Matthew M. Mars

Raging Against or With the Private Marketplace? Logic Hybridity and Eco-Entrepreneurship

The rise of market logics and the spread of neoliberal policies over the past couple of decades have led to resistance and countermobilization efforts by a variety of activists and concerned citizens—recall the vivid 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle. However, contemporary modernity is more complicated than such simple movement—countermovement imageries, and instead of witnessing a leveling of previous institutional configurations with new market-oriented ones, the blending or coexistence of multiple competing and/or complementary logics has become de rigeuer. Hence, in some cases, market logics can provide a foundation for action that supports the arguments and interests of those who stand opposed on principle to market creep. Highlighting how the environmental movement has come to embrace the market as well as activism via an exploration of student eco-entrepreneurship in university settings, we argue that both researchers and skeptics need to go beyond ideological commitments to appreciate the complicated diversity of action and empirical reality that exists at the interface of business and society.

Socially Oriented Student Entrepreneurship: A Study of Student Change Agency in the Academic Capitalism Context

This paper presents two clarifying cases of socially oriented student entrepreneurship. The findings illuminate an overlooked organizational space located at the intersection of the public good and academic capitalist knowledge/learning regimes (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004) that provides students with the entrepreneurial agency to create social change.

Who Am I versus Who Can I Become?: Exploring Women's Science Identities in STEM Ph.D. Programs

This article explores the science identities of 21 women STEM Ph.D. students at three research universities in the United States. Following a narrative approach, the findings depict five salient science identities, including those of a) academic, b) entrepreneurial, c) industrial, and d) policy scientist and e) scientist as community educator. Our study links the five science identities to epistemological approaches in knowledge creation and application and describes the ways in which women STEM doctoral students verified their identities in reaction to various social structures. Conclusions relate the concepts of identity confirmation, suppression, and flexibility to implications for policy and practice.

Integration or fragmentation? College student citizenship in the global society

Globalization has led to a societal shift toward increased emphasis on the position of individuals in the transnational context and decreased focus on distinct, but unified, national identities. This shift has led scholars to question the relevancy and effectiveness of education as a mechanism of democracy and national unification as prominently outlined in the philosophical writings of John Dewey. However, student citizenship patterns in the context of the contemporary global society have yet to be clearly identified and adequately studied from a quantitative perspective. Accordingly, we analyze national data extracted from the 2005 College Senior Survey to examine college student citizenship in terms of integration and fragmentation. The results of our exploratory cluster analysis lead us to offer four propositions on college student citizenship in the current era of globalization.

The Promise of the Organizational Ecosystem Metaphor: An Argument for Biological Rigor

Organizational scholars often adopt biological models to explain the emergence and evolution of organizations and human systems. One recent example of such adoption is the organizational ecosystem metaphor. In this article, we contend that taking a rigorous ecological approach over the application of loose ecosystem language has the potential to illuminate patterns in the life span of organizations and human systems. We first define five central properties of biological ecosystems and demonstrate their potential relevance to human-constructed systems (organizational ecosystems). We then argue the value of developing biologically based hypotheses that can be tested in the context of organizational systems. Next, we propose a set of hypotheses specific to organizational stability and disruption, using Arizona charter schools as an example to demonstrate the promise of the rigorous application of the organizational ecosystem metaphor. We close with a discussion of how the insights generated might be applied across other organizational settings and systems.

Wild greens knowledge and consumption: a qualitative exploration of human agency in the Southern Arizona food system

Abstract This qualitative, single case study explores the influence of the dominant food system (DFS) on the knowledge and consumption of three wild greens (amaranth, lambquarters, purslane) by 24 Latinxs living in Tucson, Arizona (AZ), USA. The three greens are each considered to be traditional Latinx foods. In addition to the natural occurrence of the wild greens, Tucson was selected as the study site due to its rich and diverse food tradition and deep agricultural history. A pattern of decline in the knowledge and consumption of the wild greens is observed according to three overlapping themes: generational awareness, consumer demand and scarcity, and accessibility. The bureaucratic controls that bring calculability, efficiency, and predictability to the DFS are found to be influential in the decline in wild green knowledge and consumption by the study participants. The downward knowledge and consumption pattern is further considered in the context of participant agency within the DFS. Implications for practice include strategies for more purposefully leveraging community settings and alternative marketplaces to revitalize the knowledge and consumption of wild greens and other traditional foods. Recommendations are also provided for future research on the effects of rationalization within the DFS on human agency and traditional food consumption.