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The assumption of wealth creation as the dominant motive underlying entrepreneurial efforts has been challenged in recent work on entrepreneurship. Taking the perspective that entrepreneurship involves emancipatory efforts by social actors to escape ideological and material constraints in their environments (Rindova, Barry, & Ketchen, 2009), researchers have sought to explain a range of entrepreneurial activities in contexts that have traditionally been excluded from entrepreneurship research. We seek to extend this research by proposing that entrepreneurial acts toward emancipation can be guided by different notions of the common good underlying varying conceptions of worth, beyond those emphasized in the view of entrepreneurial activity as driven by economic wealth creation. These alternative conceptions of worth are associated with specific subjectivities of entrepreneurial self and relevant others, and distinct legitimate bases for actions and coordination, enabling emancipation by operating from alternative value system perspectives. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) work on multiple orders of worth (OOWs), we describe how emancipatory entrepreneurship is framed within – and limited by – the dominant view, which is rooted in a market OOW. As alternatives to this view, we theorize how the civic and inspired OOWs point to alternate emancipatory ends and means through which entrepreneurs break free from material and ideological constraints. We describe factors that enable and constrain emancipatory entrepreneurship efforts within each of these OOWs, and discuss the implications of our theoretical ideas for how entrepreneurs can choose among different OOWs as perspectives and for the competencies required for engaging with pluralistic value perspectives.

Schumacher recognized that we separate the economic system from natural and social systems at our peril. Following Schumacher's alternative “economics,” my purpose is to understand economics differently by engaging alternative ways of perceiving and knowing. Can we conceive of an economics that embodies the requisite social and environmental values, and can the associated accountings hold the responsible actors justly accountable? I compare the premises and characteristics of Schumacher's Buddhist economics with the prevailing neoclassical formulations, illustrating the narrowness of the current perspective and highlighting the critical issues. I consider the Social and Environmental Accounting project and the extent to which it has been, and potentially will be, able to move accounting, business, and society toward a more holistic conceptualization of accounting and accountability. Assimilating the two economic perspectives in developing a more holistic and integrated accounting is offered as a path to consider on our journey toward an accounting “as if people mattered.”

Constructing and evaluating behavioral science models is a complex process. Decisions must be made about which variables to include, which variables are related to each other, the functional forms of the relationships, and so on. The last 10 years have seen a substantial extension of the range of statistical tools available for use in the construction process. The progress in tool development has been accompanied by the publication of handbooks that introduce the methods in general terms (Arminger et al., 1995; Tinsley & Brown, 2000a). Each chapter in these handbooks cites a wide range of books and articles on specific analysis topics.

The purpose of the research is to determine the signs of nonoptimality of managerial decisions that are made by Russian business systems and to determine the barriers on the path of making of optimal decisions in business systems by the example of modern Russia and perspectives of overcoming them.

The information and empirical basis of the research consists of statistical materials of the World Economic Forum, RIA Rating and Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness for 2018, according to which signs of nonoptimality of managerial decisions of Russian business systems, which are observed at the macro-level, are determined. During the research, the method of systemic, problem, and logical analysis (analysis of causal connections) and the method of formalization are used.

It is determined that drawbacks of the process of making of managerial decisions in modern Russian model of this process, connected to the functional organizational structure, low marketing activity, and underdevelopment of internal business communications, create barriers on the path of making of optimal decisions: high expenditures for making of managerial decisions, duration of the process of making of managerial decisions, high complexity of choice of alternative decisions, and incomplete accounting of possibilities and problems during decision-making.

Perspectives of overcoming the determined barriers are connected to the usage of outsource during the making of managerial decisions, refusal from functional organizational structure of managerial staff, usage of means of authomatization of making of managerial decisions, and development of systemic feedback and marketing. According to the studied practical experience of the largest and well-known Russian business systems – Rosneft, Lukoil, Gazprom, and Sberbank – these perspectives (2018) are not implemented in Russia.

Motivated by the need to reflect upon the role of entrepreneurship in the economy and society, we seek to understand entrepreneurship as having the potential to “produce” new possibilities for living when departing from a critical awareness. We consider existing critical entrepreneurship research as necessary but insufficient in adequately bringing about new perspectives of entrepreneurship as it often tends to be a position “against entrepreneurship,” discrediting the phenomenon from the many possible values it may invoke. We suggest affirmative critique (Dey & Steyaert, 2018; Weiskopf & Steyaert, 2009) to “turn critique into creativity,” thus making critique productive and exploring how actual transformation (e.g., alternatives) can be invoked when adopting such a stance.

This chapter investigates the mutual relationship between logic and paradox, showing that paradox is indispensable to test logic, as well as logic is necessary to extend our understanding of paradox. Firstly, I consider the lesson that organizational theory can draw from formal logic’s investigation of semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. Subsequently, I survey the plural interpretations of the concept of “logic” in organizational theory (as logic of theory, logic of practice, and institutional logics). I argue that this plurality of meanings is not a source of confusion but offers an opportunity to illustrate different manifestations of, and ways to cope with, organizational paradoxes.

We propose that group affective tone may be dysfunctional for teams faced with complex, equivocal, and dynamically changing tasks and environments. Group affective tone (and in particular, a positive affective tone) may exacerbate pre-existing tendencies of teams to develop a single-shared reality that team members confidently believe to be valid and to be prone to group-centrism. Alternatively, heterogeneity in member mood states within teams may lead to the development of multiple-shared realities that reflect the equivocality of the teams’ tasks and circumstances and other functional outcomes (e.g., multiple perspectives and minority dissent), which ultimately may enhance team effectiveness.