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Charisma holds a central place in discussions about leadership. The Founding Fathers were opposed to some forms of charisma but endorsed some as well. They sought to entrust government to select-people, like themselves, who could be trusted to rule for the many – in Bass (1998) terms, “socialized” as opposed to “personalized” charismatic leaders. This chapter responds to Publius, the authors of the Federalist Papers, to explain the problems the Founding Fathers’ fears have caused us in presidential elections, including that of 2000.

Today Lionel Penrose is recognised as the co-author of one of the two leading indices of power in voting legislatures – a field of study that game theory in general, and cooperative game theory in particular, has been reclaiming from sociology and political science since the 1950s. The main claim of this paper is that Penrose developed his index so as to tackle questions that go vastly beyond the narrow domain of voting; namely, acute social issues during the Cold War such as the outburst and propagation of panics, the ideological susceptibility of populations, the escalation of military conflict and the successful installation of authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, by revisiting the history of the Penrose power index, the paper re-evaluates some of its key underlying assumptions: assumptions that have been heavily – and unfairly, as the paper argues – criticised over the last decade.

This paper seeks to take stock of core arguments in some of the most central governance traditions and to discuss their capacity to deliver solutions. It starts with an appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the ideas of market‐, state‐ and civil‐society‐led governance, but also factors in the effect of media and communication as governance arenas in their own right. Then it aims to review core arguments put forward in broader approaches to governance where multiple governance mechanisms are combined.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews central approaches in the governance literature and their ability to further sustainable development. The review is taken as a basis for tentative formulations of new supplementary governance approaches.

Out of the critical analysis the paper distils is an approach to governance that combines three basic elements: First, a re‐interpretation of Montesquieu's principle of checks and balances – applied not only to state institutions, but also to the interplay between the state, markets and civil society. Second, an argument for polyarchic, multilevel governance, where flexible institutional frameworks, at various levels of aggregation, allow actors to jointly engage in developing governance. Third, it argues that open communication may constitute an important governance element. It ends by recognising that global governance, going forward, will include a mix of parallel governance models, in some ways competing for hegemony, but supporting one another in other ways.

The originality/value of the paper lies in its critical assessment of central current governance theories and in its launch of new supplementary governance approaches.

This paper builds upon the growing research on both privatization and entrepreneurship and provides a model to predict outcomes of privatization of state‐owned enterprises. Previous research has concentrated on the change in ownership as the principal driver of post‐privatization increases in firm performance and wealth creation. We suggest that structural conditions of the state‐owned enterprise and the privatization process, in combination with characteristics of the new owners, lead to performance changes because they determine the firm’s ability to transform from a state agency to an entrepreneurial organization.

History teaches that agreement about the distribution of valued things is seldom deep or widespread in large populations. When distributive issues rise to clear public consciousness, the tendency is towards civil strife. Stable democratic institutions are rarely the result of all or even most social actors cooperating voluntarily, peacefully and with adequate information; nearly always, they are the products of shrewd decisions made by those who are seriously influential – elites. Elites must trust each other to manage politics in ways that prevent distributive issues from reaching acute degrees that impel power seizures. But can elite trust be sustained in advanced post-industrial conditions? The question arises because of steadily declining needs for many kinds of work, exacerbated by large migrations from non-Western countries and a resulting insecurity that populists exploit divisively for political gain. They act as pied pipers offering delusive enticements, making irresponsible promises and exhibiting disdain for rule of law. Disinclined to deal realistically with, or even acknowledge, long-term post-industrial problems of work, populists erode elite trust and weaken the basis of stable democratic institutions.

The chapter draws on historical evidence from Central America to test two of the most influential theories of the development of democracy: (1) structural theories derived from the work of Barrington Moore and (2) theories of the “political economy of democratic transitions.” The Central American evidence confirms Moore's theory in regard to the anti-democratic role of landed elites, but not the democratic role of the bourgeoisie. Contrary to some structural theories, the industrial working class was also not important in the development of democracy in Central America. Nor does the Central American evidence fit the political economy of democratic transitions model of negotiated or imposed “transitions from above.” A new model, termed the route to democracy through socialist revolution from below is proposed to account for the Central American evidence and the implications of the model are explored for the development of democracy generally.

Where are the ultimate sources of technological breakthroughs? What makes a firm more likely to invent a breakthrough or to exploit external breakthroughs? We develop an evolutionary model of invention as a process of recombinant variation and selection. Our contributions are to highlight the skewed outcome distributions resulting from evolutionary search and to develop theory that can be tested by modeling the higher moments of search processes. Recent methodological and data collection advances make such testing possible. We motivate further research, develop our model's strategic implications, and discuss how managers might create and respond to breakthroughs.

The purpose of this paper is to expand understanding of how leaders can use their power to reshape macro-level structures to foster individuals' freedoms and build more democratic workplaces. The importance of freedom in work and life can hardly be argued with, yet current democracy scores are the lowest that have ever been recorded (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2019).

The authors analyzed two cases of successful democratization, Spain and Lithuania, where they conducted a total of 65 semi-structured interviews with different actors including the top leaders themselves. A combined inductive-deductive analysis of the in-depth qualitative data highlighted how using different dimensions of power (French and Raven, 1959) related to distributing power to others.

These findings extend understanding of how leaders can use their power to effectively distribute power to others and reach a democracy that fosters freedom. Information and referent power were crucial for aligning the different stakeholder groups, expert power emerged as key for building and empowering a network of support and legitimate power was essential for fostering peaceful and long-lasting changes toward democracy.

While previous research has recognized the importance of leadership and politics for instigating macro-level changes, this study specifies how leaders can utilize their different sources of power to bring greater power and freedom to individuals by unpacking the unique impacts of each type of power. This study thus provides practical insights for leaders seeking to establish more democratic workplaces.

As components of society, social classes contain individuals who are carriers of productive relationships. In the era of global capitalism, chains of accumulation are functionally integrating across borders and regions – uniquely altering the formation of productive relationships. How can we understand class relations in the global era, and in the context of regions and countries in Oceania and Asia? How do transnational capitalist-class fractions, new middle strata, and labor undergird globalization? How have state apparatuses and other institutions in this part of the world become entwined with new transnational processes? To begin to consider these questions, this paper provides an overview and summary of studies on transnational class relations and the associated political economic changes occurring across areas of Asia and Oceania.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the organizational reconfiguration of offshoring on firms’ strategies. A consequence of offshoring is the need to reintegrate the geographically relocated organizational activities into a coherent organizational architecture. In order to do this, firms need a high degree of architectural knowledge, which is typically gained through learning by doing. We therefore argue that firms with more offshoring experience are more likely to include organizational objectives in their offshoring strategies. We develop and find support for this hypothesis using a mixed-method approach based on a qualitative case study and comprehensive data from the Offshoring Research Network. These findings contribute to research on the organizational design and architecture of offshoring and the dynamics of organizational architectures.