Abstract:This article elaborates a normative Stakeholder Management Theory (SHMT) from a critical theory perspective. The paper argues that the normative theory elaborated by critical theorists such as Habermas exhibits important advantages over its rivals and that these advantages provide the basis for a theoretically more adequate version of SHMT. In the first section of the paper an account is given of normative theory from a critical theory perspective and its advantages over rival traditions. A (...) key characteristic of the critical theory approach is expressed as a distinction between three different normative realms, viz., legitimacy, morality, and ethics. In the second section, the outlines of a theory of stakeholder management are provided. First, three basic tasks of a theoretically adequate treatment of the normative analysis of stakeholder management are identified. This is followed by a discussion of how a critical theory approach to SHMT is able to fulfill these three tasks. (shrink)

We argue that many evolved biases produced through selective forces described by error management theory are likely to entail misbeliefs. We illustrate our argument with the male sexual overperception bias. A misbelief could create motivational impetus for courtship, overcome the inhibiting effects of anxiety about rejection, and in some cases transform an initially sexually uninterested woman into an interested one.

Stakeholder theory scholars have recently addressed two crucial calls: the first is for the integration of strategy and ethics, of stakeholder theory and strategic management, and the second call is for the development of a dynamic approach to stakeholder management. I have attempted to answer these calls by developing a theoretical framework that links together stakeholder management, stakeholder commitment to cooperate with the firm, key decision makers’ ethical commitment, and firm strategy. Starting from the basic (...) assumption that managers cannot meet all stakeholders’ demands immediately and in a tailored manner, I contend, first, that an ambidextrous approach to stakeholder management is conducive to stakeholders’ commitment to cooperate for the sustainable well-being of the firm and, second, that firm strategy and key decision makers’ ethical commitment moderate the relationship between an ambidextrous stakeholder management and stakeholder commitment to cooperate. Furthermore, drawing on this theoretical framework, I attempt to address the call for the integration of strategy and ethics by proposing a three-level conceptual model that distinguishes the objectives, the field, and the levers of integration. Finally, I outline a set of propositions that, taken together, represent a first attempt to develop a dynamic approach to stakeholder management. (shrink)

Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency (...) helped legitimize the idea of fairness in organizations as an arbiter of value. Further, each theory tempered absolute managerial autonomy with some inherent check thereon. Researchers interested in organizational justice should therefore take a historical perspective in considering how management theory includes consideration of justice-related concerns. (shrink)

Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency (...) helped legitimize the idea of fairness in organizations as an arbiter of value. Further, each theory tempered absolute managerial autonomy with some inherent check thereon. Researchers interested in organizational justice should therefore take a historical perspective in considering how management theory includes consideration of justice-related concerns. (shrink)

We propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory, and assess the implications thereof for firm-level competitive advantage. We argue that a firm’s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related, transformational adaptation over time. Our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource-based view (RBV) in strategic management and institutional theory. Stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time, a phenomenon well (...) understood in the literature, and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation. However, the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change, namely, from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity, and vice versa. When dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry, the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation. Stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage . Without these resources, which foster heterogeneity (in line with RBV thinking), the firm would not exist. At a later stage , stakeholders also contribute to inter-firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures (in line with institutional theory thinking). Adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory’s practical relevance to senior level management in business. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), tremendous efforts have been made by scientists, health professionals, business people, politicians, and laypeople around the world. Covid-19 vaccines are one of the most crucial innovations that help fight against the virus. This paper attempts to revisit the Covid-19 vaccines production process by employing the serendipity-mindsponge-3D creativity management theory. Vaccine production can be considered an information process and classified into three main stages. The first stage involved the processes of (...) absorbing information (e.g., digital data and open science) and rejecting unhelpful information (e.g., misinformation and fake news) for effectively acquiring useful insights. Useful insights were later employed by experts, enterprises, governments, and international organizations through interdisciplinary coordinated efforts for developing vaccines within a short period. Finally, the appearance of multiple types of vaccines enabled more strategic options for vaccine distribution and administration. Findings from this vaccine creativity management process could be used as critical lessons for further improvements of vaccination programs. (shrink)

Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency (...) helped legitimize the idea of fairness in organizations as an arbiter of value. Further, each theory tempered absolute managerial autonomy with some inherent check thereon. Researchers interested in organizational justice should therefore take a historical perspective in considering how management theory includes consideration of justice-related concerns. (shrink)

The move towards having more teaching of business ethics comes in part from a tendency to view managers negatively, drawing on anti-management theories that are presently popular in business schools. This can lead to a misdiagnosis of the causes of contemporary business problems. Teaching business ethics can, however, be ineffectual and counter-productive. Education in ethical philosophy can lead managers to be indecisive, sceptical or to rationalize poor conduct. The ethics of academics become salient and lapses in them undercut their (...) claims to authority. The philosophical viewpoint that stresses free choice runs contrary to the social science mission to reveal the causes that determine human behaviour and provide solutions to problems. Pro-management theory offers a more positive appreciation of managers, with its three components of structural functionalism, strategic functionalism and stewardship. (shrink)

It is becoming clear that many of today’s management theories are inadequate theoretically and practically to move understanding, scholarship, and practice to where it needs to be for scholars, business leaders, and policy makers to cope with an increasing fraught world. This Special Issue’s focus is on sustainability. Sustainability challenges need to incorporate multidisciplinary interventions and the trans- and interdisciplinary nature of solutions. To actively seek transformation toward sustainability, fundamental and innovative short-term as well as long-term efforts are required (...) in society, economy, technology, and education, including our understanding of human behavior and attitudes toward the management of the environment. This introductory piece presents natural science theories as a promising approach for achieving progress toward transformation for sustainability. (shrink)

Top-tier management journals are advocating for greater relevance from management research to Grand Challenges such as poverty alleviation. However, many scholars struggle to identify linkages between the practical undertaking of poverty alleviation and theory development opportunities in the management literature. Responding to this call, we develop and outline a framework for theorizing from an increasingly common business-based poverty alleviation approach known as ‘market orchestration.’ Core to this framework are a set of contextual difference that contrast with (...) the Western environment in which most management theorizing has taken place. These contextual differences—at the micro, meso, and macro levels—challenge the implicit assumptions underpinning much of the management literature. As a result, a substantial opportunity exists to identify new predictors, contingencies, explanations, and outcomes that can significantly inform theory. Equally important, by focusing on the contextual differences and the challenges they create, management scholars can provide practical guidance to organizations engaged in market orchestration efforts. (shrink)

Management theory is a diverse field where multiple theoretical perspectives coexist and coevolve, leading to conceptual pluralism. While conceptual pluralism is useful for grasping different aspects of the complex reality we live in, it may limit the further development of knowledge on elemental concepts. In this article, we focus on knowledge on the natural environment (NE) in management theory. We argue that management scholars and practitioners often rely on theoretical lenses that tend to reify the (...) NE, thereby limiting the conceptualization of some of the essential properties of the NE. Drawing on the example of the conceptual development of the ecosystem services (ES) at the intersection of economics and biology, we identify the advantages and the limits of interdisciplinary theory-building and testing. Finally, we discuss how tools from the philosophy of science can be useful for proposing a way forward for integrating reliable knowledge on the natural environment in management theory. (shrink)

There is growing appreciation of the challenges posed by our current economic activity in terms of the natural environment. Increasingly, people have come to appreciate that business must not only be more aware of its environmental impact, but also must be more environmentally sustainable in its core operations. Academic theories of management influence managerial practice. They clarify what is important to the corporation, and where managers and employees should direct their attention. The focus of this paper is to explore (...) the extent to which three possible managerial mindsets—shareholder value maximization, stakeholder value maximization, and the triple bottom line—may either enhance or inhibit the ability of corporations to manage in an environmentally sustainable way. We discuss the implications of each of these mindsets and highlight their relative strengths and weaknesses, noting that all three hold promise, but each has limitations in enabling managers to operate sustainably. (shrink)

Possibilities of applying the management theory in various human communities are analysed in this article. The management theory was developed as an instrument of increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of industrial enterprises. Many useful dependencies were identified and rules created for the rational division of common work and the purposeful coordination of these divided work pieces allotted for participants of the common work process. The author’s position is that many elements of the man­agement theory can (...) be successfully applied in every human community because in each of them some common work is conducted. The main condition, enabling to use all instruments of the management theory, is the existence of the main common goal, called mission, expressed in terms of meeting needs of consumers of community’s common work product. Such formulations of the mission of a family, a state, a political party and trade unions are suggested in this article. (shrink)

What would Karl Popper have made of today’s management and organisation theories? He would surely have approved of the openness of debate in some quarters, but the ease with which many managers accept the generalisations of some academics, gurus and consultants might well have troubled him. Popper himself argued that processes of induction alone were unlikely to lead to developments in knowledge and considered processes of justification to be more important. He claimed that it was not through verifying theories (...) from experiment that knowledge actually developed but through the invention of bold and innovative theories that experimenters then tried to falsify. If new theories did not agree with the results of experiment, then they were considered false. If they passed testing then they were considered unfalsified and worthy of further testing rather than true. Objective knowledge was to be obtained through ensuring critical debate and learning, rather than adhering to some objective scientific method. In this paper, Popper’s notion of falsificationism is explored through stressing the importance of the predictive content and testability of theories. A number of theories from the fields of management and organisation theory are examined and it is argued that many of them suffer from one of three defects: from over-reliance upon untestable elements with psychological origins; from being phrased in language so vague that they gloss over phenomena; or from making predictions that are so cautious and allencompassing as to be practically useless. As a result, they are likely to be unfalsifiable in Popper’s terms and their epistemological status is called into question. While acknowledging that the unpredictability of social systems poses problems for an approach stressing predictability, I conclude by arguing that organisation theory and management knowledge might well benefit from the openness and critical nature of Popper’s approach. (shrink)

Behaviorism is consistent with the assumptions of perfect competition, with the homo economicus model, and with a form of ethics that enshrines market-based notions of utility, justice, and rights and encourages rational maximizing. Economics and business courses foster this deficient form of ethics, assuming an overriding desire for money, which, according to MacIntyre and Aristotle, crowds out the associative virtues. These beliefs, often associated with Taylor and Friedman, lead to such practices as incentive compensation, which would be effective only if (...) employees were homines economici and thus rational in the sense of knowing how to satisfy whatever desires they have. Against Davidson’s view that psychology cannot be a natural science, Aristotle believes that there can be a teleological, if not exact, science of behavior. Aristotle believes that emotions and objectives may be rational or irrational. But rationality—phronesis, practical wisdom—is not a matter of applying algorithms. Doris questions whether character generates the first premises of an agent’s practical syllogisms, while Haidt has argued that we often act on emotions rather than on the basis of the reasons that we claim motivate us. Aristotle agrees that many people are not virtuous and that weakness of the will is a common occurrence, and he agrees that emotion drives actions. But if you are virtuous, your emotions and desires support your rationality. Aristotle gives us reason to reject the notion that people are homines economici and to treat them as rational deliberators, in part by creating an appropriate culture. The claim that it is in the nature of human beings to deliberate rationally is in part aspirational, but also in part scientific—in Aristotle’s modest sense. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with what Abbinnett1 described as fundamental to the discourses of social science: truth and its construction. The central problem around which the narrative is built is a growing disconnection in one area of social science, management research, between how truth is frequently defined and used and the approaches taken to constructing that truth. The result of this is an intellectual impurity whereby management research occupies an incoherent intellectual space somewhere between modernism and postmodernism. Our (...) argument is that, for a host of probable reasons, management research in many areas is dominated by the search for rational and scientific truth through the use of quantitative methodologies underpinned by a positivist philosophy. The result of this is frequently truth diluted rather than truth distilled. The essay discusses different routes to establishing a type of truth, the location of management research within a modern-postmodern continuum and the implications of this for management researchers. We begin, however, with a brief discussion of the nature of truth in social science. (shrink)

Rationality and reason are often used as synonyms, although they are very different concepts. In this article we argue that rationality is the concept of reason that has been stripped of its human elements. Ancient and medieval philosophers such as Aristotle and Aquinas stressed that the concept of reason is composed of sensitive, discursive, and moral elements. Post-Enlightenment thinkers instead, building on the works of René Descartes and Isaac Newton, took these out and claimed that rationality must be based on (...) an external logic devoid of value-concepts such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim (Koyré in From the closed world to the infinite universe, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1957). The purpose of this essay is to highlight this shift in Western thought and its consequences for management theories. While explaining the ancient concept of reason in contrast with modern rationalism (Klein in: Williamson RB, Zuckerman E (eds) Jacob Klein—lectures and essays, St. John’s College Press, Annapolis, 1985), we aim at raising awareness of the differences between building a research programme (especially in business sciences like economics and management) on rationality or on reason. (shrink)

In this paper, I build on Wittgenstein’s metaphor of a toolbox to introduce the metaphor of ‘tool confusion’ – how differing conceptual constructs may be applied, or misapplied, to one another and the effect that such applications have on the advancement of management theory. Moving beyond metaphor, I investigate a theory of management through two specific philosophical lenses (Popper and Lyotard). This analysis tests both the theory and the philosophies with regard to how each philosophy (...) may be applied as a tool to advance theory towards more effective application. Preliminary conclusions confirm that the application of partial philosophies is not as useful as the application of complete philosophies. Deeper contemplation, however, suggests that there is no upper limit to the completeness of philosophies. Thus, the problem of completeness is inescapable. In place of completeness, I explore the use of perceptual tools that are more specific, foundational and concise. Engaging in a second investigation, I use structures of logic (circular, linear, branching and co-causal) to investigate the subject theory. This investigation suggests at least two important insights relating to the structure of theory and the fuzziness of theory. Combined, these investigations and related conversations suggest rigorous methods for advancing theories and a more normative role for the philosophy of management that will support the accelerated advancement of management theory and practice. (shrink)

Handbook of Compliance & Integrity Management' provides a scientific underpinning for the practice of compliance. The compliance discipline in companies and financial institutions has grown exponentially in recent years. In spite of a plethora of works on compliance, the academic discipline on compliance is still in its infancy. This book, which is the result of the researches conducted by the Post-Doctoral Education in Compliance and Integrity Management of the VU University Amsterdam, examines the subject from such crucial and (...) varied perspectives as ethics, behavioural science, risk management, accounting, and European and international law. Much more than a critical approach to the existing practice of supervision, it provides a wealth of information, guidance, and valuable insights into the day-to-day work of compliance officers. (shrink)

Moss is right to state that management theory needs to address its epistemological foundations by considering questions in epistemology and the philosophy of science. Whether management theory needs Popper is a more tricky question. It is not clear that all theories should be falsifiable in Popper’s terms. His proposed methodology for social scientific research is inherently conservative and threatens to inhibit intellectual and social progress. But Popper’s philosophical realism and rationalism need to be preserved. Coherentism and (...) associated forms of anti-rationalism (including postmodernism and relativism) threaten to provide a rationale for the worst excesses of management theory. Indeed, the poverty of contemporary management theory is a symptom of a broader intellectual malaise: debate is increasingly characterised by the exchange of persuasive rhetoric, making it difficult to hold those in positions of power accountable for rationally justifying the positions they espouse. (shrink)

Historical myths are appealing primarily because they provide people with views of life and their role in it as significant and enduring. These worldviews help people manage death anxiety by enabling them to view themselves as part of something great that stretches far into the past and endures indefinitely into the future. We review empirical evidence supporting this analysis.

In Search of Excellence was the book that launched a thousand popular management books. In this concise book, David and Jack Collins demonstrate the emptiness of business excellence and in so doing reveal the flawed foundations of popular management theory. Focusing upon the conduct of those organizations vaunted as 'exemplars of excellence' the authors build upon insightful case reports to demonstrate wholesale misconduct at the very heart of the excellence project. Indeed, The Emptiness of Business Excellence demonstrates (...) that the exemplars of excellence indulged bribery, corruption, racism, sexism and anti-Semitism...and more besides! Furthermore, the book demonstrates that, despite their claims to knowledge, Peters and Waterman often knew little about the financial performance of their excellent organizations and were either unaware of or had chosen to overlook reports which highlighted deeply problematic conduct within those formations, which they offered as beacons for change and renewal. This book will be of interest to researchers, scholars and students with an interest in business and management, especially those focusing on the realities of managerial practice. (shrink)

Next SectionCultural differences in end-of-life care and the moral disagreements these sometimes give rise to have been well documented. Even so, cultural considerations relevant to end-of-life care remain poorly understood, poorly guided, and poorly resourced in health care domains. Although there has been a strong emphasis in recent years on making policy commitments to patient-centred care and respecting patient choices, persons whose minority cultural worldviews do not fit with the worldviews supported by the conventional principles of western bioethics face a (...) perpetual struggle in getting their care needs met in a meaningful, safe, and healing way. In this essay, attention is given to exploring why cultural differences exist, why they matter, and how health care providers should treat them in order to reduce the incidence and impact of otherwise preventable harmful moral outcomes in end-of-life care. In addressing these questions, a novel application of the renowned terror management theory will be made. (shrink)

Over the last few years, there has been an exaggeratedly widespread and frequently confused use of the concepts of 'stakeholder' and 'corporate social responsibility'. However, some interesting insights of both these notions can be found in traditional European business administration studies. In this article, the Italian view will be examined. In particular, this paper investigates the teachings of some of the historical masters of the Italian "Economia Aziendale", with particular attention to the concept of the azienda, its finalism and its (...) essential characteristics, in order to verify some consistencies with the more recent Stakeholder Management Theory. Principles and considerations seem to emerge from EA scholars' seminal works that unequivocally connect ethics with business decisions. EA fits in with SMT in many ways, and the former seems, moreover, to suggest a specific normative point of view from which the role of ethics in business activities can be approached. (shrink)

Sumantra Ghoshal’s condemnation of “bad management theories” that were “destroying good management practices” has not lost any of its salience, after a decade. Management theories anchored in agency theory (and neo-classical economics generally) continue to abet the financialization of society and undermine the functioning of business. An alternative approach (drawn from a more classic institutional, new ecological, and refocused ethical approaches) is reviewed.

The purpose of this paper is to take a critical look at some of the assumptions and theories found in economics and management and discuss their implications for the practices found in the management of business and in public management. Two sets of assumptions are of interest here. First and foremost, the assumption that economic agents are only actuated by self-interest, accompanied by assumptions about the motivating effect of pecuniary incentives and assumptions about the regulation of behaviour (...) through rules, controls and sanctions; secondly, assumptions about “scientificness” and objectivity, accompanied by demands for mathematical formalism, clear goals, quantifiable models and measurements. The assertion is that unrealistic assumptions of economics have become taken for granted and tacitly included into theories and models of management. Guiding management to behave in a fashion that apparently makes these assumptions become “true”. Cases and illustrative examples are used to show how this influences the practice of decision makers and managers. (shrink)

Understanding and improving how organizations work and are managed is the object of management research and practice, and this topic is of longstanding interest in the academia and in society at large. More recently, the contribution that the study of the brain could make to, notably, our understanding of decisions, emotional reactions, and behaviors has led to the emergence of the field of “organizational neuroscience”. Within the field of management, organizational neuroscience seeks to explore linkages between neuroscience research, (...) theories, and methods and management research. Its primary goal is to incorporate findings on the cognitive processes underlying the thoughts, behaviors and attitudes of organizational actors in order to better inform management theories, and to assist in understanding, predicting and improving these behaviors in the workplace. As a result, we have seen in the last decade a flurry of research projects and publications in organizational neuroscience, as well as novel or rejuvenated innovations around neuromarketing, neuroleadership, and cognitive enhancement in the work place, to name a few. However, research and practical applications in organizational neuroscience pose profound ethical challenges about, for example, organizational responsibility in the responsible use of scientific innovation. Drawing on recent debates in the field, and in response to upcoming ethical challenges of organization neuroscience, this book introduces “organizational neuroethics” as an emerging interdisciplinary field that addresses the ethics of organizational neuroscience research and applications, as well as the neuroscience of organizational ethics. The first part focuses on the ethics of organizational neuroscience and several chapters tackle the ethics of neuromarketing or neuroleadership and discuss the ethical issues associated with neuroenhancement practice in the workplace. The second part of the book addresses cutting-edge topics in the neuroscience of organizational ethics. Written by international experts in the fields of management, neuroscience, ethics, and social science, this book will be of prime interest to practitioners, researchers and students in the various fields concerned with improving management research and practices, as well as organizational ethics. (shrink)

The mortality salience (MS) hypothesis postulates that anxiety elicited by mortality awareness leads people to develop negative emotions toward those who hold values inconsistent with their worldview faith. We explored this hypothesis in a sample of 76 Israeli combat soldiers, who were asked to reflect on either their mortality or dental pain. Subsequently, participants reported their motivation to help a father in need who was either an Arab (outgroup) or a Jewish Israeli (ingroup), as well as their perceptions of threat (...) by Arab Israelis. Regression analysis indicated that mortality reminders intensified soldiers’ perception of threat by the outgroup, leading to an increased desire to assist a Jewish-Israeli father, and a decreased motivation to help an Arab-Israeli one. The findings demonstrate the pronounced effects of MS on soldiers involved in frequent combat actions in terms of evoking negative emotions leading to reluctance to help unarmed civilian outgroup members. Recommendations for soldiers’ pre-deployment psychoeducation sessions are provided. (shrink)

When individuals display cognitive biases, they are prone to developing systematically false beliefs. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that rather than being a flaw in human cognition, biases may actually be design features. In my paper, I assess the claim that unrealistic optimism is such a design feature because it is a form of error management. Proponents of this theory say that when individuals make decisions under uncertainty, it can be advantageous to err on the side of overconfidence if (...) the potential gains through success are high and the costs of failure are low. I argue that there are a number of conceptual problems in matching the theory with the existing data. I also show that there is empirical evidence against the error management hypothesis. (shrink)

Professional institutions are increasingly confronted by fiscal constraints and political pressures to improve and increase their accountability in a competitive consumer-driven market. Accordingly, the need to ensure efficiency and accountability is of strategic importance. This article reports on a qualitative study of medical professionals that assessed the utility of financial incentives and external control methods derived from agency theory to ensure accountability of professionals. The authors argue that approaches derived from stewardship and institutional theories can extend the principal–agent perspective (...) to sustain greater social and ethical accountability. (shrink)

Many studies about organizational experiences and theories converge today in the idea that the economic factor, most competitive now in the production of value, is the de-materialization of the economical and organizational processes. Immaterial factors (like knowledge, services, information, relationships, virtual transactions, etc.) are the competitive and crucial innovations for future competition and, at the same time, the most important criteria to rethinking and understanding the future organization. If this is true, we can realize that every person in organizations, every (...) personal history in organizations, or better the evolutionary uniqueness of every person in organizations, is the real depositary and bearer of this de-materialization. (shrink)

This article builds theory at the intersection of ecological sustainability and strategic management literature—specifically, in relation to dynamic capabilities literature. By combining industrial organization economics–based, resource-based, and dynamic capability–based views, it is possible to develop a better understanding of the strategies that businesses may follow, depending on their managers’ assumptions about ecological sustainability. To develop innovative strategies for ecological sustainability, the dynamic capabilities framework needs to be extended. In particular, the sensing–seizing–maintaining competitiveness framework should operate not only within (...) the boundaries of a business ecosystem but in relation to global biophysical ecosystems; in addition, two more dynamic capabilities should be added, namely, remapping and reaping. This framework can explicate core managerial beliefs about ecological sustainability. Finally, this approach offers opportunities for managers and academics to identify, categorize, and exploit business strategies for ecological sustainability. (shrink)

日本特有の会計環境のなかで経営者が好む会計手続き選択とは―経営者による利益調整を体系的に実証分析。.

This paper raises a challenge for those who assume that corporate social responsibility and good corporate governance naturally go hand-in-hand. The recent spate of corporate scandals in the United States and elsewhere has dramatized, once again, the severity of the agency problems that may arise between managers and shareholders. These scandals remind us that even if we adopt an extremely narrow concept of managerial responsibility – such that we recognize no social responsibility beyond the obligation to maximize shareholder value – (...) there may still be very serious difficulties associated with the effective institutionalization of this obligation. It also suggests that if we broaden managerial responsibility, in order to include extensive responsibilities to various other stakeholder groups, we may seriously exacerbate these agency problems, making it even more difficult to impose effective discipline upon managers. Hence, our central question: is a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility institutionally feasible? In searching for an answer, we revisit the history of public management, and in particular, the experience of social-democratic governments during the 1960s and 1970s, and their attempts to impose social responsibility upon the managers of nationalized industries. The results of this inquiry are less than encouraging for proponents of corporate social responsibility. In fact, the history of public-sector management presents a number of stark warnings, which we would do well to heed if we wish to reconcile robust social responsibility with effective corporate governance. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of theories of management and organisation from the perspective of Hannah Arendt’s theory of free action. This endeavour will contribute to criticism and eventually improvement of the conceptual framework of management and organisation theory. We discuss conceptual tensions in this field, for instance with respect to the relationship between human action and the constraints of an organisation. To the extent that management and organisation theory are practiceoriented, such an analysis (...) can help to understand tensions and ambiguities in practice. Some of the optimism and high hopes found in the literature may have to be tempered as a consequence of a more adequate analysis of free action. The analysis therefore provides a critical point of view on the problems of managing freely acting people. (shrink)

This paper addresses representations of Burns and Stalker’s theory that arose soon after its publication in The Management of Innovation in 1961. Different conceptions of Burns and Stalker’s contingency theory as portrayed in organisation and management texts are discussed. It will be argued that what has been represented as their theory stems in the main from ideas based on different positions within the spectrum of the positivistic, functionalist ‘paradigm’.

Based on the expanded theory of planned behavior, this study first explores the configuration relationship between founder management and innovation by using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Based on the theory of planned behavior, this study divides the behavior intention of founders into three categories: Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control. Using fsQCA, we found that there are two ways to achieve high innovation input of enterprises. In combination with the two ways, the factors such as (...) male and highly educated founder, and large firm size can effectively increase the innovation input of firms, which is consistent with the three aspects of the behavioral intention of the theory of planned behavior, and it proves that the theory of planned behavior can effectively explain the configuration relation between the founder and firm innovation. In addition, this study finds that the innovation output is different from the innovation input, is dependent on the innovation ability of the firm itself, and is less influenced by the external environment. (shrink)

The article extends the critique of structuration theory from a critical realist perspective, in particular by demonstrating how its theoretical shortcomings are manifest in management accounting research. Examining of one of the most cited structuration-based accounting studies and other more recent structuration-based accounting studies, the article highlights what accounting researchers who have embraced a structuration lens may have ignored. It also demonstrates why accounting researchers could not get a better theoretical purchase out of structuration. We find that a (...) critical realist account provides a far more in-depth account of budgeting changes and is likely to avoid the problems encountered in using a structuration theoretical lens. The article has important implications for accounting researchers as it demonstrates that analytical dualism instead of duality has much better potential to offer deeper understanding of accounting changes. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of theories of management and organisation from the perspective of Hannah Arendt’s theory of free action. This endeavour will contribute to criticism and eventually improvement of the conceptual framework of management and organisation theory. We discuss conceptual tensions in this field, for instance with respect to the relationship between human action and the constraints of an organisation. To the extent that management and organisation theory are practiceoriented, such an analysis (...) can help to understand tensions and ambiguities in practice. Some of the optimism and high hopes found in the literature may have to be tempered as a consequence of a more adequate analysis of free action. The analysis therefore provides a critical point of view on the problems of managing freely acting people. (shrink)