Emergent structural approaches to institutional complexity tend to inhibit the role of agency in addressing logic multiplicity scenarios. Prior studies of logic multiplicity have documented a diverse set of outcomes, ranging from domination through hybridization, and characterized by various levels of conflict. A new stream of research has emerged that seeks to explain this heterogeneity through the structural components of complexity. These studies tend to minimize the role of agency in institutional complexity scenarios, positing that (...) outcome diversity, and the organization’s ability to exert agency, can be accounted for by the interaction of exogenously determined parameters, such as centrality, compatibility, prioritization, and jurisdictional overlap. This article revisits the role of agency in these models, suggesting that agency is not only framed by, but may itself shape, structure. The article draws on a comparative case study in five Israeli nonprofit organizations, focusing on the introduction of the business logic through a strategic planning process, and the challenge that this represents for the legacy social logic. The case studies demonstrate that organizations regularly use a set of distinctive mechanisms to manipulate the structural components of complexity, and, in so doing, agentically regulate logic multiplicity outcomes. (shrink)

Multinational corporations are operating in complex business environments. They are confronted with contradictory institutional demands that often represent mutually incompatible expectations of various audiences. Managing these demands poses new organizational challenges for the corporation. Conducting an empirical case study at the sportswear manufacturer Puma, we explore how multinational corporations respond to institutional complexity and what legitimacy strategies they employ to maintain their license to operate. We draw on the literature on institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational (...) paradoxes. The results of our qualitative longitudinal study show that managing corporate legitimacy is a dynamic process in which corporations adapt organizational capacities, structures, and procedures. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the determinants underlying the internalization of proactive environmental management proposed by certifiable environmental management systems such as those set out in ISO 14001 and the European Management and Auditing Scheme. Using a study based on 232 usable questionnaires from EMAS-registered organizations, we explored the influence of institutional pressures from different stakeholders and the role of corporate strategy in the “substantial” versus “symbolic” integration of environmental practices. The results highlighted that although institutional pressures generally strengthen the (...) internalization of proactive environmental practices, the influence of stakeholders can either support the integration of these practices or encourage their superficial adoption. For example, while pressure from suppliers and shareholders contribute to corporate greening, pressure from customers and industrial associations tend to encourage greenwashing. Product quality-oriented strategies also positively influence EMS internalization. The paper sheds light on the institutional complexity underlying the substantial versus symbolic implementation of environmental practices, and questions the dominant isomorphic view of EMS adoption. The paper also bridges the gap between complementary approaches on corporate greening, notably neo-institutional and stakeholder theories. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

“Complexity sciences” are an interdisciplinary and transnational domain of study that aims at modeling natural and social “complex systems.” They appeared in the 1970s in Europe and the United States, but were boosted in the mid-1980s by the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) under the formula of “science of complexity.” This small but famous institution is the object of the present article. According to their promissory ambitions and to the enthusiastic claims of some scientific journalists, complexity sciences were (...) going to revolutionize all of knowledge and even private and public actors who had learned to master them. In the light of this, one would expect to observe a well-established and autonomous research and educational field, capable of reproducing itself through professional institutions. Yet this is not the case. To explain the paradox, I propose to combine different models of history and sociology of emergent and declining domains, in order to give account of the rise and failure of complexity sciences. (shrink)

The claim is made that the norms for justified belief in science require a complex structure of practices and institutional arrangements, that these arrangements have a history which, at crucial junctures, are subject to severe stress, that such severe stress puts at issue the whole epistemic structure of science, and that at present science faces one of these periods, and its future is in doubt.

The task of designing effective economic and political institutions requires substantial foresight. The designer must anticipate not only the behavior of individual actors, but also how that behavior will aggregate. Rising complexity brought about by increases in speeds of adaptation, diversity, connectedness, and interdependence make institutional design all the more challenging. Given the focus on equilibria, the extant literature on mechanism design might appear incapable of coping with this complexity. Yet, I suggest that a deeper engagement with (...) the origins of the mechanism-design framework reveals insights that may help us design robust, adaptive institutions that can harness complexity. (shrink)

Summary: The evolution of complex societies began when agricultural subsistence systems raised human population densities to levels that would support large scale cooperation, and division of labor. All agricultural origins sequences postdate 11,500 years ago probably because late Pleistocene climates we extremely variable, dry, and the atmosphere was low in carbon dioxide. Under such conditions, agriculture was likely impossible. However, the tribal scale societies of the Pleistocene did acquire, by geneculture coevolution, tribal social instincts that simultaneously enable and constrain the (...) evolution of complex societies. Once agriculture became possible, a competitive ratchet drove further improvements in subsistence and in scale of social organization . Those societies that grew and became better organized were advantaged in individual wealth and economic and military power, and tended to conquer, absorb, or be imitated by smaller and less well organized societies. Internal competitors for power espousing useful social innovations could deliver improved returns when their quest was successful. Notwithstanding the ratchet, social complexity increased only slowly in the first half of the Holocene and even afterwards few periods except the past two centuries saw changes that were dramatic on the scale of individual lifetimes. We attempt a taxonomy of the processes that regulate rates of institutional evolution, cause reversals of complexity against the ratchet, and impose historical contingency on institutional evolution. (shrink)

Institutional investors control almost 60% of all assets under management worldwide and encompass a wide variety of organizations. Despite this reach, however, institutional investors have not received the normative scrutiny they merit beyond general discussions around their legally grounded fiduciary obligations to their beneficiaries. This paper offers a discussion of institutional investor ethical obligations in light of their specific attributes. We propose that the different characteristics of institutional investors and the diverse roles they play in the (...) marketplace inform the scope of their activities, and, in turn, the different ways in which their basic ethical obligations can be fulfilled. (shrink)

This paper analyses the complexity of family life, which includes both its charismatic and institutional aspects. Deepening the understanding of this basic social group can be useful in explaining how human beings in their decisions and actions, as well as organizations, unceasingly transcend different oppositions and dimensions. Undertaking this topic is not only important in the context of understanding the fundamental and complex experience of family life in the process of preparing and introducing new members to society, but (...) also from the organizational perspective. It means that exploring the role of both dimensions – charismatic and institutional – which are somehow complementary, is crucial for understanding and harmonizing the different relationships and interactions within organizations, including business ones. In this way the article shows the connection between the functioning of the family and society (including organizations within it). (shrink)

This paper investigates the intersection of cognitive sciences and social network theory and its counterpart, the complexity sciences, aiming to shed light on the compatibility and potential integration of these frameworks into institutional theory. Institutional scholars have for long selectively adopted notions linked with the cognitive sciences and complexity sciences, such as the notion of path dependence, without exploring the broader implications of systematically integrating such perspectives into institutionalism. This paper aims to advance such a comprehensive (...) theoretical integration, by investigating the effective combination of these approaches and their significant implications. It shows how the complexity sciences contribute to dissolving the barriers between the cognitive and social realms and illustrates how this impacts notions of human agency and reflexivity. Theoretical integration also involves acknowledging considerable diversity in individual human agency, which in turn prompts a reconsideration of how notions of institutional stability, change, diffusion and adaptation are understood. Furthermore, the paper addresses the epistemological challenge presented by the complexity sciences, before it highlights the general relevance of institutional theory in analyzing complex social phenomena. Finally, the paper explores implications for research methodology, proposing that a fusion of institutional theory and the complexity sciences provides a metatheoretical framework for assessing the contextual suitability of different theoretical and methodological approaches. (shrink)

Elvira Mayordomo and Wolfgang Merkle The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 135-136, March 2013.

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)

Complexity sciences are one of the most mediatized scientific fields of the last 40 years. While this domain has attracted the attention of many philosophers of science, its normative views have not yet been the object of any systematic study. This article is a contribution to the thin social science literature about complexity sciences and proposes a contribution focused on an analysis of the origins, models, and organization of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), cradle of the field. The (...) paper defends the thesis that the notion of “complex adaptive systems” bears a project of naturalization of society through numerical and evolutionary lenses by promoting a Darwinian and capitalist view of the economy. At the same time, such a view has been embodied in the very way of functioning of the institute, which was conceived as an agile organization in a competitive environment and which relies on a fundraising philosophy that tends to commodify science. From a theoretical viewpoint, this text is anchored in the field of Science and Technology Studies and particularly in the coproductionist paradigm, which theorizes the dynamic entanglement of science and society. In terms of empirical sources, the article is based on interviews conducted by the author, and on the SFI's scientific publications as well as institutional archives. (shrink)

With the expansion of multinational corporations (MNCs), the alarming upsurge in widely publicized and notable corporate scandals involving MNCs in emerging markets has begun to draw both academic and managerial attention to look beyond home market practices to the pressing concern of CSR in emerging markets. Previous studies on CSR have focused primarily on Western markets, reserving limited discussions in addressing the issue of MNC attitudes and CSR practices in their emerging host markets abroad. Despite this incongruity in academic response (...) to CSR in emerging markets, managers of multinational companies continue to face mounting and most often conflicting pressures to weigh among multiple strategic CSR responses in emerging markets. Such a task is often further complicated by the complexity of varying business norms and standards, regulatory environments, and stakeholder demands for CSR across national boundaries. With such a challenge in mind, I attempt to examine the explanatory factors in leading MNCs, otherwise recognized for accountability and integrity in their home markets, to employ inconsistent or negligent practices under CSR pressure in Chinese emerging economy. Preliminary findings reveal that discrepancies exist in how MNCs perform in CSR in home countries versus in host countries. While MNCs do have much to improve, the institutional environment in the emerging market, including the legal framework and the ethical culture, also needs to be improved by the host country governments, the industry associations, and local firms. Meanwhile, media interest and journalists, NGOs, third party monitors, industry stakeholders as well as consumer advocacy groups can raise the visibility of MNC's contradictory practices between their origin nations and countries with emerging economies and offer the pressures and incentives for MNCs to amend their ethical short-comings. This article also suggests implications for both theory and practice. (shrink)

There is a growing understanding that modern slavery is a phenomenon ‘hidden in plain sight’ in the home countries of multinational firms. Yet, business scholarship on modern slavery has so far focussed on product supply chains. To address this, we direct attention to the various institutional pressures on the UK construction industry, and managers of firms within it, around modern slavery risk for on-site labour. Based on a unique data set of 30 in-depth interviews with construction firm managers and (...) directors, we identify two institutional logics as being integral to explaining how these companies have responded to the Modern Slavery Act: a market logic and a state logic. While the institutional logics literature largely assumes that institutional complexity will lead to a conciliation of multiple logics, we find both complementarity and continued conflict in the logics in our study. Though we identify conciliation between aspects of the market logic and the state logic, conflict remains as engagement with actions which could potentially address modern slavery is limited by the trade-offs between the two logics. (shrink)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) invests over $37 billion per year in support of research to improve human health. All research funded by NIH that involves human subjects is subject to regulatory oversight, requiring institutions to staff and manage Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). IRB members, chairs, and the many associated human subjects protections oversight professionals who support the work of the IRB must navigate complex federal regulations issued by multiple agencies. This book is the industry standard reference work (...) for the research oversight community, providing comprehensive, understandable interpretations of the regulations, clear descriptions of the ethical principles on which the regulations are based, and practical best-practices guidelines for effectively implementing regulatory oversight. (shrink)

The complexity of human societies of the past few thousand years rivals that of social insect societies. We hypothesize that two sets of social “instincts” underpin and constrain the evolution of complex societies. One set is ancient and shared with other social primate species, and one is derived and unique to our lineage. The latter evolved by the late Pleistocene, and led to the evolution of institutions of intermediate complexity in acephalous societies. The institutions of complex societies often (...) conflict with our social instincts. The complex societies of the last few thousand years can function only because cultural evolution has created effective “work-arounds” to manage such instincts. We describe a series of work-arounds and use the data on the relative effectiveness of WWII armies to test the work-around hypothesis. (shrink)

Dominant social sciences approaches to complexity suggest that awareness of complexity in late-modern society comes from various recent scientific insights. By examining today’s plant and human genomics sciences, I question this from both ends: first suggesting that typical public culture was already aware of particular salient forms of complexity, such as limits to predictive knowledge (which are often denied by scientific cultures themselves); second, showing how up-to-date genomics science expresses both complexity and its opposites, predictive determinism (...) and reductionism, as coexistent representations of nature and scientific knowledge. I suggest we can understand this self-authored epistemic confusion in modern science by avoiding ‘the usual suspects’ – fading simpler discourses left over from previous scientific times; media oversimplifications; or the need to ‘simplify’ to essentials, for ignorant publics – and looking instead at the silent imaginations of extra-scientific reference groups reflected and projectively performed in scientific discourses-practices themselves. Thus contradictions of complex scientific understandings are systematically created by science’s own embodiment of epistemic commitments influenced by commercial cultures, and by imagined publics who are important new constructed objects of institutional scientific concerns – over authority and trust. New dimensions of complexity thus come alive through paying attention to neglected tacit dimensions of science–society interrelations. (shrink)

What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive questions that the science of complexity seeks to answer. In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex (...) systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Comprehending such systems requires a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. She explores as well the relationship between complexity and evolution, artificial intelligence, computation, genetics, information processing, and many other fields. Richly illustrated and vividly written, Complexity : A Guided Tour offers a comprehensive and eminently comprehensible overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time. (shrink)

Many philosophers regard collective behavior and attitudes as the ground of the whole of social reality. According to this popular view, society is composed basically of collective intentions and cooperative behaviors; this is so both for informal contexts involving small groups and for complex institutional structures. In this article, I challenge this view, and propose an alternative approach, which I term institutional externalism. I argue that institutions are characterized by the tendency to defer to elements that are external (...) to the content of collective intentions—such as laws, declarations, and contracts. According to institutional externalism, those elements are the grounds of institutional statutes, rights, and duties. (shrink)

We attribute knowledge to institutions on a daily basis, saying things like "the government knew about the threat" or "the university did not act upon the knowledge it had about the harassment". Institutions can also attribute knowledge to themselves, like when Maybank Global Banking claims that it offers its customers "deep expertise and vast knowledge" of the Southeast Asia region, or when the United States Geological Survey states that it understands complex natural science phenomena like the probability of earthquakes occurring (...) along a given fault line. This article aims to discover when we can correctly attribute knowledge to an institution. I find this an interesting question, especially because when something does go wrong, all too often the official line of response from institutions is that they were unaware of the situation: in other words, they did not have enough information at their disposal. I will argue that institutions have fewer excuses for being ignorant than individuals do, and that many admissions of institutional knowledge are too modest. I begin by discussing a real-life example of the latter, before turning my attention to the usually fragmented nature of institutional knowledge. I also discuss the robustness of this knowledge, offering a distinction between two types of institutional knowledge. I then discuss knowledge parameters and why institutions have fewer excuses for not knowing about something than individuals do. I round off the chapter by examining institutional knowledge on climate change. (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)

The terms complexity, complex adaptive systems, and sciences of complexity are found often in recent scientific literature, reflecting the remarkable growth in collaborative academic research focused on complexity from the origin and dynamics of organisms to the largest social and political organizations. One of the great challenges in this field of research is to discover which features are essential and shared by all of the seemingly disparate systems that are described as complex. Is there sufficient synthesis to (...) suggest the possibility of an overarching science of complexity? This report describes current views on this subject held by various eminent scholars associated with the Santa Fe Institute.The physical sciences have traditionally been concerned with “simple” systems whose dynamics can be described in mathematical terms with precision and certainty. In contrast, the biological and social sciences are inevitably concerned with self-organized or social “complex” systems whose detailed behaviors appear to be unpredictable. The two categories differ greatly in size and diversity, prompting the late mathematician Stanislaus Ulam to remark that research on complex systems might be compared to the study of non-elephants. Nevertheless, certain integrative themes have begun to emerge.Rising activity in this field of research runs completely counter to the trend toward increasing fragmentation and specialization in the sciences. It has stimulated a resurgence of interest in a broad synthesis involving mathematics, computational science, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. The growth of effort in this very extended field has been greatly stimulated by the development of new computational tools that are capable of dealing with vast, interrelated databases. Many of the participants in complexity research feel that it is now time to reintegrate the fragmented interests of much of the academic community. The reader is encouraged to consider whether such views are sparking a historic renaissance of scholarship or represent a passing scientific diversion. (shrink)

This paper follows a paper by Mitcham and considers whether engineering is among a group of occupations he calls philosophically weak, in the sense that engineering does not aspire to good-in-themselves ideals as do medicine and law. The paper agrees that engineering is philosophically weak, but in the different sense that engineering is not as reflective upon its nature and place in the world as some other professions. The paper recovers Mitcham's distinction by consider the institutional complexity of (...) a given occupation, suggesting that engineering's practice in the context of complex institutional arrangements precludes the relative ethical simplicity of such occupations as medicine and law. (shrink)

Increasingly in economics what had been considered to be unusual and unacceptable has come to be considered usual and acceptable, if not necessarily desirable. Whereas it had been widely believed that economic reality could be reasonably described by sets of pairs of linear supply and demand curves intersecting in single equilibrium points to which markets easily and automatically moved, now it is understood that many markets and situations do not behave so well. Economic reality is rife with nonlinearity, discontinuity, and (...) a variety of phenomena that are not so easily predicted or understood. At the same time the broad coherence of economic systems is more impressive than ever in the face of such phenomena. The order of the economy appears to emerge from the complex interactions that constitute the evolutionary process of the economy. These phenomena have come to be labeled as complexity in economics. Even what seems simple in economics generally arises from behavior not reflecting rational expectations; we live in a world that reflects the enormous variety and diversity of humanity in their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, interacting with each other in an enormous range of institutional frameworks. What emerges in the aggregate may have little to do with what happens at the individual level. But this aggregate cannot be simply described by some set of aggregate equations. It emerges out of the soup of the individual and particular with all its multiform interactions and peculiarities. (shrink)

The complexity approach to political economy suggests that radical uncertainty is a necessary feature of a complex and evolving socioeconomic landscape. Radical uncertainty raises various adaptive challenges that are likely to escalate in the coming decades under the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” It jeopardizes the wellbeing of ordinary citizens, whose welfare prospects, job opportunities, and income stream are rendered insecure. It also renders precarious the robust implementation of universal human rights, including the right to social security. In fact, it will (...) be argued that human rights cannot be institutionally secured unless they are implemented in a “complexity aware” way that takes account of the uncertainty of the socioeconomic order. In particular, in order to better protect the dignity of rights holders, and to allow them to survive and thrive in the face of radical uncertainty, governments ought to explore various institutional alternatives to existing schemes. It will be suggested that most existing conditional welfare policies systematically fall short of complexity-aware institutional implementation to the extent that they rely on unreasonable assumptions regarding the availability of salient technocratic control over the complex socioeconomic order. Some economists and philosophers have suggested that UBI (Universal Basic Income) might be a viable way to implement the right to social security today. I propose that some of UBI’s most ethically and economically controversial features, such as unconditionality and universality, appear relatively appealing in light of the complexity perspective. In the absence of better alternatives, UBI might even be a requirement of a robust implementation of the human right to social security – a right that welfare states are already committed to on the level of ideal theory but predictably fail to respect in practice due to policy incoherence. However, open questions remain about whether UBI can be transformed from an ideal model into a pragmatic policy. (shrink)

With increasing complexity of the networks of social interaction new and more abstract forms of trust are in need. A conceptual analysis of different forms of trust, namely interpersonal trust, trust in groups and institutional trust is given. It is argued that institutional trust cannot totally replace interpersonal trust. Institutional trust rather builds on more personal forms of trust in that it is primarily formed in personal encounters with salient representatives of the institution and presupposes trust (...) in others trusting in the institution. Any form of trust is grounded in some normative foundation. A trusting person can make herself vulnerable to the action of other individuals because she perceives those others as acting from shared aims or values. Thus, some sort of virtue is a prerequisite of any form of genuine trust. While institutional trust may in some respect be more easily acquired than interpersonal trust in general it may bear a fundamental problem: institutional trust may be extraordinary robust with regard to a wide range of behavioral experiences; thus, it may be enduringly maintained although in fact unjustified. In a concluding section the general analysis is illustrated by some reflections on the problem of trust in government. (shrink)

Gerald Gaus was one of the leading liberal theorists of the early twenty-first century. He defended liberal order based on its unique capacity to handle deep disagreement and pressed liberals toward a principled openness to pluralism and diversity. Yet, almost everything written about Gaus's work is evaluative: determining whether his arguments succeed or fail. This essay breaks from the pack by outlining underlying themes in his work. I argue that Gaus explored how to sustain moral relations between persons in light (...) of the institutional threats of social control, evaluative pluralism, and institutional complexity, and the psychological threat of acting solely from what I shall call themere first-personal point of view. The idea of public justification is the key to sustaining moral relations in the face of such challenges. When a society's moral and political rules are justified to each person, moral relations survive the threats they face. (shrink)

Since the path-breaking work of Karl Deutsch on security communities and Ernst Haas on European integration, it has been clear that international institutions may create senses of community and belonging beyond the nation state. Put differently, they can socialize. Yet the mechanisms underlying such dynamics have been unclear. This volume explores these mechanisms of international community building, from a resolutely eclectic stand point. Rationalism is thus the social theory of choice for some contributors, while others are more comfortable with social (...) constructivism. This problem-driven perspective and the theoretical bridge building it are the cutting edge in international relations theory. By providing more fined-grained arguments on precisely how international institutions matter, such an approach sheds crucial light on the complex relationship between states and institutions, between rational choice and social constructivism, and, in our case, between Europe and the nation state. (shrink)

The topics of social ontology, culture, and institutions constitute a problem complex that involves a broad range of human social and cultural cognitive capacities. We-mode social cognition and shared intentionality appear to be crucial in the formation of social ontology and social institutions, which, in turn, provide the bases for the social manifestation of collective and shared psychological attitudes. Humans have ‘hybrid minds’ that inhabit cultural–cognitive ecosystems. Essentially, these consist of social institutions and distributed cognition that afford the common grounds (...) for the objectives of we-mode shared intentionality. As such, they stabilize social cognition normatively and offer predictive power in social interaction. Full-blown we-mode shared intentionality fundamentally depends on the functions of social institutions. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is to unveil whether the power distance/textual complexity duality attributed ordinarily to legal language applies to two different documents which are widely deployed, interpreted and applied in the global scope of commercial trade and communications, namely Lloyd’s Institute Cargo Clauses and the London International Court of Arbitration Rules. In choosing two texts which are the direct product of the law-making machinery of the Common law system, but which are used internationally, we ultimately undertake (...) to research whether opacity is really inherent to legal texts in English with an international scope of implementation. To scrutinise, illustrate and argue on the degree of difficulty and power distance in such legal instruments, the perspective of genre has been chosen as the most effective of instruments provided by current Applied Linguistics. Genre analysis permits to identify the genre or genres of a specialised professional community connected to the communicative group it comes from, the audience that receives it, the historical and cultural background and the extra-textual reality it aims to represent. The goal of our study, carried out through different levels: formal, discursive and, mainly, pragmatic, is to discern whether there exists any possible equation between power and textual complexity, and the consequences this entails for the understanding of the nature of these major international texts. (shrink)

Over the past decade, institutional theory has been extensively utilized in the field of social entrepreneurship (SE). However, an encompassing overview of the wide-ranging applications of institutional theory to SE is lacking, potentially hampering academic advances in this domain. To fill this gap, we conduct a systematic review and supplementary bibliometric analysis of 148 papers published between 2008 and 2022 to comprehensively understand the nexus of SE and institutional theory while also outlining the integration of ethics herein. (...) Our analysis shows that the existing research is divided into three clusters, reflecting three unique conversations between SE and institutional theory: institutional and societal change through SE, institutional complexity and hybrid organizations, and the institutional context of SE. We find that ethics is only integrated into these conversations to a limited degree. Based on our analysis, we zoom in on each conversation to identify the existing research gaps and point to new opportunities for future research. We also encourage SE scholars to zoom out on the abovementioned conversations to enrich this promising field by critically examining ethics and incorporating relevant insights from other research fields (i.e., social movement theory, category, and emotions). (shrink)

The new terrorism is a major exemplifying case for complexity theory – for example, it exemplifies major disproportionalities between cause and effect, unpredictable outcomes, and self-organizing, emergent structures. It also illustrates, I argue in this article, the emergence of global microstructures: of forms of connectivity and coordination that combine global reach with microstructural mechanisms that instantiate self-organizing principles and patterns. Global systems based on microstructural principles do not exhibit institutional complexity but rather the asymmetries, unpredictabilities and playfulness (...) of complex (and dispersed) interaction patterns. The analysis of complex global microstructures helps to collect and assess empirical evidence for the architecture of the global structural forms of a world society. It also suggests a theory of microglobalization – the view that the texture of a global world becomes articulated through microstructural patterns that develop in the shadow of (but liberated from) national and local institutional patterns. (shrink)

Violence can be physical and psychological. It can characterize personal actions, forms of group activity, and abiding social and political policy. This book includes all of these aspects within its focus on institutional forms of violence. Institution is also a broad category, ranging from formal arrangements such as the military, the criminal code, the death penalty and prison system, to more amorphous but systemic situations indicated by parenting, poverty, sexism, work, and racism. Violence is as complex as the human (...) beings who resort to it; its institutional forms pervade our relational lives. We are all participants in it as victims and perpetrators. The chapters in this book were written in the hope that violence can be explicated, even if not fully understood, and that such clarification can help us in devising less violent forms of living, even if it does not lead to its total abolition. The studies bring new aspects of violence to light and offer a number of suggestions for its remedy. (shrink)

"_The Moment of Complexity_ is a profoundly original work. In remarkable and insightful ways, Mark Taylor traces an entirely new way to view the evolution of our culture, detailing how information theory and the scientific concept of complexity can be used to understand recent developments in the arts and humanities. This book will ultimately be seen as a classic."-John L. Casti, Santa Fe Institute, author of _Gödel: A Life of Logic, the Mind, and Mathematics_ The science of complexity (...) accounts for that inscrutable mix of chaos and order that governs our natural world. Complexity explains how networks emerge and function, how species organize into ecosystems, how stars form into galaxies, and how just a few sequences of DNA can account for so many different life forms. Recently, the idea of complexity has taken the worlds of business and politics by storm. The concept is used to account for phenomena as varied as the behavior of the stock market, the response of voting populations, and the effects of risk management. Even Disney has used complexity theory to manage crowd control at its theme parks. Given the startling development of new information technologies, we now live in a moment of unprecedented complexity, an era in which change occurs faster than our ability to comprehend it. With _The Moment of Complexity_, Mark C. Taylor offers a timely map for this unfamiliar terrain opening in our midst, unfolding an original philosophy through a remarkable synthesis of science and culture. According to Taylor, complexity is not just a breakthrough scientific concept, but the defining quality of the post-Cold War era. The flux of digital currents swirling around us, he argues, has created a new network culture with its own distinctive logic and dynamic. Drawing on resources from information theory and evolutionary biology, Taylor explains the operation of complex adaptive systems in social and cultural processes and captures a whole new zeitgeist in the making. To appreciate the significance of our emerging network culture, he claims, we need not only to understand contemporary scientific and technological transformations, but also to explore the subtle influences of art, architecture, philosophy, religion, and higher education. _The Moment of Complexity_, then, is a remarkable work of cultural analysis on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how we arrived at this critical moment in our culture, and to know where we might head in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is an account of legitimacy and participation whose purposes are to produce justifiable political outcomes and to involve the citizens in productive conversations with each other. This article argues for a greater reliance on the efforts of local conversational participants in the institutional construction process. Because of their epistemic advantages, local participants are usually the agents who are most optimally positioned to construct the deliberative institutions. As such, institutionalized deliberation ought not to be seen as an orderly (...) event that is capable of being planned out beforehand by philosophers, but rather as a complex process that flourishes when the conversation is developing—as much as is practicable—on its own. (shrink)

The conflicts of interest that may arise in relationships between academic researchers and industry continue to prompt controversy. The bulk of attention has focused on financial aspects of these relationships, but conflicts may also arise in the legal obligations that faculty acquire through consulting contracts. However, oversight of faculty members' consulting agreements is far less vigorous than for financial conflicts, creating the potential for faculty to knowingly or unwittingly contract away important rights and freedoms. Increased regulation could prevent this, but (...) it is unclear what forms of oversight universities view as feasible and effective. In this article, we report on a Delphi study to evaluate several approaches for oversight of consulting agreements by medical schools. The panel was comprised of 11 senior administrators with responsibility for oversight of faculty consulting relationships. We found broad agreement among panelists regarding the importance of institutional oversight to protect universities' interests. There was strong support for two specific approaches: providing educational resources to faculty and submitting consulting agreements for institutional review. Notwithstanding the complexities of asserting authority to regulate private consulting agreements between faculty members and companies, medical school administrators reached consensus that several approaches to improving institutional oversight are feasible and useful. (shrink)

Yarkoni's argument risks skepticism about the very possibility of social science: If social phenomena are too causally complex, normal scientific methods could not possibly untangle them. We argue that the problem of causal complexity is best approached at the level of scientific communities and institutions, not the modeling practices of individual scientists.

This paper aims at transforming the nexus institution–passivity into a vibrant interrelation. With this goal on my mind, I will refer to Arnold Gehlen and his controversial discussion of the state as the most powerful institution that offers an analysis not only of the complexity of institutions but also of the genuinely paradoxical nature of the institution. Seen from the perspective of philosophical anthropology, institutions are, on the one hand, inextricably intertwined with restriction and passivity, but, on the other (...) hand, the restriction and passivity fostered by the institution must be understood as the pre-condition of an action and therefore as a force of freedom. In order to outline this thought, the paper focusses on Gehlen's last book Moral und Hypermoral (1969) and presents the institution of the state as a social-political form from which a critique – that is, a rethinking of the concept of the institution – could start. (shrink)

This book proposes a new institutional constructivist model, for social scientific and legal enquiries, based on the interrelations within the social and political world and the application of change in EU laws and politics. Much of the research conducted in social sciences and law examines the diverse activities of individuals and collectivities and the role of institutions in the social and political world. Although there exist many vantage points from which one can gain entry into understanding how agents in (...) the world act, interact, shape and bear the world, socio-legal scientific epistemology has found monism and dualism to be convincing models. This book argues that current models do not capture the complexity of our micro-worlds, macro-worlds and meso-worlds. Nor can they account for the forms and patterns of socio-legal change. Mind, time and change are brought together in an attempt to contribute to socio-legal epistemology and to enhance its toolkit. (shrink)

This paper presents a view of the process of transition from planned command socialism to mixed market capitalism involving nonlinear complex dynamical phenomena. After the former institutional structure disappears a coordination failure can bring about macroeconomic collapse as in almost all of the former Soviet bloc or macroeconomic boom as in China. A closely linked phenomenon is the rise of the underground economy as inflation and income inequality increase. This can lead to a jump from one equilibrium to a (...) very different one as nonlinear social feedback processes operate in the transition. (shrink)

This paper investigates the process through which firms and non-profit organizations reconcile divergent worldviews in the development of firm–NPO partnerships. Drawing on data from two long-lived firm–NPO partnerships, this study suggests that the dynamics of reconciliation in situations of institutional complexity can be better understood by examining how firms and NPOs manage the interplay of both market and social logics in an inter-organizational context. We have found that during the initial stages of collaboration, partners manage differences by engaging (...) in joint pilot projects and by demonstrating management’s commitment to the partnerships. Subsequently, after firms and NPOs sign a formal partnership agreement, they seek to maintain a sustainable mode of interaction by adopting three distinct mechanisms for managing tensions arising from the partnership: negotiating activity scope, monitoring and learning, and modifying organizational practices. Our research findings contribute to the literature on cross-sector partnership and institutional complexity by highlighting the means by which organizations reduce tensions associated with divergent institutional logics and maintain successful partnerships. (shrink)

An increasing body of institutional research has examined organizations’ response to conflicting institutional logics, but few studies have looked into how cross-sector organizational actors experiencing institutional complexity strategize their response mechanisms to create value in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We conduct a comparative case study of nine social partnerships between multinational companies (MNCs) and nonprofits in China. We identify a partnership logic among the value-creating partnerships where partners guided by an either/and mindset take (...) joint ownership of the social or sustainability issue/cause and integrate it into their core set of activities and goals. By contrast, the less successful partnerships guided by an either/or mindset pursue a substitution logic in which the issue and project are kept separate and marginalized from core activities and goals. We contribute to an understanding of the value creation of cross-sector social partnerships by revealing the institutional embeddedness of such partnerships and deriving a process model of collaborative value creation through institutional works in social partnerships. (shrink)

The article considers the leading and indisputable role of discursive practices in the existence of social institutions, especially in democratic governance. The necessity of searching for heuristi- cally effective approaches in the analysis of social reality in general, and especially modern soci- ality, is substantiated. In this context, the theoretical modernization of the institutional approach in the analysis of social phenomena by involving the concept of discourse in the structure of this approach is proposed. Emphasis is placed on the (...) dual meaning of social institutions — as ways of organizing the life of society and as instances (mediums) of normative, through which the order of social life is constituted, reproduced, and changed. This solves the “rule-organization” dilem- ma in neo-institutionalism. It is transferred to the mode of two inseparable and complementary functions of the institute — normative and regulative. The analysis of those semantic, organiza- tional, and procedural loadings which carry out discursive practices inactivity of institutes of society is given. In particular, emphasis is placed on the complex structure of normativity em- bodied by the public institution. It should at least highlight the explicit normativity of the system of rules and regulations on the one hand, and the order of discourse created and maintained by this institution, on the other. Discourse corresponds to the normativity in its usability — as a real process of normalization of life. Normativity exists only by generating certain practices of speech, communication, and argumentation (conclusion). This becomes the basis for distin- guishing the concept of an institution as a discursive mode of existence of a social institution on the one hand, and as a way of organizing discourse in society (order of discourse) — on the other. Among the main social effects of institutions are the generation of trust as the basis of social relations and the longevity of cultural experience. Emphasis is placed on the complexity of the existence and activities of institutions: each institution is involved in the general discursive-com- municative field of society, and in turn, influences it. (shrink)

This book examines and compares the two major traditions of institutionalist thinking in economics: the 'old' institutionalism of Veblen, Mitchell, Commons, and Ayres, and the 'new' institutionalism developed more recently from neoclassical and Austrian sources and including the writings of Coase, Williamson, North, Schotter, and many others. The discussion is organized around a set of key methodological, theoretical, and normative problems that necessarily confront any attempt to incorporate institutions into economics. These are identified in terms of the issues surrounding the (...) use of formal or non-formal analytical methods, individualist or holistic approaches, the respective roles of rational choice and rule-following behavior, the relative importance of the spontaneous evolution and deliberative design of institutions, and questions concerning the normative appraisal of institutions. The old and the new institutionalism have often been paired on opposite sides of these issues, and the issues themselves presented in a series of sharp dichotomies. Professor Rutherford argues, however, that matters are both more complex and more challenging. Although each tradition embodies fascinating insights into the study of economic institutions - their functioning, evolution, and impact on human welfare - neither has as yet provided fully satisfactory answers to the problems identified. (shrink)