stakeholder theory

Stakeholder theory is getting lots of attention these days.  Here’s a mishmash of links on stakeholder theory:

• Michael Jensen on “value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function.”
• Ed Freeman gives a 50-minute youtube primer on stakeholder theory.
• The “Redefining the Corporation” project.
• Etzioni’s “A communitarian note on stakeholder theory.”
• Testy on “linking progressive corporate law with progressive social movements.”
• Lynn Stout’s “Bad and not-so-bad arguments for shareholder primacy.”
• A Business Ethics Quarterly discussion on stakeholder theory.

stakeholder theory

The most recent issue of Business Ethics Quarterly captures an interesting symposium on stakeholder theory from last year’s Academy of Management conference: “Dialogue: Toward a Superior Stakeholder Theory.”  The dialogue included not just those who’ve directly contributed to stakeholder theory — Freeman, Donaldson, Agle, Mitchell, Wood — but also Harvard’s Michael Jensen.  The symposium was an effort to explicate the current and future state of stakeholder theory.

After reading the articles, I did not come away feeling that much better about stakeholder theory, specifically, the “theory” part of it.  I certainly agree that stakeholders matter.  Perhaps stakeholder theory is an effort to re-iterate that organizations are dependent on others for resources, legitimacy, etc (cf. Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).  I agree.  But, beyond that, I am not sure what theoretical or even practical intuition I can get from it.  One clear success, as the first article notes, is that the stakeholder language has widely diffused itself into practice (see the interesting analysis that the first authors do on Fortune 500 company web sites and the use of the word “stakeholder”), but, it seems that further articulation of the theory itself is needed.   

For example, its easy to talk about a stakeholder approach when stakeholder interests are aligned, but, when there are competing interests, and inevitably this is the case, what are the proposed decision-criteria?  How are disparate stakeholder interests prioritized?  What are the appropriate boundaries of the organization?  Undoubtedly there’ll be much work forthcoming on these and other related issues.     

Here’s a non-gated pre-publication version of the paper. 

Here’s a slew of past orgtheory posts on stakeholder-related issues. 

For the above paper’s abstract, click here:

stakeholder theory and social responsibility

Teppo

So, I am discussing stakeholder theory and corporate social responsibility in my mba org theory class today (here’s a previous post on stakeholder theory; we’ve had lots of posts on the matter).  In preparation for the class we read Friedman’s statement on corporate social responsibility, and also a longish article that articulates the general ethos and principles of stakeholder theory and corporate social responsibility. 

To polarize the class, and to get the discussion and debate going, I do a (very) quick, casual (and completely unscientific) survey right at the beginning of class. Answer the below questions: 

1-strongly disagree; 2-disagree; 3-neutral; 4-agree; 5-strongly agree

a. Companies have a social responsibility (beyond profit) when operating in third-world countries

b. Relative to frontline employees – CEOs make too much money

c. It is NOT ok for a company to lay off 30% of its employees to realize more shareholder wealth

d. A company should NOT employ child labor even if it is the norm and legal in the country in question

e.. Companies can make too much profit

f.  Companies have a social responsibility beyond just making a profit 

(Tally up your points to see which side of the fence you sit on: 6 total points – you are an arch-capitalist; 18 – neutral for the most part; 30 – [insert whatever label you’d like]). I get lots of variance and lots of healthy discussion.

stakeholder theory ethnography

Teppo

I did my first ethnographic study last weekend, kind of. All I know about ethnographic work is that I need to cite Glaser and Strauss (1967), but that did not stop me. Rather than present a critique of stakeholder theory (my original plan), on the recommendation of a colleague (thanks Bill!) I decided to interview Academy of Management conference participants (well, in reality, academic friends and acquaintances) on their thoughts about stakeholder theory. I only got to 15-20 colleagues or so in the one day that I had to do the ‘interviews,’ but it proved to be a fun and engaging endeavor. I asked, roughly, the following questions:

• What is stakeholder theory?
• What are its central predictions and propositions?
• Key insights?
• What decision criteria does it have for arbitrating between stakeholder interests? The distribution of residuals?

Those all seemed like particularly important theoretical criteria/questions for stakeholder theory to meet, particularly if it purports to be a theory of the firm. So, unedited, below some of the responses I got (from top journal editorial members, international scholars, doctoral students – a gamut of academics in the domains of organizational theory and strategy). One of my first responses was disconcerting, though things went better after that…

• Blank stare and 20 second awkward pause…and finally…“why would I know that theory, I guess, hmmm, it’s a theory that considers other stakeholders beyond shareholders…ok, I have to go now.”
• “A more holistic approach to the firm. An effort to understand the ecology of, for example, alliances and other organizational relationships.”
• “ST recognizes that many of the resource owners that enter into the firm nexus may make non-contractible but firm specific investments and are therefore to be considered residual claimants, perhaps on par with shareholders, and that — therefore — firm strategy, remuneration strategy, dividend policy, board composition etc. need to reflect this.”
• “Never understood it. There’s lots of crap that people write.”
• “Shareholder return is not the only focus, it’s a moral matter to consider others – ‘enlightened’ self-interest.”
• “Is it even a theory? Its more of a philosophy or a social agenda. Does not explain what happens, but rather, how things should be based on someone’s opinion. It might be a theory where everyone’s worse off.”
• “More is better. Meaning, inclusiveness of various others in decision-making increases likelihood of correct outcome. Of course, the process is critical.”
• “Who is not a stakeholder?”

Overall I felt like I got some nice general articulation of the general stakeholder ethos. But, when it came to actual predictions, or, when I pushed on key propositions of stakeholder theory, or, criteria for how one would arbitrate between stakeholder interests – the respondents had little to say. My conclusion, based on the interviews, was that stakeholder theory does not meet theoretical criteria. Neither is it a view or a perspective, perhaps simply an appreciation that consideration should be given to not just shareholders but also other stakeholders. But, how that stakeholder consideration would be distributed given divergent interests remains arbitrary at best, wholly dependent on pet interests that are hard to articulate.

I was surprised to hear, even from some prominent stakeholder scholars in the audience, an admission that many of the theoretical elements of the theory are missing – and it was argued that it simply is a “theory of practice,” rather than a traditional scientific theory of prediction or explanation. This notion of “theory of practice” is hard for me to swallow, as argued by Kurt Lewin, “there is nothing quite as practical as a good theory” (something to that effect), and again, stakeholder theory gives no practical guidelines or advice whatsoever (other than giving potential legitimacy for one to pursue the interests of your favorite stakeholder).

Well, the discussion overall was quite interesting, and the matter of stakeholder theory appears to permanently be on the agenda (Jim Walsh presented loads of data showing that the stakeholder language has deeply penetrated our top journals, and also the pop media). I was a bit disconcerted by the general acceptance of the approach without it meeting theoretical criteria, but I suppose this provides an opportunity for further blog posts and interaction.

stakeholder theory

Teppo

Brief musings from the 2006 Academy of Management meeting…There seems to be quite a bit of excitement about stakeholder theory, I’ll reserve more thorough discussion of some of the problems that I see with the theory for later (in short, I am not optimistic about its potential), but for anyone wanting to briefly get up to speed on stakeholder theory, the three below sources are an excellent place to start:

• Freeman, R.E. 1984. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman. The magnum opus of the perspective.
• Donaldson, T. & Preston, L. 1995. The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications. Academy of Management Review, 20: 65-91. Nice discussion of the descriptive, instrumental and normative elements of the theory.
• Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R., & Wood, D.J. 1997. Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts. Academy of Management Review, 22: 853-886. Very good overview piece (see table 1), along with some new theory development on stakeholder salience and identification.

Here’s a legal perspective on the matter of stakeholder theory by Bainbridge. More careful comments later.

what’s wrong with stakeholder theory?

Brayden

Despite its seeming rise in popularity, many smart scholars have problems with a stakeholder theory of the corporation. Some (e.g. Key 1999) argue that stakeholder theory lacks specificity and, thus, cannot be operationalized in a way that allows scientific inspection. Others, like a commenter to my first post at Conglomerate, feel that stakeholder theory offers no decision-making criteria that would adequately guide corporate governance. Most critics, like Teppo, feel that stakeholder theory is vacuous and offers an unrealistic view of how organizations operate. I agree with all of the critics. It’s true that some stakeholder theories do each of these things, BUT the real problem is that there are so many versions of stakeholder theory that it’s difficult to know where even to begin to offer critiques.

Let me try to group the various perspectives into two camps. Once I’ve created this dichotomy, I’ll tell you why they’re both wrong. Then I’ll offer an alternative view that I believe is superior. By the way, this outline of an argument could be applied to pretty much any theoretical problem and is probably a somewhat sneaky way to make your point. I don’t mind doing it here.

The first set of perspectives are what I’d call the blank-slate view of stakeholder theory. In this view, the organization is a shell that can be written upon freely by the various groups that lay claim to the corporation. The firm has very few innate interests. Its interests, in fact, are almost entirely determined by its relations to primary and secondary stakeholders. Change those relations, and the interests of the firm change accordingly. In some ways, this view is an extreme version of Granovetter’s embeddedness thesis. Interests aren’t innate at all; rather, they are merely reflective of the meaningful ties that one has. The article that Teppo cites would fit in this perspective. Most of the Donaldson and Freeman literature also fits in this camp.

The second set of perspectives fall into the adversarial stakeholder camp. In this view, the firm has its own economic interests, and so do the stakeholders. The firm’s primary purpose is to be a profit-making machine. The stakeholders’ interests are to redistribute the wealth created by the firm to other constituencies, possibly to themselves. The struggle, then, involves a set of negotiations between the parties, as they try to define who deserves more or less of the firm’s resources. In this camp are some in the more instrumental crowd, like Coff (1999) – the disputed classic. ;) In this camp you’d also find scholarship like that done by David Baron (in his “private politics” model), who argues that stakeholders, use the threat of state intervention to convince firms that it is in their best interest to redistribute resources voluntarily.

stakeholder theory, again

Teppo

I was just now preparing my presentation for an Academy of Management conference symposium (titled – “Stakeholders in Organization Theory and Strategic Management: Opportunities and Obstacles”) and ran into this quote:

A stakeholder theory of the firm must redefine the purpose of the firm…The very purpose of the firm is, in our view, to serve as a vehicle for coordinating stakeholder interests (Evan & Freeman, 1993: 102-103).

Hmm, I will have quite a bit to say about this and other even more disturbing quotes that I ran into (well, at least their general ethos). I guess the quotes aren’t necessarily disturbing in and of themselves (in fact, they are very idealistic and even virtuous), but somehow they lack any grounding in reality and seem atheoretical. That is, a stakeholder agenda (perhaps a better word than a theory) with consideration for all the various constituents that are raised under its label – environment, employees, government, suppliers, society (don’t we all have our favorite) – fundamentally misses the point of the need to prioritize, the need to consider costs, the need to bound the arguments, and, well, a need for a theory. But, I could very well be wrong.

Anyway, it promises to be a great symposium (organized by Alison Mackey) and discussion – others presenting include Jay Barney, Amy Hillman, Joe Mahoney, and Jim Walsh.

more on stakeholder theory

Teppo

…by Bainbridge.

mba education and stakeholder theory

Teppo

Yesterday’s WSJ has a short article about how several business schools are revamping their curriculum to make it more interdisciplinary – see here. This quote caught my eye (it is referring to changes being made at Yale):

Instead of the traditional compartmentalized courses, students this fall will learn the basics from the viewpoint of a company’s external stakeholders and internal constituents. These “organizational perspectives” courses will include customer, competitor, investor, employee, innovator, the state and society, the ” operations engine,” and the sourcing and managing of funds.

It is interesting to see the ‘stakeholder’ language making its way into business school education.

I have always struggled with the “theory” part of stakeholder theory. What exactly is the theory and its claims? My best reading of this literature is that it presently is a hodgepodge of competing claims about the role that suppliers, society, government, the environment (external constituents), and, employees and managers (internal constituents) should play in organizational behavior. I suppose everyone has their favorite stakeholder they would like to pitch. But, is that the theory? What else is there?

orgtheory puzzle: steve jobs 1 vs. steve jobs 2

There is one part of the Apple story that has always puzzled me: what was the difference between Steve Jobs pre-NeXT and post-NeXT? For those who aren’t Appleologists, Steve Jobs was booted from Apple in 1985. He ran a company called NeXT and founded Pixar. NeXT flopped but Pixar succeeded. About ten years later, in 1996, Jobs returned to Apple and steered it into the forefront of computing.

Here’s the thing that puzzled me: What happened in those years? What did he learn or do differently upon his return? I read the Walter Isaacson biography. It is heavy on detail, but light on analysis. You don’t quite understand how he changed in a way that allowed him to reach new heights or resolve old problems. Here are my hypotheses:

1. Steve was a little older and a little wiser. He also had more practice from running these two firms which gave him the ability to be more innovative upon returning to Apple. In other words, practice makes perfect. Old people mellow. he worked better with others.
2. Nothing changed. Same Steve, but the big difference is that he was completely control of Apple. In Steve Jobs 1, he had other founders to deal with and a board that reflected different groups of stakeholders. In Steve Jobs 2, all the founders were gone and he fired all board members not aligned with him. Thus, his fights with people didn’t undermine the company in the same way Steve Jobs 1 almost ruined Apple. In other words, Apple 1 was a divided firm with different stakeholders and Jobs was not an optimal CEO for such a firm. Apple 2 was built around Jobs and he excelled in that type of environment.

The main evidence for #1 is that he learned a lot from running NeXT that allowed the later Macs to be very successful and his media experience was directly leveraged into the iTunes project. The evidence for #2 is simply that that there is no evidence that Jobs changed as a manager at all over his whole life. The brilliant, but insane, guy you get at Reed in the 1970s is the same guy you get in the 2000s. Your opinion? Show me your work!

50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street!!

how field theory can inform strategy research

The field of strategy research could learn something from field theory. Ed Walker and I make this point in a forthcoming paper, “Winning hearts and minds: Field theory and the three dimensions of strategy,” now published online at the journal Strategic Organization.  We argue that strategy researchers too narrowly conceptualizes strategy, focusing almost exclusively on financial performance and ignoring firms’ (or elites’) motivations to attain status and power. When strategy scholars pay attention to status they usually only do so as an independent variable – a precursor to financial performance. Field theory forces us, we think, to consider the broader struggles for control and dominance that propel firms, elites, and other actors to take action. Shaping public perceptions is one of the main ways in which social actors improve their status and attain more power, and so an important component of strategy involves actively managing impressions – i.e., what people think and how they feel about key issues and actors.

Strategy research—and to some degree social movement theory as well—portrays organizations as resource-accumulating machines. The ultimate measure of success is financial performance. Another way to conceptualize organizations is as social actors whose primary function is to manage the impressions and perceptions of their various audiences. Their ultimate goal is to maintain positions of dominance. Resource accumulation depends on the ability of an organization to gain favorability and esteem. Shaping public perceptions about why one organization deserves favor is key, then, to long-term survival. But there exists an alternative and more long-term rationale for shaping public perceptions: for organizations to gain positions of prominence and power in society, they must be able to influence the rules of the game and the cultural norms and belief systems that shape who wins and who does not…

What role does strategy have in this conflict-ridden view of the world? In our estimation, strategy can be conceptualized as having three dimensions. We take inspiration from the ideas of Max Weber (1922 [1978]) in his classic essay on “Class, Status, and Party” in order to understand the features of strategy. We argue that strategy research has focused almost exclusively on financial performance (“class,” in Weber’s resource-based view of economic positions) and management’s role in shaping it. However, Weber’s conceptualization suggests that firms ought to be at least as concerned with prestige or esteem (“status”) or on the relative leverage of various stakeholders and policymakers upon firms’ actions (“party”). ..

[W]e find three major limitations in strategy research. First, it is far too focused upon firm performance at the expense of understanding strategic elements of relative status and sources of power/vulnerability. Second, its perspective is often far too short term and does not pay enough attention to all three of the aforementioned aspects of strategy, especially in the context of the “long game” of business maneuvering. Third, it downplays the extent to which businesses’ capacities for accumulating resources, maintaining reputations, and obtaining political leverage are all subject to conflict with other actors whose own relative position depends on their ability to convince the public of their alternative ideologies and worldviews.

In the paper we talk more about research focused on political influence, in particular, ought to shift away from the specialty areas of “nonmarket strategy” or “political strategy” and move to the forefront of strategy research.

the relevance of organization theory

Another big issue in our discussion about the future of organization theory must be its practical relevance. A few months ago my 10-year old son Elias asked me about my work, and I was pleased to tell him that I study organizations and explained what they are. I was struck by his reaction: “Huh, there is no need to study that.” I thought about his response and told him a couple of days later about a research project that I am working on with Joep Cornelissen and Saku Mantere. We have a paper on the accidental shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in a London tube station a couple of years ago. The Metropolitan Police thought that he was a terrorist and tragically killed this innocent man. We focus on sensemaking and communication and explain the unfortunate outcome by commintted interpretation that was built up by idiomatic expressions that could be interpreted in different ways. I was really happy that Elias was all ears when I told about this research project.

I’m not saying that all organization research needs to focus on issues that are easy to understand and appear relevant for 10-year olds or managers. However,  it is useful and refreshing to think about ways in which organization theorists could make themselves more visible and useful. This may sound naïve, but everyone is now looking at Copenhagen and most of us are hoping that political decision-makers and other stakeholders would get organized to fight global warming. I don’t think that anyone has considered that organization scholars could play the role of experts or be proactively involved in designing structures  and processes that would help out in this joint endeavor. I have also thought about the EU and the various ways in which we as scholars could be involved in studying but also developing this gigantic bureacracy.

Against this background, I’m very glad to see that there are openings to this direction. For example, the new Editorial team of Organization Studies is encouraging people to connect organization theory with broader societal issues and concerns. Also, I have been involved in planning for a Second International Conference for AOM that would focus on developing management and organization research and education in places where help is needed. I hope that I will happen.

call for papers: music & orgtheory

Call for papers on research about the organizations of musical performance:

American Orchestras Summit at the University of Michigan: Creating Partnerships in Research and Performance

Co-Hosted by the League of American Orchestras, University Musical Society, the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, and Arts Enterprise

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

While orchestras and universities share many goals from great music making to transformational education, collaborations between academics and institutions of performance are infrequent and fleeting. On January 26–28, 2010, a landmark conference concerning the American orchestra will be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to address the division between practitioners and scholars. Its goal is collaboration by leveraging the tools of academic research to address questions of mutual concern to musicologists, organizational theorists, cultural leaders, arts administrators, musicians, and other stakeholders. We will explore two issues in particular: 1) organizational structures and strategies— past and present—that have aided (or hindered) orchestras’ success and 2) the symbiotic relationship between an orchestra and its community. We hope that by considering the institutional history and practices of the American orchestra, we can better understand and address the challenges and opportunities of the present.

stakeholder governance

Stakeholder theory seems intractable—it suggests that governance ought to (somehow) consider and reconcile the interests and preferences of various organizational stakeholders.  But, the problem is that matters of stakeholder conflict and uncertainty do not really get vetted (stakeholder governance of course works great if interests happen to be aligned), and more generally stakeholder theory does not seem to provide mechanisms to resolve concerns related to the ordering of disparate stakeholder interests and preferences. [Issues we’ve discussed before.]

I just attended the Utah-BYU Winter Strategy Conference last weekend, and Joe Mahoney gave a very nice overview of stakeholder thinking, in particular focusing on economic and legal approaches to thinking about stakeholder governance, specifically matters related to property rights.   Not sure Joe’s paper necessarily resolves the concerns many have about stakeholder governance, but, nonetheless he gave a very engaging presentation on the matter —- (pdf) here’s the associated paper—specifically calling for strategy scholars to return to their stakeholder-inspired roots.

ferrets and barbie dolls: what do these have to do w/ org theory?

This caught my eye.  What google search terms, would you think, bring new folks to orgtheory?  Stakeholder theory, organization theory, social movements, obscure sociological theory?

No, here are the stats from earlier today.

Ferrets and barbie dolls and orgtheory, hmm. (This post will likely further cement our niche.)

A couple other stats.  462 unique folks have come by so far today (weekends are slow).  And, another orgtheory stat — 497 people subscribe to our feed via google.  According to google reader we average 11.7 posts per week.

orgtheory.net random searches

Teppo

Below a few of the more random search engine terms that have brought people to orgtheory.net recently:

• sociologists are stupid
• prostitution stakeholders
• cuba happiness
• sexy men (this one shows up almost daily)
• where are the Doldrums
• schizophrenia and writing
• a pizza hut, mcdonalds burger king and a pizza hut

“best of” orgtheory.net

Teppo

In case you are just now stumbling upon orgtheory.net – here’s a very, very incomplete and semi-random “best of” list of posts (and associated conclusions) that may or may not be of interest:

• b-schools have a cutthroat, Hobbesian culture and business faculty are “brutal”
• academics are plain nuts
• some come to orgtheory.net seeking sexy men
• Andrew Abbott’s paper was rejected because…
• stakeholder theory may not be a theory
• organization theory has a poor google presence
• we’re not sure what makes a classic
• Garrison Keillor is a jerk
• campus buildings are ugly
• listen to colleagues, I mean, don’t listen to them
• corporate corruption may not be increasing
• paper titles are critical
• be a legal scholar, not an economist
• profanity maintains order
• you too can become a business professor, in just five days!

(Frankly, our best posts probably come from our guest-bloggers, but I have omitted their posts to save face.)

stakeholders and social movements

Brayden

Two literatures in organizational theory address how outsider groups may influence corporate change, yet neither literature acknowledges the other. In the world of normal social science, how does this kind of thing happen? How can two different groups both purport to study the same outcome and yet learn nothing from each other?

The two groups I speak of are the stakeholder group influence scholars and the social movement folks. In recent years, there has been a flurry of actvity in both areas. Stakeholder scholars (e.g. R. Edward Freeman, Brad Agle, Jeff Frooman) examine the conditions in which stakeholder groups, like employees or members of the community, may influence corporate activity. An article in the May issue of Strategic Management Journal by Charles Eesley and Michael Lenox addresses some of the actions taken by stakeholder groups to affect change:

[O]utside stakeholder groups can engage in a set of actions such as protests, civil suits, and letter-writing campaigns to advance their interests. These actions can provide strong incentives for firms to meet stakeholder demands in one of two ways. First, they may impose direct operational costs in terms of legal fees, public relations expenses, and managerial attention if stakeholder demands are not addressed. Second, these stakeholder actions may have important consequences for a firm’s reputation and its subsequent ability to attract customers and employees and appease regulators and shareholders (pg. 765).

where do great theories come from?

If you are interested in this question, consider reading Great Minds in Management: The Process of Theory Development (Oxford University Press).  In this edited book volume, a set of top minds were asked to talk about the origins of the theories that are attributed to them.  So there is a chapter by Albert Bandura on Social Cognitive Theory, a chapter by Barry Staw on the escalation of commitment, a chapter by Jay Barney on the origins of the resource-based view, Karl Weick talks about sensemaking, Ed Freeman on stakeholder theory, Dick Scott on institutional theory, Oliver Williamson on transaction cost economics, Sid Winter talks about evolutionary economics, Jeff Pfeffer about resource-dependence, etc, etc.

Good stuff.

No matter what your theoretical cookie is – the chapters are interesting (though I haven’t carefully read all of them).  Some of the chapters are biographical, others talk about their own (often interdisciplinary) influences, some talk about the struggles of getting their work published (Barney’s RBV paper was rejected by top journals, he eventually accepted his own paper in a “lesser” journal — the article is now cited nearly 20,000 times), others offer “lessons” (Williamson: be disciplined, be interdisciplinary, have an active mind), etc.

Definitely worthwhile.

In the epilogue the volume editors Ken Smith and Mike Hitt offer their thoughts on the process of theory development (summarized in the figure below).

how to do your own blog

I’ve been asked a few times about blog writing. How do you blog? What goes into a successful blog?

• Blogging is free: WordPress and blogspot are both free. For additional customer support, you can pay at Type Pad or Powerblogs.
• Decide whether you want a single person or group blog. I do a group blog because I don’t have to generate all the content myself. I also enjoy interacting with the rest of the crew.
• Have a “beat.” Most good blogs are like magazines. They have an audience and specific set of topics. At orgtheory, we do management, sociology, and related social science topics. We also toss in the occasional fun post. If you write consistently on topics you love, it’ll work.
• Have a point of view. Each one of us has a specific take on things and we let it come out.
• Update. This is the most important issue. A blog that isn’t updated at least once a week or so will wither. That’s why I like the group blog. With six bloggers, you can depend on fresh writing.
• Professional tone. People worry how blogging might affect how people see them. Fair point. I’ve found that common sense goes a long way. Be measured and calm in your writing. Be fun. But don’t be mean. And don’t write about confidential conversations (i.e., what happens in the dept stays in the dept). My experience is that a professional & fun blog isn’t a problem.
• Time management. Here’s what I do. When I have a fun idea, such as when I read an academic journal or book, I make a note, or write it down. About once a week, a few of these ideas will turn into blog posts. It takes about as much time as watching 1 episode of a TV show. I really don’t have time for more than that.

There you go. Here is an older post on blog benefits. If you have other questions, or “how to” ideas, drop them in the comments.

Update: Kandarp asked about how we bring traffic to the blog. I think it’s just through word of mouth and links from other blogs. I also think people find us through google searches. For example, “stakeholder theory” brings you to Brayden’s and Teppo’s posts. I don’t think we do any advertising aside from just putting links on the web page. We also get the occasional “big hit.” Both Brayden and Sean were picked up by super blogger Andrew Sullivan. How he heard about them, I don’t know.

I also recommend Joseph Logan’s comment. Definitely worth reading.

AJS 113(1) the mother(org)load

Omar

The latest issue of AJS is jam-packed with stuff that should be of interest to all org-heads out there:

 

 

• The lead article by Espeland and Sauder ” Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds” deals with a topic that was recently brought up in this forum (which tells you that we are teetering so close to the cutting edge that we are going to either soon fall off or get seriously maimed): the effects of rankings on organizations. Espeland and Sauder discuss both the intended and unintended consequences of instituting commensuration where there was previously none, and they of course discuss “performativity,” although they stick to the old fashioned idea of a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
• Victoria Johnson has a historical study of the French Opera in which she “unpacks” Stinchcombe’s highly influential notion of “organizational imprinting” using detailed insights from her case. Consistent with research research on the “new structuralism” in organizational analysis, she highlights the role of entrepreneurship, historical contingency and culture in the imprinting process.
• Sarah Babb, explores the influence of classic organizational mechanisms of bounded rationality, choice under uncertainty and the institutional influence of powerful actors and processes in the organizational environment. Her case? The puzzle posed by the IMF’s adoption of an “orthodox” neoclassical prescription package for developing economies during the immediate post-war period even as the developed world was under the hegemonic influence of Keynesianism.
• Caroline Lee discusses the role of informal networks in defusing consensus between different groups of stakeholders in regional state planning projects. (If you follow orgtheory you know that stakeholder theory is one of Brayden’s many interests).
• Finally for econ-soc heads out-there, Molm, Collett and Schaefer provide a experimental test of a theory of generalized exchange which attempts to explain the classic Levi-Straussian conjecture that indirect reciprocity leads to higher levels of “generalized” solidarity for the group as a whole than other forms of restricted and negotiated exchange.

failure of corporate law

Teppo

Gordon at the Conglomerate points to a (hot-off-the-press) book that ought to also interest organization theorists – The Failure of Corporate Law: Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities (U of Chicago Press) by legal scholar Kent Greenfield.  The themes covered in the book appear to be related to matters we’ve touched on in various posts in the past – including corporate social responsibility, corporate ethics and stakeholder theory – so, perhaps more in a later post (once one of us gets their hands on a copy of the book).

corporate social responsibility

Teppo

A topic Brayden has posted on before (e.g., here and here), related to stakeholder theory – Santiago Iniguez at DeansTalk.net has some recent thoughts.

world happiness

Teppo

Click here to get to a map, rankings and data on world ‘happiness’ (HT: cnn.com). Apparently Denmark is the happiest nation in the world. In looking at the notes, the ranking/score is compiled based on the following factors:

1. SWL (satisfaction with life) rating calculated from data published by New Economics Foundation (2006).
2. SWL (satisfaction with life) index calculated from data published by New Economics Foundation (2006).
3. Life Expectancy from UN Human Development Report (2003)
4. GDP per capita from figure published by the CIA (2006), figure in US$.
5. Access to secondary education rating from UNESCO (2002)

Reasonable enough, I guess (though there are all kinds of stats issues that remain unclear).

I looked up the New Economics Foundation, (the organization providing the data for the first two measures) – its a think-tank (2002 UK think-tank of the year) that has its own, recently released “Happy Planet Index,” which consists of three items: life expectancy, human wellbeing, and environmental footprint. The UK comes in shockingly low at 108th of 178 nations, the US fairs even worse – 150th, both countries lose out to such happy places as Libya, Gabon, and Azerbaijan. And the winner, yes, you guessed it, Vanuatu. Second, Colombia, followed by several other countries recently ravaged by civil war. Cuba comes in sixth. The slogan of the New Economics Foundation – “economics as if people and the planet mattered,” and furthermore, they want to “redefine wealth and progress.” Indeed.

If you look at the formula and associated numbers and results – the index is essentially all about environmental footprint. In short, the more agrarian and backwards your society, the better you do in this index. Here’s a Guardian article excerpt – why did many countries perform so poorly?

Two factors are cited for the low showing of many countries: those recently adopting market economies and those badly affected by HIV/Aids do worst.

Hmm, there is so much wrong with this that I am not even quite sure why I am writing this post. I think a Nozickian ‘possible worlds’ experiment contrasted with the happy planet rankings would roughly turn the analysis upside down. That is, if we allowed open migration and choice on the part of individuals in terms of which type of environment they would like to live under, we would have massive migration to industrialized, democratic, peaceful, and free nations – rightfully so. It is not by accident that people are rushing to get across the US border, not the borders of Cuba or Colombia.

And where does the environment fit in? Well, the problem is that human happiness gets rhetorically linked with the environment (see the think-tank’s press releases and news clippings, and, Cuba and civil war-ridden countries of course are the best example of the problem), and progress is completely problematized. There are also some great ties (the extremes nicely tease out the problems) to issues related to stakeholder theory as well (matters related to costs, boundaries, choice etc), but I will address those in a later post.

Anyway, just a quick, semi-random rant from some late late-night web browsing.

profit with honor

Teppo

Daniel Yankelovich has written a book titled Profit with Honor: The New Stage of Market Capitalism, published by Yale University Press.

Here again is a book that presumes that we live in an unprecedented era of corporate corruption (I am not so sure [though open], neither is Peter Klein at the blog Organizations and Markets). That said, the book seems to make a somewhat different argument than other books, at least recognizing that self-interest can indeed be quite enlightened and a mechanism for creating value (something that many reject outright), but a sense of honor and stewardship has been lost. Perhaps (working on my short sentences).

In terms of solutions – things get a bit fuzzy for me once we start talking about "stewardship ethics," community and stakeholder theory (I at one point read much of this literature), on the whole these theories promise much, but once there is talk of actual decision-making and tough real-life matters related to cost, preferences, choice, and scarcity – the arguments become relatively vacuous.

is 2020 the “drop your tools” and “do-ocracy” epoch?

In Karl Weick’s (1996) analysis of the Mann Gulch disaster and a similar fire at South Canyon, he differentiates the organizational conditions under which some smoke jumpers survived, while others died when wildfires suddenly turned.  According to Weick, the key turning point between survival and death was the moment when one firefighter ordered others in his team to “drop your tools.”  Among other organizing challenges, this order to leave expensive equipment violated smoke jumpers’ routines, even their central identities as smoke jumpers.  Indeed, some did not comply with this unusual order to abandon their tools, until others took their shovels and saws away.  Post-mortem reports revealed how smoke jumpers who perished were still wearing their heavy packs, with their equipment still at their sides.  Those who shed their tools, often at the urging of others, were able to outrun or take shelter from the wildfires in time.  Weick’s introduction states,

“Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility…It is the very unwillingness of people to drop their tools that turns some of these dramas into tragedies” (301-302).

 

Around the world, some organizations, particularly those in the tech and finance industries, were among the first to enact contingency plans such as telecommuting and spreading workers out among sites.  Such steps prompted consternation among some about the possible meaning and aims of such actions – is the situation that serious?  Is this just an opportune moment for surveilling more content and testing outsourcing and worker replaceability?  What does all this mean?

 

Meanwhile, other organizations are investing great efforts to continue regular topdown, operations, sprinkled in with the occasional fantasy planning directives.  (Anyone who has watched a class of undergraduates and then a class of kindergarteners try not to touch their faces will quickly realize the limits of such measures.)  Without the cooperation of organizations and individual persons, critics and health professionals fear that certain organizations – namely hospitals and the medical care system – can collapse, as their operations and practices are designed for conditions of stability rather than large, sustained crises.

 

For organizational researchers like myself, these weeks have been a moment of ascertaining whether organizations and people can adapt, or whether they need some nudging to acknowledge that all is not normal and to adjust.  At an individual level, we’re all facing situations with our employers, voluntary organizations, schools and universities, and health care for the most vulnerable.

 

For the everyday person, the realization that organizations such as the state can be slow to react, and perhaps has various interests and constraints that inhibit proactive instead of reactive actions, may be imminent.  So, what can compensate for these organizational inabilities to act?  In my classes, I’ve turned towards amplifying more nimble and adaptive organizational forms and practices.  Earlier in the semester, I’ve had students discuss readings such as the Combahee River Collective in How We Get Free (2017, AK Press), to teach about non- and less- bureaucratic options for organizing that incorporate a wider range stakeholders’ interests, including ones that challenge conventional capitalist exchanges.

 

To help my undergraduates think through immediately applicable possibilities, I recently assigned a chapter from my Enabling Creative Chaos book on “do-ocracy” at Burning Man to show how people can initiate and carry out both simple and complex projects to meet civic needs.  Then, I tasked them with thinking through possible activities that exemplify do-ocracy.  So far, students have responded with suggestions about pooling together information, supplies, and support for the more vulnerable.  One even recommended undertaking complex projects like developing screening tests and vaccines – something, that if I’ve read between the lines correctly, well-resourced organizations have been able to do as part of their research, bypassing what appears to be a badly-hampered response CDC in the US.

 

(For those looking for mutual aid-type readings that are in a similar vein, Daniel Aldrich’s Black Wave (2019, University of Chicago Press) examines how decentralized efforts enabled towns in Japan to recover more quickly from disasters.)

 

Taking a step back, this period could be one of where many challenges, including climate change and growing inequality, can awaken some of us to our individual and collective potential.  Will be this be the epoch where we engage in emergent, interdependent activities that promote collective survival?  Or will we instead suffer and die as individuals, with packs on our backs, laden down with expensive but ultimately useless tools?

sase mini-conference cfp “Regulation, Innovation, and Valuation in Markets for Health and Medicines” – deadline extended to Fri., Jan. 24, 2020

SASE annual meeting submissions are currently open, and the submission deadline has been extended to Fri. Jan. 24, 2020!  (The 2020 annual meeting will be held July 18-20 at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.)

For those studying organizations, innovation, health, medicines, markets, and/or inequality, I wanted to call attention to one of the mini-conference calls, organized by Kathryn Ibata-Arens and Etienne Nouguez.

Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) 2020, 18-20 July

University of Amsterdam

“Regulation, Innovation, and Valuation in Markets for Health and Medicines”

Mini-Conference Call for Papers

Conference Co-Organizers:

Kathryn Ibata-Arens, PhD

Vincent de Paul Professor of Political Economy

DePaul University

Etienne Nouguez, PhD

CNRS Researcher

Center For the Sociology of Organizations (SciencesPo/CNRS)

The world is experiencing rapid transformations in the development of new approaches to improving human health and the health of communities, healthcare provision, governance over the use and pricing of drugs and medicines, and medical innovations in biotechnology (genomics and stem cell-based therapies). For example, open innovation systems and sharing in the commons have introduced healing medicines and medical innovations (e.g. the Human Genome Project). At the same time, there is growing inequality in who gets access to medical care and medicines, and at what price.

 

Meanwhile, market competition has in part led to the opioid crisis of addiction in the United States, human subjects abuses in developing countries in the race to develop new drugs, and a decline in the discovery of radical new innovations in medicines for poor populations. This mini-conference aims to convene a group of related panels around issues in global health and medicines, to facilitate useful critical discussion and reflection on participants’ works-in-progress. Driving questions include:

 

-What theoretical advances are being made in understanding causal mechanisms in improving, or undermining human health and community health, for example, through state policy and firm and organizational strategy? What new frameworks and methods are being developed to identify key actors and explain actions (e.g. improving, or undermining health, broadly defined)?

 

-What is the evolving role of the state, healthcare systems and professions, and other actors (multilateral bodies, firms, non-profit organizations) in medical and medicine provision and innovation? Are we seeing a shift from traditional dominant blocks (North America and Europe) to new actors (Asia and the Global South)? Likewise, how have states and healthcare organizations been effective (or ineffective, indifferent) in the valuation and pricing of medicines (fair, equitable, and affordable access to life saving medicines)?

 

-What should be the responsibility, if any, of the global intellectual property rights regime as arbitrated by such powerful organizations as the World Trade Organization and global corporations in monitoring access and benefit sharing of profits resulting from research and development into new drugs and medicines?

 

-What are the roles for regulation and institutionalization of markets for such boundary-products between medicine and health food as probiotics, herbals, so-called nutraceuticals, and other dietary supplements – in ensuring the health and safety of consumers and patients?

 

-In what way is current research and policy aiming for “inclusive” innovation (e.g. in healthcare provision, new drug discovery) focused on distributive aspects versus stakeholder inclusion, or both (e.g. under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs))? What is the relative role for (social) entrepreneurs, large firms, and other actors?

 

Our mini-conference encourages submissions of papers exploring emerging frameworks and theories, as well as empirically rich original data from the developed and developing world and at various levels of analysis (e.g. local community, firm, state, multilateral institution). Scholars at all levels are welcome. In the spirit of innovation and creativity, the panels will have an interactive workshop format around discussant feedback and moderated audience participation. For more information, contact the co-organizers at medhealthSASE2020@gmail.com.

You can also download the full mini-conferenc call here: SASE2020HealthandMedicinemini-conferenceCFPK10-28-19

Grad students, post-docs, and other early career scholars, please also note: travel funding and a pre-conference workshop day are available, by a competitive selection process, for those who submit full papers for consideration and are accepted in a network or mini-conference.

the relational turn in the study of inequalities and organizations – guest post by Dustin Avent-Holt and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey

On behalf of Dustin Avent-Holt and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, I am posting their guest post, a must-read for researchers looking for intersections between organizations and stratification.  In their post, they describe the shortcomings of stratification research’s in focusing on “individual” characteristics and how they build upon organizational theory to examine organizations as inequality-generating mechanisms.  Their post ends with possible research AND policy agendas for a more sustainable and equitable future.

By the end of the 1990s we began to see a relational turn in sociology, perhaps expressed most clearly in Mustafa Emirbayer’s Relational Manifesto. The core claim is that the basic unit of analysis for sociology (or perhaps the social sciences writ large) should be, neither the individual nor macro-level institutions, but the social relations between actors.

This relational claim is, of course, not new. Classical sociologists –Simmel, Marx, Mead, Blumer, Goffman– treated relationality as fundamental. All of symbolic interactionism, the economic sociologies of Granovetter’s embeddedness paradigm and Zelizerian relational work, organizational field theory, and the strong growth in network science are all contemporary exemplars.

But relationality was blurred in the mid-20^thcentury though by the growth in statistical techniques and computer software packages that enabled the analysis of surveys of individuals. Blau and Duncan’s pathbreaking American Occupational Structure became the state of the art for stratification research, but it had the side effect of obscuring – both theoretically and methodologically – the relationality that undergirds the generation of inequalities.

Simultaneously, organizational sociology had its own theoretical blinders. The move towards New Institutionalism obscured the older focus on stakeholders and dominant coalitions, refocusing on legitimating processes in the environment through which organizations isomorphically converged. Charles Tilly’s book Durable Inequalities critiqued the status attainment model partly by adopting this view of organizations, treating organizations as inequality machines mechanically matching internal and external categories.

does deliberation demobilize?

The end result of all of these little steps to empowerment is, unfortunately, not a long journey to social justice, but a tightening spiral of resignation and retreat from public life to our increasingly demanding domestic worlds. (p. 26, DIY Democracy)

Recently, I was the featured speaker at the Kettering Foundation’s April Dayton Days Meeting. My book, DIY Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry, studies the development and current success of the public engagement field, of which Kettering is very much a part—especially in supporting research on the deep engagement innovations that scholars call “deliberative democracy.”

Dialogue and deliberation (or D&D) processes typically take the form of discussions involving a cross-section of the public in informed weighing of options on tough, often unsexy (sorry Fabio) issues like municipal budgeting, waste removal, and health care. I argue that the expansion of deep democracy in all kinds of organizations is exciting, but it has been accomplished because of the needs of those same organizations to manage their stakeholders’ deep uneasiness and anger over problems like municipal retrenchment, corporate reorganization, and urban redevelopment. Organizations resort to deliberation when they face (or anticipate facing) contention, because it works to soothe tensions, stimulate empathy for administrators’ “tough choices,” and encourage individual engagement in problem-solving. As a result, intentional efforts to activate grassroots participation from the top-down tend to foster more faith in individual-level efforts over collective ones—regardless of whether a particular process prompts public cynicism about government capacities or hope for a more engaged community.

It is a complex pleasure to share research with subjects, particularly when research subjects are deeply invested in the language and practices of the academy (my talk was preceded by a nuanced discussion of how critical theory could be relevant to the foundation’s on-the-ground work). Quickly, our discussion came around to the quote above, from the introduction to DIY Democracy, which sums up the larger argument of the book but troubled a number of attendees. If reinvigorating public engagement does not produce social justice in a context of deep inequalities, then should deliberative democrats just give up?

I argued that first, we should not see deliberation as a “one-size-fits-all” solution to public problems, some of which may require contention and conflict. Second, we should imagine more ambitious opportunities for the “systems change” public deliberation repeatedly offers, but rarely delivers.

 

In my next post: how engagement practitioners manage the tensions they deal with in their everyday work…

storytelling in organizations, the state of the field of organizations and values, and a freebie article

I’ve recently published two articles* that might be of interest to orgheads, and Emerald publisher has ungated one of my articles:

1. Chen, Katherine K. 2013. “Storytelling: An Informal Mechanism of Accountability for Voluntary Organizations.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 42(5): 902-922.**

Abstract

Using observations, interviews, and archival research of an organization that coordinates the annual Burning Man event, I argue that storytelling is a mechanism by which stakeholders can demand accountability to their needs for recognition and voice. I identify particular frames, or perspectives and guides to action, articulated in members’ stories. Deploying a personalistic frame, storytellers recounted individuals’ contributions toward a collective endeavor. Such storytelling commemorated efforts overlooked by official accounts and fostered bonds among members. Other storytellers identified problems and organizing possibilities for consideration under the civic society or anarchist frames. By familiarizing organizations with members’ perspectives and interests, stories facilitate organizational learning that can better serve stakeholders’ interests. Additional research could explore whether (1) consistent face-to-face relations (2) within a bounded setting, such as an organization, and (3) practices that encourage participation in organizing decisions and activities are necessary conditions under which storytelling can enable accountability to members’ interests.

2. Chen, Katherine K., Howard Lune, and Edward L. Queen, II. 2013. “‘How Values Shape and are Shaped by Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations:’ The Current State of the Field.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 42(5): 856-885.

Abstract

To advance understanding of the relationship between values and organizations, this review synthesizes classic and recent organizational and sociological research, including this symposium’s articles on voluntary associations. We argue that all organizations reflect, enact, and propagate values. Organizations draw on culture, which offers a tool kit of possible actions supported by institutional logics that delineate appropriate activities and goals. Through institutional work, organizations can secure acceptance for unfamiliar practices and their associated values, often under the logic of democracy. Values may be discerned in any organization’s goals, practices, and forms, including “value-free” bureaucracies and collectivist organizations with participatory practices. We offer suggestions for enhancing understanding of how collectivities advance particular values within their groups or society.

3.  In addition, one of my previously published articles received the “Outstanding Author Contribution Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2013.”  Because of the award, Emerald publisher has ungated this article (or, as Burners like to say, contributed a gift to the gift economy :) ) to download here (click on the HTML or PDF button to initiate the download):

Chen, Katherine K. 2012. “Laboring for the Man: Augmenting Authority in a Voluntary Association.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations 34: 135-164.

Abstract:

Drawing on Bourdieu’s field, habitus, and capital, I show how disparate experiences and “dispositions” shaped several departments’ development in the organization behind the annual Burning Man event. Observations and interviews with organizers and members indicated that in departments with hierarchical professional norms or total institution-like conditions, members privileged their capital over others’ capital to enhance their authority and departmental solidarity. For another department, the availability of multiple practices in their field fostered disagreement, forcing members to articulate stances. These comparisons uncover conditions that exacerbate conflicts over authority and show how members use different types of capital to augment their authority.

* If you don’t have access to these articles at your institution, please contact me for a PDF.

** Looking for more storytelling articles?  Check out another one here.

send your best work to Strategic Organization

The journal Strategic Organization (SO) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.  I really like the niche of SO, at the nexus of organization theory and strategy, and the nexus of sociology and economics.  The journal has published some great stuff over the past decade, and has also taken risks by publishing the papers of up-and-coming scholars like Jerry Davis and Wayne Baker.

Joel Baum, Royston Greenwood and Dev Jennings are the founding editors of the journal – but they have now moved on (after 10 years of hard work!).  Russ Coff (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Anne Langley (HEC, Montreal) and Tim Rowley (University of Toronto) are the new editors.  I have recently also joined them in editing the journal.

So, send us your best stuff!  The advantages of SO: it’s not stodgy and it’s fast (one round of review).  Also, SO has a cool “essay”-format, which allows you to, well, say something provocative or interesting (you know: bring back x, why has no one researched y, why on earth are people studying p instead of q, etc).

Seriously, send me (or any of the editors) an email if you are interested in writing an essay on something interesting.  Opinions are allowed.

The current anniversary issue features lots of interesting essays (and the papers can currently be downloaded for free):

activism, corporate targets, and risk

Bogdan Vasi and I have a paper, forthcoming in the American Sociological Review, that examines the relationship between different kinds of corporate-targeted activism and perceptions of risk. We show that firms facing more environmental activism from shareholders are seen as having greater environmental risk. We define environmental risk as “audiences’ perceptions that a firm’s practices or policies will lead to greater potential for an environmental failure or crisis that could expose it to financial decline.” Interestingly, the effect of activism on risk is independent of observable differences in actual environmental performance.   Not all firms that have bad environmental policies or practices are seen as having the same risk exposure. Activists draw attention to bad policies and make analysts aware of the risks that those firms are taking on.  Here’s the abstract:

Although risk assessments are critical inputs to economic and organizational decisionmaking, we lack a good understanding of the social  and political causes of shifts in risk perceptions and the consequences of those changes. This article uses social movement theory to explain the effect of environmental activism on corporations’ perceived environmental risk and actual financial performance. We  define environmental risk as audiences’ perceptions that a firm’s practices or policies will lead to greater potential for an environmental  failure or crisis that would expose it to financial decline. Using data on environmental activism targeting U.S. firms between 2004 and  2008, we examine variation in the effectiveness of secondary and primary stakeholder activism in shaping perceptions about  environmental risk. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that primary stakeholder activism against a firm affects its perceived environmental risk, which subsequently has a negative effect on the firm’s financial performance.

If you’re interested in reading more, here is the paper.

the era of public university privatization

Olderwoman has written a fascinating post on Scatterplot about the political conflict brewing (or boiling over perhaps) in Madison as the UW-Madison contemplates separating itself from the larger Wisconsin university system.  The move would allow them to raise tuition and would grant the university some autonomy from the state.  Of course, the change is complicated by the current, messy politics of Wisconsin and is made even messier, as OW describes in her post, by the conflicts of interest that faculty have as citizens who typically support more progressive policies while also being stakeholders in a research institution striving to maintain its elite status. Here’s a highlight from her post:

As I have debated this issue with grad students (who are mostly lined up in opposition to the plan), I have been trying to unravel the threads of interest involved. The students tend to emphasize concerns about tuition. Issues of access and affordability are real ones. They are issues now, as state funding continues to decline. All predictions about how this issue would play out under different structures are entirely hypothetical. One group argues that to change from being a public university is to give up forever on the idea of more tax dollar subsidies for tuition. Another group argues that the only way to increase affordability is to raise tuition simultaneously with raising financial aid — effectively to charge a sliding scale that depends on family income; people who advocate this disagree about which structure is most likely to do this. As that is all hypothetical, that particular debate is solely one of opinions.

But the whole tuition debate — one I am sympathetic to as a progressive — cuts entirely differently from the issue of what is good for an elite research university. If my goal is access to high quality education for youth of modest means, wouldn’t I just stop funding an elite research university entirely? Wouldn’t that access goal be better met with an institution staffed by lower-paid faculty teaching three or four courses a semester than by an institution staffed by higher-paid faculty whose major interest and time commitment is to their research/scholarship? The trend at elite schools is toward inequality: higher and higher salaries for the high-performing research faculty, and more and more teaching done by lower paid adjunct faculty.

One core value question is whether you support the idea of an elite research institution or not. Should there be major public research institutions at all? And if so, what does it take to maintain them? Can an elite research university survive with an egalitarian ethos in the face of competition from the unapologetic elitist private institutions?

can organizational strategies be certified? would wal-mart’s strategy be certified?

I found this interesting, the Strategic Management Society (respected body of academics and practitioners in the area of strategic management) is looking at creating a “strategy certification.”  Here’s the logic:

You have your taxes completed with the help of a CPA and make your financial investments with counsel from a CFA. You might exercise with a certified personal trainer or a certified yoga instructor or send your invoices to be put into Quickbooks by a certified virtual assistant. So, of course, when you are developing strategy—a strategy that may require you and your organization to take considerable risks or make sizable investments and difficult decisions—you call on the insights of a certified strategist.

If only there was such a person. [More here.]

“Certifying” a strategy raises some interesting questions.  So, what Certified Public Accountants do is one thing.  Auditing and certifying the financials of an organization is based on the principles of comparative similarities (for example, based on rules such as the GAAP).  Strategic activity, on the other hand, is about comparative differences between organizations — differentiation is the sine qua non of strategy.   Organizational strategy, furthermore, is forward-looking and thus it is hard to somehow “certify” subjective assessments — where agreement is extremely unlikely — and the prospects of some radical innovation or course of action.  What to one looks like an escalation of commitment, to another might look like a bold strategy.   In short, I find it hard to see what exactly could be certified about an organization’s strategy.

I suppose one might think about certification and stakeholder-related considerations (indeed, these are raised in the above link), but then we get into all kinds of value-related issues.  For example, I’m guessing we would get a wide range of opinions from organizational scholars on whether Wal-Mart’s strategy should be certified.  This certification issue seems fraught with some of the same problems as “evidence-based management” — passing muster depends on whose evidence we are using and who is certifying.  And, don’t extra-institutional actors, essentially, provide a type of legitimation that proxies certification —- protests and activism send signals that serve as a de facto, albeit ex post and noisy, certification.

the organization of political campaigns

The OMT blog is hosting a series of guest commentaries about the “organization of political campaigns and campaign finance.” The first post is written by former orgtheory guest blogger, Ed Walker.  He writes about the corporate financing of political activities in the post-Citizens United era (the Supreme Court case that ruled corporations’ political donations were a form of free speech). Ed makes the link between this phenomenon and a growing interest in organizational theory about the social movement-like aspects of corporate political behavior.

Although this undisclosed electoral fundraising mechanism may be new, there’s a growing body of work that links together research on social movements and organizational theory in order to understand how corporations, since the 1970s, have made strategic efforts to reshape the civic and political landscape.  Some, such as Stanford’s Steven Barley, have drawn our attention to the means by which corporations have created new organizational fields in order to shape the federal policy domain over the past forty years.  David Vogel’s earlier work linked the mobilization of Naderite and Public Interest Movement organizations in the seventies to a more activist stance among the nation’s leading corporations.  Mayer Zald and Mike Lounsbury have been encouraging organizational theorists to return to the study of elites, expertise, power, and the traditional questions of political sociology as they relate to understanding organizations.  I find that particular prod to be quite welcome, as others are also connecting political changes in organizations to the reconfiguration of stakeholder practices.

My own work complements this research by investigating the expansion of the field of public affairs consulting since the early seventies (ASR article page, ungated PDF).  These organizations comprise a multi-million dollar industry in their own right, helping corporations and industry groups to create forms of grassroots organization of their own….The major implication of this recent work, then, is that a richer and deeper understanding of the role of corporations in the public domain over the past four decades is needed.  This understanding calls our attention to the fact that although the Citizens United ruling was indeed historic in its unleashing of anonymous corporate electoral spending, we know as organizational scholars that structural transformations can often have a much greater influence than changes in resource flows.  It seems clear that direct corporate interventions in American civic and political life have been common since long before the Supreme Court’s January decision was handed down.

Check the OMT blog regularly to see additional contributions by other organizational scholars.