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Book part
Publication date: 5 May 2023

Anthony J. Knowles

This chapter argues that modern societies are changing in ways that disrupt the complementarity between social structure and character structure. One source of this divergence…

Abstract

This chapter argues that modern societies are changing in ways that disrupt the complementarity between social structure and character structure. One source of this divergence occurs because, on the one hand, there exists a “neoliberal” character structure that is oriented toward the accumulation of human capital and holds that such accumulation and hard work will allow one to achieve the “American Dream.” On the other hand, the deep embeddedness of this character structure may in fact deepen the possibility of structural crisis, as developments in automation and ongoing transformations of labor continuously shift the economic structure and many feel they are employed in meaningless “soul crushing” jobs. This diagnosis prompts the question: is the accumulation of human capital futile? In other words, can there exist an abundance of jobs that simultaneously pay enough to provide a middle-class lifestyle and be both socially respected by most members of society while also providing subjective meaning for the individual – without accruing high social costs? Through reflections upon my own biography growing up in East Tennessee, this chapter utilizes the framework of Planetary Sociology to encourage sociologists to rethink the category of “human capital” and recognize the divergence of social structure and character structure to be a serious problem with planetary implications. Only by critical examination of the sociohistoric context from a planetary perspective can these challenges be constructively evaluated and reckoned with.

Details

Planetary Sociology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-509-4

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 July 2022

Victor Silva Corrêa, Marina de Almeida Cruz, Vânia Maria Jorge Nassif, Pedro Lucas de Resende Melo and Rosileine Mendonça de Lima

Embeddedness has gained prominence in entrepreneurship studies. However, the notion that the embeddedness metaphor relates to “market” structures prevails in studies in the area…

Abstract

Purpose

Embeddedness has gained prominence in entrepreneurship studies. However, the notion that the embeddedness metaphor relates to “market” structures prevails in studies in the area. Entrepreneurship scholars still know little about whether entrepreneurs are eventually embedded in other structures whose relationships go beyond the restricted dimension of the interested actor’s assumption. This study aims to propose investigating the social structures in which a specific type of entrepreneurship, the religious one, is embedded.

Design/methodology/approach

The research was qualitative, using interviews as an evidence collection instrument. A total of 17 entrepreneur-pastors responsible for business churches in Brazil and eight parishioners took part in the study.

Findings

Religious entrepreneurs are embedded in market structures, corroborating a perspective that associates embeddedness with the utilitarian notion. At the same time, entrepreneurs are embedded in two other social structures: reciprocity and redistribution.

Practical implications

This article emphasizes the relevance of going beyond the predominant perspective associated with the utilitarian and rationalized understanding of embeddedness in relationship networks.

Originality/value

This study makes essential contributions. Initially, it attests to the utilitarian perspective of Granovetter’s embeddedness while suggesting incorporating two other dimensions into the metaphor. By highlighting this, this article stresses the need to reinterpret the metaphor of embeddedness and how entrepreneurship scholars use it. Further, by emphasizing the need to consider embeddedness in networks beyond its still utilitarian perspective, this paper highlights unexplored opportunities for entrepreneurship scholars.

Details

Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, vol. 16 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2053-4604

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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 13 March 2024

Keanu Telles

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

Design/methodology/approach

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

Findings

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

Originality/value

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

Details

EconomiA, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1517-7580

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Book part
Publication date: 9 May 2023

Bahar Araz and Ipek Kalemci Tuzun

The question of the nature of the collar is pursued drawing on results generated in the field of social ontology as well as on observations from history. In this chapter, it can…

Abstract

The question of the nature of the collar is pursued drawing on results generated in the field of social ontology as well as on observations from history. In this chapter, it can be tried to seek what the nature of collar is, this is a central question for social theory, not least economics and human resources. Tony Lawson (2019, p. 1, 2021) has recently developed a theory of social positioning “… which is the social phenomena are everywhere constituted by or within process through which social totalities are formed or emerge.” The central idea of the theory of social positioning is that social relations are ultimately power relationships, which structure how social phenomena are organized. This chapter further explores this idea by conceptualizing power drawing on the theory of social positioning. Collar is a social phenomenon and associated with certain kind of structure which is social classes in this chapter. This structure will be taken as a class relation in Marxist approach as it is known, this relation is about power. In this framework, the question of the nature of collar needs to be explained with social positioning theory.

Details

Management and Organizational Studies on Blue- and Gray-collar Workers: Diversity of Collars
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-754-9

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Article
Publication date: 14 September 2022

Cletus Agyenim-Boateng, Sulemana Iddrisu and James Otieku

This paper aims to examine the nature of corporate governance systems in Ghanaian Family-owned Businesses (FOBs). Specifically, the study investigates the nature of boardroom…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the nature of corporate governance systems in Ghanaian Family-owned Businesses (FOBs). Specifically, the study investigates the nature of boardroom decisions structures, sources of governance regulations and family roles in corporate governance.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on Bourdieusian perspectives of the field, capital, habitus and doxa, a case study design is used to gather detailed insights about the phenomena. Purposively, the study conducts 20 interviews with participants from 15 FOBs in Ghana. The interview data are complemented with secondary sources, such as FOB handbooks, website information, legal documents and scriptures. Subsequently, data gathered were thematically analysed.

Findings

The study finds that human actors blended traditionally tacit and legally expressed boardroom decisions structures in FOBs governance. Again, traditional values, social acceptance of religious sociology and regulatory frameworks of the field dictate corporate governance practices in FOBs. In multiple family ownerships, orthodoxy of doxa is challenged; hence, power struggles and family roles in governance depend on capital possessed by social actors.

Practical implications

To continue as a going concern, FOBs must be mindful of traditional, religious sociology of family and regulatory frameworks within the field in which they operate. This is because, without this, the going concern of FOBs becomes suspicious and highly unlikely, especially where there are multiple family ownership and generations.

Originality/value

The previous literature predominantly focussed on formal boardroom structures in addressing FOBs' corporate governance issues. Notwithstanding, family governance risk of domineering and distrust associated with traditional and relational governance mechanisms remain under-represented and inconclusive, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Details

Journal of Family Business Management, vol. 13 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2043-6238

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Article
Publication date: 28 March 2023

Hardeep Singh Mundi

The paper aims to examine the effect of CEOs' social networks on capital structure complexity (CSC) and firm performance.

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to examine the effect of CEOs' social networks on capital structure complexity (CSC) and firm performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Ordinary Least Squares regression (OLS) and Generalized method of moments (GMM) regression results estimate the effect of CEOs' (Chief executive officer) social networks on capital structure complexity and firm performance. The number of sources of capital (NSC) and concentration ratio estimate the capital structure complexity for the sample firms.

Findings

The results show that CEOs' social networks significantly influence CSC. We suggest that the CEOs' social networks encourage them to make more complex capital structure decisions. This behavior deteriorates firm performance.

Research limitations/implications

There is a lack of systematic conceptual reason for measuring CEO social network. Future research should use other measures of the social network to estimate the relation of the CEO's social network with CSC and firm performance.

Practical implications

The findings support the managerial power approach and social network theory that the observable characteristics of CEOs influence CSC. The results are robust for an alternative explanation.

Originality/value

By investigating the impact of the influence of CEOs' social networks on CSC and performance, the authors extend research on strategic leadership and capital structure and firm performance.

Details

Review of Behavioral Finance, vol. 16 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1940-5979

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 5 May 2023

Harry F. Dahms

Planetary sociology starts out from the supposition that sociology as a discipline emerged in the context and out of an interest in the fate of modern “national” societies. Yet…

Abstract

Planetary sociology starts out from the supposition that sociology as a discipline emerged in the context and out of an interest in the fate of modern “national” societies. Yet, as a discipline, it emerged with tools designed to identify, track, and analyze processes and forms of organization which today are playing out and observable at the planetary level. For sociology to be in the position to make important contributions to the challenges modern societies are facing in the twenty-first century, it must apply the tools it developed over the course of more than a century, to processes and phenomena that are transforming and applying to planetary civilization and Earth's ecosystem. The necessary starting point is the critical investigation of the interconnected structuring principles that have been shaping both societies and individual identities, and how they reinforce patterns which thwart both sociology's ability to make increasingly necessary contributions, and modern societies' ability to embrace qualitative rather than quantitative forms of progress. A reinvigorated enlightenment will be necessary to increase the probability that sociology will be well-positioned to provide decision-makers and actors with the insights, tools, and knowledge needed to confront impending challenges and crises constructively.

Details

Planetary Sociology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-509-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 31 July 2023

Marcelo S. Isidório and Magali Reis

This research aimed to analyze the interactions of “pre-adolescent” students in the classroom through relationships sustained by structure, agency, and power exercises based on…

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze the interactions of “pre-adolescent” students in the classroom through relationships sustained by structure, agency, and power exercises based on Anthony Giddens’ Theory of Structuring.1 A qualitative research approach was used with the characteristic of a case study in a municipal public school in the city of Itabira (MG), Brazil. As procedures for recording the evidence, we used the application of a questionnaire, observation of the classroom and listening to students and teachers in a class of the sixth year of elementary school II during the 2017 school year. The results indicated that the vision of “pre-adolescence” marked by biological and psychological changes remains institutionalized for school professionals. The students demonstrated the need for the teacher to use his teaching authority to set limits in the classroom, however, this exercise of agency-power by the teacher must be negotiated and mediated by the participation of “pre-adolescents.” In view of this procedural context, “pre-adolescent” students cannot be held responsible for the instability of the interactive process in the classroom if the historical and social context through which these students pass is not considered in comparison to the institutionalized characteristics solidified through the process, time, and space by the school and/or some of its representatives (teachers).

Article
Publication date: 17 January 2023

Helen Mackenzie and Umit S. Bititci

The conceptual foundations of performance measurement and management (PMM) are predominantly rooted in control systems research. However, the appropriateness of this paradigm for…

Abstract

Purpose

The conceptual foundations of performance measurement and management (PMM) are predominantly rooted in control systems research. However, the appropriateness of this paradigm for volatile and uncertain environments has been questioned. This paper explores whether grounding PMM in social systems theory and viewing uncertainty from an organisational behaviour perspective provides new insights into the PMM theory–practice gap.

Design/methodology/approach

A framework, rooted in social systems theory and practice theory, is created that describes how organisational behaviour shapes the social processes associated with organisational change. Semi-structured interviews of 35 people from 16 organisations coupled with thematic analysis are employed to identify the organisational behavioural characteristics that influence how PMM is executed in practice. PMM is then reconceptualised from the perspective of this social systems-based framework.

Findings

This investigation proposes (1) performance management is concerned with elements of PMM-related practices open to flexible interpretation by human agents that change the effectiveness of organisational practices, whereas performance measurement is concerned with elements of PMM-related practices not open to interpretation but deliberately reproduced to provide a consistent comparison with the past; (2) the purpose of PMM should be to achieve organisational effectiveness (OE) and (3) the mechanisms underlying performance management and performance measurement are social intervention and embeddedness, respectively.

Originality/value

This first social systems perspective of PMM advances the development of PMM's theoretical foundations by providing a behaviour-based interpretation of, and framework for, PMM-mediated organisational change. This competing approach has strong links to practice.

Details

International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 43 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3577

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 February 2023

Huasi Xu, Yidi Liu, Bingqing Song, Xueyan Yin and Xin Li

Drawing on social network and information diffusion theories, the authors study the impact of the structural characteristics of a seller’s local social network on her promotion…

Abstract

Purpose

Drawing on social network and information diffusion theories, the authors study the impact of the structural characteristics of a seller’s local social network on her promotion effectiveness in social commerce.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors define a local social network as one formed by a focal seller, her directly connected users and all links among these users. Using data from a large social commerce website in China, the authors build econometric models to investigate how the density, grouping and centralization of local social networks affect the number of likes received by products posted by sellers.

Findings

Local social networks with low density, grouping and centralization are associated with more likes on sellers’ posted products. The negative effects of grouping and centralization are reduced when density is high.

Originality/value

The paper deepens the understanding of the determinants of social commerce success from a network structure perspective. In particular, it draws attention to the role of sellers’ local social networks, forming a foundation for future research on social commerce.

Details

Information Technology & People, vol. 37 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-3845

Keywords

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