ABSTRACT In this wide-ranging interview, Bob Jessop discusses the development of, and many of the main themes in, his work over the last fifty years. He explains how he became interested in realism and Marxism; and he describes the various influences on his highly influential theory of the state. The discussion explores his strategic-relational approach, his thoughts on regulation theory, variegated capitalism, post-disciplinarity, cultural political economy and his ‘spatial-turn’, as well as neoliberalism, contemporary events and looming problems (...) of climate change and crisis. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview, Bob Jessop discusses the development of, and many of the main themes in, his work over the last fifty years. He explains how he became interested in realism and Marx...

This article opens with a brief analysis of key features of the Mexican semi-authoritarian regime. It then moves to a discussion of the critical realist positions and features that inform the strategic-relational approach. Attention is paid to social interactions and causal relations that enable the SRA to trace patterns of punctuated evolution and to highlight the processes of transformation. Since ideal types serve to highlight key characteristics in specifc phenomena, processes and actors, some features of ideal types (...) of the state and of the transition from one type to another are also discussed. In particular, attention is paid to the Keynesian welfare national state and to the Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime ideal types elaborated by Jessop. For it is contended that the specific features of these ideal types could be of great help in broadening the debate on economic restructuring and political reforms in countries such as Mexico. Moreover, the SRA approach provides an insight into the endogenous features of social change and stresses the importance of networking for a strategic agenda as well. For the never-static dynamics of the processes of change the role of situated agents in context is fundamental, as it injects intentionality and acknowledges the contingency of the conditions that surround them. (shrink)

This article opens with a brief analysis of key features of the Mexican semi-authoritarian regime. It then moves to a discussion of the critical realist positions and features that inform the strategic-relational approach. Attention is paid to social interactions and causal relations that enable the SRA to trace patterns of punctuated evolution and to highlight the processes of transformation. Since ideal types serve to highlight key characteristics in specifc phenomena, processes and actors, some features of ideal types (...) of the state and of the transition from one type to another are also discussed. In particular, attention is paid to the Keynesian welfare national state and to the Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime ideal types elaborated by Jessop. For it is contended that the specific features of these ideal types could be of great help in broadening the debate on economic restructuring and political reforms in countries such as Mexico. Moreover, the SRA approach provides an insight into the endogenous features of social change and stresses the importance of networking for a strategic agenda as well. For the never-static dynamics of the processes of change the role of situated agents in context is fundamental, as it injects intentionality and acknowledges the contingency of the conditions that surround them. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of the quantification of higher education by introducing a theoretical framework for power relations and agency within this process. Instead of treating evaluation regimes as external and imposed on the sector, it argues for a relational approach to the problem of exercising power over the higher education sector through means of evaluation. To develop such an approach, the article draws on two sources: Guy Neave’s account of the evaluative state and Bob Jessop’s (...) strategic–relational approach (SRA) to the state. By using the latter to further develop our understanding of the logic under which the evaluative state operates, the article offers a general framework for inquiring about the conditions that shape power relations and impact the degree of agency at the disposal of the actors involved in the evaluative state. For this purpose, the article operationalises the six general dimensions of the state developed on the grounds of the SRA in the context of the evaluative state. In turn, to demonstrate its heuristic value, the article refers to the emergence of the evaluative state in Poland and how scholarly communication was quantified and made commensurate in this process. (shrink)

Recent work in the strategic-relational approach to explaining the relationship between structure and agency emphasises the significance of ideas, discourses, and the semiotic realm of symbols. However, this work does not yet offer an explanation of how discourses relate to symbols – how texts take on meaning. This article shows why this is needed. It then provides such an account of language use and learning in explicitly strategic-relational terms. That account both grounds strategic-relational (...) concepts of discourse, and helps define them more clearly. While complementing and strengthening such notions, it also provides an insight into the way particular discourses interrelate. In particular, the model presented here suggests the importance of the constructive and critical potential of reason, in enlarging the scope for critical syntheses across discourses, and guarding against hegemony. (shrink)

The Strategic Choice Approach (SCA) is a method meant to deal with operational decision in a strategic way and to manage different sources of uncertainty in decision-making processes. The paper describes how SCA can deal with the future in the specific realm of urban planning in current cities, which represents a typical example of Wicked Problem, taking into account the three different levels of uncertainties that the method aims to manage (Uncertainties about the working Environment, UE; Uncertainties (...) about Related decisions, UR; Uncertainties about guiding Values, UV). We argue that these three types of uncertainties are referred to the ‘ordinary’ problems of modern and contemporary cities. The project of an architectural/urban transformation has to do with this kind uncertainties and implications – in overcoming a series of approvals of different institutional order – and, with this purpose, takes the form of a contract. Instead, this categorisation doesn’t conceive some new and uncertain challenges of future cities, around climate change, infrastructural disruption, insecurity, pandemics, at local and global scales, that are currently under debate in the cities. In this study we suggest that this character of uniqueness can imply the exploration of a new category of uncertainty in the SCA scheme, the ‘uncertainty about disruptive events (UD)’, a type of catastrophic or just unknown in their effects. First of all, we define the PSMs (Problem Structuring Methods) as methods of structuring the «wicked problems». Secondly, we examine the SCA as «a strategic choice process through time», taking into account the three different levels of uncertainty that the method intends to manage. (shrink)

The research aims to study the role of strategic and operational planning as approach for crises management in UNRWA - Gaza Strip field- Palestine. Several descriptive analytical methods were used for this purpose and a survey as a tool for data collection. Community size was (881), and the study sample was stratified random (268). The overall findings of the current study show that strategic and operational planning is performed in UNRWA. The results of static analysis show that (...) there are a relation between strategic and operational planning and crises management. In spite this relation existence, it need more improvement and expanding. Also there are shortcomings in the way that organization manages the crises before and after they occur. A crisis management is only practicing during the crisis. The study suggests that UNRWA must invest in more resources to enhance strategic and operational palming and improve other methods to face potential crises in the future. (shrink)

Crucial components of strategic communication include the audience, which plays a decisive role in how any conflict plays out. Strategic narratives are seen as means by which political actors attempt to construct a shared meaning of international politics to shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors. The article analyzes the news discourse of the Russian media sources RT, Pervyj Kanal, and NTV on Russia’s coronavirus aid to Italy in spring 2020. In the context of media coverage, some (...) methodological questions arise: How should the intentional structuring of narratives, targeting of audiences, and the manipulative intentions of the strategic actor be studied? For this purpose, the article combines strategic narrative theory with Umberto Eco’s concepts of the Model Reader and the Model Author. Analysing the aims and intentionality of the strategic narratives, we postulate the Model Reader as an analytical category that organizes the study of the audience’s interpretation process. The function of the Model Reader is to actualize the codes and intertextual references that the author has strategically planned in the news message, in order to achieve the geopolitical aims of the strategic narratives in question. The analysis of constructing the Model Reader and the Model Author of strategic narratives is complemented by Greimas’ semiotic theory of the narrative and the composition principles of Lotman’s discrete/non-discrete texts. (shrink)

Examining previous discussions on how to construe the concepts of gender and race, we advocate what we call strategic conceptual engineering. This is the employment of a (possibly novel) concept for specific epistemic or social aims, concomitant with the openness to use a different concept (e.g., of race) for other purposes. We illustrate this approach by sketching three distinct concepts of gender and arguing that all of them are needed, as they answer to different social aims. The first (...) concept serves the aim of identifying and explaining gender-based discrimination. It is similar to Haslanger’s well-known account, except that rather than offering a definition of ‘woman’ we focus on ‘gender’ as one among several axes of discrimination. The second concept of gender is to assign legal rights and social recognitions, and thus is to be trans-inclusive. We argue that this cannot be achieved by previously suggested concepts that include substantial gender-related psychological features, such as awareness of social expectations. Instead, our concept counts someone as being of a certain gender solely based on the person’s self-identification with this gender. The third concept of gender serves the aim of personal empowerment by means of one’s gender identity. In this context, substantial psychological features and awareness of one’s social situation are involved. While previous accounts of concepts have focused on their role in determining extensions, we point to contexts where a concept’s role in explanation and moral reasoning can be more important. (shrink)

This article integrates arguments and evidence from my 2019 monograph Heart to Heart: How Your Emotions Affect Other People. The central claim is that emotions operate as processes of relation alignment that produce convergence, complementarity, or conflict between two or more people’s orientations to objects. In some cases, relation alignment involves strategic presentation of emotional information for the purpose of regulating other people’s behaviour. In other cases, emotions consolidate from socially distributed reciprocal adjustments of cues, signals, and emerging actions (...) without any explicit registration or communication of emotional meaning by parties to the exchange. The relation-alignment approach provides a fresh perspective on issues relating to emotion’s interpersonal, intragroup, and organizational functions and clarifies how emotions are regulated for social purposes. (shrink)

Despite the acknowledged importance of strategic planning in business and other organizations, there are few studies focusing on strategy texts and the related processes of their production and consumption. In this article, we attempt to partially fill this research gap by examining the institutionalized aspects of strategy discourse: what strategy is as genre. Combining textual analysis and analysis of conversation, the article focuses on the official strategy of the City of Lahti in Finland. Our analysis shows how specific communicative (...) purposes and lexico-grammatical features characterize the genre of strategy and how the actual negotiations over strategy text involve particular kinds of intersubjectivity and intertextuality. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyze the relationships between theories of strategic design and participatory design, in multiple commercial alliances between local entrepreneurs from different sectors and their integrated application in the urban context. Various authors have dealt with these strategic issues in isolation and less frequently have addressed them from the entrepreneurial experience. A review of the specific literature allows us to account for the main concepts involved in this approach. The case being analyzed (...) refers to a fitness-related venture in the city of La Plata, which articulated, together with other local actors, a collaborative strategy that led to the application of a superior business model for its sector. In addition, he capitalized on his role as an influencer on the social network Instagram, as a way to enhance the project’s comprehensiveness. The topics that are addressed synthesize the key concepts that allow us to interpret the praxis relieved. And from them, create a model that can be applied in other markets and territories to promote young local development. And in this way, different actors, complementary products and services serve to jointly promote a co-productive and self-managed culture. (shrink)

Because it promises to benefit business and society simultaneously, strategic philanthropy might be characterized as a “happy marriage” of corporate social responsibility behavior and corporate financial performance. However, as evidence so far has been mostly anecdotal, it is important to understand to what extent empirics support the actual practice as well as value of a strategic approach, which creates both business and social impacts through corporate philanthropic activities. Utilizing data from the years 2006 to 2009 for a (...) sample of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which monitors the world’s most sustainable companies, the authors test a model of strategic philanthropy in which the dependent variable is evidence that a firm does or does not measure business and social impacts simultaneously. From the DJSI data, the authors find a proposed measure of overall corporate social performance to be the most important explanatory factor for engagement in strategic philanthropy. Moreover, this measure of CSP has a mediating effect on the relations between certain independent variables and strategic philanthropy. Other important findings provide support for the influence of the institutional factors industry and region on the likelihood that companies are practicing strategic philanthropy, but little effect of the business characteristics company size and profitability on that likelihood. (shrink)

Singapore's strategic play to secure international wealth management market share has been very successful. Serious questions, however, were raised in relation to this ascendency as the Global Financial Crisis drove the European Union and the United States of America to become proactive in clamping down on tax evasion and other areas deemed by them to be undesirable within the international financial system. This paper will examine the Singapore government's decade-long growth policy of its wealth management sector, and how it (...) has been impacted upon by international regulatory responses. Further, it examines how in stark contrast to the EU and the US, Indonesia has been far less successful in its diplomatic efforts to have Singapore address financial diplomacy issues in relation to Indonesian citizens residing in Singapore. This article will argue, however, that Singapore's less than robust response to Indonesia's constant requests for action maybe to the long-term detriment of Singapore itself. (shrink)

For more than twenty years, Peter Vanderschraaf’s work has combined rigorous game-theoretic analysis, innovative use of (social) scientific method, and normative analysis in the context of the social contract. Vanderschraaf’s work has influenced a significant interdisciplinary field of study and culminated in the publication of his book, Strategic Justice: Convention and Problems of Balancing Divergent Interests (OUP, 2019). Building upon his previous work, Vanderschraaf developed a new theory of justice (justice-as-convention) that, despite a mutual advantage approach, considers the (...) most vulnerable members of society and defends the egalitarian bargaining solution. To advance his theory, Vanderschraaf proposes an account of conventions that updates and systematizes David Lewis’s account of conventions, drawing on contemporary developments in game theory and economics. This topical collection brings together game theorists, philosophers, economists, and political scientists to discuss themes from Vanderschraaf’s work. The collection bridges a gap among disjoint but closely related literatures in game theory, bargaining theory, formal philosophy, rationality, equality, justice, and the social contract in order to advance dialogue among scholars in this rich and growing field of study. (shrink)

RESUMEN El presente trabajo describe los cambios estratégicos del Centro de Inmunología y Productos Biológicos de la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey que contribuyen a la formación profesional, la investigación y los servicios científico técnicos. Recoge los resultados obtenidos desde el 2015 hasta el 2017. Los referentes teóricos permiten un acercamiento epistémico que facilita la relación con el conocimiento y la creación de concepciones para abordar los problemas de salud. El centro tiene cuatro proyectos asociados a programas y 11 (...) institucionales. Se posee 2,7 publicaciones por autor y 18 participaciones en eventos, de ellos, ocho internacionales. Se perfecciona un sistema de gestión de la calidad, nueve servicios científico-técnicos, diversos servicios a la docencia y proyectos de investigaciones. Se aprovecha el potencial que genera el proceso de auto-organización del trabajo colectivo, para un mejor funcionamiento, sinergia y sustentabilidad de la gestión de una unidad de desarrollo e innovación. ABSTRACT The present work describes the strategic changes of the Center of Immunology and Biological Products of the University of Medical Sciences of Camagüey that contributes to the professional training, the investigation and the technical-scientist services. It gathers the results obtained from 2015 to 2017. The theoretical bases allow an epistemic approach that facilitates the relation with the knowledge and the creation of conceptions to tackle the health problems. The center has four projects associated with programs and 11 institutional ones. There are possessed 2.7 publications per author and 18 participations in events, of them, eight international ones. Scientist - technical staff perfects a system of management of the quality, nine services, diverse services to the teaching and projects of investigations. One makes use of the potential that generates the auto-organization process of collective work, for a better functioning, synergy and sustainability of the management of a unit of development and innovation. (shrink)

Condom use among college men in the United States is notoriously erratic, yet we know little about these men’s approaches to other contraceptives. In this paper, accounts from 44 men attending a university in the western United States reveal men’s reliance on culturally situated ideas about gender, social class, race, and age in assessing the risk of pregnancy and STI acquisition in sexual encounters with women. Men reason that race- and class-privileged college women are STI-free, responsible for contraception, and will (...) pursue abortion services if necessary. Since men expect women will take responsibility, they often stay silent about condoms and other contraceptives in sexual encounters—a process we term “strategic silence.” Men’s strategic silence helps uphold local constructions of hegemonic masculinity that prioritize men’s sexual desires and protects these constructions by subtly shifting contraceptive and sexual health responsibility onto women. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of men’s expectations of women for upholding constructions of hegemonic masculinity, which legitimate gender inequality in intimacy and are related to men’s underestimation of the risks associated with condom-free sex. (shrink)

In the realities of the digital economy there are fast and permanent processes of digitalization of economic relations and economic activity, technologies, information and knowledge in the field of business management are becoming increasingly important. Modern economic conditions in which enterprises operate are characterized by globality, dynamism and uncertainty. One of the main factors that can ensure the company's stability in the market and help strengthen its position is a well-founded development strategy. Depending on the direction of enterprise development, it (...) is important to distinguish such strategies as intensification, integration and diversification, which can be applied individually or in combination. The need to adapt to the conditions of comprehensive digitalization requires enterprises to take an innovative approach to their activities, and the harmonization of the mechanism of strategic management of innovative development of the enterprise should consist of determining the vector of innovative transformations. Knowledge is very important in the innovation process, because it is not only an important contribution, but also the result of the process of transformation of innovation culture of enterprises. The use of modern methods of e-commerce, digital platforms and blockchain allows companies to gain new benefits and opportunities. Enterprises that choose as a strategic vector of development a systematic combination of innovative approach to their activities, analysis of internal and external resources of development, adequate adaptation to the external realities of the digital economy, achieve high results in the present and future. (shrink)

Writing strategic documents is a major practice of many actors striving to see their educational ideas realised in the curriculum. In these documents, arguments are systematically developed to create the legitimacy of a new educational goal and competence to make claims about it. Through a qualitative analysis of the writing strategies used in these texts, I show how two of the main actors in the Czech educational discourse have developed a proof that a new educational goal is needed. I (...) draw on the connection of the relational approach in the sociology of education with Lyotard’s analytical semantics of instances in the event. The comparison of the writing strategies in the two documents reveals differences in the formation of a particular pattern of justification. In one case the texts function as a herald of pure reality, and in the other case as a messenger of other witnesses. This reveals different regimens of proof, although both of them were written as prescriptive directives – normative models of the educational world. (shrink)

How might argumentation scholars approach sound? Using the analytics afforded by strategic maneuvering, this essay identifies three unique features of sonic presentational devices: they are immersive, immediate and embodied. Although these features offer arguers presentational resource, they also pose new problems to the reasonable resolution of disagreement: immersion hazards overlap, immediacy risks rate of delivery beyond reflection, and materiality can coerce listeners. To theorize strategic use of sound, I reconstruct and analyze a popular Radiolab segment “The Unconscious (...) Toscanini of the Brain.” I find Radiolab uses three different sonic figures: synchronicity, or the translation of data into sound to foreground temporal relations; musical stings, an auditory invocation of embodied memory and the wave, a sonic strategy to arouse and narrow attention. I conclude that Radiolab’s use of sound is reasonable because it extends the critical discussion. (shrink)

Surat zari industry is one of the oldest industries in Surat (Gujarat state in the western part of India) dating back to the sixteenth century. It enjoys the status of cottage industry since 1955. Zari is an intermediate product broadly catering to two end-user industries—textiles industry including handicrafts and the fashion industry. It is largely a family-owned, community-based, skilled-oriented, fragmented industry, with a very low level of automation, experiencing intensive rivalry. Zari making involves a series of inter-related closely guarded processes, (...) which are passed on from generation to generation. Some of the issues and challenges that the industry is facing today are related to the traditional mindset of the entrepreneurs, quality, lack of standardization of processes and marketing. The paper discusses the possible strategic interventions as also the cluster approach to enhance competitiveness of the industry. (shrink)

Many of the negative connotations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are linked to its perceived role as a public relations exercise. Following on calls for more positive engagement by public relations professionals in organisational strategic planning and given the rapidly increasing interest in CSR as a business strategy, this article addresses the question of how the theory and practice of public relations can provide direction and support for CSR. To this end, this article explores leadership styles and motivations of (...) a sample of corporate leaden from prominent Australian-based corporations in relation to their chosen CSR activities to examine the current position of, and potential for, professional communicators' impact in shaping CSR-driven policies at a strategic level. We find that while public relations theory has evolved, many leaders still see public relations professionals only as a source of positive publicity. Our findings suggest that the model of distributive leadership has more relevance to an emerging idea of public relations involvement in CSR than more traditional understandings of leadership. We conclude that the public relations profession needs to develop a greater understanding of senior management approaches to the development and dissemination of CSR activities to support organisational leadership as it currently operates with respect to CSR. (shrink)

Resistance to innovation is a behavioral barrier to implementing innovation in any organization. It is associated with employees’ demotivation to adopt new technologies. Strategic orientation toward digitalization is a new dimension in shaping innovative organizational performance. It is also evident from past studies that certain employees’ capabilities are associated with organizations’ strategic orientation when undergoing digitalization. This study examines the relationship between these factors and achieving innovative organizational performance. First, it looks at how strategic orientation toward digitalization (...) relates to digital capabilities, which include digital knowledge and innovation. This study also examines how capabilities affect strategic orientation toward digitalization and innovative organizational performance. Moreover, the negatively regulating role of resistance to innovation as a moderator is also tested between capabilities and innovative organizational performance in this research. The authors discovered a connection between strategic orientation towards digitalization and innovative organizational performance in their research. A Likert scale with five points was used to quantify the responses, and the points ranged from 1 to 5 on the scale, with one being strongly disagreed and five strongly agreed. The findings of the study also show that digital knowledge capability and innovation capability have a substantial impact on innovative organizational performance. The research also discovered that employees’ resistance to innovation exerts a sizeable moderating influence on the connection between digital knowledge competence and innovation capability within the innovative organizational performance. The study’s results show that businesses must have a strategic focus on digitalization if they want to improve their ability to come up with new ideas and their digital knowledge skills, which are both critical for the growth of the entrepreneurial system. The model that has been proposed is available to entrepreneurs so that they can apply it in their businesses to advance the entrepreneurial system appropriately. The authors present a theoretical model for entrepreneurial systems based on the strategic orientation towards the digitalization approach. This model is something that entrepreneurs could utilize to improve the performance of their organizations as a whole. In addition, the employee’s resistance to innovation is used as a moderator in the model, which is another innovative method. The research contributes new and essential information to the existing literature on innovative organizational performance. (shrink)

This new volume explores terrorism and strategic terror, examining how the public responds to terrorist attacks, and what authorities can do in such situations. The book uses a unique interdisciplinary approach, which combines the behavioural sciences and international relations, in order to further the understanding of the 'terror' generated by strategic terror. The work examines five contemporary case studies of the psychological and behavioural effects of strategic terror, from either terrorist attacks or aerial bombardment. It also (...) looks at how risk-communication and public-health strategies can amplify or reduce psychological and behavioural responses, and considers whether behavioural effects translate into political effects, and what governments can do to relieve this. Ultimately, the study argues that the public is not prone to panic, but can change their behaviours to reduce their perceived risk of being exposed to a terrorist attack. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, homeland security, social psychology and politics in general. (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)

At its core, this study understands its central term, poiesis as the process of forming new styles of sense-making and multiple modes of thought. Such plural styles deserve notice so far as they give readers alternate ways of organizing experience and interpersonal relations: they provide new worlds, in fact. The epithet "New-world" poiesis, then, is in one respect redundant, since new worlds are revealed through the "poetic" process itself. But the title also refers to current and past historical encounters between (...) an "old-world" Anglo-American mindset and its "others"---encounters between worlds that over time have qualified, tested, strengthened, and fractured each other. ;Poets who generate and interweave new worlds provide a context for maintaining a central debate within discussions of complexity in contemporary U.S. poetics. Assuming that lyric poetry can reasonably be expected to represent and to some extent transform experiences and perceptions of reality, the question arises as to what kind of experiences and worlds should be represented and/or transformed. On one hand, critics find that the role of the contemporary lyric is expressive, that is, most suited to approaching the internal conscious states or the social conditions of a person or group. On the other hand, as a fragmentary, associative use of language, lyric poetry shows the workings of language itself, a system of meaning concerned mainly with its own, ongoing re-organization. ;This debate between poetic language as providing either coherence or change---a debate that currently enjoys critical esteem and claims an increasing amount of attention from critics, poets, and anthologists---assumes that as complexity increases in poetic experimentation, the capacity for the poem to represent social relations diminishes. Poems that examine the surface texture of language, its critics claim, dissolve most often into a "play of words." Gathered into rival camps that it seems could hardly disagree more radically, the terms of the argument appear in the form of a debate between social identity and complex meaning systems. ;Detailing more specific versions of this debate, my project investigates four intellectual environments into which plural-world poetries have introduced complex lyric treatments of experience in order to distort dominant, established views: subjecting historical; cultural; linguistic; and urban discussions to a "deep pluralism." What I've found is that in the richest instances, long lyric poems that provide plural worlds allow for both resonance and wonder, both coherent sources of personal expression or social affiliation and an ability to appreciate multiple styles and to move across identities and ways of naming the real. Each aspect to the other is usually said to be incommensurate, and yet, at the right level of abstraction, or plurality, meaningful social distinctions can be made with minimal exclusionary consequences. (shrink)

Animal Suffering and Public Relations conducts an ethical assessment of public relations, mainly persuasive communication and lobbying, as deployed by some of the main businesses involved in the animal industrial complex - the industries participating in the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of animals. Society has been experiencing a growing ethical concern regarding humans' (ab)use of other animals. This is a trend first promoted by the development of animal ethics - which claims any sentient being, because of sentience, deserves moral consideration (...) - and more recently by other approaches from the social sciences, including critical animal studies. In this volume, we aim to start an entirely unaddressed discussion within the field of public relations: the need to problematize the ethics of persuasion when nonhuman animal suffering is involved, particularly the impact of persuasion and lobbying on compassion towards other animals in the cases of food, experimentation, entertainment and environment management. The books provides an interdisciplinary, theoretical discussion illustrated with international case studies from experts in strategic communication, public relations, lobbying and advocacy, animal ethics, philosophy of law, political philosophy and social psychology. This unique book merges the fields of critical public relations, animal ethics and critical animal studies and will be of direct appeal to a wide range of researchers, academics and doctoral students across related fields. (shrink)

Adopting an Ethics of Care theoretical framework, this paper aims to investigate the way in which the owner-mangers (OMs) of small and medium-sized enterprises in Malaysia engage in human resource management. Based on in-depth interviews with 48 OMs, the findings show that HRM practices occur within the remit of management but are described by the managers in terms of relational obligations and cannot be fully accounted for using a strategic, instrumental, or critical lens. The present study highlights the (...) importance of the caring attitudes of OMs who adopt a humanistic management approach, responding to the varied needs of their employees and the obligations which are inherent to relationships between humans. (shrink)

This article develops a critical realist, strategic-relational analysis of the gendering of the state. It draws freely from feminist theorists, recent work on masculinity, and some of the insights of ‘queer theory’. My aim is to show the contingently necessary nature of the gender biases in the state's institutional architecture and operation and show how these can be illuminated through a critical realist, strategic-relational perspective. The article has four main parts. These deal with critical realism and (...) the strategic-relational approach ; its implications for analyzing gender selectivities; the gender selectivities of advanced capitalist democratic states; and some implications of strategic selectivity for feminist action. (shrink)

Corporate sustainability introduces multiple tensions or paradoxes into organisations which defy traditional approaches such as trading-off contrasting options. We examine an alternative approach: to manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens where contradictory elements are managed concurrently. Drawing on paradox theory, we focus on two specific pathways: to the organisation-wide acceptance of paradox and to paradoxical resolution. Introducing the concept of strategic agility, we argue that strategically agile organisations are better placed to navigate these paradox pathways. Strategic (...) agility comprises three organisational meta-capabilities: strategic sensitivity, collective commitment, and resource fluidity. We propose that strategically agile organisations draw on strategic sensitivity and collective commitment to achieve organisation-wide acceptance of paradox, and collective commitment and resource fluidity to achieve paradoxical resolution. For each of these meta-capabilities, we identify three organisational practices and processes specifically related to corporate sustainability that organisations can leverage in pursuit of strategic agility. We offer a conceptual framework depicting the strategic agility meta-capabilities, and associated practices and processes, which organisations draw on to successfully manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens. (shrink)

This paper explores stakeholder relations of sustainable banks as organizations that simultaneously pursue the community development and market profitability goals. The study features the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV), an international group of 62 financial institutions and 16 strategic partners, which collectively hold $200 billion USD of assets under management. Using the organizational identity orientation framework (Brickson, 2005, 2007), it reveals that, contrary to widely held assumptions that community-focused organizations serve a broad common good purpose, sustainable banks (...) take a relational stance based on effectively prioritizing community issues aligned with their missions and establishing strong partnerships with selected counterparts. Sustainable banks approach their stakeholder relations through the relational identity orientation expressed in the practices of inclusion of affected communities, full incorporation of local needs, philanthropic inclusiveness, transparency and power balance among stakeholders, governmental commitments, and relational hiring and socializing. (shrink)

The climate change mitigation effort is being translated into several actions and discourses that make collateral benefits and their rationale increasingly relevant for sustainability, in such a way that they are now a constant part of the political agenda. Taking a broader and consensual perspective, co-benefits are considered here to be emerging advantages of implementing measures to lower greenhouse gases. Starting with the analysis of policy documents referring to two European urban transportation strategies, the emergent co-benefits are problematized and discussed (...) to better understand their moral aspect. Further ethical reflection is conducted after an analysis of some unintended consequences of the co-benefits rationale arising from the examples. The discussion focuses primarily on the challenges of an integrative moral justification for co-benefits and also for their role in the climate change mitigation effort. We also discuss the limitations of the current normative models that frame a co-benefits rationale, both from a moral viewpoint and in relation to the overall climate change mitigation strategy. In this article, we propose the concepts of well-being and freedom, as portrayed by the Capability Approach, as possible guiding notions for the moral and social evaluation of goodness of these emergent benefits as well as their rationale. Additionally, some preliminary conclusions are drawn regarding the potential of the presented concepts to support climate change mitigation action. Finally, we outline a scenario where the Capability Approach is the moral guideline for a co-benefits rationale and illustrates its potential in terms of enhancing climate change mitigation strategy. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate, based on an extensive study of the Shell-led Camisea gas project in Peru, how what we believe to be a new approach to dealing with stakeholders, focusing on sense-making and combining industry dynamics and stakeholder empowerment, was developed. The project’s success was measured by the fact that, unlike similar projects around the world, it did not meet with major opposition during its 4-year life span. Those involved in the Camisea project succeeded (...) in creating an open approach to building stakeholder relationships, allowing them to navigate through a number of diverse and challenging socio-political and ecological issues. An integral part of Shell’s approach was acting upon its commitment to high standards of operation and values. The insights from this case clearly indicate that stakeholder management and theorizing can profit from a less controlled, open and sense-making oriented strategizing with stakeholders. (shrink)

I analyse here some histories of people who lived in concentration camps and told their experiences: De Gaulle Anthonioz (La Traversée de la nuit), Geoffroy (Au temps des crématoires…), Semprun (L’Écriture ou la vie). These histories represent the lives of survivors, but they are also a form of literary expression with a narrative structure that codifies a genre. More particularly, I focus the attention on the incipit, a strategic place in which some of the specific features of the global (...) meaning and structural organization of the whole text can be seized. My hypothesis is that in histories of survival, already in the incipit, the authors strive to convey the emblematic value of their history: an extreme and traumatic experience which is difficult to express. The analysis of these incipit shows that experiences related to concentration camps, to be expressed, need an elaborated message and that an artistic aim can contribute to the representation of these experiences. From the structural viewpoint, histories of survival amplify a dichotomy existing in several literary genres and currents: ‘external reference’ and ‘internal organization’, mimetic ‘truth’ and narrative ‘structure’, ‘reality’ and ‘convention’, ‘experience’ and ‘narration’. In my opinion, histories of survival solve theseoppositions by reconciling some contraries through the use of oxymora. Even narratives structures or key figures such as the author, the narrator, the observer, the witness and so on, tend to become oxymora. The study of these features (and combination) is pertinent for anthropology (by seizing facts thanks to elaborated ‘ways of uttering’ authors often redefine forms of humanity) and for semiotics (any form of expression, even if original, has to be collectively shared and based on a system of signs). In my opinion, a joint semiotic and anthropological approach can help analysing histories of survival as a ‘literary genre’ and as a ‘historical tragic phenomenon’. (shrink)

I analyse here some histories of people who lived in concentration camps and told their experiences: De Gaulle Anthonioz (La Traversée de la nuit), Geoffroy (Au temps des crématoires…), Semprun (L’Écriture ou la vie). These histories represent the lives of survivors, but they are also a form of literary expression with a narrative structure that codifies a genre. More particularly, I focus the attention on the incipit, a strategic place in which some of the specific features of the global (...) meaning and structural organization of the whole text can be seized. My hypothesis is that in histories of survival, already in the incipit, the authors strive to convey the emblematic value of their history: an extreme and traumatic experience which is difficult to express. The analysis of these incipit shows that experiences related to concentration camps, to be expressed, need an elaborated message and that an artistic aim can contribute to the representation of these experiences. From the structural viewpoint, histories of survival amplify a dichotomy existing in several literary genres and currents: ‘external reference’ and ‘internal organization’, mimetic ‘truth’ and narrative ‘structure’, ‘reality’ and ‘convention’, ‘experience’ and ‘narration’. In my opinion, histories of survival solve theseoppositions by reconciling some contraries through the use of oxymora. Even narratives structures or key figures such as the author, the narrator, the observer, the witness and so on, tend to become oxymora. The study of these features (and combination) is pertinent for anthropology (by seizing facts thanks to elaborated ‘ways of uttering’ authors often redefine forms of humanity) and for semiotics (any form of expression, even if original, has to be collectively shared and based on a system of signs). In my opinion, a joint semiotic and anthropological approach can help analysing histories of survival as a ‘literary genre’ and as a ‘historical tragic phenomenon’. (shrink)

Around 1907, 1987, and 2007 Japan faced a crossroads in defining internationalism and Asianism, determining their relative priorities, and assessing their relevance for national identity. Similarities can be found in the far-reaching changes occurring in Japan's external environment in the three periods and in the importance of setting a new direction for strategic thinking. Misjudgments in the first two periods are reviewed in order to draw lessons for responding to today's challenges. A distorted outlook on internationalism led to rejection (...) of shifts in US thinking welcomed elsewhere in the global community. Now as attention focuses on debates over the Six-Party Talks as a test of internationalization and over the East Asian Community and regionalism as a test of Asianism, it is possible that the riveting impact of the issue, as with the issue 20 years earlier, will remain a symbol that trumps a strategic approach toward Asia at a moment of far-reaching regional reorganization. Shortcomings in dealing with the concepts internationalism and Asianism are connected; at the very time the Japanese struggle with one, they are also at an impasse over the other. The same set of factors may be at work: an absence of agreed principles on which to anchor foreign policy; fragmented strategic thinking that loses sight of interconnections and the big picture; and national identity that excessively separates Japan from global forces that transform politics and society and that narrowly compartmentalize the historical developments that shaped relations with Asian countries without capturing the fundamental regional dynamics. (shrink)

Collaborative governance (CG) is becoming the common currency of decision‐making, able to surmount existing institutional constraints to effectively address challenges related to sustainability and social and environmental corporate behavior. CG approaches may however result in institutional complexity. As an illustration of CG in the domain of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the ISO 26000 standard is a legitimate point of reference for organizations worldwide. The standard represents a pluralistic institutional logic that resonates several tensions arising from the domain it tries to (...) standardize, the nature of its development process, its interpretation of CSR and the type of standard it represents. This article aims to identify and examine strategic responses to ISO 26000 by various standards‐related organizations (including national standardization institutes, certification organizations, and service providers) and to contribute to the understanding of strategic responses of organizations to pluralistic institutional logics that result from CG. (shrink)

Forecasts predicting the reunification of the Korean Peninsula were common throughout the 1990s. Since then, enthusiasm for such predictions has dampened, and though the fundamental assumption of reunification remains, predictions of when and how this will happen have been more restrained. Reunification leaves two unresolved yet interdependent issues: reunification itself, which is the urgent challenge; and the strategic issues that emerge from reunification, which have the potential to fundamentally transform strategic relations in the region of Northeast Asia. Within (...) this context, this paper examines the prospects of Korean reunification against the background of the interstate relations. Initially, it will establish the framework from which such scenarios will emerge: the historical background of the division, the extreme differences between the two states, the role played by the North Korean nuclear threats and the impact of the September 11, 2001 on the interstate relations, and finally general situation and relations in the East Asian region. Then, three possible scenarios of the unification will be developed: through peaceful integration, through the fall of North Korea or through a war. Summing up, even the death of Kim Jong Il will not bring change in the domestic and foreign policy of North Korea which is going to continue an aggressive approach toward the South. In the short-term reunification is definitely not in the interest of the current ROK administration, and the South has no intention of encouraging it. None of the considered scenarios envisions early reunification, and it seems that for the future, the status quo on the Korean Peninsula will remain. (shrink)

The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss the issue of managing fake news in the online environment, from an organizational perspective, by using reactive PR strategies. First, we critically discuss the most important definitions of the umbrella term fake news, in the so-called post-truth era, in order to emphasize different challenges in conceptualizing this elusive social phenomenon. Second, employing some valuable contribution from literature, we present and illustrate with vivid examples 10 categories of fake news. Each type of (...) fake news is discussed in the context of organizational communication. Based on existent literature, we propose a 3D conceptual model of fake news, in an organizational context. Furthermore, we consider that PR managers can use either reactive PR strategies to counteract online fake news regarding an organization, or communication stratagems to temporarily transform the organization served into a potential source of fake news. The existing typology of reactive public relations strategies from the literature allow us to discuss the challenge of using them in counteracting online fake news. Each reactive PR strategy can be a potential solution to respond to different types of online fake news. Although these possibilities seem to be extensive, in some cases, PR managers can find them ineffective. In our view, this cluster of reactive PR strategies is not a panacea for managing fake news in the online environment and different strategic approaches may be need, such as communication stratagems. In this context, communication stratagems consist in using organization as a source or as a vector for strategic creation and dissemination of online fake news, for the benefit of the organization. We conclude that within online environment PR managers can employ a variety of reactive PR strategies to counteract fake news, or different communication stratagems to achieve organizational goals. (shrink)

The Transcendental Psychology Approach to the study of perception has been developed by A.I. Mirakyan at the Psychological Institute (Moscow, Russia) about 30 years ago. This article considers the results of theoretical and experimental investigations and provides a historical overview of the approach’s development. Started with the investigations of constancy in perception, it went beyond the traditional Product Basis Paradigm (relying on perceptual features for finding perceptual mechanisms) into Philosophical Metaphysics of “nothing” and “something” concepts for revealing the (...) form-generating principles as fundamental axiomatics of the Transcendental Psychology Approach. Several principles were developed and justified: structure-process anisotropy, spatial-temporal discreteness, the formation of anisotropic (particularly, symmetric) relations, the coexistence of alternatives, and some others. Principles are explanatory for the regulations of sensory-perceptual processes and are the direct object of further specification and experimental verification using hypothetical transcendental models of perceptual structures. The theory suggests that the internal mechanisms of these models would not naturally manifest themselves in experiments within the functional range of perception, and to see the phenomena, it is necessary to bring the perceptual system out of its natural functional range. The form-generating processes are named adiaphorous in the sense that they specifically generate new structures and forms, regardless of the characteristics of products used and produced in the processes. In general, it is possible to speak about the class of so-called structurally-generative processes that are specific to the process of transition between the system-generating structures studied by different hierarchically interrelated sciences. The proposed two-staged qualitative model of the perceptual process consists of two substantially different parts: the direct sensory perception and a process of form designation or sensory name assignment. Further investigations of structurally-generative processes seem likely to shed light on the mechanisms of brain function and to contribute strategically to new directions in philosophical psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)

This study considers the potential for influencing business students to become ethical managers by directing their undergraduate learning environment. In particular, the relationship between business students’ academic cheating, as a predictor of workplace ethical behavior, and their approaches to learning is explored. The three approaches to learning identified from the students’ approaches to learning literature are deep approach, represented by an intrinsic interest in and a desire to understand the subject, surface approach, characterized by rote learning and memorization (...) without understanding, and strategic approach, associated with competitive students whose motivation is the achievement of good grades by adopting either a surface or deep approach. Consistent with the hypothesized theoretical model, structural equation modeling revealed that the surface approach is associated with higher levels of cheating, while the deep approach is related to lower levels. The strategic approach was also associated with less cheating and had a statistically stronger influence than the deep approach. Further, a significantly positive relationship reported between deep and strategic approaches suggests that cheating is reduced when deep and strategic approaches are paired. These findings suggest that future managers and business executives can be influenced to behave more ethically in the workplace by directing their learning approaches. It is hoped that the evidence presented may encourage those involved in the design of business programs to implement educational strategies which optimize students’ approaches to learning towards deep and strategic characteristics, thereby equipping tomorrow’s managers and business executives with skills to recognize and respond appropriately to workplace ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Turbulent changes in the American business landscape over the past several years present a potentially ominous future for our society. The confluence of corporate downsizing, declining unionism and the surging preference for hiring part-time/temporary workers poses a threat to the very existence of our blue-collar middle class. Furthermore, when these conditions are juxtaposed against prevailing corporate rhapsodies to employee participation programs and a teamwork approach to quality improvement, the scenario becomes absurd.Solutions to the societal and workplace problems we face (...) require both ethical and practical attention. This paper examines current labor-management hostilities from the Mutual Trust perspective on morality. Furthermore, I propose a strategic internal marketing framework as one mechanism for trust-building at the labor-management frontier. The premise for the study is that as a society we will be better off with the system of checks and balances which labor unions can provide; that positive business performance will result from cooperative rather than adversarial relations; and that to be a premier player in the global economy, we must replace worker cynicism and detachment with hope. (shrink)

ArgumentThe Scandinavian countries share a solid reputation as longstanding contributors to top level Arctic research. This received view, however, veils some deep-seated contrasts in the ways that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have conducted research in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. In this paper it is argued that instead of focusing on the geographical determinism of science – the fact that the Arctic is close to, indeed part of, Scandinavian territories – we should look more closely at the geopolitics of (...) science to understand the differences and similarities between these three Nordic countries. Through case studies of, mainly, Swedish Arctic and North Atlantic glaciology in the 1920s through to the 1940s, and of Norwegian preparations in the 1950s for the International Geophysical Year 1957/58, the paper demonstrates how different styles of research – research agendas, methodological choices, collaborative patterns, international networks, availability of infrastructure, relations to politics and power – are conditioned on economic interests and strategic and geopolitical trajectories, either these are explicitly put in the forefront of scientific priorities as in the case of Norway in the 1950s, or when they are manifestly disregarded in the name of scientific internationalism, as in the case of Swedish glaciology. The case of Danish colonial science in Greenland is only cursorily drawn into this analysis but corroborates the overall thesis. The analysis of this wider science politics of Scandinavian circumpolar science is exercised against a brief introductory backdrop of Arctic science historiography. Its chief message is that the analysis of polar science applying modern theory and method of the social studies of science is comparatively recent and that the full potential of merging the literature of Arctic science and exploration with those of security, geopolitics, indigenous voices, and the politics of nationalism is yet to be realized. (shrink)

Based on interviews with legal practitioners working with or within anti-racist social justice movements in Sweden, we explore some dilemmas and paradoxes that appear when social movements pursue struggles for anti-racist social justice through the legal arena. How do the interviewees understand and critically relate to legal practices in contemporary anti-racist social justice struggles? What are the conditions of engagement of these organisations in the legal arena and how do they impact social justice struggles in Sweden? What are the stakes (...) in the legal practices of these movements? Rather than a strategically chosen tool for social justice, legal practice could be understood as a kind of self-defence, as resorting to law is often a response to an unjust legal system, oppressive treatment by the state or disadvantage and deprivation. The interviewees’ reflections on their legal practices are informed by a fundamental ambivalence between the ideological commitment in the critique of law and their position from which it is impossible to ignore the legal arena. Instead of taking a clear stance for or against the law as a tool for social justice struggles, we have attempted to understand what are the methods and the effects of legal practice that grow from this ambivalence. The accounts of our interviewees indicate that both practical strategies and ways of accounting for these aim at subverting and challenging the law while at the same time using it. Throughout the analysis we have conceptualised these strategies as decentring, re-politicising and redistribution. (shrink)

Horton and Gerrig outlined a memory-based processing model of conversational common ground that provided a description of how speakers could both strategically and automatically gain access to information about others through domain-general memory processes acting over ordinary memory traces. In this article, we revisit this account, reviewing empirical findings that address aspects of this memory-based model. In doing so, we also take the opportunity to clarify what we believe this approach implies about the cognitive psychology of common ground, and (...) just as important, what it does not imply. We also highlight related areas of research demonstrating how general cognitive processes can constrain access to relevant knowledge in ways that shape both language production and comprehension. (shrink)

This paper describes a set of ideal type organizations in a developmental sequence. As these descriptions are based on Spiral Dynamics (or Emerging Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory – ECLET), the types are labeled as Order, Success, Community and Synergy. Per type the author elaborated on the underlying value system and relating institutional structures, such as leadership role, governance and measurement format. As a summary, a Transition Matrix is presented which indicate the paradigm shifts per discipline/department, as manifested in the (...) subsequent ideal type organizations. As Order and Success generally describe the majority of corporations in Western Economies, the latter two types introduce new approaches to more innovative – and more sustainable/responsible – ways to doing business. Based on Community Values, the author introduces a new measurement format which is the foundation for a systemic and coherent set of management tools to be used in a stakeholder approach. These tools relate to the strategic, tactical and operational tasks of management and have been developed by researchers of the European Corporate Sustainability Framework (ECSF) consortium. The set includes two tools which are generic: the Strategic Sustainability Scan (Strategy) and the Sustainability Matrix, which is a self-assessment tool (tactics). Three operational tools are context and industry specific: These are the Community related Responsive Business Scorecard (RBS) and Benchmark Format for measuring and monitoring sustainability performance and a methodology – a Management Information System – to generate information on people, planet and profit in order to provide data for the set of key performance indicators. (shrink)

Sequential decision theory formally solves the problem of rational agents in uncertain worlds if the true environmental prior probability distribution is known. Solomonoff's theory of universal induction formally solves the problem of sequence prediction for unknown prior distribution. We combine both ideas and get a parameter-free theory of universal Artificial Intelligence. We give strong arguments that the resulting AIXI model is the most intelligent unbiased agent possible. We outline how the AIXI model can formally solve a number of problem classes, (...) including sequence prediction, strategic games, function minimization, reinforcement and supervised learning. The major drawback of the AIXI model is that it is uncomputable. To overcome this problem, we construct a modified algorithm AIXItl that is still effectively more intelligent than any other time t and length l bounded agent. The computation time of AIXItl is of the order t x 2^l. The discussion includes formal definitions of intelligence order relations, the horizon problem and relations of the AIXI theory to other AI approaches. (shrink)