Search

Collaboration is often described as the key to solving complex problems; yet, complex challenges such as climate change, poverty, and inequality are persistent in time and across geography. We approach this issue by combining literature on participatory architectures with affordances theory. We ask: what are the affordances of a participatory architecture that targets wicked problems? To answer this question, we conducted and analyzed 48 semi-structured interviews with key members of Catalyst2030, a participatory architecture created to promote collaboration for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our findings reveal four ideal types of affordances of participatory architectures -- coordinated action, advocacy, social learning, and meaning-making -- which create both opportunities and frustrations in formulating, sustaining, and reconfiguring collaborative arrangements to address wicked problems. Juxtaposing our findings with extant literature, we discuss how affordances shape the initiation of pragmatic collaboration through a participatory architecture, how affordances help understand the indeterminacy of wicked situations, and the challenges of harmonizing a participatory architecture's governance with its affordances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companies venturing in low earth orbit (LEO) and beyond pose challenges for the theory and practice of international business (IB) -- and, a set of opportunities on par with prior shifts in field focus. There is considerable scholarship on the role of diverse distances in IB: Physical distance, places and locations, as well as cultural and institutional distance and distinct geographies have been prominent dimensions of analysis. These build from a focus on the successful management of the distributed multinational corporation, a core of IB since 1960s. This research note opens up a novel avenue of space and distance in IB: Contemporary commercial ventures in outer space, along with associated governance issues. These developments not only challenge traditional IB terminology and focus but also raise questions of how to integrate commercial engagements in outer space into IB research and practice. We reflect on core IB themes and past and contemporary developments around space activities that since early 2000s become increasingly commercialized, enabled by emerging technologies and changed funding sources, and posing novel analytic challenges. Based on this elaboration, we suggest future research topics around starting space ventures, international space law and institutions, internationalization into space, space MNC (SMNC) management, and provide some concluding considerations about the complexity of the study of outer space in the IB field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium aims to connect emerging research on imagined futures and possibilities with historical and institutional approaches to field and industry emergence. To start a conversation about the social structures of the possible, we mobilize three distinct sets of cognate concepts and theory-method packages that have so far been used in relative isolation in management: First, the concepts of interstitial spaces, early moments, and experimental spaces; second the historically-informed notion of "paths not taken" and counterfactual analysis; and third, recent methodological developments such as topic modeling, socio-cultural network analysis, and qualitative comparative analysis. * The Social Structure of The Future: Early Moments, Interstitial Spaces and The Possible Histories * Presenter: Marta Villamor; Robert H. Smith School of Business, U. of Maryland * Presenter: Fabian Prieto-Nañez; Technology and Society Virginia Tech * Presenter: David A. Kirsch; U. of Maryland * Presenter: Timothy Hannigan; U. of Alberta School of Business * Presenter: Yunjung Pak; U. of Alberta * Presenter: Valeria Giacomin; Bocconi U. * Presenter: Marc Ventresca; U. of Oxford * Presenter: Michele Scataglini; Saïd Business School U. of Oxford [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presumed features of the 'knowledge economy' regularly drive critical policy decisions around economy and industrial policy and often spill over into action and rhetoric in education both higher education and primary secondary, labor markets, social security and aging policy, and broadly into social policy considerations. But the 'knowledge economy' is one of several terms that have come to be used to summarize developments and trends in broad features of economic activity: Knowledge economy, information economy, 'new' economy, innovation economy, and like terms all assert basic changes in the structure and drivers of economic productivity. And add to these companion terms like postindustrial society, information society, the digital divide, etc. that blur the specificity of 'economy' and 'society' and also carry models of technology and institutional and societal change. What is to be learned by investigating these keywords and their evolution? In this paper we investigate the post-war development of keywords operating as nouns in apposition to 'economy'. This paper builds upon the work of T Mitchell, Foucault and Meyer, tracking further the historical development of the concept of the economy by tracing keywords such as 'knowledge', 'post-industrial', and 'information', used to suggest a particular quality to this concept. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presumed features of the 'knowledge economy' regularly drive critical policy decisions around economy and industrial policy and often spill over into action and rhetoric in education both higher education and primary secondary, labor markets, social security and aging policy, and broadly into social policy considerations. But the 'knowledge economy' is one of several terms that have come to be used to summarize developments and trends in broad features of economic activity: Knowledge economy, information economy, 'new' economy, innovation economy, and like terms all assert basic changes in the structure and drivers of economic productivity. And add to these companion terms like postindustrial society, information society, the digital divide, etc. that blur the specificity of 'economy' and 'society' and also carry models of technology and institutional and societal change. What is to be learned by investigating these keywords and their evolution? In this paper we investigate the post-war development of keywords operating as nouns in apposition to 'economy'. Our project builds upon the work of Timothy Mitchell, tracking further the historical development of the concept of the economy by tracing keywords such as 'knowledge', 'post-industrial', and 'information', used to suggest a particular quality to this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we assemble relevant work concerned with the official statistics on services in the economy. We start out with some recent/exemplar cases of change and controversy over services statistics to highlight key issues. We then provide a brief history of three aspects of services statistics (changing intellectual conceptions of 'services', early efforts to conceptualize modern economies, and the impact of these both on services statistics). We consider the theoretical, methodological, and conceptual questions raised by research in this area, placing the history and sociology of services statistics in relation to more general issues at the intersection of the sociology of knowledge, historical sociology, and the economic sociology of strategy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]