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1 – 10 of 14During the great post–World War II economic expansion, modernization theorists held that the new American capitalism balanced mass production and mass consumption, meshed…
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During the great post–World War II economic expansion, modernization theorists held that the new American capitalism balanced mass production and mass consumption, meshed profitability with labor's interests, and ended class conflict. They thought that Keynesian policies insured a near full-employment, low-inflation, continuous growth economy. They viewed the United States as the “new lead society,” eliminating industrial capitalism's backward features and progressing toward modernity's penultimate “postindustrial” stage.7 Many Americans believed that the ideal of “consumer freedom,” forged early in the century, had been widely realized and epitomized American democracy's superiority to communism.8 However, critics held that the new capitalism did not solve all of classical capitalism's problems (e.g., poverty) and that much increased consumption generated new types of cultural and political problems. John Kenneth Galbraith argued that mainstream economists assumed that human nature dictates an unlimited “urgency of wants,” naturalizing ever increasing production and consumption and precluding the distinction of goods required to meet basic needs from those that stoke wasteful, destructive appetites. In his view, mainstream economists’ individualistic, acquisitive presuppositions crown consumers sovereign and obscure cultural forces, especially advertising, that generate and channel desire and elevate possessions and consumption into the prime measures of self-worth. Galbraith held that production's “paramount position” and related “imperatives of consumer demand” create dependence on economic growth and generate new imbalances and insecurities.9 Harsher critics held that the consumer culture blinded middle-class Americans to injustice, despotic bureaucracy, and drudge work (e.g., Mills, 1961; Marcuse, 1964). But even these radical critics implied that postwar capitalism unlocked the secret of sustained economic growth.
The emergence of strengths-based management may be the management innovation of our time. Nearly every organization has been introduced to its precepts – for example, the insight…
Abstract
The emergence of strengths-based management may be the management innovation of our time. Nearly every organization has been introduced to its precepts – for example, the insight that a person or organization will excel only by amplifying strengths, never by simply fixing weaknesses. But in spite of impressive returns, organizations and managers have almost all stopped short of the breakthroughs that are possible. With micro tools largely in place, the future of strengths management is moving increasingly to the macro-management level, as witnessed in the rapid and far-reaching use of large group methods such as the Appreciative Inquiry Summit and its next generation design-thinking summit. Macro means whole and, by definition, unites many improbable opposites – for example, it embraces top down and bottom up simultaneously. It is a prime time source of organizational generativity. But the rules of macro-management are different than any other kind, most certainly micro-management. A decade of research and successful prototyping with single organizations, regions and cities, extended enterprises, industries, and UN-level world summits reveals five “X” factors – a specific set of mutually reinforcing elements of success and organizational generativity – and provides a clear set of guidelines for when and how you can deploy the “whole system in the room” design summit to bring out the best in system collaboration. By analyzing the performance and impacts of six case studies of the “whole system in the room” Appreciative Inquiry design summit, this chapter provides a bird’s eye view of the opportunities, challenges, and exciting new vistas opening up in this the collaborative age – a time when systemic action and macro-management skill are the primary leverage points for game-changing innovation, scalable solutions, and generative organizing. The chapter concludes with a call for more research into the stages of large group dynamics and advances a metaphor from the leadership literature – the spark, the flame, and the torch – to give imagery to the “positive contagion” and “the concentration effect of strengths” that happens during an Appreciative Inquiry Summit where 100s and sometimes 1000s come together interactively and collaboratively to design the future.
Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as…
Abstract
Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.
David Seidl, Tanja Ohlson and Richard Whittington
This paper develops the practice-driven institutionalist perspective by introducing the concept of “restless practices.” Drawing on the practice theory of Theodore Schatzki, the…
Abstract
This paper develops the practice-driven institutionalist perspective by introducing the concept of “restless practices.” Drawing on the practice theory of Theodore Schatzki, the authors distinguish practices by their “teloi”: some practices are devoted to replication, others are restlessly aimed at change. These restless practices are themselves composed of constitutive practices orientated toward “collecting,” “selecting” and “directing.” The authors illustrate restless practices and their constitutive practices by drawing on examples from consulting and standard-setting, both repeatedly generators of purposive, field-level change. The authors conclude that practice-driven institutionalism can accommodate change originating both from local improvisatory activities on the ground and from the designs of restless practices oriented toward fields at large.
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Institutional actors are critical allies for grassroots movements, but few studies have examined their effects and variations within the non-democratic context. This chapter…
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Institutional actors are critical allies for grassroots movements, but few studies have examined their effects and variations within the non-democratic context. This chapter argues that while institutional allies are heavily constrained and unlikely to give open endorsement to grassroot activists, some institutional activists indirectly facilitate movement mobilization and favorable outcomes in the process of advancing their own political agendas. Drawing upon in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 and 2012, I illustrate this argument by examining the Anti-PX Movement – a landmark grassroots environmental movement against a chemical plant – in Xiamen, China. I find that the environmental institutional actors were constrained and divided, yet some still fostered opportunities for movement mobilization and in turn exploited the opportunity created by the protesters to pursue their policy interests, thus facilitating positive movement outcomes. As long as the claims are not politically subversive to the authoritarian rule, this type of tacit and tactical interaction between institutional activists within the state and grassroot activists on the street is conducive to promoting progressive policy changes.
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Purpose – This chapter aims to show the similarities and differences that can be found in the destiny of cooperative banks and mutual insurance companies; these two industries…
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Purpose – This chapter aims to show the similarities and differences that can be found in the destiny of cooperative banks and mutual insurance companies; these two industries, for reasons both similar and specific, are now “at a crossroads.” To reinforce this, we begin by tracing the history of cooperative banks and mutual insurance companies to better inform the future. Cooperative banks and mutual insurance gradually secularized and out of corporatism have patiently built-in different ways depending on the network as opposed to companies.
Results – This chapter will pursue these observations by identifying the impacts of recent crises in shaping business models by questioning a central issue which is that the trap values meet performance requirements in a fierce competition. Then, this chapter will end with the discussion on the main challenges faced by the mutual sphere; «She» should be replaced by «it». Could it exert a role in the crisis?
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Pragmatism in the sense of harmonizing rules and reality for the sake of appropriate problem solving and overall performance is a ubiquitous phenomenon in organizational life. As…
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Pragmatism in the sense of harmonizing rules and reality for the sake of appropriate problem solving and overall performance is a ubiquitous phenomenon in organizational life. As such it has been generalized as an everyday requirement of making organizations work and a virtue of human decision making under the condition of complexity, strategic dilemmas or “wicked problems.” This chapter addresses both the theoretical and the normative dimensions of pragmatism in organizations, public administration in particular. The main statement is that the necessary theoretical clarification concerns the distinction between pragmatism and what is referred to as a logic of appropriateness while the normative limits of pragmatism refer to the necessity of ranking logics of appropriateness and related values plus the ability to act on the basis of accurate judgment which is primarily, even if not exclusively, a matter of leadership.
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Kathryn Goldman Schuyler, with Margaret Wheatley, Otto Scharmer, Ed Schein, Robert E. Quinn, and Peter Senge