Implications for democracy of a networked bureaucratic world

Dwight Waldo wrote nearly fifty years ago that democracy is very much more than the political context in which public administration is carried out. Public administration is now less hierarchical and insular and is increasingly networked. This has important implications for democracy, including changing responsibilities for the public interest, for meeting public preferences, and for the enhancement of political deliberation, civility, and trust. Networked public administration can pose a threat to democratic governance and it can open possibilities for strengthening governance, depending on the values and actions of public administrators

Interdependent supply relationships as institutions: The role of HR practices

This paper aims to use institutional theory to explore the role of human resource (HR) practices as carriers in the evolution of interdependent supply relationships. Design/methodology/approach – This is a qualitative study of an inter-firm supply relationship where the two partners were interdependent as a result of a “closed loop” supply relationship. The paper explores the perspectives of employees at multiple levels within both partners, and collects pluralist evidence from 36 interviewees from both sides of the dyad. It collects documentary evidence such as minutes, contractual agreements and HR documents. This paper re-analyses the evidence from earlier work using an institutional theory framework. Findings – Using Scott's “three pillars” the paper shows that HR practices can act as carriers of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements in interdependent supply relationships through both formal and informal mechanisms. Regulative elements were less evident, but could be fundamental in shaping the other two. A tension was found between institutional pressures at the inter- and intra-firm levels, an emergence of innovative practices and new routines at inter-organizational level, and an evolution over time that could involve a de-institutionalisation of the relationship as a result of internal priorities competing with the resource requirements of the supply relationship. Originality/value – The paper addresses the interface between OM and organisational theory. Areas are proposed where institutionalisation of a supply relationship can be strengthened or weakened. The findings further challenge the view of supply relationships as a “spectrum” in which progress is unidir

Ethical human resource management: a critical analysis

In modern day, Human Resource Management (HRM) is seen as a mere variant of management control aiming intentionally to ‘colonize’ the identity of the individual employee which points to the contradictions between the idealised HRM theories and its practice commonly referred to as the difference between rhetoric and reality. These critical analyses suggest that HRM reflects a historical shift in the way work is defined and managed and research has to be undertaken on how morality and ethics may be represented in the discourse, lived experiences, practice and broader context of HR professionals. The HR function will continue to face challenges in balancing business imperatives and ethical values but as long as the corporate and HR leadership remains committed, no challenge may be insurmountable

Rethinking network governance: new forms of analysis and the implications for IGR/MLG

Our position is that network governance can be understood as a communicative arena. Networks, then, are not defined by frequency of interactions between actors but by sharing of and contest between different clusters of ideas, theories and normative orientations (discourses) in relation to the specific context within which actors operate. A discourse comprises an ensemble of ideas, concepts and causal theories that give meaning to and reproduce ways of understanding the world (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). Consequently, network governance can be understood as the inherently political process through which discourses are produced, reproduced and transformed. Democratic network governance thus becomes the study of the way in which the core challenges of democratic practice are addressed – how is legitimacy awarded, by what mechanisms are decisions reached, and how is accountability enabled. Three approaches to the discursive analysis of democracy in network governance are considered - argumentation analysis, inter-subjectivity, and critical discourse analysis – and their implications for the study of intergovernmental relations and multi-level governance (IGR/MLG) are discussed. Case examples are provided. We conclude that the value for the study of MLG/IGR is to complement existing forms of analysis by opening up the communicative and ideational aspects of interactions between levels of government and other actors

Both Sides of the Story: Communication Ethics in Mediatized Worlds

Current transformations in the media landscape are challenging contemporary communication and media ethics in at least 2 ways. First, digitization of the media creates new ethical problems that stimulate calls for a redefinition of the norms and values of public communication. Second, new instruments of web-based media observation introduce new possibilities for media (self-)regulation and accountability, thus complementing the initiatives of traditional institutions like press councils. The article retraces those conflicting developments by reference to 2 comparative studies, representing the diverging traditions of conventional communication ethics and media accountability research. In bridging over the conceptual gap between the 2 forms of research, the article develops new perspectives for ethical reflection in the mediatized worlds of the digital ag

Methodology and Applications of Christian Leadership Ethics

A fundamental methodology for Christian leadership ethics will be proposed, which has long been pending in the discourse on ethical leadership. It is necessary to first clarify what characterizes leadership ethics, and secondly, what Christian leadership ethics imply and how this methodology should be classified with regard to alternative paradigms. Thirdly, the practical impact for selected areas of application will be pointed out. It will be demonstrated that leadership ethics in general is based on a transparent basis of values and apply to specific scopes. It defines the relationship between economic efficiency and human utility in a narrower sense as objective dualism. Christian leadership ethics is based on the biblical conception of man and therefore the arguments are metaphysical. The related answer to objective-dualism implies direct consequences for the design of human resource management, motivation and communication. At least from a Christian point of view, it is undisputable that there are and should be Christian leaders in management. But can or should there be Christian leadership ethics? This has been questioned in principle by the example of Ferdinand Rohrhirsch – even though recently, several approaches have raised this claim: for instance, the model of Servant Leadership, which comes from the U.S. and is slowly being established in Europe. The perspective leadership ethics by Cornelius Keppeler or the Business Metaphysics by Michael Schramm, is another example. In this article we clear the way for a Christian methodology which goes beyond virtue. We clarify what is meant by corresponding Christian leadership ethics and where, from a fundamental ethical point of view, such a system can be classified in relation to alternative paradigms. Corresponding consequences for selected areas of application will be shown

Kite-marks, standards and privileged legal structures; artefacts of constraint disciplining structure choices

As different countries and regions continue to develop policy and legal frameworks for social enterprises this paper offers new insights into the dynamics of legal structure choice by social entrepreneurs. The potential nodes of conflict between exogenous prescriptions and social entrepreneur’s own orientation to certain aspects of organization and what social entrepreneurs actually do in the face of such conflict is explicated. Kite-marks, standards and legal structures privileged by powerful actors are cast as political artefacts that serve to discipline the choices of legal structure by social entrepreneurs as they prescribe desirable characteristics, behaviours and structures for social enterprises. This paper argues that social enterprises should not be understood as the homogenous organisational category that is portrayed in government policy documents, kite-marks and privileged legal structures but as organisations facing a proliferation of structural forms which are increasingly rendered a governable domain (Nickel & Eikenberry, 2016; Scott, 1998) through the development of kite marks, funder / investor requirements and government policy initiatives. Further, that these developments act to prioritise and marginalise particular forms of social enterprises as they exert coercive, mimetic and normative pressures (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) that act to facilitate the categorising of social enterprises in a way that strengthens institutional coherence and serves to drive the structural isomorphism (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2017; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) of social enterprise activity. Whilst the actions of powerful actors work to maintain (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006) the social enterprise category the embedded agency of social entrepreneurs acts to transform it (Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009). The prevailing Institutional logics (Ocasio, Thornton, & Lounsbury, 2017; Zhao & Lounsbury, 2016) that serve to both marginalise and prioritise those legal structures are used to present argument that the choice of legal structure for a social enterprise is often in conflict with the social entrepreneur's orientation to certain aspects of how they wish to organise. Where the chosen legal structure for a social enterprise is in conflict with the social entrepreneur's own organising principles as to how they wish to organise then this can result in the social entrepreneur decoupling (Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009) their business and/or governance practices from their chosen legal structure in order to resolve the tensions that they experience. Social entrepreneurs also experiencing the same tension enact a different response in that they begin to create and legitimate new legal structures on the margins of the social enterprise category through a process of institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009; Hardy & Maguire, 2017)

Locating distributed leadership

This special issue addresses a number of the key themes that have been surfacing from the literature on distributed leadership (DL) for some time. Together with those papers selected to be included in this special issue, the authors set out both to explore and contribute to a number of the current academic debates in relation to DL, while at the same time examining the extent to which research on DL has permeated the management field. The paper examines a number of key concepts, ideas and themes in relation to DL and, in so doing, highlights the insights offered through new contributions and interpretations. The paper offers a means by which forms of DL might be conceptualized to be better incorporated into researchers' scholarship and research, and a framework is presented which considers a number of different dimensions of DL, how it may be planned, and how it may emerge, together with how it may or may not align with other organizational activities and aspects. © 2011 The Authors. International Journal of Management Reviews © 2011 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd