Formal organizing and transnational communities: evidence from global finance governance associations, 1879-2006

The global economic, political and social landscape underwent a remarkable transformation in the latter half of the twentieth century (Giddens 1984, 1990; Hirst & Thompson 1996; Boli and Thomas, 1999; Crori et al 2003; see also Foucault 1970, 1979 on general epistemic shifts). These changes had an impact on many aspects of economic and social life. One of the most profound developments has been the proliferation of transnational organizing through formal structures. The extraordinary growth in global voluntary associations, in particular, and the timing of the emergence of these associations in the global sphere have not yet been adaquately explained by existing theories in organizational analysis and other social sciences. Therefore, an alternative theoretical approach is required to understand how and why associational forms of organization of economic and social activiry have moved into the transnational space. In this chapter we shall address these concerns by looking at the historical emergence of global finance governance organizations and note the existence of archipelagos of agencies that govern finance in different ways. These voluntary associations include legally incorporated associations that exist within local legal jurisdictions as well as loosely structured networks and movements that are disembodied entities that exist and coordinate using electronic media. Incorporated assoviations display local rootedness with implications such as legal liability of its members, the right to own property and enter contracts, and the right to open a bank account and officially lodge a complaint. Much of the earlier work on understanding global organization focused on particular factors related to technology, knowledge or expertise, and worked within the framework of existing nation-state jurisdiction. However, the heterogeneirty within this global space reveals how, through the governance mechanism of global associetions, finance has evolved into a global concern embodying particular logics and following a specific historical trajectory

Pentagon Officials Misled Congress on Transgender Troops by Asserting Falsehoods that DoD’s Own Data Contradict, and by Calling Equal Treatment "Special" Treatment

Two senior Pentagon officials testified on February 27, 2019 before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel in defense of President Trump’s proposed ban on transgender service members, which the Defense Department plans to reinstate once permitted by courts. In their testimony, James N. Stewart, performing the duties of Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and Vice Admiral Raquel Bono, Director of the Defense Health Agency, misled Congress by asserting falsehoods about readiness and deployment and by saying that applying a single standard of fitness equally to all service members means giving transgender troops “special accommodations.” Their mischaracterizations echoed many of the main points in DoD’s 2018 “Report and Recommendations on Military Service by Transgender Persons,” known as the “Mattis Report.” Both the written and verbal testimony introduced deceptive, erroneous, and false assertions about the ostensible risk that gender dysphoria poses to readiness and deployment and about standards that DoD plans to apply to transgender service members. DoD witnesses deemed gender dysphoria a risk despite the fact that 1) every Service Chief testified in Congress that inclusive policy has not compromised readiness; 2) no evidence supports the assertion; 3) a global medical consensus finds the medical condition is treatable and should not be disqualifying; and 4) DoD’s own data concerning the successful deployment of hundreds of service members with the diagnosis contradict the claim. DoD witnesses defined transgender individuals as a deployment risk and then blamed them for being “unwilling” to adhere to standards written specifically to exclude them from service

Organizational Culture and Institutional Theory: A Conversation at the Border

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/105649261141979

Book Review of J. Halpern and R. Stern, eds., “Debating rationality: Non-rational aspects of organizational decision-making"

In their introduction of 'Debating Rationality: Non-rational Aspects of Organizational Decision Making,' editors Jennifer Halpern and Robert Stern trace the social science foundations of rationality and its research uses, stressing conceptions and applications from multiple research traditions. Shapira provides a pointed summary of the foundations of rationality used in the behavioral decision theory literature. Gibbons presents a similar review from the perspective of the economics of internal organization and its dialogue with organization theory. The three chapters work particularly well together to outline the terms of the debate. In the seven chapters that follow, authors whose work has helped shape contemporary research bring their expertise to the business of studying decisions and organizations. Rather than discarding the economic rationality model, the authors either advocate its revision or identify some of its inconsistencies

Revista de educación

Se analiza la aparición y la institucionalización de la escolarización masiva. Se explica cómo y por qué la escolarización masiva se convierte en una medida importante del progreso individual y nacional. Se examina hasta qué punto los elementos distintivos de la escolarización masiva se convierten en elementos relativamente fijos en el entorno mundial de los estados-nación. Y se tratan los orígenes de la escolarización masiva y de su elaboración ideológica y, la dinámica de la institucionalización educativa a partir de finales del siglo XIX.Ministerio Educación CIDEBiblioteca de Educación del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Calle San Agustín, 5 - 3 Planta; 28014 Madrid; Tel. +34917748000; [email protected]

Discharging Transgender Troops Would Cost $960 Million

On July 26, 2017, President Donald J. Trump stated his intention to prohibit transgender persons from serving “in any capacity” in the U.S. military. This would include those who might apply to join the armed forces as well as those who are currently serving. According to the President, “Our military . . . cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs,” presumably referring to the cost of medically necessary, transition-related health care for transgender personnel. Commentators and scholars have addressed the financial costs associated with providing such care, but no previous analysis thus far has estimated the costs of discharging transgender personnel from the armed forces. If a decision to discharge currently serving transgender personnel is based largely on financial considerations, then policymakers should take into account the costs of discharging the service members, not just the costs of retaining them under a policy of equal treatment. The present study employs a “replacement-cost method” to calculate the overall cost of removing transgender personnel. Assuming the military must recruit and train a replacement for each service member discharged, the total price of a complete ban is derived by multiplying the number of service members who will be discharged by the cost of recruiting and training a replacement. The authors use a conservative estimate of the number of transgender personnel currently serving, drawn from research published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The cost of health care is an upper-bound estimate calculated by analysts at the RAND Corporation. The study does not include administrative costs and lost time for military personnel tasked with identifying transgender members and overseeing their separation, or government costs associated with legal challenges by those targeted for separation. The authors estimate that the financial cost of fully implementing a ban on transgender service members, as initially proposed by the President, would be $960 million. In addition, the authors compare the cost of fully implementing the ban to the cost of providing medically necessary health care to transgender personnel. Given that the total annual cost of providing such care is, at most,$8.4 million, the $960 million price tag of fully implementing the President’s proposed ban is more than 100 times greater than the annual cost of retaining transgender service members and providing for their health care needs

Inhabited Ecosystems: Propelling Transformative Social Change Between and Through Organizations

Two research streams examine how social movements operate both “in and around” organizations. We probe the empirical spaces between these streams, asking how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts contributes to transformative social change. By exploring activities in the mid-1990s related to advocacy for domestic partner benefits at 24 organizations in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota, we develop the concept of inhabited ecosystems to explore the relational processes by which employee activists advance change. These activists faced a variety of structural opportunities and restraints, and we identify five mechanisms that sustained their efforts during protracted contestation: learning even from thwarted activism, borrowing from one another’s more or less radical approaches, helping one another avoid the traps of stagnation, fostering solidarity and ecosystem capabilities, and collaboratively expanding the social movement domain. We thus reveal how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts animates an inhabited ecosystem of challengers that propels change efforts “between and through” organizations. These efforts, even when exploratory or incomplete, generate an ecosystem’s capacity to sustain, resource, and even reshape the larger transformative social change effort