IT Alternatives to Social Control in Organizations

This paper extends theories of control as an organization design tool and empirically explores the efficacy of delegation technologies in providing the equivalent of social (clan) control for effort-averse agents engaged in low programmable, low outcome measurement task environments

Managing Corporate Reputation

{Excerpt} Newly minted approaches to corporate reputation are already obsolete. Beyond gaining control of issues, crises, and corporate social responsibility, organizations need to reconceptualize and manage reputation in knowledge-based economies. Reputation is not about likability: it is the aggregate estimation in which a person or entity is held by individuals and the public against a criterion, based on past actions and perceptual representation of future prospects, when compared to other persons or entities. Since we cannot develop a personal relationship with every entity in the world, the regard in which a party is held is a proxy indicator of predictability and the likelihood the party will meet expectations, a useful earmark that facilitates sense and decision making against alternatives. Every day, through what amounts to a distributed means of social control, we assess and judge with effect the competence of individuals and organizations to fulfill expectations based on such social evaluation

Environmental Quality Laboratory Research Report, 1985-1987

The Environmental Quality Laboratory at Caltech is a center for research on large-scale systems problems of natural resources and environmental quality. The principal areas of investigation at EQL are: 1. Air quality management. 2. Water resources and water quality management. 3. Control of hazardous substances in the environment. 4. Energy policy, including regulation, conservation and energy-environment tradeoffs. 5. Resources policy (other than energy); residuals management. EQL research includes technical assessments, computer modeling, studies of environmental control options, policy analyses, and research on important components of the large-scale systems. Field work is also undertaken at EQL, some in collaboration with other organizations, to provide critical data needed for evaluation of systems concepts and models. EQL's objectives are as follows: 1. To do systematic studies of environmental and resources problems. The results of these studies, including the clarification of policy alternatives, are communicated to decision-makers in government and industry, to the research community, and to the public. As an organization, EQL refrains from advocating particular policies, but seeks to point out the implications of the various policy alternatives. 2. To contribute to the education and training of people in these areas through involvement of predoctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting faculty members in EQL activities. This educational effort is just as important as the results of the studies themselves, and should make lasting contributions to the nation's ability to solve its environmental and resources problems. The work at EQL goes beyond the usual academic research in that it tries to organize and develop the knowledge necessary to clarify society's alternatives by integrating relevant disciplines. EQL works on solving problems of specific localities when there is a strong element of public interest or educational value, or the concepts and results are applicable to other places. The research of EQL during this period was done under the supervision of faculty members in Environmental Engineering Science, Chemical Engineering, and Social Science. This research report covers the period from October 1985 through September 1987. The publications listed under the individual project descriptions are the new ones for the reporting period

Diseño de la estructura organizacional y de coordinación de un observatorio basado en inteligencia colectiva

Introduction: This article is the product of research developed within the framework of the Emple-ap Project, throughout 2019 at the School of Industrial Engineering, Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas.  Problem: Limitations in the use of traditional hierarchical structures for the management of organizations based on control hierarchies, due to their difficulty in operating efficiently in human social systems (HSS). Objective: To generate a general proposal to understand the structure and organizational management for the observatory of employability of the Pacific Alliance (PA) supported by collective intelligence (CI) and high reliability organization (HRO). Methodology: The methodology for the development of the proposal is supported on grounded theory, in which the design emerges from the statements made in previous research. Results: Based on the results of the review, it presents a proposal for organizational structure for the observatory, emphasizing the alternatives to divide and coordinate the work and the important characteristics of the structure to facilitate the exploitation of available resources. Conclusion: The CI and reliable organizations, are a different and decentralized way of management in organizations that allow you to create more flexible and robust systems. This study creates a general outline of the characteristics and main preconditions that must have a system based on CI. Originality: The main contribution of this research lies in the design of an organizational structure, different from the traditional hierarchical structure, supported by CI for the management of an entire organization. Limitations: Currently, there are no great advances with respect to organizational structures or alternatives to the traditional hierarchies of control, despite limitations in information processing and the impact that has on performance

New Prospects for Organizational Democracy? How the Joint Pursuit of Social and Financial Goals Challenges Traditional Organizational Designs

Some interesting exceptions notwithstanding, the traditional logic of economic efficiency has long favored hierarchical forms of organization and disfavored democracy in business. What does the balance of arguments look like, however, when values besides efficient revenue production are brought into the picture? The question is not hypothetical: In recent years, an ever increasing number of corporations have developed and adopted socially responsible behaviors, thereby hybridizing aspects of corporate businesses and social organizations. We argue that the joint pursuit of financial and social objectives warrants significant rethinking of organizational democracy’s merits compared both to hierarchy and to non-democratic alternatives to hierarchy. In making this argument, we draw on an extensive literature review to document the relative lack of substantive discussion of organizational democracy since 1960. And we draw lessons from political theory, suggesting that the success of political democracy in integrating diverse values offers some grounds for asserting parallel virtues in the business case

Understanding and Preventing Employee Turnover

Child welfare agencies have identified worker turnover as a particularly problematic organizational issue. In children’s mental health agencies, turnover also seems to be an issue for residential care services. Do people voluntarily leave child welfare and children\u27s mental health organizations because of the work itself, because of the workload, or because they find “success” difficult to experience? These are often given as reasons by departing employees, but to develop a comprehensive understanding why turnover takes place in these organizations, this paper looks at the research on turnover in organizations generally and in child welfare and children\u27s mental health organizations specifically. Research on unwanted employee turnover has produced thousands of articles. We begin by exploring the major themes in this literature and then relate these themes to research done in human services organizations, and child welfare and children\u27s mental health organizations specifically. We conclude with a list of research questions to pursue in our study of workers’ experiences in the workplace

Convergence in the making : transnational civil society and the Free Trade Area of the Americas

The paper analysis the role Hemispheric Social Alliance network in its efforts to build a transnational coalition between labor unions, social movements, indigenous, environmental and citizen organizations throughout the Americas to oppose the establishment of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The prospects of hemispheric solidarity cannot be assumed in face of such heterogeneity of social actors. Drawing from social constructivism and the theory of structuration, the paper will propose a methodological approach to the study of transnational collective action in the Americas by stressing the political value of building discourse coalitions and embedding collective expectations. Defying the official meanings of the FTAA project, the Hemispheric Social Alliance has been articulating a counter-hegemonic critique to neo-liberal approaches to development in the Western Hemisphere

Men, Masculinities and Water Powers in Irrigation

The aim of this article is to provide an informed plea for more explicitly identifying, naming and unravelling the linkages between water control and gender in irrigation. The fact that power, expertise and status in irrigation tend to have a strong masculine connotation is by now quite well established, and underlies calls for more women in water decision making, engineering education and professions. Yet, the questions of how and why water control, status and expertise are linked to masculinity, and of whether and how such links work to legitimize the exercise of power, are seldom asked. To date, associations between masculinity and professional water performance have largely been taken for granted and remained unexamined. The resulting perceived normalcy makes mechanisms of (gendered) power and politics in water appear self-evident, unchangeable, and indeed gender-neutral. The article reviews examples of the masculinity of irrigation in different domains to argue that exposing and challenging such hitherto hidden dimensions of (gendered) power is important for the identification of new avenues of gender progressive change, and for shedding a new and interesting light on the workings of power in water. KEYWORDS: Irrigation, water, gender, politics, masculinities, engineer

Confronting Criminal Law’s Violence: The Possibilities of Unfinished Alternatives

Confronting criminal law’s violence calls for an openness to unfinished alternatives — a willingness to engage in partial, in process, incomplete reformist efforts that seek to displace conventional criminal law administration as a primary mechanism for social order maintenance. But despite all indications that the status quo in U.S. criminal law administration is profoundly dysfunctional — an institutional manifestation of the deepest pathologies in our society — contemporary criminal law reform efforts and scholarship focus almost exclusively on relatively limited modifications to the status quo. These modifications may well render criminal law administration more humane, but fail to substitute alternative institutions or approaches to realize social order maintenance goals. In particular, these reformist efforts continue to rely on conventional criminal regulatory approaches to a wide array of social concerns, with all of their associated violence: on criminalization, policing, arrest, prosecution, incarceration, probation, and parole. Thus, even as these reformist approaches may offer substantial benefits, they remain wed to institutions that perpetrate criminal law’s violence and to limited temporal and imaginative horizons. By contrast, this essay explores a series of criminal law reform alternatives that offer more fundamental substitutes for criminal law administration. More specifically, this essay focuses on the possibilities of alternatives to criminal case processing that substitute for the order-maintaining functions currently attempted through criminal law enforcement. These alternatives hold the potential to draw into service separate institutions and mechanisms from those typically associated with criminal law administration. Further, these alternatives enlist on more equal footing and invite feedback and input from persons subject to criminal law enforcement. Importantly, this latter subset of reform alternatives is decidedly unfinished, partial, in process. I will argue that this unfinished quality ought not to be denied as an embarrassment or flaw, but instead should be embraced as a source of critical strength and possibility. In this dimension, this essay is a preliminary call for more attention on the part of legal scholars and criminal law reform advocates to unfinished partial substitutes for the order-maintaining work performed by criminal law administration — a call to attend further to as yet incomplete reformist alternatives that may portend less violent and more self-determined ways of achieving some measure of social order and collective peace. I begin to develop this argument by drawing, in particular, on the work of the Norwegian social theorist and prison abolitionist Thomas Mathiesen