Rethinking the sharing economy:The nature and organization of sharing in the 2015 refugee crisis

Our paper focuses on a non-standard sharing example that harbors the potential to disrupt received wisdom on the sharing economy. While originally entering the field to analyze, broadly from a governance perspective, how the 2015 refugee crisis was handled in Vienna, Austria, we found that the non-governmental organization Train of Hope - labeled as a "citizen start-up" by City of Vienna officials - played an outstanding role in mastering the crisis. In a blog post during his visit in Vienna at the time, and experiencing the refugee crisis first-hand, it was actually Henry Mintzberg who suggested reading the phenomenon as part of the "sharing economy". Continuing this innovative line of thought, we argue that our unusual case is in fact an excellent opportunity to discover important aspects about both the nature and organization of sharing. First, we uncover an additional dimension of sharing beyond the material sharing of resources (i.e., the economic dimension): the sharing of a distinct concern (i.e., the moral dimension of sharing). Our discovery exemplifies such a moral dimension that is rather different from the status quo materialistic treatments focusing on economic transactions and property rights arguments. Second, we hold that a particular form of organizing facilitates the sharing economy: the sharing economy organization. This particular organizational form is distinctive - at the same time selectively borrowing and skillfully combining features from platform organizations (e.g., use of technology as an intermediary for exchange and effective coordination, ability to tap into external resources) and social movements (e.g., mobilization, shared identity, collective action). It is a key quality of this form of organization to enable the balancing of the two dimensions inherent in the nature of sharing: economic and moral. Our paper contributes to this Special Issue of the Academy of Management Discoveries by highlighting and explaining the two-fold economic and moral nature of sharing and the organization of sharing between movement and platform

Математическая модель потоков покупателей двухпродуктовой торговой компании в виде системы массового обслуживания с повторными обращениями к блокам

Построена математическая модель формирования потока покупателей торговой компании в виде системы параллельного обслуживания кратных заявок с повторным обращением и неограниченным числом обслуживающих приборов, получено выражение для математического ожидания капитала торговой компании, а также найдено условие для существования максимума этой функции. Для конкретного примера определено оптимальное отношение стоимости подарка к средней стоимости покупки, обеспечивающее максимальную прибыль компании

So What Do You Do? Experimenting with Space for Social Creativity

This chapter investigates the relationship between physical space and processes of creative thinking and action. The authors build on organizational and sociological literature about social space and aesthetics, then illustrate how the latter two aspects influenced each other in five action experiments. Small mixed groups explored how they would use a studio to facilitate social innovation and to strengthen the link between the Max Stern Jezreel Valley College in Israel and the surrounding communities. Analysis of the video recordings identified seven configurations of social space that changed over time as the participants engaged in the task. The authors suggest that the undifferentiated and unencrusted nature of the space was both a source of uncertainty and potential for the participants. Some groups generated more innovative processes and products than others. The study also offers insights into the importance of embodied action and verbal discourse in innovative processes

The logic of tact:How decisions happen in situations of crisis

The mass-migration of refugees in the fall 2015 posed an immense humanitarian and logistical challenge: exhausted from their week-long journeys, refugees arrived in Vienna in need of care, shelter, food, medical aid, and onward transport. The refugee crisis was managed by an emerging polycentric and inter-sectoral collective of organizations. In this paper, we investigate how, during such a situation, leaders of these organizations made decisions in concert with each other and hence sustained the collective's capacity to act collectively. We ask: what was the logic of decision-making that orchestrated collective action during the crisis? In answering this question, we make the following contribution: departing from March's logics of consequences and appropriateness as well as Weick's work on sensemaking during crisis, we introduce an alternative logic that informed decision-making: the logic of tact. With this concept we (a) offer a better understanding of how managers make decisions under the condition of bounded rationality and the simultaneous transgression of their institutional identity in situations of crisis; and we (b) show that in decision-making under duress cognition is neither ahead of action, nor is action ahead of cognition; rather, tact explicates the rapid switching between cognition and action, orchestrating decision-making through this interplay

The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability

This paper proposes a new organizational metaphor, the ‘Biophilic Organization’, which aims to counter the bio-cultural disconnection of many organizations despite their espoused commitment to sustainability. This conceptual research draws on multiple disciplines such as evolutionary psychology and architecture to not only develop a diverse bio-cultural connection but to show how this connection tackles sustainability, in a holistic and systemic sense. Moreover, the paper takes an integrative view of sustainability, which effectively means that it embraces the different emergent tensions. Three specific tensions are explored: efficiency versus resilience, organizational versus personal agendas and isomorphism versus institutional change. In order to illustrate how the Biophilic Organization could potentially provide a synthesis strategy for such tensions, healthcare examples are drawn from the emerging fields of Biophilic Design in Singapore and Generative Design in the U.S.A. Finally, an example is provided which highlights how a Taoist cultural context has impacted on a business leader in China, to illustrative the significance of a transcendent belief system to such a bio-cultural narrative

When bureaucracy meets the crowd:Studying ‘Open Government’ in the Vienna city administration

International audienceOpen Government is en vogue, yet vague: while practitioners, policy-makers, and others praise its virtues, little is known about how Open Government relates to bureaucratic organization. This paper presents insights from a qualitative investigation into the City of Vienna, Austria. It demonstrates how the encounter between the city administration and “the open” juxtaposes the decentralizing principles of the crowd, such as transparency, participation, and distributed cognition, with the centralizing principles of bureaucracy, such as secrecy, expert knowledge, written files, and rules. The paper explores how this theoretical conundrum is played out and how senior city managers perceive Open Government in relation to the bureaucratic nature of their administration. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to empirically trace the complexities of the encounter between bureaucracy and Open Government; and second, to critically theorize the ongoing rationalization of public administration in spite of constant challenges to its bureaucratic principles. In so doing, the paper advances our understanding of modern bureaucratic organizations under the condition of increased openness, transparency, and interaction with their environments.<br/