Managing Social-Business Tensions: A Review and Research Agenda for Social Enterprise

In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomeno

Managing the grading paradox: leveraging the power of choice in the classroom

How can management educators cultivate students' interest in the MBA classroom? Inspiring interest, an important antecedent of learning, can be an uphill battle due to the ubiquitous presence of grades. Grades are meant to encourage interest, yet they often do just the opposite. The result is a grading paradox. We hypothesize that leveraging choice in the classroom can manage this grading paradox by increasing interest. In a field experiment in real-world MBA classrooms (N = 91 students), we found that a choice intervention, the opportunity for students to allocate the weight of several course components toward their final course grade, was associated with higher levels of two types of interest, triggered situational interest and maintained situational interest. This study corroborates and extends previous laboratory-based research documenting the positive relationship between choice and interest, and offers a practical tool that management educators can use to encourage student interest

Siting of HIV/AIDS diagnostic equipment in South Africa: a case study in locational analysis

This paper describes a practical application of locational analysis to the siting of HIV/AIDS diagnostic equipment in laboratories across South Africa. Classical location analytical techniques were extended to ensure that laboratories are sited as close as possible to major centres of demand from hospitals and clinics. A particular advantage of the modified set covering algorithm developed is that choices between laboratory sites are made in a transparent manner. In order to find appropriate numbers and ideal placement of CD4 laboratories, runs were undertaken for various scenarios based on maximum travel time from health facilities to laboratory sites. Results demonstrated to decision makers showed close comparisons with pilot review projects undertaken in four health districts of South Africa. The research has potential to impact health care delivery to HIV sufferers in the poorest rural regions of the country

Technology use by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to support employment activities: A single-subject design meta analysis

This is the published version. Copyright 2006 IOS PressObjectives: Technology has the potential to improve employment and rehabilitation related outcomes for persons with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of technology use on employment-related outcomes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Study design: A comprehensive search of the literature pertaining to technology use by people with intellectual disabilities was conducted, and a single-subject design meta analysis was conducted for a subset of those studies, which focused on employment and rehabilitation related outcomes. Results: The use of technology to promote outcomes in this area was shown to be generally effective, in particular when universal design features were addressed. Conclusions: Technology has the potential to enable people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to achieve more positive employment and rehabilitation outcomes. It is important to focus on universal design features important to persons with cognitive disabilities, and there is a need for more research in this area

Our Collective Tensions:Paradox Research Community’s Response to COVID-19

In this commentary on three articles from dozens of paradox theory scholars on paradox approaches to examining the COVID-19 pandemic and how the COVID-19 pandemic informs paradox theory, the authors involved in coordinating the collection of three papers discuss the process of bringing together scholars from around the world to discuss the pandemic. Four other preeminent paradox theorists offer additional commentaries on the papers in this Collection.</p

Diverging and Converging: Integrative Insights on a Paradox Meta-perspective

Paradox theory stands at an exciting moment in organization and management theory. Scholars increasingly seek out insights about the nature and management of contradictory demands to explain a wide array of organizational phenomena across multiple levels of analysis. Our two reviews in the 2016 Academy of Management Annals attest to this growing breadth and depth, each integrating and expanding related, yet different bodies of research. Schad, Lewis, Raisch, and Smith (2016) emphasize the depth of scholarship by analyzing an increasing number of paradox studies within management science. Putnam, Fairhurst, and Banghart (2016) highlight the breadth of scholarship by comparing paradoxes that emerge from multiple theories and paradigms that embrace an interdisciplinary orientation. By drawing on distinct literatures, these two manuscripts reveal diverse insights and reflections about paradoxical demands in organizations. In this integrative reflection, we juxtapose our two review articles, surface distinct assumptions and emphases, highlight complementarities, and raise questions for future scholarship. In doing so, we hope to fuel insights toward a meta-perspective on paradox