Computer science advocates institutional frameworks as an effective tool for modelling policies and reasoning about their interplay. In practice, the rules or policies, of which the institutional framework consists, are often specified using a formal language, which allows for the full verification and validation of the framework (e.g. the consistency of policies) and the interplay between the policies and actors (e.g. violations). However, when modelling large-scale realistic systems, with numerous decision-making entities, scalability and complexity issues arise (...) making it possible only to verify certain portions of the problem without reducing the scale. In the social sciences, agent-based modelling is a popular tool for analysing how entities interact within a system and react to the system properties. Agent-based modelling allows the specification of complex decision-making entities and experimentation with large numbers of different parameter sets for these entities in order to explore their effects on overall system performance. In this paper we describe how to achieve the best of both worlds, namely verification of a formal specification combined with the testing of large-scale systems with numerous different actor configurations. Hence, we offer an approach that allows for reasoning about policies, policy making and their consequences on a more comprehensive level than has been possible to date. We present the institutional agent-based model methodology to combine institutional frameworks with agent-based simulations). We furthermore present J-InstAL, a prototypical implementation of this methodology using the InstAL institutional framework whose specifications can be translated into a computational model under the answer set semantics, and an agent-based simulation based on the jason tool. Using a simplified contract enforcement example, we demonstrate the functionalities of this prototype and show how it can help to assess an appropriate fine level in case of contract violations. (shrink)

This study focuses on why some companies in developing countries go beyond environmental regulations when implementing their corporate environmental social responsibilities or citizenship behavior. Drawing mainly upon the new institutional theory, this study develops a conceptual framework to explain three institutional factors: companies’ market orientations, industrial characteristics, and corporate identities. Accordingly, we suggest that companies from developing countries that are oriented to markets in developed countries, operate in highly concentrated industries, and have missionary identities adopt corporate environmental (...) citizenship behavior by going beyond environmental regulations. The study also discusses the theoretical, policy, and managerial implications of the conceptual framework. (shrink)

This research delved into the analysis of the role of institutional entrepreneurship within the Colombian business context, focusing on the process of divergent change promoted by entrepreneurs. Following the theory of institutional entrepreneurship, it examined how entrepreneurs operating in non-privileged positions within highly regulated industries challenge established conventions by developing new ventures. The study was underpinned by qualitative research of a descriptive nature, implementing a design based on a review of existing literature. The results of this analysis revealed (...) that the integration of traditional entrepreneurial skills with supplementary and complementary competencies, oriented towards new institutional logics, can constitute an effective strategy for entrepreneurial development in Colombia. Consequently, it is concluded that institutional entrepreneurship exerts a significant influence on entrepreneurial change within Colombia. This finding provides valuable insights for future research and for the design of policies to promote innovation and entrepreneurial development in the country. (shrink)

This chapter examines the rapidly developing global institutional frameworks for corporate sustainability occurring in response to imminent climate change. Corporations need to engage fully and responsibly in the urgent tasks of adaptation and amelioration required to remedy the damage caused by their earlier externalization of the costs of emissions and other pollution and reach for the objective of eliminating future carbon emissions. Guiding and facilitating this immense paradigm shift in corporate sustainability is a vast framework of international and (...) civil institutions focusing on different elements of the transformation process. The resulting widening scope of corporate directors’ duties in this more dangerous context is considered. Finally, the remarkable burgeoning of international institutions and agencies advising and monitoring corporations on climate change, carbon disclosure, responsible investment, and integrated reporting are examined. Collectively, this huge and multifaceted effort by both business and civil society, by all the agencies and initiatives discussed, represents a great advance in the campaign for corporate environmental, social, and governance responsibility. The ideals manifested are often exemplary, and whatever weaknesses and limitations revealed in the complex challenges these initiatives face, in aggregate, the initiatives do represent a significant institutional development in the cause of corporate responsibility. (shrink)

This paper explores both differences and points of contact between selected contemporary theories of public ethics in the West and China. China is in a greater state of flux in this connection, with new, eclectic approaches to ethical justification for moral agency gaining prominence. There are thematic parallels between East and West in their distinct strains of institutionalism . However, there are recent Chinese theoretical proposals – many incorporating Western sources – that address this quandary, namely the institutional overdetermination (...) of moral agency. These proposals are joined to contributions from feminist and liberation ethics in a critical reconsideration of overridingness in formal ethics. Contemporary Chinese ethics connect moral claims to kin, community, and reciprocity networks, particularly as traditional philosophy is recovered in new theoretical syntheses. The grounding of Confucian ethics i.. (shrink)

The present research is an attempt to determine the contribution of the management system and the institutional framework to the efficiency of values-based management. The interest in the question of efficiency stems from the fact that to grasp this founding principle of management is essential for any effort of evaluation and valuation accompanying the adoption of any type of management. Our choice of an organizational variable as well as an environmental one to explain the phenomenon of efficiency, intends (...) to cover sources of influence, both internal and external to the organization. As such, this study addresses the following question: What is the effect of the management system and the institutional framework on the efficiency of values-based management? The main theoretical and empirical results reveal that these two variables contribute jointly to the efficiency of VBM. More precisely, the empirical results obtained, in particular through the canonical correlation analysis, specify that both variables influence the efficiency of VBM in different degrees, with the effect of the management system being superior. The latter explains the efficiency of the management by the values at a rate of 52.59 %, whereas the institutional framework explains it only up to 25.15 %. (shrink)

In order to understand how the environment influences business owner/managers’ attitudes towards tax morale, we build a theoretical model based on a neo-institutionalist framework. Our model combines three complementary perspectives on institutions—normative, cultural–cognitive and regulatory–instrumental. This enables a broader understanding of factors that influence business owner–managers’ attitudes towards tax evasion. We test the resulting hypotheses using regression analysis on survey data on business owner/managers in Latvia—a transition country, which has undergone massive institutional changes since it was part of (...) the Soviet Union over 25 years ago. We find that legitimacy of the tax authorities and the government, feeling of belonging to the nation and perceptions of the risk and severity of punishment are all associated with higher tax morale for business owners and managers. (shrink)

This book deals with the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of bounded rationality in the operation of institutions. It focuses on decisions made under uncertainty, and presents a reliable strategy of knowledge acquisition for the design and implementation of decision-support systems. Based on the distinction between the inner and outer environment of decisions, the book explores both the cognitive mechanisms at work when actors decide, and the institutional mechanisms existing among and within organizations that make decisions fairly predictable. While (...) a great deal of work has been done on how organizations act as patterns of events for (boundedly) rational decisions, less effort has been devoted to study under which circumstances organizations cease to act as such reliable mechanisms. Through an empirical strategy on open-ended response data from a survey among junior judges, the work pursues two main goals. The first one is to explore the limits of "institutional rationality" of the Spanish lower courts on-call service, an optimal scenario to observe decision-making under uncertainty. The second aim is to achieve a better understanding of the kind of uncertainty under which inexperienced decision-makers work. This entails exploring the demands imposed by problems and the knowledge needed to deal with them, making this book also a study on expertise achievement in institutional environments. This book combines standard multivariate statistical methods with machine learning techniques such as multidimensional scaling and topic models, treating text as data. Doing so, the book contributes to the collaboration between empirical social scientific approaches and the community of scientists that provide the set of tools and methods to make sense of the fastest growing resource of our time: data. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present the dynamics of the structure of human action to enable us to link the organizational level of institutions, norms, and culture of the firm. At the organizational level, the existing institutions and culture are the confines of our individual action. However, at the individual level, we focus on the external consequences of our acts. It is our acts that maintain social institutions and culture. The ethics of personal virtues demands an ethics of (...) institutions, the ethics which deals with the institutional means of realizing individual ends. All individuals choose courses of action by deciding what type of life is worth living. In this view, virtue (arete) occupies a central position, defining the paradigm that each society with its institutions and norms sets as the model of life to be lived (eudiamonia). (shrink)

Among key emerging societal principles to which a lawyer owes a high degree of fidelity are those that advance sustainability and that combat corruption. This essay considers the character of those...

As euthanasia has become a widely debated issue in many Western countries, hospitals and nursing homes especially are increasingly being confronted with this ethically sensitive societal issue. The focus of this paper is how healthcare institutions can deal with euthanasia requests on an organizational level by means of a written institutional ethics policy. The general aim is to make a critical analysis whether these policies can be considered as organizational-ethical instruments that support healthcare institutions to take their institutional (...) responsibility for dealing with euthanasia requests. By means of an interpretative analysis, we conducted a process of reinterpretation of results of former Belgian empirical studies on written institutional ethics policies on euthanasia in dialogue with the existing international literature. The study findings revealed that legal regulations, ethical and care-oriented aspects strongly affected the development, the content, and the impact of written institutional ethics policies on euthanasia. Hence, these three cornerstones—law, care and ethics—constituted the basis for the empirical-based organizational-ethical framework for written institutional ethics policies on euthanasia that is presented in this paper. However, having a euthanasia policy does not automatically lead to more legal transparency, or to a more professional and ethical care practice. The study findings suggest that the development and implementation of an ethics policy on euthanasia as an organizational-ethical instrument should be considered as a dynamic process. Administrators and ethics committees must take responsibility to actively create an ethical climate supporting care providers who have to deal with ethical dilemmas in their practice. (shrink)

Individuals, Institutions, and Markets offers a theory of how the institutional framework of a society emerges and how markets within institutions work. The book shows that both social institutions, defined as the rules of the game, and exchange processes can be analyzed along a common theoretical structure. Mantzavinos' proposal is that a problem solving model of individual behavior inspired by the cognitive sciences provides such a unifying theoretical structure. Integrating the latest scholarship in economics, sociology, political science, law, (...) and anthropology, Mantzavinos offers a genuine political economy showing how social institutions affect economic outcomes. (shrink)

The Forestry Pilot Plan set intomotion collectively-owned and managed forestry in overforty communities in Quintana Roo, Mexico and hasshown the promise of a forestry development model thatpromotes conservation by giving local people a genuinestake in sustainable resource management. Today, thelegacy of the PPF is under great pressure. Externally,neoliberal policy reform restructures agrarianproduction in ways that favor individual overcollective management of natural resources.Internally, organizational problems createinefficiencies within both forestry ejidos(cooperative agrarian communities) and theirintermediate level forestry civil societies. Peasants'capacity to defend their (...) interests and dealeffectively with their production problems throughstrong representative organizations is beingundermined by new rules for economic associationwithin the ejidos and by the turning over of technicalservice financing to the market. Though organizationalinnovations within the ejidos hold positive potential,existing civil societies merit continued assistance askey actors promoting sustainable forestry. Studyingcommon property management regimes across multiplelevels and dimensions reveals that in Mexico, policyreform overlooks the crucial social resourcesrepresented by peasant organization, undermining thepossibility of sustainable forest management whileassigning the peasant most of the cost ofconservation. If conservation is indeed encouraged bythe genuine participation of those with a stake insustainable use of natural resources, national andinternational communities that value Mexico's tropicalforests should also invest in both social and economiccosts of conservation. (shrink)

The authors led the development of a framework for ethical decision-making for an Academic Health Sciences Centre. They understood the existing mission, vision, and values statement (MVVs) of the centre as a foundational assertion that embodies an ethical commitment of the institution. Reflecting the Patient and Family Centred Model of Care the institution is living, the MVVs is a suitable base on which to construct an ethics framework. The resultant framework consists of a set of questions for (...) each of the MVVs. Users of the framework are expected to identify two or more possible decisions to address the issue at hand and then, by applying the provided sequence of questions to each, examine these options and determine the overall ethically preferable decision. The construction of such a framework requires the creative involvement of the institution’s staff. Thus the development of the framework can represent a training process in ethical decision-making as well as advance the ethical atmosphere of the institution. This novel approach has the advantage of placing the MVVs on active duty, at the centre of ethical decision-making, and lifts it from its otherwise relative obscurity in most institutions. (shrink)

This paper provides a computational framework, based on defeasible logic, to capture some aspects of institutional agency. Our background is Kanger-Lindahl-Pörn account of organised interaction, which describes this interaction within a multi-modal logical setting. This work focuses in particular on the notions of counts-as link and on those of attempt and of personal and direct action to realise states of affairs. We show how standard defeasible logic (DL) can be extended to represent these concepts: the resulting system preserves (...) some basic properties commonly attributed to them. In addition, the framework enjoys nice computational properties, as it turns out that the extension of any theory can be computed in time linear to the size of the theory itself. (shrink)

This thesis examines the key moral principles that should govern decision-making by police and military when using lethal force. To this end, it provides an ethical analysis of the following question: Under what circumstances, if any, is it morally justified for the agents of state-sanctioned security institutions to use lethal force, in particular the police and the military? Recent literature in this area suggests that modern conflicts involve new and unique features that render conventional ways of thinking about the ethics (...) of armed conflict, and the use of lethal force, as inadequate or redundant. In particular, there is an increased concern with the moral difficulties created by “non-standard” cases. This is where the police or military are obliged to operate outside their conventional contexts. In such non-standard cases, on what moral basis can (or should) state actors – especially the police and military – use lethal force? One approach argues that there is nothing morally exceptional about the use of lethal force by police or military. This says the only available moral justification for using lethal force is killing in self-defence or defence of others. In contrast, I use an institutional approach to develop a moral framework for the state’s morally exceptional use of lethal force. The institutional approach is concerned with the ends (telos) or purpose of a social institution. It says that the moral purpose of a social institution alters the moral responsibilities of its agents; what is referred to as role morality. My analysis demonstrates that there is an important moral distinction between justified killing in self-defence and state-sanctioned uses of lethal force. My claim is that police and military uses of lethal force are not morally justified in the same way as the average person’s use of lethal force (i.e. self-defence or defence of others). Instead, I argue that the state-sanctioned institutional role of police and military give these state actors special moral duties, and therefore exceptional moral justification, for using lethal force. I argue that the institutional end of the police is the preservation of public safety. This includes using lethal force where it is necessary to protect life and prevent serious injury to jurisdictional inhabitants. In contrast, a morally responsible state uses military force to defend the “common good.” That is, when it is necessary to defend the peaceful functioning of a state from armed threats or other forms of political violence. I then conclude that non-standard cases require the addition of jus ad vim (or the just use of military force short-of-war) as a hybrid element to the moral framework for the state-sanctioned use of lethal force. This provides a better way of applying ethics to the use of military force when defending the common good against serious threats in non-standard cases. This is because jus ad vim complements the conventional military paradigm by permitting the use of military capabilities to defend the common good. But, at the same time, it inhibits the move towards the more destructive levels of violence characteristic of conventional warfighting. (shrink)

Cambodians are still vulnerable. To reverse those conditions, National Social Protection Strategy (N.S.P.S) was developed for the poor and vulnerable people to promote their livelihoods. Royal Government of Cambodia (R.G.C) has paid attention to social assistance. In strategic plans, highlights on strengthening, and collectively developing social security, consistent and effective. With these issues, the government establishes a national social protection policy framework to help all people in particular poor and vulnerable people (M.o.E.F, 2017, p.1). The research aims at reviewing (...) the institutional capacity of government institutions in charge of the National Social Protection Framework (N.S.P.P.F) toward its goal achievement The Department for International Development (D.E.F.I.D) capacity approach is proposed as a framework for this institution of government toward its goal achievement. The D.E.F.I.D (2003) cited in Kay amp Franks (2003) identifies the approach for assessing capacities in three-level. The strengths and the weakness of the seven points were identified. Those included an Overview of N.S.P.P.F, financial resources, relationship with others, policies and systems, strategies, structures, and technical skills and competencies. It was concluded that budget limitations and lack of data and guidelines for implementing the frameworks were limited. Recommendations were identification of People with Disability (P.W.D) data, people close to the poverty line, the inclusion of P.W.D, increase in budget, and budget decentralization. (shrink)

Theory of Mind (ToM), the cognitive capacity to attribute internal mental states to oneself and others, is a crucial component of social skills. Its formal study has become important, witness recent research on reasoning and information update by intelligent agents, and some proposals for its formal modelling have put forward settings based on Epistemic Logic (EL). Still, due to intrinsic idealisations, it is questionable whether EL can be used to model the high-order cognition of ‘real’ agents. This manuscript proposes a (...) framework that takes visibility, memory, perspective and communication as the main factors underpinning mental attributions. This is more in-line with findings in cognitive science and allows us to model well-known False-Belief Tasks that are typically used in testing people's ToM. We discuss some of the framework's technical features, arguing why it does justice to empirical observations. (shrink)

Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) are publicly funded organisations that provide small loans to people in financially underserved areas of the UK. Policy makers have repeatedly sought to understand and measure the performance of CDFIs to ensure the efficient use of public funds, but have struggled to identify an appropriate way of doing so. In this article, we empirically derive a framework that measures the performance of CDFIs through an analysis of their stakeholder relationships. Based on qualitative data from (...) 20 English CDFIs, we develop a typology of CDFIs according to three dimensions: organisational structure, type of lending and type of market served. Following on from this, we derive several propositions that consider how these dimensions relate to the financial and social performance of CDFIs, and provide the basis for a performance measurement framework. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that corporate social responsibility is institutionalised amongst multinational corporations. Yet CSR scholarship faces considerable challenges. An agreed definition is lacking, even amongst researchers adopting aligned approaches. Studies remain heavily focused on making a business case for CSR, despite its widespread acceptance into business practice. Few studies examine CSR’s on-ground implications for the communities it purports to help, favouring instead a macro-level focus. And concerns about CSR’s sincerity, motivations and ethics perpetuate questions about its integrity. This article argues (...) that new institutionalism is well placed to respond to these core challenges for CSR, and that new institutionalist perspectives can complement and enrich other common theoretical approaches. It contributes a social mechanism-based framework for CSR, identifying and exploring the key social mechanisms that institutionalise it; namely, discourse, mimesis, normative learning and coercion. Understanding CSR as an institution facilitates new and different explorations of its causes and effects and opens new avenues for scholarly inquiry. Illustrative examples from a 3.5-year study of CSR in the global mining industry are presented to explore the implications of CSR as an institution and to suggest pathways for innovative research. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the relationship and the interaction between institutions, policy and the labour market in the light of the ideas of the first generation of institutional economists, who, in contrast to neoclassicals, conceived of the economy as a nexus of institutions, underlining, therefore, the significant role of institutional and non-market factors in the functioning of an economic system. They also criticised those who define (economic) welfare only in terms of efficiency and satisfaction of consumer interests; (...) institutionalists instead focus on issues related to justice, human self-development and labourers' welfare. In addition, early institutionalists paid considerable attention to the institutional framework of the labour market. In particular, the first generation of institutional economists highlighted the importance of institutions and other non-market parameters in determining the level of wages and employment (e.g. the role of the bargaining power of workers and employers). Furthermore, they made substantial contributions towards the field of labour policy and they were pioneers in the formulation of economic and social policy. Specifically, various modern institutions and labour market policies, such as unemployment benefits, industrial training and active employment policies, were implemented in the US, during the first decades of the 20th century, after the recommendation of the institutional labour economists. Therefore, their ideas, besides being interesting from a historical point of view, may also be useful in today's analysis of workers' problems and the functioning of modern labour markets. (shrink)

Defining the principles of justice that ought to govern the global economic and political sphere is one of the most urgent tasks that contemporary political philosophers face. But they must also contribute to working through the institutional implications of these principles. How might principles of global justice be realized? Must the institutions that aim to implement them be transnational, or can global justice be attained within the context of the state system? Can institutions of democratic self-governance be imagined beyond (...) the nation-state? These are just some of the questions that still face political philosophers even when issues of abstract principle have been addressed. This volume establishes a dialogue between philosophers working at all levels of abstraction. Some of the authors are concerned with the grounds and scope of the obligations that bind the citizens and governments of rich countries to those of poorer nations. But many examine the question of how these obligations can be satisfied, both within existing institutional frameworks and beyond. Together their essays constitute a major contribution to the advancement of both the theoretical understanding and the practical requirements of global justice. (shrink)

This study develops an internal–external institutional framework that explains why firms act in socially responsible ways in the emerging country context of China. Utilizing a mixed method of in-depth interviews and a survey study of 225 Chinese firms, the author found that internal institutional factors, including ethical corporate culture and top management commitment, and external institutional factors, including globalization pressure, political embeddedness, and normative social pressure, will affect the likelihood of firms to act in socially responsible (...) ways. In particular, implicit ethical corporate culture plays a key role in predicting different aspects of corporate social responsibility, while external institutional mechanisms mainly predict market-oriented CSR initiatives. This study contributes to the research on CSR antecedents by showing that in the emerging economy of China, CSR toward nonmarket stakeholders is more closely intertwined with corporate tradition and values, while legitimacy-seeking CSR activities are still limitedly rewarded. (shrink)

Scientific progress has many facets and can be conceptualized in different ways, for example in terms of problem-solving, of truthlikeness or of growth of knowledge. The main claim of the paper is that the most important prerequisite of scientific progress is the institutionalization of competition and criticism. An institutional framework appropriately channeling competition and criticism is the crucial factor determining the direction and rate of scientific progress, independently on how one might wish to conceptualize scientific progress itself. The (...) main intention is to narrow the divide between traditional philosophy of science and the sociological, economic and political outlook at science that emphasizes the private interests motivating scientists and the subsequent contingent nature of the enterprise. The aim is to show that although science is a social enterprise taking place in historical time and thus is of a contingent nature, it can and in fact does lead to genuine scientific progress - contrary to the claims of certain sociologists of science and other relativists who standardly stress its social nature, but deny its progressive character. I will first deal with the factual issue by way of introducing the main concepts and mechanisms of modern institutional theory and by applying them to the analysis of the cultural phenomenon that we call modern science. I will then turn to the normative issue: what is the appropriate content of the institutional framework, for scientific progress to emerge and be sustained at which level should it be set and by whom? Addressing this problematic is equivalent to conducting a constitutional debate leading to a Constitution of Science. (shrink)

This paper aims to characterize the main actors in the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry — national companies, foreign companies and public laboratories — and analyze how they were affected and how they reacted to changes over the last 30 years in the institutional framework. The results show that national companies have been gaining prominence in the Brazilian pharmaceutical market with their internationalization movement and their strengthening of innovation strategies.

We subject others and are ourselves subjected to risk all the time - risk permeates life. Despite the ubiquity of risk and its imposition, philosophers and legal scholars have devoted little of their attention to the difficult questions stimulated by the pervasiveness of risk. When we impose risk upon others, what is it that we are doing? What is risking's moral significance? What moral standards govern the imposition of risk? And how should the law respond to it? This book highlights (...) these important but neglected questions and offers novel answers to them in a systematic way, constructing a normative framework of risk imposition that draws upon a wide range of insights from diverse sources within philosophy and legal theory.Oxford Legal Philosophy publishes the best new work in philosophically-oriented legal theory. It commissions and solicits monographs in all branches of the subject, including works on philosophical issues in all areas of public and private law, and in the national, transnational, and international realms; studies of the nature of law, legal institutions, and legal reasoning; treatments of problems in political morality as they bear on law; and explorations in the nature and development of legal philosophy itself. The series represents diverse traditions of thought but always with an emphasis on rigour and originality. It sets the standard in contemporary jurisprudence. (shrink)

Although euthanasia is seen as the problem of the individual will and as one’s right to privacy, to a better quality of life or to a dignified death, it has major institutional implications. They are closely related to the juridical system, to the way of understanding state involvement in protecting the individuals and respecting their freedoms, to the institutional system of health care, to the government rules that establish social, political or professional practices. The public debate around the (...) topics related to the human condition, like euthanasia, grants a special force to public communication, to organizational communication, to communication in professional environments, to physician-patient communication and, more generally, to interpersonal communication. In this text we emphasize the importance of public debate on euthanasia from the perspective of organizational ethics, of medical deontology, of patients’ rights, but especially of elaborating public policies and national programs, and we underline the importance of the need to establish protocols for health care, as well as to build a framework of democratic communication. (shrink)

The Republic of Macedonia has been a part of the Bologna process since 2003. The Ministry of Education, law and policy makers and higher education institutions have actively engaged with its main concepts. In parallel with this, since the adoption of the law on higher education in 2008 and the reform of the Accreditation and Evaluation Board, there have been numerous changes and amendments culminating in the fast-tracked adoption of a new law at the beginning of 2015. Some of its (...) solutions created a huge debate among the academic community, other intellectuals and students themselves, resulting in the postponement of that law and a kind of legal vacuum. In such turbulent circumstances, individual higher education institutions had to consider how and to what extent to adopt and develop relevant standards and guidelines, comply with the legal framework and promote good practice. The aim of this paper is to present how these three aspects, Bologna standards and guidelines for Quality Assurance, a national legal framework and an institutional approach are being reflected, merged and implemented at a relatively young higher education institution. It questions the impact of these three elements on each other and how one institution’s drive for improvement is affected. This is done through a qualitative analysis of the three-fold perspectives. The conclusions and recommendations are expected to be of use to policy makers in the country and region as they evaluate how international trends and good practice fit into the socio-economic and political conditions of RM and similar countries. At the same time, it can demonstrate how far institutional quality assurance and progress can be implemented and recognized in the country itself and by some international stakeholders. It can also prove that the South East European University is a national leader in this field as RM has no functioning QA evaluation system, while SEEU has managed to create a well structured and operating one, based on international and institutional experiences. (shrink)

In recent years there has been increased recognition of the importance of high standards in ethics, governance and the integrity of research. This paper is a case study of the University of Bristol's approach to address these important activities in a Higher Education Institution. It will highlight the importance of working closely with the academic research community to ensure maximum engagement, leading to a sustained culture change that recognizes faculty and departmental specific needs. A key tool to ensuring high standards (...) of research integrity and compliance with the legislative framework is the development of a supportive quality assurance programme. (shrink)

The Civil Economy approach, as developed by Italian economists Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, aims at introducing reciprocity into the economy as a humanizing factor. Despite being presented as an innovative perspective, the CE approach shares many characteristics with the German model of Social Market Economy. The present paper compares both approaches, showing that they in fact share a normative basis and similar aims but address them from diverse points of view; namely, CE addresses them from a virtue ethics perspective (...) and SME from an institutional ethics one. This leads them to stress different aspects and to focus on diverse problems. Therefore, CE would not constitute an alternative to SME but a complement. Thus, a combination of both approaches should allow each to take advantage of their respective strengths and lead to a better result in terms of the common good. (shrink)

This paper reports a preliminary sketch of a framework for integrating perspectives on economics, ethics, strategy, and stakeholders (Jones, 1995). It may notbe desirable in management practice to separate such considerations (Harris & Freeman, 2008). There are three general types of collective choice institutions: governments, markets, and voluntary associations. There are four general types of moral theory: moral rules (Kantianism), consequentialism (utilitarianism), virtuousness (bundling virtue theory, religion, and moral intuitionism), and social contract. There are three general positions concerning social (...) responsibilities of individuals and corporations (i.e., a licensed group of individuals). One position asserts zero social responsibility beyond compliance with laws. The polar-opposite position asserts significant social responsibilities by moral obligation. An intermediate position asserts social responsibility by agent cost-benefit analysis. The framework seeks to map these types of institutions, moral theories, and social responsibility conceptions relative to one another. The purpose is to see whether insight can be obtained concerning certain key developing debates. The paper explores implications of the work of Ostrom and Williamson (winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences) for this framework. That work addresses choice institutions—to which moral theories and social responsibility theories can be added. (shrink)

The book provides a novel account of the ontological foundations of institutional facts, and argues that there are some important epistemic and methodological implications that follow from this ontology. The first part of the book offers a detailed reductive account of institutional facts by way of metaphysical grounding. It shows that an ontology of institutional facts requires an ontology of social rules, and the latter depends on a reductive account of collective attitudes. The book offers a grounding-reductive (...) account of collective attitudes that comports with methodological individualism. It argues for a functional explanation of the constitutive relations between rules and practices, challenging John Searle’s influential distinction between constitutive and regulative rules. The second part of the book aims to show that there are a number of important epistemic and methodological conclusions that follow from the ontology of institutional facts. First, that there are certain types of widespread errors about the socially constructed aspects of reality that are not metaphysically possible. The second methodological argument is that a metaphysical account of institutional reality does not have to provide an explanation of the relevant social practices in terms that would rationalize the practice for the participants themselves. Finally, the last chapter explains the idea of hierarchical practices, arguing that basic social power-structuring rules function to transform brute power into an elaborate normative framework, constituting authoritative institutions that are central to our institutional reality. (shrink)

The regulation of the activity of multiple autonomous entities represented in a multi-agent system, in environments with no central design (and thus with no cooperative assumption), is gaining much attention in the research community. Approaches to this concern include the use of norms in so-called normative multi-agent systems and the development of electronic institution frameworks. In this paper we describe our approach towards the development of an electronic institution providing an enforceable normative environment. Within this environment, institutional services are (...) provided that assist agents in forming cooperative structures whose commitments are made explicit through contracts. Our normative framework borrows some concepts from contract law theory. Contracts are formalized using norms which are used by the institution while monitoring agents’ activities, thus making our normative environment dynamic. We regard the electronic institution as a means to facilitate both the creation and the enforcement of contracts between agents. A model of “institutional reality” is presented that allows for monitoring the fulfillment of norms. The paper also distinguishes our approach from other developments of the electronic institution concept. We address the application of our proposal in the B2B field, namely regarding the formation of Virtual Organizations. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of the escalation in institutional inves power and heterogeneity for two dominant theories of corporate governanceagency theory and stakeholder theory. From this analysis, a new view of the agency relationship between institutional investors and their portfolio firms emerges, which recognizes the institutions’ market power, complex role as financial intermediaries, and possible involvement in simultaneous and opposing agency contracts. We also conclude that stakeholder theorists should reconsider these newly empowered shareholders’moral standing in relation to (...) their portfolio firms, and they should reexamine the identities and goals of these modern investors. To that end, we demonstrate that a novel, intragroup application of Mitchell, Agle, and Wood’s stakeholder framework to heterogeneous institutional investors illuminates their varying levels of stakeholder salience. (shrink)

Heeding the call for a deeper understanding of how cross-sector social partnerships can be managed across different contexts, this article integrates ideas from institutional theory with current debate on cross-boundary collaboration. Adopting the point of view of business actors interested in forming a CSSP to address complex social problems, we suggest that “appropriateness” needs shape business approaches toward partnering for social change, exerting an impact on the benefits that can be gained from it. A theoretical framework is proposed (...) that identifies and frames four CSSP styles, as resulting from combinations of dominant institutional orientations in a field and its general level of coherence. We show how, depending on prevailing institutional logics, intervention models underlying the CSSP have to emphasize either the business soundness of the initiative or its social value, together with a consistent leadership style. Moreover, while directive approaches based on concentrated governance structures aimed at setting the rules of the game are shown to prevail in fields characterized by low level of institutional coherence, participative models emerge in more established fields, with CSSP’s promoter playing an integrative role through distributed governance structures. The article concludes with a summary and implications of an institutional-based view of CSSPs. (shrink)

We formulate a general institution-independent (i.e. independent of the details of the actual logic formalised as institution) version of the Craig Interpolation Theorem and prove it in dependence of Birkhoff-style axiomatizability properties of the actual logic.We formalise Birkhoff-style axiomatizability within the general abstract model theoretic framework of institution theory by the novel concept of Birkhoff institution.

Recent years have seen an immense upsurge in developing the notion of institution with the aim of updating and reconfiguring its conceptualisation to make it correspond to present times. The stakes are high as the current Western institutional framework struggles to ensure its historical continuation—conceived broadly as political, economic, social, scientific, artistic, and other institutions—as the predominant global dispositive. In the article, we first review the current most significant orientations and disciplines that focus on institutions and proceed with (...) a critical assessment of relevant events. In the second part, we question the subjective process and subjectivation of an institutional framework. If we reject the linguistic, empirical, or hermeneutic approaches, how can we capture the dynamics of change in a framework? What indicates that a subjective process is taking place? We draw on the cases of St. Paul and Giordano Bruno to illuminate the Law’s historical repetition through cumulative cultural growth in re-inscribing the subjectivization of faithful and enduring—i.e. universalist—operations of rupture and dispute leading to a Decision against reigning particularisms of institutional setups. (shrink)

This paper discusses the varieties of capitalism in transitional societies in Latin America and Central / Eastern Europe. The intended purpose of these transitions from semi-closed import-substituting economies in the first case and state socialist ones in the second was to institutionalize open-market economies. Twenty or thirty years later, there is a variety of types of capitalism in these countries, which I classify into three: open-market, neo-mercantilist, and anemic. The question for sociology is whether these quite different variants represent temporary (...) stages or distortions in the same process of transition or whether, on the contrary, they may institutionalize as discrete forms of peripheral capitalism. Neither standard “legacy” argu­ments nor institutionalist theories offer satisfactory answers to this question. The multiple modernities approach, on the other hand, is more appropriate as a theoretical perspective, but it has not produced yet specific propositions applicable to this question. My paper makes two claims. First, the successful transfer of institutions depends on the congruence between these institutions and the broader institutional framework of the recipient economies, a point not developed by institutionalist theories. I offer a hypothesis in this regard: Two critical nodes of congruence are the regulatory and extractive capacity of the state and the strength of civil society. Second, market capitalism (as liberal democracy as well) is a complex institution, and some of its components “travel” more easily across societies and institutional frameworks, and therefore are easier to institutionalize. This is the source of the hybrid variants. (shrink)

The concept of institutional logics, as developed by Roger Friedland and articulated in the management and organization studies literature, is brought into alignment with Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic framework. Drawing on examples from studies of law and organizations, the article argues for the value of conceptualizing society as comprising a set of institutional orders, each operating with a distinctive logic. Logics are made evident in practices and the article argues that those working in the critical realist addition need (...) to pay more attention to taken for granted practices in their analyses. (shrink)

The present paper seeks, from the political realism of Hinkelammert and the politics of the liberation of Dussel, to identify the initial limits that delineate the framework of political action. The political action framework delimits the space of empirical possibility. For it, the definition of politics is adopted as “art of the possible”, explicitly accepted by Hinkelammert and developed implicitly by Dussel. Three limits are identified that outline the framework of political action: 1) the natural environment as (...) a condition of existence of living corporality, 2) the satisfaction of physical needs as a condition to preserve living corporality, 3) intersubjective experiences as a condition to maintain the human life. Propose these limits allows to establish the bases of the utopia of the political realism of Hinkelammert and of the politics of the liberation of Dussel. (shrink)

Universal social institutions, such as marriage, commons management and property, have emerged independently in radically different cultures. This requires explanation. As Boyer and Petersen point out ‘in a purely localist framework would have to constitute massively improbable coincidences’ . According to Boyer and Petersen, those institutions emerged naturally out of genetically wired behavioural dispositions, such as marriage out of mating strategies and borders out of territorial behaviour. While I agree with Boyer and Petersen that ‘unnatural’ institutions cannot thrive, this (...) one-sided explanation of universal social institutions in terms of genetic human nature is unsatisfactory. Drawing on the literature on multi-level selection and gene-culture coevolution, I argue that universal social institutions are first and foremost the products of cultural selection. They occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of cultural possibilities, much in the same way that biological adaptations occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of biological possibilities. To show this, I use game-theory. By modelling the domains of social interaction in which marriage, commons management, and property emerged as Prisoner’s dilemma situations, it becomes clear how an institutional framework allows the group to move to an interactive equilibrium with a larger payoff. Institutions do so by incentivising all parties to adopt a cooperative strategy. They are culturally selected ways of optimising genetically constrained domains of human social interaction. (shrink)