Social enterprise as a socially rational business

What is the goal of social enterprise policy? Is it the creation of a ‘not-for-profit’ or ‘more-than-profit’ business movement? In institutional policy circles, arguments are shaped by the desire to protect assets for the community, while entrepreneurial discourses favour a mixture of investment sources, surplus sharing and inclusive systems of governance. This article uses data from a critical ethnography to offer a third perspective. Human behaviour is a product of, and support system for, our socio-sexual choices. A grounded theory of social and economic capital is developed that integrates sexuality into organisation development. This constructs business organisations as complex centres of community-building replete with economic and social goals. By viewing corporate governance from this perspective social enterprise is reconceived as a business movement guided by social rationality with the long-term goal of distributing social and economic capital across stakeholder groups to satisfy individual and collective needs.</p

Communication Networks, Hegemony, and Communicative Action

Communicative action now commonly takes place in electronically mediated global networks and the networks are a powerful form of social ordering. This article analyzes the different forms of power that operate in communicative networks and how these alter communicative action. It suggests that the more optimistic literature on global and network governance, arguing and bargaining, and soft norm generation has not taken these new modes of hegemony fully into account. An analysis of the possible forms of communicative freedom in networks rounds off the article.sovereignty; identity; multilevel governance; Europeanization

`Open\u27 for Collective Business: The Governance of Contemporary Economic Cooperatives in a Corporate Q\u27EQCHI\u27 Maya Town

This article examines the governance of a Q\u27eqchi\u27 Maya community located on multiple margins who are cooperatively managing several businesses. I do so by first situating this study within the context of Guatemalan history wherein cooperatives were first promoted in various economic and environmental zones only to be subsequently viewed as subversive and targeted by the military. The community within this study is located in the Izabal Department, a region far less affected by Guatemala\u27s genocidal past. I argue that the cooperative businesses created by this community have allowed for a selective incorporation of market-based relations that mitigate the commonly experienced alienation of labor and social relations brought on by the capitalist mode of production. The projects created by the community rely upon consensus-based decision-making and reciprocal labor exchanges which mirror their established structures for interpersonal relationships and principles for communal land management. The rotational role system utilized has allowed for the distribution of the economic risks and gains inherent to business ventures creating opportunities for income generation strategies to be flexible and diversified. A lack of specialization has allowed for appropriate time management to fulfill social obligations while maintaining a subsistence-based mode of livelihood. The community being situated within a plurality of peripheries has led to the reinforcement of communal ties, values, and self-sufficiency by collectively navigating limitations. The resultant increases in autonomy and self-determination have therefore strengthened the community\u27s ability to resist relying on external actors

Control configurations in buyer-supplier relationships: environment- buyer organisation- goals and modes of control

Considering the growing externalisation of strategic activities, the problem of the control of buyer-supplier relationships is crucial. Therefore, researchers usually propose modes of control that are adapted to various environments. However, the organisations are often considered as “black boxes” whose goals are unspecified. This paper examines buyer-supplier control configurations that take into account the organisation of buying firms and their goals toward their suppliers. This research is based on six case studies conducted in the manufacturing industry (60 interviews). The outcome of the research is a matrix which represents four configurations of buyer-supplier control, based on the global purchasing environment of the buying firm (in terms of reciprocal dependence between the buyer and its suppliers). For each configuration, a type of purchasing organisation (structure and intra-organisational control of purchasing agents) and a principal goal for the buying firm are proposed: the lord-buyer wants to exert its power, the partner-buyer aims at assuring goal congruence with its suppliers, the vassal-buyer tries to reduce uncertainty and the market-buyer seeks to grasp opportunities on the market. For each configuration, the modes of control that the buyer exerts on its suppliers –in terms of means, objects of control, influence strategies of the buyer (more or less coercive) and suppliers reactions- are coherent with the main goal of the buyer.interorganisational control; buyer-supplier relationship; power; dependence; Goals of control

When Europe encounters urban governance: Policy Types, Actor Games and Mechanisms of cites Europeanization

This paper examines European Union (EU) causal mechanisms and policy instruments affecting the urban domain throughout the lenses of the Europeanization approach. Instead of looking at EU instruments that are formally/legally consecrated to cities, we use theoretical public policy analysis to explore the arenas and the causal mechanisms that structure the encounters between the EU and urban systems of governance. Policy instruments are related to policy arenas and in turn to different mechanisms of transmission thus originating a typology of European Policy Modes. The paper focuses on four different EU instruments in the in the macro-area of sustainable development and proposes potential game-theoretical models for each of them. In the conclusions we highlight the differences between this approach and the traditional analysis of EU urban policy, and suggest avenues for future empirical research based on typologies of policy instruments and modes of Europeanization

The Governance of Services

The problem of assessing a system of governance for composite services in the social economy is approached by means of original methods.The main innovation is that the welfare structure of a society is separated from the legal transaction- or institutional structure.As both the various types of services and the various modes of management are defined in terms of relations between sets of persons, these structures can be compared and the performance of a managementsystem can be assessed.The dynamics of a wide range of hybrid forms of organization - between market and hierarchy - is analyzed in this framework. The approach elaborates on the new institutional economics, and the social theory of micromotives and macrobehavior in exchange and transactions.welfare and transactions;hybrid organizations;typology of services;typology of modes of governance;institutional economics