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Global businesses create and sustain operational success and create value by balancing the centripetal and centrifugal organizational forces they generate. Productive efforts to achieve strategic and operational success are enabled by the balance of competing tensions not their oscillations. Internal regulators contribute to this balance when they are understood and systematically integrated into both short and long-term decision-making. Inattention to the intricacies of interactive regulating dynamics and systems dilute value creation, or worse, destroy it. The whole business organization must be greater than the sum of its parts to deliver optimum value. Anything less creates gaps which competitors will exploit to the detriment of shareholder value creation. The business landscape is replete with companies that failed to create or sustain balance. There are also examples of great companies that nurture tensions to promote proper balance.

Multicultural teams (MCTs) and their managers are subject to numerous exogenous forces that profoundly affect how these teams’ members relate, what their difficulties are, and how they interact with task, technology and the larger organization(s) around them. We approach such teams from a multi-level perspective, focusing on global business culture, industry situation, and national political context as macro forces affecting these teams. We explain how these factors affect team functioning through the centripetal and centrifugal forces that they exert on individuals. Our perspective will acknowledge the complex reality of social construction among team members, and offer the view that members’ expectations and their mutual interactions are responsible for shaping each other's subsequent cognitions.

This chapter proposes using a dialectical approach infused with elements of dialogism to analyze polyphonic discourses of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to create more nuanced understandings of the contradictions, oppositions, tensions, and complexities that characterize the conceptualization, enactment, and communication of CSR.

This chapter draws upon the notion of dialectics discussed by scholars such as Hegel and Marx and infuses it with Bakhtinian notions of dialogism to create a dialectical framework for analyzing discourses of CSR.

This chapter illustrates the conceptual argument for a dialectical approach to examining discourses of CSR by using the example of the dualistic discussion of corporations as agents of empowerment or exploitation. When examined through a dialectical lens, the empowerment–exploitation debate reveals, among others, the dissolution of boundaries between the categories of empowerment and exploitation, the coexistence and interplay of a multitude of related oppositions, and raises questions on praxical patterns employed by social actors to manage the dialectical tensions inherent in everyday organizing.

A dialectical approach in communication studies could open possibilities for acknowledging the co-existence of and interplay among multiple voices in society, thus opening spaces for engaging with diverse perspectives and creating a more holistic understanding of complex social constructs such as CSR.

A dialectical approach that attends to tensions negotiated by social and organizational actors as they try to conceptualize, enact, and communicate CSR can enrich the study of polyphonic discourses of CSR by generating more textured and insightful understandings of CSR than those currently examined through mostly dualistic lenses.

The CW’s long-running horror-drama series Supernatural (2005–) has been accused of undoing progressive advances for women made by Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996–2003). While it’s hard to deny the truth in that claim, Supernatural also problematizes conventional gender roles from a very different approach, one that plays with perceptions of masculinity and social class.

Buffy Summers may initially seem to have more in common with Supernatural’s Sam Winchester, a chosen one with special powers who wants a normal life away from the supernatural. However, Buffy shares more in common with Dean Winchester. Embodying popular gendered stereotypes in their introductions, it’s gradually revealed that there is more complexity to each. Both form alliances with Others; both recognize elements of the Other in themselves. Both transgress conventional gender boundaries, complicating the notion of a binary gender system. Both series introduce the seemingly familiar only to alter it into the uncanny. See the little cute blonde virginal cheerleader? She can kick your ass. See the stupid cocky womanizing jock? All he wants is family and a home. This chapter explores the increasingly gender-blended, social-class-crossing behaviours of Supernatural’s Dean Winchester as an heir to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Climate change is a vortical situation of increasing turbulent conditions called the “sixth extinction.” In this chapter I begin with the two-dimensional Archimedean spiral (the coiling rope), move on to the three-dimensional corkscrew spiral (or threaded screw), and on to the three-dimensional double spiral of upward and descending movement with many nested vortices. The latter is more necessary to understand climate change, and our possible future in it, than the flat spirals. Ironically, Plato wrote about the double-twisted spiral with its nested vortices long ago. We are in a double-spiralic helice, a vortical phenomenon with centripetal and centrifugal, upward-ascending and downward-descending waves, and left and right turning whorls. It is worse than this. We need to challenge spiral symmetry thinking. There is no reality axis around which the spiralic helice is spinning, and there is no symmetry. There is no uniformity to the spiralic vortices of turbulence of the sixth extinction.

Existing work on multi-level governance (MLG) has concentrated on decentring of the state (e.g., Rhodes, R. A. W. (1994). The hollowing out of the state: The changing nature of the public service in Britain. Political Quarterly, 65(2), 138–141; Rhodes, R. A. W. (1997). Understanding governance: Policy networks, governance, reflexivity and accountability. London: Open University Press; Rhodes, R. A. W. (2008). Understanding governance: Ten years on. Organisation Studies, 28(8), 1243–1264); growth of non-state actors in governing (e.g., Crouch, 2004; Jessop, B. (2004). Multi level governance and multi-level metagovernance-changes in the European Union as integral moments in the transformation and re-orientation of contemporary statehood. In I. Bache & M. Flinders (Eds.), Multi level governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press); classifying different types of governance (e.g., type 1 and type 2 MLG – see Hooghe & Marks, 2003; Ongaro, E., Massey, A., Holzer, M., & Wayenberg, E. (Eds.). (2010). Governance and intergovernmental relations in the European Union and the United States: Theoretical perspectives. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). The purpose of the chapter is to complement these approaches by focusing on politics and political strategies in multi-level systems.

The chapter draws on an extensive literature in governance and political accountability and on political dynamics, management and strategies within multi-level state systems. Although in international context, particular accentuation is placed on the UK case.

There are three broad findings. First, while the growth of MLG and in particular supra state activities and institutions have undermined conventional conceptions of political accountability, more nuanced interpretations are provided; as are cases of successful popular challenge to a seemingly inevitable application of neo-liberal new public management driven approaches to public service provision, as witnessed in examples of public service de-privatisation and re-municipalisation. Second, as seen in the United Kingdom, political strategies in a multi-state system are presented in terms of zero sum or alternatively win-win scenarios. In Scotland, for example, though there have been difficulties for state wide parties in managing multi-level politics in the devolved arena, yet in that arena win-win strategies have been played out; and in Northern Ireland with a contextual backdrop of conflict, there is also evidence of win-win political actions. Third, some general findings are presented which outline a range of centrifugal and centripetal forces found in some European countries and how these affect the choice of political strategy.

This chapter claims that the La Chamba community in central Colombia exhibits some characteristics of Schumpeter's (1949) concept of economic development. This case is important because it represents several mestizo communities in Latin America, which are deeply involved in domestic and international craft markets. The market economy penetrates the ceramic community of La Chamba, fostering technological change, improving economic development (as Schumpeter defines it), and creating economic differences across households.

This chapter proposes a quantum relational process philosophy as an approach for studying organization-in-becoming as a world-creating process. Furthermore, the quantum relational process philosophy is tied to quantum storytelling. Whereas the quantum relational process philosophy outlines a philosophy of a processual ontology, epistemology, and ethic, quantum storytelling provides the storytelling medium through which such an ontology, epistemology, and ethic emerges through articulation and actualization. As such, the two approaches are introduced as inseparable from each other.

The focus of this chapter is to unfold the ties between the quantum relational process philosophy and quantum storytelling through the perspective of the quantum relational process philosophy itself.

The proposed quantum relational process philosophy is defined as Being-in-Becoming. Thereby, this approach is suggested as an alternative to the “Being” perspective and the “Becoming” perspective or at least as a further development of the becoming perspective. These latter two perspectives present two different ways of viewing organizational change: development and transformation.

The being perspective relies on substance ontology acknowledging the existence of entities: that “which is.” In substance ontology, however, entities such as individuals and organizations are viewed as existing in themselves in fixed space-time frames. This view entails a rather static and stable ontology, perceiving the organization as a ready-made world of stable, unchanging entities. This perspective is often referred to as the approach of building the organizational world through intervention and control of change.

As a contrast, the becoming perspective relies on a process ontology while the organization is perceived as a sea of constant flux and change through which the organization emerges on the way. In this process-oriented perspective, attention is directed toward “that which is becoming.” In this perspective, the organization is perceived as a world-making phenomenon emerging through ceaseless processes of transformation. This approach is often referred to as the dwelling approach, that is, to dwell in the world-making phenomenon letting it happen. This perspective tends to ignore that which exists, that is the ready-made forms, and only focus on that which is becoming.

In this chapter, the proposed being-in-becoming perspective views the tension between being and becoming as a dialectical interplay that is decisive to organizational transformation. However, in the being-in-becoming perspective, “entities” are viewed from a quantum perspective whereby being-in-becoming differs from the substance ontology in its view of the nature of “entities.” In this perspective, the organization is viewed as a dialectical interplay between, at the one hand, the organizational form(ing) of life and, at the other hand, the aliveness of unfolding and transforming living life-worlds of being-in-the-world in fluid space and open time. This dialectical interplay is conceived as central in organizational world-creating processes.

The aim of the chapter is to develop a conceptual framework of a quantum relational process philosophy that embraces the dialectics of transforming organizations. The contribution is to be capable of understanding the performative consequences of dialectic to organizational transformation viewed from the being-in-becoming perspective of the quantum relational process philosophy.

Through the contribution of Heidegger, Hegel, Aristotle, and Boje, and further enriched by Barad, Bakhtin, and Shotter, a conceptual framework is developed for understanding, analyzing, and problematizing dialectical organizational world-creating.

This framework is called “Fourfold World-Creating.” The fourfold world-creating framework keeps the dialectic of organizational transformation at its center while it at the same time take into consideration the dialectical interplay of ontology, epistemology, and ethic. In this sense, the framework is proposed as quantum relational process philosophy. The incorporation of ethic in the quantum relational process philosophy represents an additional contribution of the chapter.

The fourfold world-creating framework is furthermore suggested to be conceived as a quantum relational process philosophy of the antenarrative dimension in David Boje’s quantum storytelling triad framework encompassing: (1) the narrative, (2) the living stories, and (3) the antenarrative. In his recent research, David Boje has a developed a dialectical perspective on his storytelling framework. Following in line with this thinking, this chapter suggests viewing (1) the narrative as the ready-made form, (2) the living stories as the living life-worlds, and (3) the antenarrative as fourfold world-creating.

In this sense, the proposed dialectical fourfold world-creating framework and its embeddedness in the quantum relational process philosophy contributes to our understanding of the research contributes of antenarrative storytelling in organizational studies.

As findings, the chapter proposes what could be considered as ontological, epistemological, and ethical key constituents in dialectical organizational world-creating. The contribution of these findings encompasses an analytical framework for (1) understanding the dialectical, transformative movements of the organization as well as (2) analyzing and problematizing the cease of dialectical tensions that seems to lock the organization in a particular state of being, only capable of repeating and reproducing its ready-made world in fixed space-time frames.

To begin, citizens of the former Soviet Republics perceive themselves to be failures. Many view the last century as a waste for Russians, an opinion shared not only among intellectuals but also among civilians. Disappointment with communism and communists has been followed by disappointment and mistrust in democracy and democrats. While Russia’s current boundary configuration and ethnic posture are new, it has retained the most painful colonial assets of Czarist Russia, primarily in the Northern Caucasus. Further, the two Chechen wars exacerbate the challenges the nation now faces and serve as a reminder that, although Vladimir Putin’s assent to power has reduced somewhat the centrifugal tendencies in Russia, the new Russian Federation is not immune to challenge.