Sandy Green

Corporate Governance in the Context of Crises: Towards a Stakeholder Theory of Crisis Management

In this paper, we take a step towards developing a stakeholder theory of crisis management. We argue that, in the context of crises, adopting the principles of a stakeholder model of corporate governance will lead companies to engage more frequently in proactive and/or accommodating crisis management behaviour even if these crisis management behaviours are not perceived to maximize shareholder value. We also propose a mechanism that may explain why the stakeholder model may be associated with more successful crisis management outcomes. We conclude by challenging the efficacy of the shareholder view in crisis and crisis-like situations, and call for further theoretical and empirical research.

Institutional Field Dynamics and the Competition Between Institutional Logics The Role of Rhetoric in the Evolving Control of the Modern Corporation

The authors examine how competing institutional logics shape institutional fields. Specifically, they conceptualize control of the modern corporation as an evolving institutional field. They connect changes in the institutional field to the rhetoric and corresponding logics put forth by various corporate stake-holders vying for control of the firm. Changes in the corporate institutional field are represented as the diffusion of takeovers and takeover defenses. Corporate control rhetoric is traced in interviews with corporate board members. The authors argue that the rhetoric of corporate control shapes and establishes dominant stakeholder groups in the institutional field. They conclude with a brief discussion of their analysis and a call for further research.

Rhetorical Institutionalism: Language, Agency, and Structure in Institutional Theory Since Alvesson 1993

In 1993, Mats Alvesson published ‘Organizations as Rhetoric’. In his paper, Alvesson proposed that knowledge was ambiguous and that rhetoric was therefore critical to the construction and operation of institutions and organizations. Moreover, he argued that in such an ambiguous and thus rhetorical world, knowledge operated as an institutionalized myth and rationality surrogate. Alvessons insights helped inspire and initiate one of the most promising and growing areas of institutional research: rhetorical institutionalism. Rhetorical institutionalism is the deployment of linguistic approaches in general and rhetorical insights in particular to explain how institutions both constrain and enable agency. In this paper, we trace these original insights and discuss the benefits of continuing the integration of rhetorical ideas in institutional research. In addition, we propose and develop a rhetorical model of institutionalism that can spearhead research and conclude with some direct suggestions for future research.

Rhetoric, Risk, and Markets: The Dot-Com Bubble

Post-conventional economic theories are assembled to inquire into the contingent, mimetic, symbolic, and material spirals unfolding the dot-com bubble, 1992–2002. The new technologies bubble is reconstructed as a rhetorical movement across the practices of the hybrid market-industry risk culture of communications. The legacies of the bubble task economic criticism with developing critical capacity sufficient to address attention-driven economies of worth.

Inquiry on Inquiry Scientific Inquiry as a Reflective Process

The subject matter of this article is the discussions that occurred during the process of conceptualizing and writing a paper on the philosophy of organizational science. These discussions reflect some of the tensions inherent in academic writing and publishing, as well as personal and intellectual tensions, which can make the writing process frustrating and, at once, enlightening.

The Student Debt Bubble

The ‘student debt bubble’ is an ideograph referring to the growing imbalance between the costs of higher education and the capacity of students to shoulder increasing debt burdens. This unsustainable condition is constructed by numerous stakeholders, who have dramatically resituated risks and rewards in higher education. The resulting debt bubble has multiple outcomes, including incremental efforts for reform at the federal level, ideological speculation by neoliberal bloggers, and vituperative assaults on higher education by state and local politicians. Following Kenneth Burke, we isolate the student debt bubble as network and rhetoric of motives.

Institutional Frame Switching: How Institutional Logics Shape Individual Action

Abstract Although scholars increasingly use institutional logics to explain macro-level phenomena, we still know little about the micro-level psychological mechanisms by which institutional logics shape individual action. In this paper, we propose that individuals internalize institutional logics as an associative network of schemas that shapes individual actions through a process we call institutional frame switching. Specifically, we conduct two novel experiments that demonstrate how one particularly important schema associated with institutional logics – the implicit theory – can drive individual action. This work further develops the psychological underpinnings of the institutional logics perspective by connecting macro-level cultural understandings with micro-level situational behavior.