The increasing knowledge intensity of jobs, typical of a knowledge economy, highlights the role of firms as integrators of know-how and skills. As economic activity becomes mainly intellectual and requires the integration of specific and idiosyncratic skills, firms need to allocate skills to tasks and traditional hierarchical control results increasingly ineffective. In this work, we explore under what circumstances networks of agents, which bear specific skills, may self-organize in order to complete tasks. We use a computer simulation approach and investigate (...) how local interaction of agents, endowed with skills and individual decision-making rules, may produce aggregate network structure able to perform tasks. To design algorithms that mimic individual decision-making, we borrow from computer science literature and, in particular, from studies addressing protocols that produce cooperation in Peer-to-Peer networks. We found that self-organization depends on the structural features of, formal or informal, organizational networks embedding both professionals, holding skills, and project managers, holding access to jobs. (shrink)

The raging cynicism felt toward businesses and business leaders is a by-product of perceived violations in the social contracts owed to the public. Business schools have a unique opportunity to make a significant impact on present and future business leaders, but ‘practicing what we teach’ is a critical condition precedent. This paper presents frameworks for ethical practices for assessing the social contracts owed by business schools in their role as citizens in the larger community. We identify the ethical implications of (...) business school practices to guide the development of tools for self-assessment and to focus on delivering the implied duties owed to the stakeholders of business schools. (shrink)

There is a “Pragmatist turn” visible in the field of organization science today, resulting from a renewed interest in the work of Pragmatist philosophers like Dewey, Mead, Peirce, James and others, and in its implications for the study of organizations. Following Wicks and Freeman, in the past decade Pragmatism has also entered the field of business ethics, which, however, has not been uniformly applauded in that field. Some scholars fear that Pragmatism may enhance already existing positivist and managerialist tendencies in (...) current business ethics, while others see more emancipatory potential in Pragmatism, arguing that it complements and supports stakeholder theory. In this paper, a comparison of the philosophical underpinnings of Pragmatist and Critical conceptions of business ethics is offered, concentrating on the Pragmatism of John Dewey and the Critical theory of the Frankfurt School, in particular of Axel Honneth. It is argued that these two developed along two converging lines. Along the first line, Dewey was far more skeptical and critical of capitalism than is often thought. Along the second line, the reactions to Pragmatism of Frankfurt School Critical theorists developed over time from generally hostile, to partially inclusive, to more fully integrative. At the crossroads of these converging lines a Pragmatist Critical perspective is developed and exemplified, and its implications for business ethics are outlined. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship increasingly involves collective, voluntary organizing efforts where success depends on generating and sustaining members’ participation. To investigate how such participatory social ventures achieve member engagement in pluralistic institutional settings, we conducted a qualitative, inductive study of German Renewable Energy Source Cooperatives. Our findings show how value tensions emerge from differences in RESCoop members’ relative prioritization of community, environmental, and commercial logics, and how cooperative leaders manage these tensions and sustain member participation through temporal, structural, and collaborative compromise strategies. (...) We unpack the mechanisms by which each strategy enables members to justify organizational decisions that violate their personal value priorities and demonstrate their varying implications for organizational growth. Our findings contribute new insights into the challenges of collective social entrepreneurship, the capacity of hybrid organizing strategies to mitigate value concessions, and the importance of logic combinability as a key dimension of pluralistic institutional settings. (shrink)

Hegel’s practical philosophy has important insights for understanding the ethical role of the firm in modern society. From a broadly Hegelian perspective, the firm’s role in society is to facilitate freedom, that is, the concrete realization of rational agency. It does this by providing the institutional structures, norms, practices, and modes of discourse necessary for individuals to link their subjective aims with objectively valid societal aims, embodied in the firm’s purpose. Accordingly, I first present a Hegelian account of the link (...) between action and social structure, before arguing that the firm, when it functions properly, enables individuals to express their capacity for rational agency within concrete social contexts. I then draw upon Paul Adler’s Marxist analysis of the development of organizational structures and processes to support the viability of a broadly Hegelian account of the firm within a contemporary economic context. I conclude by outlining a number of practical implications of this account, before explaining its implications for two prominent theories of business ethics, the MacIntyrean perspective, and the Market Failures Approach. (shrink)

This paper presents a study of gatekeeping in the U.S. political blog “Daily Kos.” Open online collectives like Daily Kos use relational mechanisms, such as gatekeeping, to manage organizational boundaries and filter the contributions of participants. However, neither prior theories of gatekeeping nor the existing analyses of open online collectives account for the character or implications of gatekeeping in the Daily Kos community. Using qualitative evidence as well as statistical analysis of a large sample of comment threads on the site (...) from 2008, I argue that gatekeeping on Daily Kos takes centralized and decentralized forms, and that both modes depend critically on relational boundary work among site participants. Centralized gatekeeping proceeds through actions by high-status members of the community. Decentralized gatekeeping, by contrast, consists of more numerous and small-scale interactions between community members, who filter and moderate each other’s participation. Both forms of gatekeeping enhance the ability of site leaders and incumbent community members to regulate access to privileges and agenda-setting responsibilities on the site. These findings imply that the egalitarian ethos of open online collectives exists in tension with the mechanisms through which participation and status inequalities emerge among participants. How collectives engaged in mobilization and discursive production resolve this tension will shape the long-term impact of online participation and blogs on the political and public spheres. (shrink)

An important part of what it means for agents to be situated in the everyday world of human affairs includes their engagement with economic practices. In this paper, we employ the concept of cognitive institutions in order to provide an enactive and interactive interpretation of market and economic reasoning. We challenge traditional views that understand markets in terms of market structures or as processors of distributed information. The alternative conception builds upon the notion of the market as a “scaffolding institution.” (...) Introducing the concept of market as a “socially extended” cognitive institution we go beyond the notion of scaffolding to provide an enactive view of economic reasoning that understands the market participant in terms of social interactive processes and relational autonomy. Markets are more than inert devices for information processing; they can be viewed as “highly scaffolded,” where strong constraints and incentives predictably direct agents’ behavior. Building on this idea we argue that markets emerge from (a) the economic interaction of both supply and demand sides, in continual and mutual interplay, and (b) more basic social interactions. Consumer behavior in the marketplace is complex, not only contributing to determine the market price, but also extending the consumer’s cognitive processes to reliably attain a correct evaluation of the good. Moreover, this economic reasoning is socially situated and not something done in isolation from other consumers. From a socially situated, interactive point of view buying or not buying a good is something that enacts the market. This shifts the status of markets from external institutions that merely causally affect participants’ cognitive processes to social institutions that constitutively extend these cognitive processes. On this view the constraints imposed by social interactions, as well as the possibilities enabled by such interactions, are such that economic reasoning is never just an individual process carried out by an autonomous individual, classically understood. In this regard, understanding the concept of relational autonomy allows us to see how economic reasoning is always embodied, embedded in, and scaffolded by intersubjective interactions, and how such interactions make the market what it is. (shrink)

Based on a qualitative survey among 203 US workers active on the microwork platform Amazon Mechanical Turk, we analyze potential biases embedded in the institutional setting provided by on-demand crowdworking platforms and their effect on perceived workplace fairness. We explore the triadic relationship between employers, workers, and platform providers, focusing on the power of platform providers to design settings and processes that affect workers’ fairness perceptions. Our focus is on workers’ awareness of the new institutional setting, frames applied to the (...) mediating platform, and a differentiated analysis of distinct fairness dimensions. (shrink)

The governance of nanotechnology seeks to limit its risks, without constraining opportunities. The literature on the effectiveness of approaches to governance has neglected approaches that impact directly on the behavior of a researcher. We analyze the effectiveness of legal regulations versus regulation via self-commitment. Then, we refine this model by analyzing competition and autonomy as key contingency factors. In the first step, qualitative interviews with nanotechnology researchers are conducted to reflect this model. In the second step, its empirical relevance is (...) tested using a survey of 90 nanotech researchers. The results indicate that legal regulations, as well as self-commitment to an informal CoC reduce the scope of behavior. Finally, that competition and autonomy affect the relative strength of these governance factors. (shrink)

Despite the proliferation of sharing economy initiatives in agri-food systems, the recent literature has still not unravelled what sharing exactly entails from an organizational standpoint. In light of this knowledge gap, this study aims to understand which resources are shared, and how, in a heterogeneous set of sharing economy initiatives in the context of food and agriculture. Specifically, this study compares the organization of various forms of alternative food networks (AFNs), which are recognized to be frugal forms of sharing economy (...) initiatives (i.e., locally based, small-scale and with limited use of information technology), in terms of leadership, bureaucracy, shared resources and participants’ engagement. Data from a comparative case study across 18 AFNs identify five sharing economy models of AFNs with distinctive shared resources and organizational mechanisms: consumer groups; commercial community gardens; as well as network-based, privately owned and publicly owned self-consumption community gardens. These models also display notable differences in terms of their origins, participants’ goals and constraints which, to some extent, may be associated to the nature of their organization. Findings inform policy-makers, AFNs’ leaders and stakeholders—especially those seeking to support innovative models towards sustainable transitions—on how to tailor institutional norms and develop networks to meet the heterogeneous needs of different typologies of sharing economy initiatives in agri-food systems. (shrink)

The concept of social capital helps to explain relations within and between companies but has not crystallized yet. As such, the nature, development, and effects of such relations remain elusive. How is social capital created, how is it put to use, and how is it maintained? Can it decline, and if so, how? We argue that the concept of social capital remains a black box as the mechanisms that constitute it remain underdeveloped and that it is a black hole as (...) many empirical phenomena are attributed to its presence. We use and develop the literature on gift exchange to provide a firmer theoretical basis for the concept of social capital. (shrink)

This article argues that corporate law has become the legal platform upon which is erected a social process impeding society’s capacity to lucidly reflect on its primary ends; in this sense, corporate law is in conflict with social autonomy. This process is described here as a social feedback loop, in the structural centre of which lies the corporation which imposes its own purpose as an irrational social end, i.e. irrespective of its potentially catastrophic social consequences. The article argues that resolving (...) the conflict between corporate law and social autonomy is impossible, because it presupposes a change of social paradigm towards one where corporate law as business organisation law has no obvious fit. This questions the social legitimacy of corporate law, signifies its non-permanence and thus opens up the field for seeking radical alternatives in the future. (shrink)

In order to understand how the logic of public management can enrich humanistic management’s practices, the current paper will analyze the managerial practices adopted by public administrations within a situation of emergency, a condition where the specific features of the public management can emerge more clearly. Specifically, it will focus on the ways in which the municipality of Bergamo (one of the hardest-hit cities) have reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic, outlining interesting managerial practices especially from the point of view of (...) Humanistic Management’s theory. Such interest resides also in the fact that although the Humanistic Management’s field of research has dealt with a wide range of topics (including human development, emancipation and progress), so far, however, it has not yet considered public administrations, whose role is by definition oriented towards human development through the creation of public value. The analysis of public management through the lens of Humanistic Management can be useful in various respects. Above all, the difference between public administrations and private enterprises can also lead to a very much different process of value creation, based on collaborative forms of production as well as relational and reflexive forms of management. In accordance with the Humanistic Management framework, also business organizations must generate social wellbeing. From this point of view, the lesson of public administrations can be extremely useful for business organization and management alike. (shrink)

This paper explains how middle managers might enlist ethically engaged employees into the production of reliable, sustainable CSR. An accompanying model illustrates how those managers can encounter employee engagement in CSR and channel their enthusiasm effectively. It presents factors scaffolding organizational support for employee engagement and how they relate to the intensity of that engagement. It introduces the importance of employee voice and illustrates how associated signals might be captured.

As trust in the news media continues to decline, news organizations must find ways to bolster that trust, often in the face of diminishing budgets and dwindling bottom lines. Can trust support and even bolster economic success in news organizations? We offer a multidimensional model of trust that takes into account, among other elements, considerations of risk and scope, and suggest that journalistic excellence and economic success can support each other and result in increased public trust in news media.

Business firms have been explained as internal markets or as communities. To be sustainable, however, they need to reconcile these two constituting elements that have mainly been touted as opposite and part of a dualistic relationship. We suggest that organizations may, in alternative, view market and community as part of a duality, interdependent and mutually constituting processes that may not only contradict each other but also enable one another. The implications of a duality view for business ethics, which articulates market (...) and community elements in a fruitful, mutually enabling relationship, are considered, and duality is presented as a way of transcending what is commonly viewed as opposition, moving organizations both in the direction of humane and competitive finalities. (shrink)

A constructive, highly professional relationship between tax authorities and taxpayers is essential for tax compliance. The aim of the present paper was to explore systematically the determinants of this relationship and related tax compliance behaviors based on the extended slippery slope framework. We used in-depth qualitative interviews with 33 self-employed taxpayers and 30 tax auditors. Interviewees described the relationship along the extended slippery slope framework concepts of power and trust. However, also novel sub-categories of power (e.g., setting deadlines) and trust (...) (e.g., personal assistance) were mentioned. Furthermore, also little-studied categories of tax behavior emerged, such as accepting tax behavior, e.g., being available to the tax authorities, or stalling tax behavior, e.g., the intentional creation of complexity. The results comprehensively summarize the determinants of the tax relationship and tax compliance behaviors. Additionally, results highlight future research topics and provide insights for policy strategies. (shrink)