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How headquarter (HQ) and subsidiary actors end conflicts and reach agreements is an important but still under-researched question in multinational corporations (MNC) literature. This conceptual article approaches these conflict dynamics from the Convention Theory perspective. Convention Theory draws attention to justice principles (known as “order of worth”) and to the material aspects in relations between MNC actors. We offer a framework that contributes to HQ-subsidiary relations research in three ways: (1) it links conflicts to justice principles, (2) it enriches the understanding of the stability of agreements, and (3) it sheds light on the activities needed for realizing preferred arrangements.

We stress the public demand for accountability of global brands and the rise in normative public brand evaluations in online networks. To gain an empirical and theoretical understanding of these phenomena, we introduce the notion of public brand auditing, which refers to public agents collectively contrasting brands against a multiplicity of shared understandings of what is worthy and good.

Convention theory serves as a theoretical lens to conceptualize public brand auditing, since it provides a normative framework of orders of worth based on which the appropriateness of actions are judged. Empirically, we conduct a netnographic study and illustrate public auditing strategies with online discussions about Google on the Slashdot platform.

We find that public brand auditing comprises two major auditing strategies: drawing leeways of acceptable brand conduct and allocating responsibilities.

Approaching public forms of normative brand judgments from a convention theory perspective allows researchers to better understand how the public holds brands accountable and evaluates brand conduct against higher-order principles.

The concept of public brand auditing helps managers to understand and approach the normative basis of both positive and negative brand judgments.

We urge brands to monitor public demand for accountability and emphasize the importance of the civic, market, and industrial orders of worth in guiding brand conduct.

This paper offers a conceptualization of and a framework for investigating public brand auditing phenomena.

The diversification phase observed in the American economy since 1975 (Leontiades, 1980) has led to significant questioning about the dimensions constituting related diversification. During the 1980s, the disappointing performances of businesses that had implemented related diversifications pushed researchers to take a closer look at the challenges involved in integration to discover commonalities in progressing from potential synergy to synergy achieved. As a result, many recent research endeavors have attempted to describe the management and integration process best suited to the context (Haspelagh & Jemison, 1991; Marks & Mirvis, 1998; Pablo, 1994; Shrivastava, 1986). Obviously, their attention focused primarily on initiatives targeting integration on the functional, structural, and operational levels, without really taking into account the historical, cognitive, and cultural baggage that each business carries around with it.

This research is intended to provide a better understanding of the factors that contribute to creating synergies between companies undertaking an integration process involving related diversification. Based on the cognitive approach, it is premised on the notion that creating synergy primarily depends on reconciling the collective representations of the companies involved rather than on simply implementing measures designed to achieve technical and operational integration.

This study places particular emphasis on the concept of collective representations, which recognizes that organizational players come to adopt a relatively homogeneous view of the world. It proposes an analysis framework and research method enabling it to go beyond the limits of attempts that, up until now, have strived to quantify and substantiate the mental schemata of organizations involved in merger acquisition. Moreover, these attempts have been criticized as being too vague (Côté, Langley & Pasquero, 1999; Grant, 1988; Lampel & Shamsie, 2000).

In order to characterize the content of collective representations specific to each of the organizations undergoing integration, we propose applying a new approach in the sociology of organizations called the theory of conventions (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991, 1994). The convention theory posits that organizational players share representation systems that help forge interaction rules. Collective, concerted action is made possible by mobilizing common frameworks, that is, conventions. These conventions are characterized by higher principles specific to each city. The outcome can be agreement or conflict, depending on whether player justifications are rooted in the same city or not.

Through the longitudinal analysis of the case of related diversification, specifically a Canadian chartered bank’s acquisition of two brokerage subsidiaries (1987, 1994), this study examines the evolution of the integration initiatives and collective representations of the businesses involved. We made two significant observations in examining the various integration initiatives undertaken by the bank during the period under study. First, the integration initiatives could be described as falling into the technical, structural, and operational categories. Second, their outcomes, both qualitatively and quantitatively, were far from conclusive.

Concurrent analysis of justificatory fragments of the three organizations, during the period under studied, revealed divergence between the justification modes that each of the businesses opted for. This divergence of dominant collective representations enabled us to interpret the issues encountered during these initiatives and posit a new explanation for their qualified success.

Responsible investors have been the precursor in using ESG information in investment decisions. The growing attention to ESG issues across the more traditional investment community is considered as the mainstreaming of RI. However, it is important to note that the integration of ESG information by mainstream investment companies is a fundamentally different approach than RI. While RI derives from moral and ethical concerns, the new trend of integration of ESG information by mainstream investors is business driven.

Based on the keynote address given at the conference on “Organizing Institutions: Creating, Enacting and Reacting to Institutional Logics” held at the Banff Springs Hotel in June 2012, this essay analyzes the relationship between Max Weber's polytheistic theory of value spheres and institutional logics, proposing that the latter project entails studying institutional logics through a framework of comparative religions. I argue that God, love, transcendence, and immanence are all potentially useful analytic categories by which to understand institutional logics.

Within the agri-food sectors of Western countries, there is an increasing interest in alternative food, i.e., organic, local and regional food, artisanal food, short-supply chains, slow food etc. Innovation in food processing is a significant element both in alternative food and conventional food strategies. Alternatives are based on competition on qualities rather than price. A main question in this chapter is to address how alternative qualities are embedded into food products? This question is explored using a study of two alternative cases within the dairy sectors of Norway and Wales. A model of the different modes of designed qualities of food is developed and discussed to explore the complex issue of quality. We find space and technology especially relevant as dimensions of qualities. Our conclusion is that there is a need to nuance the discussion about quality and food. Firms may develop as hybrids within a conventional vs. alternative perspective, and a strong emphasis on the conventional and alternative as a dichotomy tends to give a static and restrictive perspective.

While some researchers have considered commodity chain analysis to be a tool or method that is “innocent of theory,” or can be combined with any theory, this paper argues that it has a specific set of theoretical investments. It argues that commodity chain analysis emerged in response to criticisms of the determinism, economism, and western bias in earlier development paradigms. Drawing on recent scholarship, it argues that researchers have turned to the study of commodity chains to provide situated and contingent accounts of global political economy that are historically specific, sensitive to culture and meaning, and attentive to subaltern perspectives.

Ritual female genital practices, widespread throughout Africa, are essential to gender identification and often are a pre-requisite for marriage. More severe forms of the practice, which are common in parts of Northeastern Africa, are also believed to enhance a woman’s childbearing capacity. Here, we critically review the gender- and class-based theories that explain the origins and persistence of female genital practices and the factors that precipitate social change. We also critically review evidence of the association of certain forms of the practice with various health, demographic, and social consequences. Our review exposes several methodological limitations of existing research that preclude population-based inferences about the medical and social implications of these practices and suggest that existing policies targeting such practices draw more on concerns over human rights than on scientific evidence about their sequelae. This review nevertheless exposes a potential contradiction between local justifications for and consequences of certain forms of the practice. Namely, despite an intended function of female genital practices to enhance a woman’s marital capital, certain forms may ironically lead to marital instability and dissolution through their negative effects on the health and reproductive capacity of women. We conclude with recommendations for research to examine the salience and implications of this potential paradox for women in Northeastern Africa.

This chapter conducts a systematic comparison of behavioral economics’s challenges to the standard accounts of economic behaviors within three dimensions: under risk, over time, and regarding other people. A new perspective on two underlying methodological issues, i.e., inter-disciplinarity and the positive/normative distinction, is proposed by following the entanglement thesis of Hilary Putnam, Vivian Walsh, and Amartya Sen. This thesis holds that facts, values, and conventions have inter-dependent meanings in science which can be understood by scrutinizing formal and ordinary language uses. The goal is to provide a broad and self-contained picture of how behavioral economics is changing the mainstream of economics.

This chapter reviews the recent polarisation of debates in agrofood and rural studies, in particular the opposition between network (social relations, actor-network) and political economy analyses. It explores the contributions of different network approaches and draws on the French convention and regulation traditions, which provide alternative guidelines for confronting micro–macro tensions. Networks have similarly assumed analytical centrality in the new institutional economics and subsequent elaborations of the Williamsonian transaction costs paradigm have involved an approximation to some of the central tenets of social network analysis. Alternative traditions of political economy analysis (Global Value Chains (GVC), Global Production Networks) are now making an important contribution to agrofood studies. A distinctive feature of these analysts is their overture to social networks, actor-network, transaction costs and convention theory in the effort to capture the multiple dimensions of economic power and coordination. The possibilities for a fruitful convergence between these apparently conflicting approaches are best captured in the emergence of the concept of the “netchain”. At the same time, the intractability of values to absorption within economic transactions suggests the need to move forward to a focus on the tensions between netchains and social movements and a different type of network, the global policy network.