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1 – 10 of 99Panayotis G. Michaelides and Kostas Theologou
The purpose of this paper is to argue that Joseph Schumpeter's views are influenced by the French social philosopher Gabriel Tarde who delivered a theory of social evolution based…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to argue that Joseph Schumpeter's views are influenced by the French social philosopher Gabriel Tarde who delivered a theory of social evolution based on technological change as its driving force.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper investigates the affinities in Schumpeter's and Tarde's respective theoretical and methodological approaches.
Findings
In this context, the paper finds striking similarities in their central visions.
Practical implications
Understanding Schumpeter's theories implies a deeper acquaintance with Tarde's oeuvre.
Originality/value
The paper concludes that several Schumpeterian insights appear to be less original.
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In recent discussions on social entrepreneurship, there have been calls for the discipline to make better use of general theories of entrepreneurship. This article seeks to argue…
Abstract
Purpose
In recent discussions on social entrepreneurship, there have been calls for the discipline to make better use of general theories of entrepreneurship. This article seeks to argue that while the literature may not be explicitly theoretical, it often draws upon taken‐for‐granted concepts inherited from Joseph Schumpeter.
Design/methodology/approach
The text seeks to identify Schumpeterian assumptions within the social entrepreneurship literature, and introduce alternative perspectives on “the social” and “entrepreneurship”, drawn from the social theory of Gabriel Tarde. These are then discussed in the context of the social entrepreneurial initiative Hand in Hand.
Findings
The article identifies and re‐assesses three assumptions: that of the social as container; that of capitalism‐specific societal dynamism; and that of the atomistic, non‐inventive entrepreneur.
Originality/value
By re‐imagining “the social” and “entrepreneurship” through the work of Tarde, the article suggests that scholars can develop new conceptualisations of social entrepreneurship.
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Shadow organizing refers to the emergence of parallel arrangements that sit alongside and imitate mainstream or conventional ways of organizing. It can be a response to challenges…
Abstract
Purpose
Shadow organizing refers to the emergence of parallel arrangements that sit alongside and imitate mainstream or conventional ways of organizing. It can be a response to challenges that require new ways of working without abandoning what is valuable about conventional arrangements. However, the processes through which shadow organizing is accomplished are not well understood; there is a need to go beyond traditional notions of mimicry and metaphor. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper demonstrates how a Tardean approach to imitation can address this gap. It deploys imitation as an explanatory concept, based on contemporary readings of Tarde, as well as understandings of organizing as an unfolding process. Child and Family Centres in Tasmania (Australia), are used as an example of shadow organizing, delivering integrated health and education services in an emerging parallel arrangement.
Findings
The analysis highlights an imitation dynamic which is far from straightforward mimicry. Rather, it comprises repetition and generation of difference. This dynamic is conceptualized in Tardean fashion as three patterns: the imitation of ideas before expression; the selective nature of imitation; and insertion of the old alongside the new.
Originality/value
The paper moves beyond metaphors of shadow organizing, and understandings of shadow organizing as mimicry. Conceptualizing imitation in an alternative way, it contributes fresh insights into how shadow organizing is accomplished. This enriches and expands the conceptual apparatus for researchers wishing to understand the betwixt and between of shadow organizing.
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Federico R. León, Oswaldo Morales, Juan D. Ramos, Álvaro Goyenechea, Paul A. Rojas, José Meza and Andrés Burga-León
Call centers generate stress and absenteeism in staff and the literature suggests that people-oriented leadership is the right way of supervision for such a situation. This study…
Abstract
Purpose
Call centers generate stress and absenteeism in staff and the literature suggests that people-oriented leadership is the right way of supervision for such a situation. This study compared its effects versus those of other types of leadership.
Methodology
Absentee data of 379 representatives of customer services of a Peruvian call center were analyzed and the representatives answered a questionnaire about the Framework of Values in Competition and its four types of leadership. Day and night work shifts were compared.
Results
It was observed that absenteeism declines with people-oriented leadership, although only during the day shift, and the addition of leadership oriented to change, results and control devalues models.
Limitations/implications
Future studies should cover the performance of the worker. The findings suggest a need to re-focus the theoretical focus on environmental contingencies that affect leadership effectiveness.
Originality/value
Leadership theorists will ask themselves in what circumstances the multiple leadership is effective. Call center managers will appreciate the organizational value of people-oriented leadership at the first level of supervision.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the aftermath of the 2006-07 financial crisis and attempts to identify a range of causes that were responsible for it and are likely to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the aftermath of the 2006-07 financial crisis and attempts to identify a range of causes that were responsible for it and are likely to trigger similar events in the future. The analytical tradition established by the study of white-collar crime provides the background for such an examination, which avails itself of some conceptualisations derived from classical economic thought.
Design/methodology/approach
Explanations of financial crime can resort to general theories based on allegedly universal values. They can posit the existence of criminaloids, namely, individuals who indulge in illegal practices, or ‘honest fraud’, while not deeming themselves culpable. Anomie and control theory in criminology have highlighted how the causes of financial crime are associated with general criminogenic contexts or with individual propensities or mindsets. This paper adds to the existing perspectives a number of variables that can provide a more nuanced picture of financial crimes.
Findings
This paper attempts to identify a range of discrete variables that can be termed interstitial in the sense that they can accompany a variety of theoretical hypotheses, locate themselves in the space left in between the different approaches while providing supplementary analytical foci. Ignorance, entitlement, reverse Keynesianism, recklessness, efficiency and the finance curse may offer additional angles from which the causation of financial crime can be observed. Sociological and criminological arguments, in this paper, are interspersed with notions derived from classical economics.
Originality/value
The originality of this contribution is to be found in its use of different theoretical traditions, establishing a dialogue between social theory, criminology and economic thought.
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Frank Upward, Barbara Reed, Gillian Oliver and Joanne Evans
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the widespread crisis facing the archives and records management professions, and to propose recordkeeping informatics, a single minded…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the widespread crisis facing the archives and records management professions, and to propose recordkeeping informatics, a single minded disciplinary approach, as a way forward.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reflects an Australasian perspective on the nature of the crisis besetting archives and records management professions as people struggle to adjust to digitally converged information ecologies. It suggests recordkeeping informatics as an approach for refiguring thinking, systems, processes and practices as people confront ever increasing information convergence, chaos and complexity. It discusses continuum thinking and recordkeeping metadata as two key building blocks of the approach, along with three facets of recordkeeping analysis involving the understanding of organisational culture, business process analysis and archival access.
Findings
Discussion of information and communication technologies as a “wild frontier” highlights the breaking down of recordkeeping processes within them. The causes for this chaos are complex and there is an urgent need to develop more coherent frameworks to identify and address the issues. Such frameworks need to grow from, and be conversant with, strong symbiotic relationships between social formations, recordkeeping processes, and archives, so that they may be applicable in an increasingly diverse range of organisational and community contexts. Embracing complexity is a must if the wild frontier is not to grow wilder.
Originality/value
The paper outlines a new disciplinary base from which new and old recordkeeping methods can be launched that are appropriate for this era.
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This article aims to explore the impact of new social media on the 2011 English riots.
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to explore the impact of new social media on the 2011 English riots.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper suggests that discourse on the riots in the news and popular press is obscured by speculation and political rhetoric about the role of social media in catalysing the unrest that overlooks the role of individual agency and misrepresents the emotional dimensions of such forms of collective action.
Findings
In considering the riots to be symptomatic of criminality and austerity, commentators have tended to revive nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century crowd theories to make sense of the unrest, which are unable to account for the effect of new social media on this nascent twenty‐first century phenomenon.
Research limitations/implications
Here, the notion of the “mediated crowd” is introduced to argue that combining emotions research with empirical analysis can provide an innovative account of the relationship between new social media and the type of collective action that took place during the riots. Such a concept challenges orthodox nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century crowd theories that consider crowds to be a corollary of “emotive contagion” in spatial proximity, with “the mediated crowd” mobilised in the twenty‐first century through social networking in both geographic and virtual arenas.
Originality/value
The paper proposes that this original approach provides insight into the particular conditions in which the 2011 English riots emerged, while advancing crowd theory in general.
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Eraldo Carneiro, Marcos André Costa and Mário Mendes Neto
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze a study of publics that was conducted by the Corporate Communications Department of Petrobras, an integrated energy company of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze a study of publics that was conducted by the Corporate Communications Department of Petrobras, an integrated energy company of Brazilian origin, one of the ten largest in its sector worldwide. Petrobras' strategic vision for 2020 includes the goal of becoming the preferred company among its publics of interest. To achieve this, Petrobras had to develop a concept and categories of its publics that could be applied to all the company's areas and subsidiaries.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was based on analysis of theories related to publics and stakeholders, secondary data gathering, and on consultation of Petrobras areas and subsidiaries through workshops.
Findings
The analysis of theories of publics and stakeholders enabled the identification of some variables that can provide a basis for building concepts. The project identified needs and issues of each Petrobras public and gave rise to the concept and categories of publics of interest of the company.
Practical implications
The project brought greater understanding of the individuals and groups that compose the network to which Petrobras belongs. The participative process of internal consultation amplified the debate on the theme and enabled the conceptualization and classification of publics for Petrobras as a whole. The project represents a direct collaboration of the Corporate Communications Department with the company's strategic vision.
Originality/value
The study reinforces the perspective that, faced with myriad concepts, an organization can develop its own definition and classification of publics or stakeholders in order to help it to manage its relationships.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the manner in which advocates of crowdsourcing reconfigure the classical sociological treatment of the crowd.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the manner in which advocates of crowdsourcing reconfigure the classical sociological treatment of the crowd.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach taken conceives of the semantics of crowd theorizing in three phases, each of which makes sense of the power dynamics between the elite and the crowd. In phases one and two, the crowd is conceptualized as a problem generator; in phase three, the crowd is depicted as a problem solver and innovator.
Findings
This paper provides a critical look at phase three crowd theorizing. It explores how, by ignoring the disruptive power dynamic, crowdsourcing generates a credible image of the crowd as an innovator and problem solver. The work concludes with a discussion of the implications of phase three crowd theorizing for researchers in sociology.
Practical implications
Advocates of the wisdom of crowds, if interested in the sociological implications of their position, must attend to both the disruptive and costly implications of third phase crowd theorizing.
Originality/value
This paper maps the crowdsourcing process and places it in context. It argues that the distance between the classical social scientific treatment of the crowd is not nearly as great as crowdsourcing advocates would have one believe. Nevertheless, phase three crowd theorizing opens up sociologically relevant questions regarding the future portrayal of collective intelligence as a form of virtual property.
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Hugo Gaggiotti and Margaret Page
The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodological challenges of developing a shared academic–student discourse of recovery with undergraduate students in their final year…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodological challenges of developing a shared academic–student discourse of recovery with undergraduate students in their final year at a British business school.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors reflect on the meaning of recovery and how it was negotiated and constructed by the relation established between students and academics, by analysing the visual- and text-based materials they produced and the discussions provoked by these materials using symmetric ethnology and content analysis.
Findings
The main finding is that students tended to reflect on the real, particularly the social, by creating copies and replicas; the authors, as academics, engaged with this practice with ambivalence. The article concludes that this as an attempt to manage what is felt to be unmanageable, echoing what some authors consider to be a contemporary practice of social justification (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991) and others consider to be a well-established cultural practice (Taussig, 1993).
Research limitations/implications
The paper contributes to a better understanding of how relatedness and reflexive inquiry become essential for when teaching and that is linked with academics being able to be openly related with students and their situation; to a better understanding of recovery and how it can be co-constructed by academics and students through a share narrative; to a methodology for the analysis of text and images, and its appropriateness for the study of ways in which imagination of the future may be co-constructed; and to an understanding of mimetic objects, replicas and copies.
Practical implications
The paper suggests that this approach could have practical implications when applying co-inquiry approaches of learning, the understanding of institutional and academic meaning of replication and relatedness in academic context of economic crisis.
Originality/value
The authors conclude that academic relatedness and students–tutors engagement is constructed differently when re-considering replication as a way of learning. Preference for copying and pasting found texts and images, rather than creating, served as a way of managing the unknown and of constructing recovery through a process of “mimeting” (Campbell, 2005).
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