which may serve as agents for transferring social or cultural values—results in a high degree of intolerance toward the non-religious Israeli population. The contact lines between the two populations have become, therefore, confrontation areas which are characterized by territorial conflicts.

Study of the directions of the territorial expansion suggests what the spatial strategy of the ultraorthodox community is: to gain control of a whole, well-defined urban space in order to maintain cultural dominance in it, while assuring potential directions for expansion in the future. The relationships with the outside, non-religious population is built on a modus operandi principle: i.e. minimal and culturally neutral interactions.

This strategy is carried out through penetration and expansion tactics in a well-known process. These processes present important challenges for planning areas in which ultra-orthodox communities reside.     

以学术社团为载体培养大学生创新竞赛能力的研究

以我校学生学术社团参与大学生科技竞赛的组织形式为例,提出以学术社团为载体,发挥社团的组织优势,培养大学生的创新能力、团队合作精神和竞赛获奖成绩,营造学校创新竞赛氛围,以期为高校科技竞赛组织管理工作提供一种思路。     

‘Totally Un‐Australian!’: Discursive and Institutional Interplay in the Melbourne Port Dispute of 1997–98*

ABSTRACT We examine how discourses are mobilized and deployed by actors in an inter‐organizational domain during a critical industrial relations event. We identify the ways that business interests and union interests in the Melbourne Port industrial dispute of 1997–98 related to each other. We weave concepts from domain theory and organizational discourse theory in deriving the concept of the discursively ordered domain. This suggests that the main processes that occur in a domain are actors’‘mapping’ texts onto discourses and discourses onto interpretive schemes which make certain courses of action rational and sensible. Methodologically, we join an institutional‐historical analysis and a text‐based discourse analysis to gain a well‐rounded understanding of the situation. We extract several discursive frameworks which the major actors mobilized to make sense of the situation, and draw linkages to the actions that those positions made possible. The main findings are that actors in the two networks performed complex mapping in different ways, the material and symbolic outcomes of the dispute are products of those mapping processes, and the material and discursive aspects of the domain interweave. We discuss the value of the concept of discursively ordered domain for mutually enriching domain theory and discourse analysis and for understanding critical events such as major industrial disputes in new ways.     

Artifacts that organize: Delegation in the distributed organization

A great deal of research on geographically distributed organizing focuses on communication among members; however, in the face of increasingly large, complex and interdependent infrastructure, scholars must also examine instances of technology-supported coordination that function by replacing rather than enhancing human communication among organizational members. Central to this are complex processes of delegation — in which organizational work and agency are passed back and forth across the shifting line between “social” and “technical” elements. Building on work in the sociology of science, this paper extends the concept of delegation and applies it to thorny questions around the work of sustaining organization over time. We explore two examples from the Open Science Grid (OSG), an initiative that distributes computational resources to geographically dispersed and otherwise loosely coordinated research teams. Our first case is one of successful delegation, as automated access to resources is extended to a new group of distributed scientists. We then turn our attention to a case where the process of delegation breaks down, revealing the usually invisible work needed to sustain “seamless” integration. As these cases show, delegation is complex, fragile, and central to the nature of contemporary organizing. Specifically, delegation: 1) reconfigures the organization of work; 2) transforms how outcomes are accomplished; 3) redistributes responsibility for organizational decision-making; and 4) shifts the visibility and invisibility of both actors and their work.     

Provoking identities: entrepreneurship and emerging identity positions in rural development

This article discusses entrepreneurship in a depleted community in transition. The purpose is to develop knowledge about how discourses are used in the positioning of identity in regional development. The concept positioning illustrates how identities are provoked, challenged, negotiated and moved into identity positions that break away from the idea of imitating successful and wealthy regions; instead, locality, place and history emerge as important resources from where local actors obtain agency and recognize new opportunities. Ethnographic data of a single case were collected over a six-year period between 2005 and 2010. The longitudinal nature of the study made it possible to incorporate how local stakeholders took on new identity positions, while handling their inspiration as well as their frustration. Results show how rural change was conditioned by discourses and how entrepreneurship challenged and reframed dominating structures through interaction between entrepreneurship and community. Four discourses, expressed as dichotomies available to people in this depleted community, illustrate the interactive process of positioning: change vs. traditions, rational vs. irrational, spectacular vs. mundane and individual vs. collective. The results support research emphasizing perspectives that acknowledge interaction between entrepreneurship and context as well as discursive aspects of regional development.     

SME policy implementation as a relational challenge

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between actors, who implement the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policy, and entrepreneurs, who are the targets of the policy, by focusing on the question who is serving whose interests. The paper presents a case study conducted in one of the sub-regions in Finland. The data include individual interviews with 10 policy implementers and 19 small business entrepreneurs and two group discussions. The data are approached from the perspectives of discourse analysis and positioning theory. The results are further interpreted in terms of agent–principal relations. The results indicate that one relational challenge faced in the implementation of the SME policy is the proxy agency, in which both policy implementers and entrepreneurs position themselves as the principal and the other party as their agent. The proxy agency can be viewed as an interactional pitfall caused by the incompatible discourses of entrepreneurs and policy actors and the actor positions constructed with these discourses. Besides addressing the relational problems enabled by certain individual discourses, the paper also demonstrates how there is also a need to address the potential conflict that stems from the collision between discourses.     

Equilibrium with coordination

The obvious equilibrium concepts in the simplest institutions for transferring ownership of commodities—bilateral exchange—are neither Nash equilibria nor cooperative equilibria. To study such equilibria as special cases of equilibria of a social system it is necessary to introduce coordination. Two or more agents coordinate their actions, if, when they consider an alternative to a state, they take as given—for agents with whom they coordinate—the alternative state. If there is no coordination we obtain Nash equilibrium as a special case. If there is complete coordination we obtain optimality as a special case. The main result is an existence theorem for a social system with coordination. This theorem is then applied to prove existence of exchange equilibria in an economy with bilateral exchange.     

A theory of the temporary organization

The idea of the firm as an eternal entity possibly came in with the era of industrialism. In any case, the practical consequences of this idea contrast sharply with many ideas about projects and temporary organizations. Mainstream organization theory is based upon the assumption that organizations are or should be permanent; theories on temporary organizational settings (e.g., projects) are much less prevalent. In this article, we address the need for a theory of temporary organizations, thus seeking to supplement traditional project management wisdom. We also suggest some components of such a theory by elaborating on certain ideas about projects. “Action”, as opposed to “decision”, is one such component which is central to a theory of the temporary organization. In some respects we are thus dealing with antipoles, in other respects with concepts similar to those in established mainstream organizational theory. The role of “time” in the firm is different as compared to its role in the temporary organization. The differences have several important implications and we are able to suggest a coherent outline of a theory which we believe could be useful and which also covers several important aspects of temporary organizations.     

The religious factor in private education

We quantify the religious factor in private education in the United States by calibrating a political economy model of school choice—among public, private-nonsectarian and subsidized religious schools—in which parents differ in their incomes and in their preferences for religious education. This shows strong latent demand for religious schooling, conditioned on current subsidized tuition levels in parochial schools, which is suppressed by the need to “pay twice” for private education. Applying the results of the calibration to gauge the effect of means-tested school voucher programs on religious and nonsectarian private enrollment, we find that when the amount of the voucher is relatively small, including subsidized religious schools in such programs is necessary for providing low-income families effective access to private education.     

INSTITUTIONALISED JUSTIFICATION OF CORPORATE ACTION: INTERNATIONALISATION AND THE EU IN CORPORATE REPORTS

This paper provides an institutional analysis of the way a set of Finnish firms have used the concept of internationalisation and the EU in justifying major strategic decisions. They have used internationalisation, and in particular the then new possibility of Finland joining the EU, as an argument in support of radical change. An analysis of their annual reports reveals a number of institutional arguments which are strong because they are generally accepted, a priori, as being important not only to firms but indeed to Finland as a whole. In using institutional arguments firms are aligning their own interests with those of the country, and in so doing are able to justify radical changes in most parts of their own organisations. We are not claiming that Finnish firms should not react to the challenges which EU represents. Rather, we suggest that by using institutional arguments they are borrowing legitimacy from a wider public. The arguments used are typically very broad, invoking very general visions of the role of Finland in the EU. We call these arguments “easy rides” because, even if they are only partially explicated, it is generally assumed that they will become accepted without questioning by public and employees alike. Certain specific patterns of “easy rides” can be distinguished: i) The mobilisation of a “national mission”, ii) “Sacrifice now, reap the benefit later”, and iii) “Bigger is better”. The paper concludes with a methodological discussion about the difficulty of distinguishing between the technical/functional and the institutional arguments.     

Trade-offs and disappearing acts: shifting societal discourses of diversity in Canada over three decades

In the past few decades, research on minority and disadvantaged groups in the workplace has focused on the discourse of diversity management; however, most of this research has emphasized individual and organizational discourse rather than broader, societal contexts. Our critical analysis of societal/macro level discourse explores the discursive constructions of equity and diversity in Canada, and provides original findings on how these discourses have been produced in the public sphere. We apply quantitative and qualitative textual analysis to articles published from 1986 to 2014 in The Globe and Mail, a nationally distributed newspaper, and the Canadian Employment Equity Act Annual Reports from 1988 to 2013. This paper describes a range of discursive patterns including those focusing on compliance-based equity oriented toward social justice as well as voluntary ‘diversity management’ grounded in corporate self-interest. It demonstrates important trade-offs in who is protected and promoted through the contrasting discourses, and in the types of actors legitimizing these discourses. We provide detailed evidence of these patterns by applying Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, and conclude with a discussion of implications for practice and for theory that are suggested in our analysis.     

Arbitrage and price revelation with asymmetric information and incomplete markets

This paper deals with the issue of arbitrage with differential information and incomplete financial markets, with a focus on information that no-arbitrage asset prices can reveal. Time and uncertainty are represented by two periods and a finite set S of states of nature, one of which will prevail at the second period. Agents may operate limited financial transfers across periods and states via finitely many nominal assets. Each agent i has a private information about which state will prevail at the second period; this information is represented by a subset S_i of S. Agents receive no wrong information in the sense that the “true state” belongs to the “pooled information” set ∩_iS_i, hence assumed to be non-empty.Our analysis is two-fold. We first extend the classical symmetric information analysis to the asymmetric setting, via a concept of no-arbitrage price. Second, we study how such no-arbitrage prices convey information to agents in a decentralized way. The main difference between the symmetric and the asymmetric settings stems from the fact that a classical no-arbitrage asset price (common to every agent) always exists in the first case, but no longer in the asymmetric one, thus allowing arbitrage opportunities. This is the main reason why agents may need to refine their information up to an information structure which precludes arbitrage.