The Interdependence of Private and Public Interests

The predominant focus in research on organizations is either on private or public institutions without consistent consideration of their interdependencies. The emphasis in scholarship on private or public interests has strengthened as disciplinary and professional knowledge has deepened: management scholars, for example, tend to consider the corporation as the unit of analysis, while scholars of public policy in government, public health, social science and education often analyze governmental, multilateral, community and non-profit organizations. This article advocates a partial merging of these research agendas on the grounds that private and public interests cannot be fully understood if they are conceived independently. We review three major areas of activity today in which public and private interests interact in complex ways, and maintain that current theories of organization science can be deployed to understand better these interactions. We also suggest that theories of public-private interaction also require development and describe a concept called "global sustainable value creation," which may be used to identify organizational and institutional configurations and strategies conducive to worldwide, intertemporal efficiency and value creation. We conclude that scholarship on organizations would advance if private-public interactions were evaluated by the criterion of global sustainable value creation.

Toward a Theory of Public Entrepreneurship

This paper explores innovation, experimentation, and creativity in the public domain and in the public interest. Researchers in various disciplines have studied public entrepreneurship, but there is little research specifically on the nature, incentives and constraints of public entrepreneurship to innovate in the public interest. We begin by extending concepts of the entrepreneurial firm to include greater interactions in the public domain, and then turn to the role of entrepreneurial firms in fostering institutional change. This focus points toward opportunities for integrating transaction-costs, political and international business theories to achieve a more refined institutional theory of firm-government interactions that incorporates entrepreneurial agency as a principal mechanism for innovating in the fulfillment of public and private interests.

Resources, Capabilities, and Routines in Public Organization

States, state agencies, multilateral agencies, and other non-market actors are relatively under-studied in the strategic entrepreneurship literature. While important contributions examining public decision makers have been made within the agency-theoretic and transaction-cost traditions, there is little research that builds on resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to organizations. Yet public organizations can be usefully characterized as stocks of physical, organizational, and human resources; they interact with other organizations in pursuing a type of competitive advantage; they can possess excess capacity, and may grow and diversify in part according to Penrosean (dynamic) capabilities and behavioral logic. Public organizations may be managed as stewards of resources, capabilities, and routines. This paper shows how resource-based, (dynamic) capabilities, and behavioral approaches shed light on the nature and governance of public organizations and suggests a research agenda for public entrepreneurship that reflects insights gained from applying strategic management theory to public organization.

The role of religion in the longer-range future, April 6, 7, and 8, 2006

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, a publication series that began publishing in 2006 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This conference that took place during April 6, 7, and 8, 2006. Co-organized by David Fromkin, Director, Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and Ray L. Hart, Dean ad interim Boston University School of TheologyThe conference brought together some 40 experts from various disciplines to ponder upon the “great dilemma” of how science, religion, and the human future interact. In particular, different panels looked at trends in what is happening to religion around the world, questions about how religion is impacting the current political and economic order, and how the social dynamics unleashed by science and by religion can be reconciled.Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affair

Authoritarianism, Populism, and the Global Retreat of Democracy: A Curated Discussion

To the surprise of many in the West, the fall of the USSR in 1991 did not lead to the adoption of liberal democratic government around the world and the much anticipated “end of history.” In fact, authoritarianism has made a comeback, and liberal democracy has been on the retreat for at least the last 15 years culminating in the unthinkable: the invasion of a democratic European country by an authoritarian regime. But why does authoritarianism continue to spread, not only as an alternative to liberal democracy, but also within many liberal democracies where authoritarian leaders continue to gain strength and popularity? In this curated piece, contributors discuss some of the potential contributions of management scholarship to understanding authoritarianism, as well as highlight a number of directions for management research in this area.publishedVersio

Resources, Capabilities, and Routines in Public Organizations

States, state agencies, multilateral agencies, and other non-market actors are relatively under-studied in strategic management and organization science. While important contributions to the study of public actors have been made within the agency-theoretic and transaction-cost traditions, there is little research in political economy that builds on resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to the firm. Yet public organizations can be characterized as stocks of human and non-human resources, including routines and capabilities; they can possess excess capacity in these resources; and they may grow and diversify in predictable patterns according to behavioral and Penrosean logic. This paper shows how resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to understanding public agencies and organizations shed light on their nature and governance

The Performance of US Corporations: 1981-1994.

This study decomposes the performance of US public firms between 1981 and 1994 into year, industry, corporate-focus and firm effects. Performance is measured by Tobin's q, accounting profitability, and a hybrid measure. The results show that firm effects were more important to performance than industry effects, although industry effects had a large permanent component. Corporate focus was not important. The stylized facts suggest that competitive advantages--that is, differences between direct competitors in the same industry--were at least as important as industry influences on performance. Industry influences were more predictable and sustainable than competitive advantages, however. Copyright 1999 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd