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Marx suggested that it is infeasible and wrong to arrange the economic categories according to the order by which they have worked in history. Their order is determined by their interrelationship in the modern bourgeois society, which is in contrast to their natural sequence or that which is in accordance with the course of history. Sometimes, a logical sequence is precisely opposite to the historical sequence. There are many efforts to be done in the study of China’s economic and social issues with Marxist logical and historical methods. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

When reading Das Kapital, we can clearly see the historical materialism methods. Another method of Marxist political economics is the scientific abstract method.

This is based on the new development idea to carry out scientific and technological innovation and change the focus of development from quantity to quality. With regard to the supply side structural reform as the main focus, people’s ever-growing demand for a better life can be satisfied and the higher level dynamic supply–demand balance can be kept.

In fact, measures to remedy unbalanced and inadequate development of the social principal contradiction have been plainly indicated in the report delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is based on the new development idea to carry out scientific and technological innovation and change the focus of development from quantity to quality.

Discussion regarding systems that promote innovation, aptly named innovation ecosystems, has been intensifying both in academia and business. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the activity theory as a theoretical framework for conceptualising and studying innovation ecosystems. Using the activity theory, it investigates elements that affect the success and viability of innovation ecosystems formed between startups and incumbent firms, collaborating with an established firm within the context of an open innovation programme.

This study uses an exploratory case research approach and proposes the activity theory as a theoretical background to be used in innovation ecosystem research. Based on this approach, this study draws from interviews and research observations in an innovation ecosystem formed between an established firm and various startups that aim to co-develop innovative offerings.

By applying the activity theory tools, this study identifies several contradictions between interacting actors of this innovation ecosystem that can adversely affect the innovation process. Furthermore, it proposes the use of the activity theory as a fitting theoretical lens to study innovation ecosystems.

The novelty of this study is related to the focus on the incumbent–startup context for extending the innovation ecosystem literature. Using the activity theory as a viable methodological tool allows us to conceptualise firms as social constructs and hence pinpoint inner characteristics that can affect and shape their interactions and the broader ecosystem. This process is further enhanced by the use of primary data that give unique insights into the inner workings of innovation ecosystems by identifying underlying contradictions.

The architecture, engineering and construction industry faces several challenges when performing life-cycle cost calculations. On the basis of activity theory, this study aims at improving our understanding of the current cost calculation in design practices as an activity system with a number of built-in contradictions.

Drawing on one of the authors’ practical experience from a design office, the research design comprises a paradigmatic case study of a Danish architecture firm, in which data are gathered through documents, observations, interviews and physical artefacts. Moreover, this paper applies a literature review on barriers for adopting life-cycle costing.

The paper identifies a number of primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary contradictions between practices of design, cost calculations and data management. Thus, hypotheses are formulated on how and to what extent these different contradictions shape cost calculations in design practices to obstruct or support the application of life cycle costing principles in design.

This study is part of an ongoing research project. Thus, additional analysis is required before the authors may conclude on final results.

This paper identifies a number of factors that obstruct or support the implementation of life cycle costing in current design practices.

This paper provides new insights into the various contradictions that shape data management in architectural offices as a prerequisite for improving life cycle design practices.

Older patients are at high risk of hospital readmission, which has led to an increasing number of screening and intervention programs. Knowledge on implementing screening tools for preventing readmissions in emergency department (ED), where the primary focus is often the present-day flow of patients, is scant. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether a new screening tool for predicting readmissions and functional decline in medical patients>65 years of age could be implemented and its influence on cross-continuum collaborations between the primary and secondary sectors.

The study took place in an ED in Denmark, in collaboration with the surrounding municipalities. An evaluation workshop with nurses and leaders from the ED and the surrounding municipalities took place with the aim of investigating the organizational changes that occurred in daily practice after the implementation of the screening tool. The workshop was designed and analyzed using cultural historical activity theory (CHAT).

The results showed that it was possible to develop collaboration between the two sectors during the test period. However, the screening tool created different transformations for the municipality employees and in the ED. The contradictions indicated that the screening tool did not mediate a general and sustained transformation in the cross-continuum collaboration.

Screening tools are not objective, neutral or “acontexual” artifacts and must always be adapted to the local context and sectors. CHAT offers a perspective to understand the collective object when working with organizational transformations and implementation.

The study have shown that screening tools are not objective, neutral or “acontexual” artifacts and must always be adapted to the local context. This is called adaption process. This adaption requires time and resources that should be taken into consideration from the beginning of introduction of new screens.

This paper contributes with knowledge about CHAT which offers a way to understand the leading collective object when working with organizational transformations and implementation. CHAT focuses not only on the structural changes but also on the cultural aspects of organizational changes, which is important if we want to reach a sustained change and implement the new screening tool in different sectors.

The world currency is endowed with two inherent contradictions, namely, the general contradiction of all currencies and the special contradiction between the quality and quantity of the world currency. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In the wake of the Second World War, the USA, with its strong economic and military strength, established an international monetary system centered on the US dollar (USD). This gave USD the status of “world currency” and bounded it to the US imperialist hegemony with mutual integration and interaction, making it possible for USD capital to conduct international exploitation and wealth plundering extensively around the world.

The contradiction between the capital logic and the power logic, which is inherent in capital accumulation models of the new imperialism, also indicates the inevitable decline of USD.

This constitutes an important feature of the new imperialism. However, as a sovereign currency, USD has inextricable and inherent contradictions while exercising its function as the world currency.

This paper aims to demonstrate that state shareholders are confronted with contradictory logics leading to institutional contradictions that activist shareholders can exploit. The competing logics of the state as shareholder and their impact on corporate governance and shareholder activism offer fertile grounds for research advances in Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs).

Through an extensive literature review of state ownership, institutional contradictions and shareholder activism, this paper analyzes two case studies involving the French State as shareholder.

In the French context, these two cases illustrate how institutional contradictions result in opportunities for shareholder activism. By focusing on the institutional contradictions of the state shareholder, this investigation suggests a need for experimental research to observe how shareholder activists adapt to each institutional change in CMEs. This experimentation can help policymakers to avoid creating additional conditions that shareholder activists can exploit.

This focuses only on France and its state shareholdings. To generalize results, studies of other CMEs and state shareholders are needed.

Policymakers should consider all legislative proposals for their potential to deviate from corporate governance practice by experimenting with them in a laboratory setting. Shareholder activists can compare state shareholders’ actions against the state’s legislation to emphasize institutional contradictions that counter minority shareholders’ rights.

This research is the first to analyze how the state as shareholder can exploit its competing logics to resist against shareholder activism and support management or to become itself a shareholder activist.

In recent years, the acronym VUCA has gained traction in strategic communication (SC) as an umbrella term that summarizes the recurrent challenges (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) of digital communication environments. However, an integrated reflection on how the VUCA dimensions facilitate a deeper understanding of specific digitalization challenges and how to navigate through these challenges is lacking. This article aims to explore and substantiate the descriptive (how) and prescriptive (how to) potential of VUCA for SC under digitalization conditions.

We first provide a systematic discussion of the four VUCA dimensions based on the general strategy literature. While their descriptive value is undisputed, prescriptive advice on how to respond to these challenges is contradictory. We substantiate this observation in a second empirical step based on problem-centered interviews with strategic communicators at the agency and corporate levels.

Our findings reveal that VUCA facilitates a systematic mapping of digitalization challenges consistently identified by professionals. The proposed strategic responses, however, remain contradictory at the theoretical and empirical levels. Hence, we propose the VUCA radar as a comprehensive descriptive and prescriptive framework.

The radar provides (a) a systematic overview of recurrent digitalization challenges to SC at the industry and practice levels and (b) prescriptive advice on how to navigate through these challenges by balancing contradictory strategic responses at the levels of vision, understanding, clarity and agility.

Building on the existing literature and on a series of interviews conducted in very diverse coworking spaces, this article attempts at analyzing coworking by focusing on the historical evolution and heterogeneity of its interpretations, as well as the plurality of its realization in practice and prospective developments.

The theoretical framework adopted is Cultural Historical Activity Theory – a dialectical approach which allows the study of human activities as historically evolving and complex systems which change under the impulse of their inner contradictions. The analysis presented here starts with an overview of the history of the theoretical elaborations and discussions of coworking. The authors then focus on the experiences and interpretations of this phenomenon as conveyed by coworkers and coworking managers in the north of Italy – one of the most active coworking areas in Europe.

Coworking first emerged as a way of promoting forms of work and organization that require simultaneous, multidirectional, and reciprocal work, as understood in contrast to forms that incorporate an established division of labor, demarcated communities, and formal and informal sets of rules. However, with time, coworking has evolved toward novel directions, giving rise to heterogeneous interpretations of it. Inquiry constitutes a deeper investigation of the heterogeneity of coworking. The take-away message here is that the prefix co- in coworking can be interpreted, through a play of words, to evoke multiple positions and views conveying internal contradictions.

The historical overview of coworking shows a strong differentiation and multisided interpretation of this phenomenon along two dimensions of historical development, namely, social and business, and outward and inward. The qualitative analysis of the interviews traces the different lived interpretations and conceptions of coworking. The analysis confirms, on the one hand, the complexity and heterogeneity described in the literature, and on the other hand, it enriches the literature by depicting the contradictory nature of the phenomenon, including how the historical and inner tensions of coworking are dynamically evolving in the concrete experiences reported by the managers and users in the coworking spaces.

To realise the shared development of the digital economy, people need to transcend the capital logic and advocate the logic of cooperative development, i.e. “co-construction, benefit-sharing and co-governance”. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned statement.

Platform economy is a new economic form produced by the transformation of the social production patterns in the era of digital capitalism. In the neo-imperialist stage, a new stage of capitalist development, capital logic promotes the global expansion of the platform economy and influences its development process, organisational form, contradictions and dilemmas and internal transcendence. Having the spatiotemporal chain of capital circulation repaired, the globalisation of the platform economy is reshaping how the means of production are combined with labour, affecting the local changes in the general relations of production and “international relations of production”.

In the accumulation of digital capitalism, the social contradictions and fundamental contradictions in the capitalist world have been further intensified, making exploitation, income distribution gap, monopoly and other problems increasingly severe. The imbalance and inequality in the global development of the digital economy are increasingly prominent.

Regarding the global governance of the digital economy, China, as a major responsible country, will strive to encourage all countries to co-build a community with a shared future in cyberspace. In the new international development pattern of digital economy globalisation, China must take effective measures to actively safeguard its national security and development interests to meet specific challenges.

This chapter examines how darknet drug marketplaces operate within platform capitalism. While capitalist power relations remain underexplored in research on digital drug markets, the analysis shows that the basic foundation of cryptomarkets relies on the infrastructure of platform capitalism. The authors use the concept of platform capitalism to explore cryptomarkets in an ideology-critical way. Platforms are infrastructure for the mediation of buyers and vendors; however, they are designed to extract data on the activities of their users. Platform capitalism refers to the process by which the vast collection of user data feeds into the accumulation of capital. The authors use a dialectical method to examine the constellation of digital drug platforms by disclosing a threefold contradiction: state control and self-regulation; visibility and concealment; and legality and illegality. The analysis reveals that darknet drug platforms make a profit not only from the trade of illicit drugs and the collection of user data, but also based on the illegal status of drugs, the associated ideology, and the closed ecology of darknet platforms. Power relations in cryptomarkets thereby mimic those observed in platform capitalism in general. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of platform capitalism for online drug markets.