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Today's internet is shaped largely by privately operated platforms of various kinds. This paper asks how the various commercially operated communication, market, consumption and service platforms can be grasped as a distinct organizational form of enterprise. To this end, we make a basic distinction between (1) the platform-operating companies as organizing and structuring cores whose goal is to run a profitable business, and (2) the platforms belonging to these companies as more or less extensive, rule-based and strongly technically mediated social action spaces. While platform companies are essentially organizations in an almost archetypical sense, the internet platforms they operate constitute socio-technically structured social, market, consumption or service spaces in which social actors interact on the basis of detailed and technically framed rules, albeit, at the same time, in a varied and idiosyncratic manner. The thesis of this paper is that the coordination, control and exploitation mechanisms characteristic of the platform architectures are characterized by a strong hierarchical orientation in which elements of co-optation and the orchestrated participation of users are embedded. In this hybrid constellation, the platform companies have a high degree of structure-giving, rulesetting and controlling power-in addition to exclusive access to the raw data material generated there. While this power may manifest, at times, as rigid control, direct coercion or enforceable accountability, for the majority of rule-obeying users it unfolds nearly imperceptibly and largely silently beneath the surface of a (supposed) openness that likewise characterizes the platforms as technically mediated spaces for social and economic exchange. Das heutige Internet wird durch privatwirtschaftlich betriebene Plattformen der unterschiedlichsten Art geprägt. Dieser Aufsatz fragt danach, wie sich diese verschiedenartigen kommerziellen Kommunikations-, Markt-, Konsum- und Serviceplattformen als distinkte Unternehmensform fassen lassen. Dazu wird eine basale Unterscheidung zwischen (1) den plattformbetreibenden Unternehmen als organisierenden und strukturierenden Kernen und (2) den ihnen gehörenden Plattformen als mehr oder minder ausgreifenden sozialen Handlungsräumen vorgenommen. Während sich Plattformunternehmen als Organisationen in einem geradezu klassischen Sinne darstellen lassen, konstituieren die von ihnen betriebenen Internetplattformen soziotechnisch strukturierte Sozial-, Markt-, Konsum- oder Serviceräume, in denen soziale Akteure zwar auf der Grundlage detailliert ausgestalteter und technisch eingefasster Regeln, aber zugleich variantenreich und eigenwillig interagieren. Die für solche Plattform-Architekturen charakteristischen Koordinations-, Kontroll- und Verwertungsmechanismen zeichnen sich durch eine starke hierarchische Ausrichtung aus, in die Elemente der Kooptation und des orchestrierten Mitwirkens der Nutzer eingelagert sind. Die Plattformunternehmen haben in dieser hybriden Konstellation ein hohes Maß an strukturgebender, regelsetzender und kontrollierender Macht - und verfügen überdies über den exklusiven Zugriff auf das dort produzierte Rohmaterial an Daten. Diese Macht äußert sich in vielen Fällen, aber längst nicht immer als rigide Kontrolle, als direktiver Zwang oder einklagbare Rechenschaftspflicht, sondern entfaltet sich für die große Zahl regel-konformer Nutzer weitgehend geräuschlos unter der Oberfläche einer (vermeintlichen) Offenheit, die die Plattformen als Markt- und Sozialräume auch auszeichnet.

Misunderstandings are often perceived as something to be avoided yet delineate an integrative part of everyday work. This book addresses the role that misunderstandings play in collaborative work and, above all, their effects on the organisational result. As exemplified by project collaboration across three offices of a multinational corporation in India, Frauke Mörike explores how misunderstandings shape the organisational system and why they prove not only necessary but even productive for organisational functioning. In doing so, she offers new ways to think about collaboration and establishes `misunderstanding' as a key factor of insight for the field of organisational research.

Oriented around efficiency, civic technology primarily aims to remove barriers by automating and streamlining processes of government. While removing barriers is vital in many matters of governance, should it always be the aim of civic technology? In our ongoing ethnographic research to understand the work of community engagement performed by public officials in local government, we have observed how this orientation around efficiency in civic technology can inadvertently create distance in the relationships between citizens and governments. In this article, we discuss how an orientation around trust could open a space for civic technology that primarily aims to close distance in the relationships between citizens and public officials. We do so by first providing an account of how trust functions in the work of public officials performing community engagement, calling attention to where and when efficiency is at odds with the importance of relationship building between public officials and citizens. We build on ethnographic findings and a series of co-design activities with public officials to develop three strategies that operate under the logic of trust: historicizing engagement, focusing on experience, and mediating expectations. In all, by focusing on trust and the relational work of closing distance, civic technology can move towards addressing the growing crisis in confidence being faced in democracies.

This article presents research on faith-based community organizing in the US to examine how congregation members engage in structural change efforts related to marginalized populations. Examining the case of one organizing model, justice ministry, congregations focus on power defined through relationships, cultivated in informal spaces, and communicated through personal narrative (traditionally private, feminine spheres), and change is enacted by creating tension in public (traditionally masculine) spaces with decision-makers. A growing body of literature presents nuanced gender analyses of policy advocacy, social movements, and community change efforts both in terms of strategic models of action and revisiting our understanding of historical movements. We ask questions about how the expectations and work are constrained or facilitated by cultural expectations of gender roles and power dynamics. Examining the organizing model of justice ministry through a gender lens helps to understand how an emphasis on relational power (traditionally gendered as feminine) facilitates and strengthens the use of a range of tools, including publicly challenging authority (more frequently gendered as masculine). While the private/public, feminine/masculine dichotomy has severe limitations and risks oversimplification, the utility remains in helping name and challenge real power differentials based on gender.

The policy word “collaboration” is a political buzzword omnipresent within human service organisations in Sweden and other countries. Collaboration stands for services working together toward a common goal. It is understood as the solution for a multitude of problems, putting the client at the centre and involving the services needed for making them financially self-sufficient. Public service collaboration assumes gaps between entities, whether they are organisations or professionals holding a particular kind of knowledge or available resources. Gaps are seen as omissions and pitfalls in activities which should be removed. My thesis is that putting the gap at the centre reveals not only the disjuncture of the gaps but also the productiveness of the gap in collaborative projects between organisations. The article demonstrates how documents and meetings work both as makers and blenders of gaps between social services and jobcentres. If gaps are productive spaces, what does it denote for collaboration between organisations? The article is placed ethnographically in documents and meetings set to enable collaboration between social workers and job coaches. I will focus on the gap, the space between documents and organisations, as productive spaces in collaborative projects.

The aim of this research is to show how the reconstruction of the existing Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia influences the promotion of a responsive legal culture in the bureaucratic system. The research methods are normative and empirical, along with the philosophical approach, statute approach, conceptual approach, and direct interview in the field. Concluding the reconstruction of the Ombudsman of the Republic Indonesia to be more ideal through the review of the Law Number 37 from 2008 regarding the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia including the relation to its institutional authority, and the legal force of the Ombudsman’s recommendations that should be final and binding, so the recommendations have an executorial power.

How and under what conditions does legitimacy affect processes of international institutional change? This article specifies and evaluates three causal mechanisms by which variation in legitimacy induces institutional change in international organizations (IOs) and argues that an important, yet hitherto neglected, source of legitimacy-based change is cognitive in nature. Using survival analysis, we evaluate these mechanisms with a novel dataset on the establishment of parliamentary institutions in thirty-six regional organizations between 1950 and 2010. We find that the empowerment of supranational secretariats, engagement with the European Union, and parliamentarization in an organization's neighborhood increase the likelihood of regional parliamentarization. This suggests that legitimacy judgments that draw on cognitive referents provide an important source of international institutional change. We illustrate the underlying cognitive emulation mechanism with a case study of parliamentarization in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The division of parental leave among couples today is still unequal—even in countries with progressive leave schemes. Given the gendered nature of the workplace, we examine how organizational characteristics relate to fathers’ uptake and length of parental leave as well as to the perceived career consequences of leave uptake among those fathers who took leave. In our mixed methods study, we draw on unique quantitative and qualitative data on different-sex couples with young children in Germany (2015). We find that the fear of professional repercussions and the lack of a replacement at work inhibit fathers both from taking leave in general and, for those who take leave, from taking it for more than two months. Interestingly, however, the majority of fathers who took leave did not think that their leave negatively affected their professional advancement. This positive evaluation was independent of the length of leave. We compared fathers’ perceived leave consequences to those of mothers, who tended to have a more negative view of the impact of taking leave on their careers. Both fathers and mothers were more likely to report negative career consequences if they worked in organizations that promoted a strong ideal worker norm, that is, where employees thought that they were expected to prioritize paid work over their private life.

The world has faced a major increase in forced displacement and the theme has also become the subject of many public, media and political debates. The public communication of refugee organizations thereby increasingly impacts their operations, the public perception on forcibly displaced people and societal and policy beliefs and actions. However, little research has been conducted on the topic. Therefore, this conceptual article aims to (1) define refugee organizations’ public communication, (2) situate it within broader research fields, and (3) motivate the latter’s relevance as research perspectives. In order to be able to achieve these research objectives, the article first discusses the social and scientific relevance of the research subject and identifies important gaps within literature which both form an essential scientific base for developing the main arguments. Adopting a historical perspective, the article demonstrates that in recent decades the social and scientific relevance of research on strategic and non-profit communication in general and on refugee organizations’ public communication in particular have increased. Nevertheless, these fields remain underdeveloped and are mostly text-focused, while the production and reception dimensions are barely explored. Remarkably, however, little or no research has been conducted from an organizational communication perspective, although this article demonstrates that the subject can be adequately embedded in and examined from the fields of strategic, non-profit and public communication. Finally, the article highlights the relevance of the holistic Communicative Constitution of Organizations perspective and argues that future research can benefit by adopting multi-perspective, practice-oriented, multi-methodological, comparative and/or interdisciplinary approaches.

This themed collection is bound together by some foundational observations which have been well documented in earlier research. European post-war welfare systems face challenges related to aging populations, globalization, migration, changing patterns of family and gender roles. The post-war model of welfare dependent on the idea of stable heterosexual families, with male breadwinners and women carers is giving way to more individualized and mobile systems. The four articles and commentary in this issue provide glimpses of the issues within this field that unite contexts as diverse as the Nordic countries, Brazil and the United States. They explore the intersection of welfare, religion and gender charting gendered problems in welfare provision in relation to religious organisation, affiliation and identity. This issue provides examples of how the exhaustion of women and welfare systems is interconnected and the understanding of this crucial to any attempts to reform welfare systems to enhance social inclusion or reduce exclusion.

Modern bureaucratic organisations are characterized by hierarchical structure, control and accountability. Post-bureaucratic organisations, which are widely established in the postmodern world, encourage empowerment, initiative, creativity and responsibility of their members while transferring control functions to the corporate culture and a clearly defined and comprehensible mission of their organisation. Despite the fact that the postmodern, or post-bureaucratic, type of an organisation that came into being in the 1960s is being increasingly integrated in various aspects and areas of society, including public institutions and universities, the question whether this type of organisation gains ground over the modernist type is still yet to be answered. This paper has been written on the basis of the materials from 3 focus groups, representing administration and faculties of one university, that summarise their seven-year experience of EU Structural Funds project management. The paper presents insights into the issues arising due to the interplay between different corporate values and cultures and considers alternatives of solving these issues.

This article analyses four emerging refugee support organisations in Austria, founded before the so-called refugee crisis in 2015. It argues that these organisations have managed to occupy a middle space between mainstream NGOs and social movements with structures of inclusive governance, a high degree of autonomy, personalised relationships with refugees, and radical critique combined with service delivery. Based on interviews with the founders of each organisation, we show that their previous NGO and social movement experience formed a springboard for the new initiatives. It not only allowed them to identify significant gaps in existing service provision, but also provided the space of confrontation with the asylum system inspiring a strong sense of outrage, which in turn developed into political critique. We argue that this critique combined with identifying the needs of asylum seekers and refugees has produced a new type of organisation, which both delivers services and articulates radical demands. Each organisation offers a space of encounter, which undoes the ‘organised disintegration’ of the asylum system.

Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Initially, it was a small anti-nuclear protest group composed of Americans and Canadians, peaceniks and hippies, World War II veterans and people barely out of high school. Twenty years later, it was the world’s largest environmental NGO, with headquarters in Amsterdam, branches in over forty nations, and a regular presence at international environmental meetings throughout the world. This article will chart Greenpeace’s growth throughout its first two decades, in the process examining how the organization became influential at several levels: in local politics in places like Vancouver; at the national level in countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and Germany; and at global forums such as the International Whaling Commission and various UN-sponsored environmental meetings. It will analyze the combination of activist agency and political op-portunity structures that enabled Greenpeace to gain political influence. I argue that Greenpeace’s influence largely stemmed from its engagement with what political scientist Paul Wapner calls “world civic politics,” which in this case involves the dissemination of an ecological sensibility that indirectly influences behavior at multiple scales, from individuals, to governments, to multi-lateral organizations. Only in this way could a group with relatively limited resources hope to influence millions of individuals and powerful governments., Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung Vol. 42, No. 2 (2017): Forum II: Spatial Dimensions of Governance in 20th Century Political Struggles. Starting Point and Frequency: Year: 1979, Issues per volume: 4, Volumes per year: 1

Over the last 20 years, open source development has become an integral part of the software industry and a key component of the innovation strategies of all major IT providers. Against this backdrop, this paper seeks to develop a systematic overview of open source communities and their socio-economic contexts. I begin with a reconstruction of the genesis of open source software projects and their changing relation- ships to established IT companies. This is followed by the identification of four ideal-typical variants of current open source projects that differ significantly in their modes of coordination and the degree of corporate involvement. Further, I examine why open source projects have mainly lost their subversive potential while, in contrast to former cases of collective invention, remaining viable beyond the emergence of predominant solutions and their commercial exploitation: In an industry that is characterized by very short innovation cycles, open source projects have proven to be important incubators for new product lines and branch-defining infrastructures. They do not compete against classical forms of production but instead complement and expand these. In den letzten 20 Jahren ist die Open-Source-Entwicklung zu einem integralen Bestand der Softwareindustrie und zu einem zentralen Baustein der Innovationsstrategien aller großen IT-Anbieter geworden. Vor diesem Hintergrund entfaltet dieses Papier einen systematisierenden Überblick über Open-Source-Communities und ihre sozioökonomischen Kontexte. Nach einer historischen Rekonstruktion zur Ausdifferenzierung quelloffener Softwareprojekte und ihren sich wandelnden Relationen zu etablierten Unternehmen werden vier Varianten derzeitiger Open-Source-Projekte voneinander abgegrenzt, die sich in ihren Koordinationsweisen und dem Grad ihrer Unternehmensnähe signifikant voneinander unterscheiden. Daran anknüpfend wird herausgearbeitet, aus welchen Gründen Open-Source-Projekte inzwischen ihre subversive Formatierung weitgehend verloren haben, aber im Gegensatz zu früheren Ausprägungen kollektiver Invention überlebensfähig geblieben sind: In einer durch sehr kurze Innovationszyklen geprägten Softwareindustrie haben sich quelloffene Entwicklungsvorhaben als zentrale Inkubatoren für neue Produktlinien und branchenfundamentale Infrastrukturen erwiesen. Projektförmige Arbeitsweisen in Open-Source-Gemeinschaften und eingespielte Formen ökonomischer Koordination stehen nicht in einem konkurrierenden, sondern in einem komplementären Verhältnis zueinander.

This paper explores the perspectives of Bosnian organizations in Germany on the institutional and structural conditions for transnational engagement in post-war recovery processes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Its point of departure is the empirical finding that Bosnian organizations in Germany are not intensively and regularly involved in transnational activities directed toward Bosnia, despite a continued emotional attachment to the origin country and an estimated strong capacity for such engagement among the Bosnian population in Germany. The paper argues that this situation can in large part be explained by taking an actor-centered perspective and analyzing Bosnian organizations’ perceptions of the structural conditions created by the Bosnian authorities. The empirical data have been obtained from an explorative research on Bosnian organizations in Germany, which studied how Bosnians in Germany organize and what types of transnational activities oriented toward the settlement and origin country they pursue. First, the paper introduces a distinction between capacity and willingness of migrants and their organizations to engage in the origin country and outlines why this distinction is important in the context of conflict-generated migrants’ involvement in a post-conflict setting. Second, it identifies the limited efforts the Bosnian government has made so far to mobilize its population abroad and discusses why there is such reluctance to develop a diaspora strategy. Third, the paper presents the perspectives of Bosnian organizations in Germany on the conditions for transnational engagement in post-war recovery processes in the origin-country, including opinions on the Bosnian government and the relationship with the local population in Bosnia. The empirical findings presented in this paper suggest that the researched organizations’ perception of the unfavorable Bosnian context severely decreases their willingness to transnationally engage in origin-country developments. Thus, the structural constraints in the origin country and the way how they are perceived by the researched organizations form crucial limits to stronger transnational engagement in post-war recovery processes.

Police models are designed to improve safety in society. Although Estonia has not deliberately used any (combination of) police models for developing its policies of safety and its police reforms since the country regained independence, its safety has improved considerably during the last couple of decades. The scholarly discussions about police models are overwhelmingly about the possible effects of different models on safety management and about their application to particular countries. However, countries like Estonia with no consistent conceptions of police have received little attention in academic literature. We aim to fill this gap by analysing the developments of the Estonian police in its philosophical, strategic, tactical and organisational dimensions over the period between 1991 and 2013. The analysed materials include the official police development plans, legislation, statutes, training programs and statistics about the police. Our analysis shows that although safety in Estonia has improved considerably, developments of the Estonian police are characterised by internal discrepancies and inconsistencies. In view of this, we put forth some hypotheses for further studies regarding policy development in a situation where policy is not explicitly stated or where organisational reforms are seen not as “simple” or “complex” problems, but as “wicked” problems., Studies of Transition States and Societies, Vol 8, No 1 (2016)

In this article I discuss output legitimacy as a category of normative analysis of international organizations (IOs). I first take issue with the widespread view that output legitimacy is just a synonym for organizational effectiveness or efficiency, and unrelated to democracy. Against this view, I argue that output legitimacy has an important democratic dimension. The touchstone of "democratic output legitimacy" is the extent to which systems of governance generate results that cater to the public interest. This notion of democratic output legitimacy is then applied to IOs. The ability of IOs to safeguard a transnational public interest hinges on i) their ability to keep powerful (state and non-state) actors in check; ii) the epistemic quality of their decision-making procedures; iii) their respect for human and civil rights. Attaining these qualities may require shielding IOs from the input dimension of the international political process. I warn that some strategies to improve the democratic input legitimacy of IOs may enhance the power of strong nations over weaker ones, and of well-organized industry lobbies over other interests. (author's abstract) Der vorliegende Beitrag diskutiert Output-Legitimität als Kategorie normativer Analyse internationaler Organisationen (IOs). Dabei geht er zunächst auf eine weit verbreitete Ansicht ein, der zufolge Output-Legitimität lediglich ein Synonym für organisationale Effektivität oder Effizienz ist, ohne dabei einen Bezug zur Demokratie herzustellen. Im Gegensatz dazu wird hier die Auffassung vertreten, dass Output-Legitimität über eine bedeutende demokratische Dimension verfügt. Als Prüfstein demokratischer Output-Legitimität wird angelegt, inwiefern Governance-Systeme Ergebnisse generieren, die sich am öffentlichen Interesse orientieren. Anschließend wird dieses Verständnis demokratischer Output-Legitimität auf IOs angewendet. Die Fähigkeit von IOs, ein transnationales öffentliches Interesse abzusichern ist abhängig von i) ihrer Fähigkeit, einflussreiche (staatliche und nicht-staatliche) Akteure unter Kontrolle zu halten; ii) der epistemischen Qualität ihrer Entscheidungsverfahren; iii) der Achtung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte durch die IO. Um dies zu erreichen, kann es erforderlich sein, IOs von der Input-Dimension des internationalen politischen Prozesses abzuschirmen. Der Beitrag warnt damit zugleich davor, dass einige Strategien zur Verbesserung der demokratischen Input-Legitimität von IOs die Macht stärkerer über schwächere Staaten oder gut organisierter Industrielobbys über andere Interessen vergrößern könnten. (Autorenreferat)

This paper attempts to delineate the interaction between trust, emotion, and ethical decision making. The authors first propose that trust can either in cite an individual toward ethical decisions or drag him or her away from ethical decisions, depending on different situations. The authors then postulate that the feeling of guilt is central in understanding how trust affects the ethical decision making process. Several propositions based on these assumptions are introduced and implications for practice discussed.

The past decade has seen a sustained move by students of international institutions and organizations to viewing their subject matter as independent variables affecting state interests and policy. Conceptually, this has put a premium on identifying the mechanisms connecting institutions to states; methodologically, there has been a growing concern with measuring process. In this paper, I survey empirical applications where international institutions are claimed to be influencing state-level action through various processes and mechanisms. The move to process and to the method of process tracing has been salutary, I argue, producing rich and analytically rigorous studies that demonstrate the multiple roles -good and bad- institutions play in global politics. At the same time, challenges remain. In terms of design, scholars often fail to address the problem of equifinality -where multiple causal pathways may lead to the same outcome- and instead conduct process tracing only on their preferred argument. Theoretically, the power and generalizability of arguments about institutions seem to decrease as the focus shifts to process. Finally, the potential for process tracing to help scholars produce integrative frameworks about international institutions -combining insights from different social-theoretic toolkits- remains unfulfilled. (author's abstract) Das letzte Jahrzehnt war geprägt von einem andauernden Wandel im Forschungsbereich der internationalen Institutionen und Organisationen. Diese werden zunehmend wie unabhängige Variablen behandelt, welche die staatlichen Interessen und Politiken beeinflussen. Konzeptionell wird damit die Möglichkeit geboten, Mechanismen zwischen Institutionen mit Staaten zu identifizieren. Methodisch rückt die Erforschung von Prozessen zunehmend in den Fokus. In diesem Ansatz untersuche ich einige empirische Studien, in denen behauptet wird, dass Institutionen das Handeln auf der staatlichen Ebene durch unterschiedliche Prozesse und Mechanismen beeinflussen. Den Übergang zur Analyse von Prozessen und der Methode des "process tracing" sind eine erfreuliche Entwicklung, denn wie ich argumentiere, sind solche Studien bereichernd und analytisch präzise und demonstrieren die vielseitigen Rollen -gute wie schlechte- die Institutionen in der globalen Politik einnehmen können. Gleichzeitig ist festzustellen, dass es noch einige Herausforderungen gibt. Im Hinblick auf Design scheitern Forscherinnen und Forscher häufig am Problem der Äquifinalität -wenn multiple kausale Pfade zum gleichen Ergebnis führen- und wenden process tracing nur bezüglich ihres präferierten Arguments an. Theoretisch scheinen die Stärke und die Generalisierbarkeit der Argumente hinsichtlich der Institutionen mit der Fokusierung auf Prozesse zu sinken. Das Potenzial von process tracing hinsichtlich der Konstruktion integrativer Analyserahmen über internationalen Institutionen unter Zuhilfenahme verschiedener sozialtheoretischer Instrumente bleibt unausgeschöpft. (Autorenreferat)

FOUCAULTian governmentality research has turned out a very powerful tool for analyzing social processes and logics involved in recent appreciation of the entrepreneur as the role model for the conduct of states, organizations and private businesses. However, the lack of interest in further methodological elaboration of governmentality research has left it unclear how the particular theoretical perspective of governmentality researchers influences their empirical observations. The principal aim of this article is to overcome the methodological deficit in governmentality research and indicate one possible way of how the theoretical, methodological, and empirical levels of analysis could be interlinked in a consistent and scrutinizable manner. The suggestion presented for methodologization of governmentality research draws on the methodological insights gained in the French epistemological tradition by Gaston BACHELARD, Pierre BOURDIEU, Georges CANGUILHEM, Rainer DIAZ-BONE and Michel FOUCAULT. It is argued that the reflexive methodology and its key methodological principles of epistemological break and holistic methodology as they were developed in the French epistemological tradition provide a number of instructive insights on how to join the theoretical, methodological and empirical levels of analysis. However, this article goes beyond methodological discussion and applies the elaborated methodological instructions to a case study on the governmentalization of entrepreneur in Swedish governmental discourse.URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1303106, Die FOUCAULTsche Gouvernementalitätsforschung hat sich als wirkmächtiges Werkzeug erwiesen, um jene sozialen Prozesse und Logiken zu untersuchen, die "den Unternehmer" zum Leitbild für das Handeln von Staaten, Organisationen und Wirtschaftsunternehmen haben werden lassen. Wegen des bisher eher mangelnden Interesses an der Methodologisierung der Gouvernementalitätsforschung ist aber unklar geblieben, wie die empirischen Beobachtungen der Gouvernementalitätsforscher/innen durch deren besondere theoretische Sichtweise beeinflusst werden. Hauptziel des vorliegenden Beitrages ist, das methodologische Defizit der Gouvernementalitätsforschung zu überwinden und einen möglichen Weg aufzuzeigen, wie die theoretische, methodologische und empirische Ebene auf kohärente und nachvollziehbare Art und Weise miteinander verbunden werden können. Der hier präsentierte Vorschlag zur Methodologisierung der Gouvernementalitätsforschung greift auf methodologische Erkenntnisse zurück, die in der französischen epistemologischen Tradition von Gaston BACHELARD, Pierre BOURDIEU, Georges CANGUILHEM, Rainer DIAZ-BONE und Michel FOUCAULT entwickelt wurden. Es wird dargelegt, dass die reflexive Methodologie und ihre wesentlichen Grundsätze des epistemologischen Bruchs und der holistischen Methodologie wichtige Erkenntnisse darüber liefern, wie die theoretischen, methodologischen und empirischen Ebenen der Analyse zusammengeführt werden können. Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrages ist aber auch, über die methodologische Diskussion hinauszugehen und die erarbeiteten methodologischen Leitlinien auf eine empirische Fallstudie zur Gouvernementalisierung "des Unternehmers" im schwedischen politischen Diskurs anzuwenden.URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1303106, La investigación FOUCAULTiana sobre gubernamentalidad ha resultado un instrumento muy poderoso para analizar procesos sociales y lógicas implicadas en la apreciación reciente del empresario como el modelo a imitar para la conducta de estados, organizaciones y negocios privados. Sin embargo, la falta de interés en elaboración metodológica de la investigación sobre gubernamentalidad no ha dejado claridad sobre cómo la perspectiva teórica particular de gubernamentalidad influye a los investigadores en sus observaciones empíricas. El objetivo particular de este artículo es superar el déficit metodológico en la investigación sobre gubernamentalidad e señalar una vía posible para vincular de manera consistente y revisable los niveles de análisis empíricos, metodológicos y teóricos. Lo que se presenta para la metodologización de la gubernamentalidad se basa en las enseñanzas de Gaston BACHELARD, Pierre BOURDIEU, Georges CANGUILHEM, Rainer DIAZ-BONE y Michel FOUCAULT. Se ha argumentado que la metodología reflexiva y sus principios claves metodológicos de ruptura epistemológica y la metodología holística tal cual fueron desarrollados en la tradición epistemológica francesa proporcionan cierta cantidad de ideas instructivas sobre cómo unir los niveles teóricos, metodológicos y empíricos del análisis. Sin embargo, este artículo va más allá de la discusión metodológica y aplica las instrucciones metodológicas elaboradas a un estudio del caso sobre la gubernamentalización del empresario en el discurso político sueco.URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1303106

"This article relates common ways of conceptualising action research as 'intervention', 'collaboration', 'interactive research', 'applied research', and 'practitioner research' to a number of different ways of knowing, extracted from the works of Aristotle. The purpose is not to disavow any of these practices but to expand the philosophical, methodological, and theoretical horizon to contain the Aristotelian concept of praxis. It is claimed that praxis knowing needs to be comprehended in order to realize the full, radical potential in action research providing real 'added value' in relation to more conventional social research approaches. Praxis knowing radically challenges the divisions of labour between knower-researchers and the known-researched. Thereby it also challenges both the epistemologies and institutionalisations dominating both conventional research and conventional ways of conceptualising action research." (author's abstract)

International audience; For three decades now, all OECD countries have adopted vast programmes of public administration reform and modernization inspired by the New Public Management doctrine. True to their inspiration, one of the major objectives of these constitutive policies was to put all ongoing public policies, old and new, under scrutiny in order to measure their utility and performance. However and paradoxically enough, none of those policies became itself the object of a clear evaluation in terms of mid and long-term costs and benefits. This article is a step toward a critical assessment of the various hidden costs generated by these reform policies in OECD countries. After stating their common persuasion, it ascertains the inevitable diversity of national situations, for uncovering eventually the logics active behind all these administrative reforms, animated by the quest for a new cohesion and a renewed legitimacy of the contemporary post-modern states.

This article outlines the development of a theory of predecessor successor transitions in social contexts using a grounded theory approach. The theory can be applied to such diverse phenomena as the transfer of family businesses to the next generation, university chair succession, the passing on of parental roles (for example in the case of adoption or remarriage), and organ transplantation. The core conceptual category that emerged was 'the transfer of personal objects'. This concept refers to the transfer of the power of disposal over objects that are fundamental to the identity and the identification of the owner. A number of theoretical dimensions of the category were identified. Methodologically speaking, the theory generated can be classified as a formal grounded theory. In other words, the comparison of different empirical fields and cases using hermeneutical analysis yielded a transdisciplinary social science category that can be employed to conceptualize the dynamics of the development of interpersonal, social, or institutional structures, especially with regard to the links and the interplay between material and symbolic components, between the individual and the social, and the past and the present., Historical Social Research Vol. 37, No. 4 (2012)

International audience; Community policing presents its own distinct governance and accountability challenges. Local community police officers, for example, can find themselves stretched between the accountability demands of the local community and those flowing from professional, managerial and central government sources. Drawing on the results of a recent ethnographic study on neighbourhood police officers in rural and urban areas in the Netherlands, this article probes the nature and extent of these tensions and the coping strategies deployed by the officers in question and the police organisation as a whole. It finds that a regular strategy is to neutralise or marginalise the voice of the local community in shaping police priorities and strategies. Local democratic control of the police is often smothered by the competing professional, managerial, cultural and central government forces. This, in turn, has the effect of putting distance between police offices and citizens, and even creating a demand for the engagement of private sector patrol officers who are more responsive to the needs and wishes of the local community.

In this article, we outline the concept of management as a symbolizing construction. According to Niklas LUHMANN, organizations process by referring to decisions. But decisions are not simply "given" and in principle invisible. This is the reason why organizations institute formalities like protocols, signatures or other insignia of the official that symbolize the decision—without actually being a decision. These symbols allow for making decisions "process-able." And just like a protocol or a signature, management symbolizes decisions as well. Management provides an organizational practice with symbols of decision making without being the "unity" of the decisions, as decisions perpetually have to be reconstructed, redefined and rearranged in the communication of all organizational units. Therefore management symbolizes on the one hand more than it can achieve. On the other hand the importance of management as a symbolizing construction lies in allowing the reconstruction, redefining and rearrangement of decisions by making them visible and recognizable. Heroic managers, meetings, management tools and procedures are solutions to the paradox of decision making. By symbolizing decidedness they create credibilities that conceal the self-referential construction of organizational communication and the paradox of its decision praxis. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1003218, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 11, No 3 (2010): Methods for Qualitative Management Research in the Context of Social Systems Thinking

With permission from publisher "Business Perspectives". http://businessperspectives.org/ Organizational learning can be described as a transfer of individuals’ cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Employees seeking the same colleagues for advice are structurally equivalent, and the aim of the paper is to study if the concept can act as a way to organizational learning. It is argued thatthe mimicking of colleagues’ advice seeking structures will induce structural equivalence and transfer the accuracy of individuals’ cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Taking a dyadic level of analysis the authors revisit a classical case and present novel data analyses. The empirical results indicate that the mimicking of advice seeking structures can alter cognitive accuracy. The paper also discusses the findings’ implications for organization learning theory and practice.

Processes of socio-technical change that are triggered by new technological opportunities do not occur as radical fractures over short periods of time, subsequently leading to new periods of technological, institutional and organizational continuity. What appears - after ten, twenty, or thirty years - to be radical socio-technical change is in fact the result of longer search and restructuring processes, which are influenced by a number of related technological and socio-economic changes. Once these changes accumulate, they then lead to substantial adjustments within the technological, institutional and (inter-) organizational foundations of a society, the economy, or within a sector. How can an analysis of such processes of radical as well as gradual change be performed? What mechanisms are involved in their occurrence, which patterns do they follow and what variations do they assume? Against the background of technology-induced change within economic sectors, this paper develops a concept of gradual socio-technical transformation. ‘Transformation’ means: change resulting in the radical realignment of a field, by which both its technological profile and the connected social coordinates are significantly modified. ‘Gradual’, on the other hand, emphasizes the fundamental procedural peculiarity of such changes, which essentially occur by degrees as an accumulation of numerous transformation-related impulses extending over a longer period of time. The concept provides concrete tools for analyzing and classifying exceptional periods of substantial socio-technical change., Durch neue technologische Möglichkeiten angestoßene Prozesse soziotechnischen Wandels verlaufen nicht als radikale Brüche in kurzen Fristen, die schnell in eine neue Periode technologischer, institutioneller und organisationaler Kontinuität münden. Das, was nach zehn, zwanzig oder dreißig Jahren als radikaler soziotechnischer Umbruch erscheint, ist vielmehr das Ergebnis längerer Such- und Neustrukturierungsprozesse, die durch eine Vielzahl aufeinander bezogener technologischer und sozioökonomischer Veränderungen geprägt werden. Erst in ihrer Kumulation führen diese Veränderungen zu substanziellen Erneuerungen der technologischen, institutionellen und (inter-) organisationalen Grundlagen der Gesellschaft, der Wirtschaft oder eines Sektors. Wie lassen sich solche Prozesse ebenso radikalen wie sukzessiven Wandels analysieren? Über welche Formen vollziehen sie sich, welche Verlaufsmuster und Varianten können sie annehmen? Vor dem Hintergrund des durch neue Technologien angestoßenen Wandels von Wirtschaftssektoren wird in diesem Aufsatz ein Konzept gradueller sozio-technischer Transformation entwickelt, mit dem sich die vielschrittigen, oft erratischen und nichtlinearen Prozesse soziotechnischen Wandels analysieren und strukturieren lassen, die sich erst mit der Zeit zu substanziellen sektoralen Neuausrichtungen verdichten. ‚Transformation‘ heißt: Im Ergebnis radikale Neuausrichtung eines Feldes, durch die sich sowohl dessen technologisches Profil als auch - damit verbunden - dessen soziale Koordinaten substanziell verändern. ‚Graduell‘ betont demgegenüber die wesentliche prozessuale Eigenheit derartiger Umbrüche, die sich grundsätzlich schrittweise, als Kumulation zahlreicher Transformationsimpulse vollziehen und über einen längeren Zeitraum erstrecken.

The following study is based on Niklas LUHMANN's organizational theory. LUHMANN's theory provides an analytical framework for the comparison of different organizations as structurally equal entities. The assumption that only successful decisions are registered by an organization as a basis for following decisions stirs curiosity about the results of unsuccessful decisions. The study asks for management strategies to cope with non-success. The authors analyze examples for unsuccessful change management in several organizations of eating out using the functional analysis as an analytical strategy. The analysis is based on several guided interviews undertaken with the individuals responsible for the kitchens of their organizations. Thereby the failure to establish the use of organic food products appears in a different light: namely as a powerful opportunity for reflection and improvement. Targeting such examples provides more potential for learning than best practice cases. In the following, the widespread hesitancy to use unsuccessful examples is discussed in regard to organizational expectations. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1003225, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 11, No 3 (2010): Methods for Qualitative Management Research in the Context of Social Systems Thinking

Reflexivity has gained considerable significance in organization studies over the last decade. The discussion provides significant insight into interpreting one's findings and into presenting them to the academic community. But, the relationship between research partners in practice and researchers remains less in focus. Nevertheless, it provides the foundation from which data and interpretations emerge. To provide an orientation, this paper aims to develop a methodological heuristic inspired by social systems theory to conceptualize the relational foundation of longitudinal research. This "reflexive system theory heuristic" is illustrated empirically by reconstructing the research process of a longitudinal single case study on a change process in a hospital. The heuristic helps to observe and explain the dynamic relationship in the field and to explicitly acknowledge the status of empirical findings when understanding research as a generative activity. The heuristic conceptualizes the researched and research practices as communication systems, thus consistently developing a reflexive approach for field research. By taking into account the practice as well as the academic context, the heuristic can be extended to the insights drawn from the discussion on reflexivity. For social systems research on organizations, the heuristic provides a starting point to foster a methodological discussion. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1003147, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 11, No 3 (2010): Methods for Qualitative Management Research in the Context of Social Systems Thinking

This article reports on the course and the findings of a two year longitudinal study aimed at investigating the impact of a knowledge management project on an organization's communication and decision structures. The knowledge management project introduced cross-functional Communities of Practice into a division of a large automotive company. The author-researcher applied a multi-perspective and multi-method research approach called "balanced evaluation" for being able to unravel changes in organizational knowledge and decision patterns. This system-theoretic approach to evaluation of transformation processes is described and compared to more traditional approaches; findings are presented and discussed., Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10 (3), ISSN:1438-5627

"This paper advances research on institutional work in market constitution processes. I show how purposive, coordinated action is organized under conditions of uncertainty through practices of rendering irreducible uncertainty tolerable. Building on recent developments in institutional theories of organization, market sociology, and the concept of field-configuring events, I analyze collective market-making efforts at a conference on the next generation of lithography technology for manufacturing semiconductors. I use original documents and 76 field interviews in a qualitative analysis to identify and understand the main practices of collective institutional work at the conference, along with the immediate consequences of these practices. My findings show that the overall purpose of the conference was to generate momentum toward commercialization, in spite of remaining uncertainty, through practices of bootstrapping, roadmapping, leader-picking, and issue-bracketing. These are practices of ignoring, denying, displacing, and suspending uncertainty, respectively. I contribute important clarifications of the meaning of purposive action and agency in institutional work and I advance action-theoretical explanations of market constitution processes by identifying activities involved in shaping a market that is still in the making." (author's abstract) "Diese Studie trägt zur Erforschung von Institutional Work in Marktkonstitutionsprozessen bei. Der Autor zeigt, wie gezieltes, koordiniertes Handeln unter Ungewissheit durch Praktiken organisiert wird, die die Ungewissheit tolerierbar machen. Ausgehend von den jüngsten Erkenntnissen der institutionalistischen Organisationstheorien, der Marktsoziologie und dem Begriff des Field-Configuring Events analysiere ich kollektive Bemühungen der Markterschaffung bei einer Konferenz über die nächste Generation von Lithographietechnologie für die Halbleiterproduktion (Next Generation Lithography). Anhand von Originaldokumenten aus dem Feld sowie 76 Interviews führt der Autor eine qualitative Analyse durch, mit der die wichtigsten Praktiken des kollektiven Institutional Work bei der Konferenz und deren unmittelbare Folgen identifiziert und verstanden werden können. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es in der Konferenz vor allem darum ging, einen gewissen Schwung, das heißt: eine zielgerichtete Kraft zu erzeugen, die die Kommerzialisierung einer neuen Technologie anstoßen soll - und zwar trotz der verbleibenden Ungewissheit. Dies wurde durch Praktiken des Ignorierens, Leugnens, Verschiebens und Aufhebens von Ungewissheit erreicht, die ich mit den englischen Begriffen bootstrapping, roadmapping, leader-picking und issue-bracketing genauer bezeichne. Die Studie trägt zur weiteren Klärung der Bedeutung von gezieltem Handeln und der Rolle von Akteuren in Institutionalisierungsprozessen bei. Der Autor bringt handlungstheoretische Begründungen von Marktkonstitutionsprozessen voran, indem er Praktiken beschreibt, die einen Markt beeinflussen, der sich noch im Entstehungsprozess befindet." (Autorenreferat)

"Organizational data describe central characteristics of organizations, their internal structures and processes as well as their behavior as corporate actors in different social and economic contexts. Firm and enterprise data are the most frequently used type of organizational data, but there is also a growing interest in data on schools, universities, and hospitals in the economic and social science research. In the last several years, there has been a substantial improvement in the accessibility and scientific usability of organizational data from official statistics. However, nonofficial organizational data produced within publicly funded research projects are practically impossible to obtain for secondary analyses. There is no documentation of the existing stock of non-official organizational data, and the methodological standards used for organizational research in Germany are low compared to the standards of international research. Against this background, it is recommended that efforts be focused on documenting and archiving the existing non-official organizational data for secondary analyses and on establishing higher methodological standards within this research field." (author's abstract)

"Despite the obvious existence of civil society organizations (CSOs) and forms of civic engagement, the data available for this sector remains inadequate. This expert report provides a comprehensive view of the current data situation, reveals existing gaps, and offers suggestions on how these gaps might be closed. The empirical material currently provided by existing data sources - the Federal Statistical Office, statistics from the CSOs themselves, as well as special data and surveys - only register this area separately and to a limited extent, and even then not in a consistent manner. With respect to both civil society organizations and forms of individual engagement there is an inadequate data situation. Questions that have arisen around whether CSOs will remain oriented toward civil society in a context of increased economic pressure on organizations cannot be answered. Similarly, it is nearly impossible to analyze whether civic engagement belies an increased tendency towards monetarization. Since civil society will undoubtedly continue to gain in political and social importance, the long-term task will be to set up a meaningful and a predominantly self-contained system of data collection and provision. This goal can be reached by following up on the existing surveys and databases described in this paper." [author's abstract]

This paper offers a fresh perspective on the connection between professional work and socio-economic inequality by tracing the emergence of the trust and estate planning profession in America. Unlike studies of inequality and the professions that focus on the status attainment of individuals and their families, or on labor market segregation, this paper explores professional work as a means of creating and reproducing larger systems of socio-economic stratification. Trust and estate planners contribute to macrolevel inequality by helping wealthy clients accumulate large fortunes and pass them on to their descendants; this, in turn, has shaped the status and composition of other professions. As sources of economic power have changed – moving from land and factories to more fungible forms – the need for legal, organizational and financial strategies to protect assets from taxation, creditors, and spendthrift heirs intensified, catalyzing the transformation of trust and estate planners from amateurs to professionals. Thus, trust and estate planners are both products and producers of the changing worlds of work and wealth. To shed light on these transformations, this paper will draw on the literatures of sociology, economics and anthropology, focusing on these professionals’ three critical roles – as investors, administrators, and guardians of wealth – in reproducing systems of stratification. Dieses Papier untersucht die Professionalisierung der Treuhand- und Immobilienverwaltung in den USA. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Untersuchungen über soziale Ungleichheit und Berufsstände, die auf das Erreichen eines bestimmten Status von Individuen und deren Familien oder auf Arbeitsmarktsegregation abzielen, werden Berufsgruppen hier hinsichtlich ihres Einflusses auf soziale Stratifizierung untersucht. Treuhand- und Immobilienverwalter fördern soziale Ungleichheit auf der Makroebene, indem sie wohlhabenden Klienten helfen, große Vermögen anzuhäufen und diese ihren Nachkommen zu vererben. Dies wiederum hat Auswirkungen auf den Status und die Zusammensetzung anderer Berufe. Als die Quellen wirtschaftlicher Macht, früher Landbesitz und Industrieeigentum, fungiblere Formen annahmen, stieg der Bedarf an juristischen, organisatorischen und finanziellen Strategien, Vermögen vor der Besteuerung und dem Zugriff durch Gläubiger und verschwenderische Erben zu schützen. Dies beförderte die Professionalisierung der Vermögensverwalter und machte sie gleichermaßen zu Produkten und Produzenten der veränderten sozialen Organisation von Arbeit und Wohlstand. Das Papier vergleicht Literatur aus Soziologie, Ökonomie und Anthropologie und erklärt die Entwicklungen im Hinblick auf die drei kritischen Rollen der Vermögensverwalter in den verschiedenen Systemen sozioökonomischer Stratifizierung: als Investoren, Administratoren und Vermögensverwalter. Introduction Trust and estate planning as a profession The intersection of professions and families Impact on stratification and the professions in the United States Professionals as fiduciaries Implications for the study of professions and inequality References

"Formen der Dezentralisierung wie Gruppenarbeit und Center-Konzepte prägen die Diskussion in der Industrie- und Organisationssoziologie seit Anfang der 1990er Jahre bis heute. Bisher fehlt aber eine detaillierte Auseinandersetzung mit der Einführungsdynamik und den Bedingungen der Dezentralisierung von Organisationsstrukturen. Warum führen scheinbar so viele Betriebe neue Organisationsformen ein, und zu welchem Zeitpunkt geschieht dieses? Warum gerade zu diesem Zeitpunkt? Ziel unsere Analyse ist, die Bedingungen und Eigenschaften der Einführungsdynamik von Maßnahmen der Dezentralisierung aufzuzeigen. Allgemein wird behauptet, dass Dezentralisierung von Organisationsstrukturen als Reaktion auf wirtschaftliche oder technologische Veränderungen zu verstehen ist. Wir wollen diesen Hypothesen die Vorstellung der institutionellen Einbettung von Organisationen gegenüberstellen. Mit Hilfe der neo-institutionalistischen Organisationstheorie untersuchen wir, welche Rolle der Veränderung von Leitbildern, als soziale Konstruktionen, für die Einführungsdynamik von Dezentralisierungsmaßnahmen zukommt. Leitbilder werden hier als Rationalitätsmythen behandelt, die bestimmte Ziele und Mittel der Organisation in Beziehung setzen und diese gebündelt transportieren. Mit Hilfe des IAB-Betriebspanels werden die Eigenschaften und Bedingungen der Einführungsdynamik von Maßnahmen der Dezentralisierung untersucht. Zur Bestimmung von Dynamik, Zeitpunkt und der sektorenübergreifenden Verteilungen kommen deskriptive Analysen im Längs- und im Querschnitt zum Einsatz. Darüber hinaus überprüfen wir die Hypothesen zur Dezentralisierungsdynamik mit Hilfe einer Trendanalyse auf Basis einer Logit-Regression. Ergebnis unserer Untersuchung ist, dass sich nach einem Einführungsboom zwischen 1993 und 1995 die Einführungsdynamik erheblich abschwächt und nach 2001 mit deutlich geringerer Intensität verläuft. Es kommt zu einer stabilen Polarisierung von Betrieben, die substanzielle Dezentralisierungsmaßnahmen vorgenommen, und solchen, die dieses unterlassen haben. Ausgelöst durch eine Wirtschaftskrise 1992/3 verliert das etablierte Rationalisierungsparadigma an Legitimität, und es verbreitet sich ein neues Leitbild. Damit entsteht die Vorraussetzung für einen weit reichenden Organisationswandel. Wir zeigen, dass Betriebe, die Dezentralisierungsmaßnahmen ergreifen, sich in ihrer Beurteilung von Zielen und Mitteln signifikant von den Betrieben unterscheiden, die keine Maßnahmen ergriffen haben. Dieser Befund wird als Indikator für eine Rolle von Leitbildern für Organisationswandel gedeutet." (Autorenreferat)

"Coordination between different United Nations (UN) departments, funds, agencies, and programmes has become an issue of increasing concern for scholars and practitioners alike. With the United Nations taking on ever more ambitious roles in countries emerging from conflict, no single unit or agency can master the task of post-conflict reconstruction, also known as peacebuilding, alone, instead, a concerted effort is called for. Recent efforts at reorganizing the way the United Nations works in peacebuilding missions have not yielded the desired results of achieving a more coherent, and in that way more efficient and more effective UN presence. In order to offer fresh inputs for the debate, this paper looks at the issue of coordination from a theoretical perspective. Informed by organization theory, a framework for interorganizational coordination is developed and then applied to the United Nations and peacebuilding. The main finding is that in order to improve interorganizational coordination and in lieu of trying to become one streamlined hierarchical organization, the United Nations should acknowledge its network character and cultivate those social and structural control mechanisms which facilitate coordination in networks." (author's abstract) "Die Koordination zwischen verschiedenen Einheiten des Systems der Vereinten Nationen (VN) hat in den letzten Jahren sowohl für Praktiker als auch für Akademiker zunehmend an Bedeutung gewonnen. Da die Vereinten Nationen immer ambitioniertere Aufgaben der Konfliktnachsorge, der Demokratisierung und des Wiederaufbaus in Krisenregionen übernehmen, wird der Ruf nach einem koordinierten Vorgehen immer lauter - denn keine einzelne VN Unterorganisation kann die Fülle der Aufgaben allein bewältigen. Trotzdem haben die Bemühungen der letzten Jahre hin zu mehr Koordination und Integration bisher nicht die erhofften Ergebnisse gezeigt. Dieses Papier möchte zur aktuellen Debatte beisteuern, indem es zuerst das Thema 'Koordination' von einem theoretischen Blickwinkel aus beleuchtet. Basierend auf den Erkenntnissen der Organisationslehre wird ein theoretisches Modell der Koordination entwickelt - dieses wird dann auf die Vereinten Nationen als Unternehmer von Friedensmissionen angewandt. Haupterkenntnis ist hierbei, dass, um interorganisationelle Koordination innerhalb der Vereinten Nationen zu verbessern, die sozialen und strukturellen Koordinationsmechanismen gestärkt werden sollten, die dem netzwerkartigen Charakter des Systems entsprechen - anstatt weiterhin zu versuchen, über das ganze System hinweg eine straffe Hierarchie durchzusetzen." (Autorenreferat)

"The article illustrates that there seems to be a fairly large distance between action research ideals of dialogue, democracy, participation, and involvement and the actual challenges we have met when practicing dialogic action research in hierarchical organizations where dialogue is always already embedded in organizational power relations. An overall purpose is to show that we are not only involved professionally as action researchers, but also challenged existentially as human beings when practicing dialogic action research. This has at least two consequences. One is about giving up knowing in advance. The other is about focusing on the quality of the relations with the participants, because this relationship seems to have critical impact on the quality of the results of dialogic action research projects. The article presents some concepts developed in dialogic action research projects in Danish, private and public organizations such as AR dilemmas, self-referentiality, emergent mutual involvement and not knowing, social concrete blocks, and the arbitrary punctuator." (author's abstract)

Trust has a great potential for furthering our understanding of organizational change and learning. This potential however remains largely untapped. It is argued that two reasons as for why this potential remains unrealized are: (i) A narrow conceptualization of change as implementation and (ii) an emphasis on direct and aggregated effects of individual trust to the exclusion of other effects. It is further suggested that our understanding of the effects of trust on organizational change, should benefit from including effects of trust on the formulation stage. It should also benefit from exploring the structuring effects of trust in organizations. Throughout this chapter, ways to extend current research on trust in organizations are suggested. The chapter also provides examples of relevant contributions where available. In order to capture organizational effects of trust, it is suggested that trust should be studied over longer time intervals, and include several referents of trust, spanning both horizontal and vertical relationships in the organization.

In the face of a vast, but highly heterogeneous literature, this paper examines the factors that shape different scientifi c perspectives on the loosely bounded set of phenomena addressed by the terms "globalization" and "global governance." Based on the secondary analysis of research funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation, the paper shows fi rst how the disciplinary paradigms of economics, law, and the social sciences lead to different perspectives on a shared object. In a second step, intra-disciplinary differences in perspective are analyzed. Based on a comprehensive review of the relevant social science literature, it is fi rst shown how changes in world politics since World War II are refl ected in the scientifi c perspective on globalization and global governance. In a final section, different perspectives of American and European scholars are then linked to differences in geopolitical context that have developed since the end of the Cold War on both sides of the Atlantic. The fi ndings alert scholars to the contingent nature of their ways of perceiving, evaluating, and studying a given scientific object. Angesichts einer ausufernden und hochgradig heterogenen Literatur zu "Globalisierung" und "global governance" fragt dieses Papier nach den Faktoren, die die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auf den mit diesen Begriffen angesprochen, unscharf abgegrenzten Bereich von Phänomenen prägen. Gestützt auf die Sekundäranalyse von Projekten in einem Schwerpunktprogramm der VolkswagenStiftung wird zuerst die charakteristisch verschiedene Perspektive von Sozialwissenschaftlern, Wirtschaftswissenschaftlern und Rechtswissenschaftlern auf ein gemeinsames Erkenntnisobjekt dargestellt. In einem zweiten Schritt werden auf der Grundlage einer umfassenden Analyse sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur intradisziplinäre Unterschiede der Betrachtungsweise analysiert. Zuerst wird gezeigt, wie sich die weltpolitische Entwicklung seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in der Analyse von Globalisierung niedergeschlagen hat. Anschließend wird ein (selten bemerkter) Unterschied in den Perspektiven amerikanischer und europäischer Wissenschaftler in Beziehung gesetzt zu dem unterschiedlichen geopolitischen Kontext, der sich nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges auf beiden Seiten des Atlantik entwickelt hat. Das Papier verweist damit auf die Selektivität und kontingente Natur wissenschaftlicher Perspektiven auf ein gegebenes Erkenntnisobjekt. 1 Introduction 2 Disciplinary ways of studying globalization 3 The impact of historical developments 4 The impact of geopolitical context 5 Conclusion References

"This contribution argues that it is time to move beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) to 'global responsibility'. As long as the field retains its old label, the learning agenda for organizations will be too narrow to address the full range of challenges for a sustainable world. It sets too small a stage, invites too few actors to participate and restricts the types of roles they can play. Global responsibility reframes the way issues are defined and the paths along which solutions may be found. After building the argument for the term, the contribution draws on research about organizational learning to identify the kinds of learning that organizations must become skilled at in order to tackle global responsibility. It then illustrates learning processes in a cooperative bank and an international non-governmental association, a multinational corporation, and a multi-stakeholder platform created by the United Nations. These cases show how organizations are combining various types of learning and using physical and virtual learning spaces to generate knowledge for action. The contribution concludes by discussing how to increase the number of organizations engaging in such global responsibility and how to speed up their learning. To this end, lessons are drawn from experiences with the diffusion of voluntary and mandatory approaches to corporate social reporting over the past forty years." (author's abstract) "Dieser Artikel regt dazu an, den Begriff Corporate Social Responsibility (soziale Verantwortung von Unternehmen) auf globale Verantwortung zu erweitern. Der bisherige Begriff ist in mehrfacher Hinsicht zu eng gefasst, unter anderem weil er sich nur auf Unternehmen und nur auf soziale Verantwortung bezieht und damit andere Organisationstypen und Verantwortungsfelder außer Acht lässt. Das Konzept der globalen Verantwortung erweitert den Bezugsrahmen und damit die potentiellen Lösungsansätze. Die Verwirklichung von globaler Verantwortung in der Praxis wird Organisationen vor große Herausforderungen in Bezug auf Lernen stellen. Daher geht der Beitrag im nächsten Teil auf Erkenntnisse aus dem Bereich des Organisationslernens ein, die dann anhand von mehreren Fallbeispielen verdeutlicht werden. Die Beispiele stammen aus unterschiedlichen Typen von Organisationen: einer Genossenschaftsbank, einer internationalen NGO, einem multinationalen Unternehmen und einer Multi-Stakeholder-Plattform der Vereinten Nationen. Diese Beispiele zeigen auch, wie Organisationen bestimmte Lerntypen kombinieren und sowohl physische als auch virtuelle Räume nutzen, um Wissen über Organisations- und Ländergrenzen hinweg zu generieren. Abschließend werden die Möglichkeiten ausgelotet, die Beteiligung von Organisationen an diese Lernprozesse quantitativ zu erheben und qualitativ zu optimieren. Erfahrungen mit der Diffusion von anderen Instrumenten, beispielsweise Sozialbilanzen, die auf freiwilliger bzw. gesetzlicher Basis beruhen, werden ausgewertet. Die Autoren weisen auf die Notwendigkeit von verbindlichen Vorgaben hin, die einen inhaltlich- und verfahrensorientierten Rahmen liefern, in dem Lernexperimente innerhalb und zwischen Organisationen möglich gemacht werden." (Autorenreferat)

"This article makes a case for viewing international governmental organizations (IOs) as corporate agents capable of learning. In doing so, it attempts to go beyond prevailing conceptions of IOs as means or settings for multilateral negotiation and bargaining. The proposed theoretical framework argues from an organizational learning perspective. By integrating notions from neo-institutionalism and policyanalysis it tries to capture the impact of IOs' publicness on learning processes. The focus is on IOs' relations with stakeholders and constituencies for the development and implementation of transboundary policies. These interactions are seen as a means to learn about external demands, expectations and expertise. Their impact on the internal dynamics in IOs tends to be of a dual nature: enhanced adaptability in its margins and buffering the organizational core from environmental fluctuations. Hence, some skepticism is appropriate in assessing IOs' capacity to engage in profound changes as a result of learning. It rests on the contention that the social constitution of the organization-environment nexus and its linkages with intraorganizational processes is of crucial importance for IOs' ability to learn about environmental changes and developments. Emphasis is placed on the contested and controversial nature of knowledge absorption and the limiting effect of administrative routines and procedures on IOs' absorptive capacity." (author's abstract) "Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird der Versuch unternommen, internationale gouvernmentale Organisationen als lernfähige korporative Akteure zu betrachten. Damit soll gezeigt werden, dass internationale Organisationen weder als Instrumente mitgliedstaatlicher Interessen noch als Arenen multilateraler Verhandlungsprozesse hinreichend verstanden werden können. In der Perspektive des Organisationslernens wird danach gefragt, wie internationale Organisationen im Zuge des Interaktionsgeschehens mit Akteuren aus ihrem Umfeld über äußere Veränderungen und Trends lernen. Dabei geht es um die Vermittlung als auch die Interpretation der von außen an internationale Organisationen herangetragenen Erwartungen, Anforderungen, Ideen und Wissen. Ziel des Papiers ist die Entwicklung eines theoretischen Analyserahmens, der das Interaktionsgeschehen zwischen internationalen Organisationen und den ihre Umwelt repräsentierenden Akteuren als Auslöser für organisationale Lernprozesse begreift und gleichzeitig auch institutionelle, kulturelle und politisch-interessenbezogene Bedingungen berücksichtigt. Die aus dem Spannungsfeld zwischen Organisation und Umwelt resultierenden Lernprozesse sind dualer Natur: Erhöhte Anpassungsfähigkeit in den Grenzbereichen internationaler Organisationen geht mit Abpufferung des Organisationskerns von Umweltfluktuationen einher. Diese Einschätzung gründet auf der Prämisse der sozialen Konstituierung des Organisations-Umwelt Nexus und dessen Verbindungen mit organisationsinternen Prozessen. Darüber hinaus wird die politische Bedingtheit organisationaler Wissensprozessierung und der Einfluss administrativer Routinen und Verfahren auf die Aufnahmefähigkeit internationaler Organisationen betont." (Autorenreferat)

"The field of organizational learning has developed dynamically but is not ready for closure. This article reviews the cultural contexts in which research on organizational learning has been conducted since the 1960s, and the intellectual traditions that underpin the field. It traces changes in the types of organizations. studied and in the range of agents of organizational learning attended to by scholars. The processes and models that have shaped the discussion over the past decades, and changes in the tone or color of the way organizational learning has been treated are also highlighted. Trends in organizational practices are identified as well. On the basis of this broad stocktaking exercise, key challenges for future research on organizational learning and knowledge creation are outlined." (author's abstract) "Das Forschungsgebiet 'Organisationslernen' hat eine sehr dynamische Entwicklung durchgemacht, deren wesentliche Züge in diesem Beitrag konturiert werden, um die zentralen Erkenntnisse der letzten Jahre festzuhalten und verbleibende Forschungslücken zu identifizieren. So werden die kulturellen Umfeldbedingungen und die intellektuellen Traditionen, in die die Forschung zum Organisationslernen seit den 60er Jahren eingebettet ist, beschrieben. Ferner wird dargestellt, wie sich mit zunehmender Ausdifferenzierung des Feldes die Spannbreite der untersuchten Organisationstypen (Unternehmen, Behörden, Gewerkschaften, soziale Bewegungen usw.) und Akteure vergrößert hat. Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen den Prozessen und Modellen, die die Diskussion über die letzten Jahrzehnte geprägt haben, werden hervorgehoben. Darüber hinaus werden Trends in den lernbezogenen Praktiken von Organisationen aufgezeigt. Anhand dieser umfassenden Bestandsaufnahme skizzieren die Autoren die wesentlichen Herausforderungen für die zukünftige Forschung und erweitern das Feld Organisationslernen zugleich um den Aspekt der 'Wissensgenerierung' (knowledge creation)." (Autorenreferat)

Vor dem Hintergrund der zunehmenden Bedeutung privater Organisationen in internationalen Regimen fragen die Verfasser, welche Voraussetzungen eine Organisation aufweisen muss, um sich als einflussreicher Akteur in einem internationalen Regime zu etablieren. Sie diskutieren diese Frage am Fallbeispiel des gescheiterten Versuchs der "Internet Society" (ISOC), sich als privater Regulierer im Internet-Bereich zu etablieren. Dabei werden Aspekte einer Theorie des Organisationshandelns mit Perspektiven aus der Sicht des Neuen Institutionalismus verknüpft. Die Verfasser stellen die Binnenstruktur der ISOC dar und analysieren die Positionierung der ISOC zwischen den Organisationsfeldern Telekommunikation und Internet. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass unzureichende organisatorische Ressourcen und der Spagat zwischen den genannten unterschiedlichen Organisationsfeldern zum Scheitern der ISOC führten. (ICE)

The paper presents a theoretical outline for a cross-national comparative study of business associations. It identifies two clusters of independent variables that are assumed to affect the structure of intermediary organizations: properties of the represented group ("Logic of Membership") and properties of the state and other political institutions such as trade unions ("Logic of Influence"). It goes on to develop a model of the organizational properties of business associations as they respond to these two logics and to other functional exigencies ("Logic of Goal Formation" and "Logic of Effective Implementation"). In a further step, the paper suggests four dimensions ("Domains", "Structures", "Resources", "Outputs") in which the "organizational development" of interest associations from lower to higher levels of "organizational complexity" and "strategic autonomy" can be studied. Das Papier enthält einen theoretischen Entwurf für eine international vergleichende Studie von Wirtschaftsverbänden. Es benennt zwei Gruppen von unabhängigen Variablen, die die Struktur von intermediären Organisationen beeinflussen: Eigenschaften der vertretenen Gruppen ("Mitglieder-Logik") und Eigenschaften des Staates und anderer politischer Institutionen wie der Gewerkschaften ("Einfluß-Logik"). Im Anschluß daran wird ein Modell der organisatorischen Eigenschaften von Interessenverbänden als Ausdruck der Einwirkung der beiden genannten "Logiken" sowie anderer funktionaler Zwänge ("Logik der Zielformierung", "Logik der effektiven Zielverwirklichung") entwickelt. Danach werden vier organisatorische Dimensionen vorgeschlagen ("Domänen", "Strukturen", "Ressourcen", "Tätigkeiten"), in denen die "organisatorische Entwicklung" von Interessenverbänden von niedrigeren zu höheren Niveaus "organisierter Komplexität" und "strategischer Autonomie" untersucht werden kann. Introductory Preface Part A: Why Study the Organization of Business Interests? 1 The Substantive Problem: Business Interests as the Subject of Associative Action 2 The Theoretical Domain 2.1 The Political Imperatives for Business Associability 2.2 The Organizational Requirements for Business Associability 2.3 The Policy Consequences of Business Associability Part B: The Variables for Analysis 3 The Competing Imperatives and Logics of BIAs 4 The Logic of Membership 4.1 Number 4.2 Equality 4.3 Competition 4.3.1 External Competition 4.3.2 Internal Competition 4.4 Interdependence 4.5 >Heterogeneity 4.6 Turnover 4.7 Profitability and Growth 4.8 Social Cohesion 4.9 Concluding Remarks on the Logic of Membership 5 The Logic of Influence 5.1 Interactions with the State 5.1.1 General (National) Conditions 5.1.2 Specific (Sectoral) Conditions 5.2 Interactions with Organized Labor 5.2.1 General (National) Conditions 5.2.2 Specific (Sectoral) Conditions 6 Organizational Properties 6.1 Introduction 6.1.1 Organizational Development: Organized Complexity and Relative Autonomy 6.1.2 Domains, Structures 6.2 Domains 6.2.1 Parameters 6.2.2 Units of Membership 6.3 Structures 6.3.1 Intra-Organizational Structures 6.3.1.1 Horizontal Differentiation: Intra-Organizational Complexity 6.3.1.2 Hierarchical Integration: Intra-Organizational Coordination 6.3.2 Inter-Organizational Structures: Higher-order Associations 6.3.3 Inter-Organizational Structures: Associational Systems 6.4 Resources 6.5 Outputs Solidaristic Goods, Public (Pressure) Goods Selective Goods Monopoly Goods References

"Berater können im Prozeß des Organisationslernens ein breites Spektrum von Rollen einnehmen. Dieser Artikel untersucht, inwieweit diese Rollen den Lernprozeß entweder stützen oder verhindern. Kernstück der Analyse ist das Erreichen einer angemessenen 'Marginalität' der Beraterrolle, die erst den Mitgliedern der Organisation ermöglicht, die 'Zentralität' im Lernprozeß zu gewinnen, die notwendig ist, um Lernen und Lernergebnisse in der Organisation zu halten. Gezeigt werden eine Reihe von Kräften, die Berater in eine zentrale Rolle bringen und dadurch Organisationslernen eher verhindern als unterstützen. Die Klärung und Aushandlung von Rollen zwischen Beratern und Organisationsmitgliedern wird als Schlüsselprozeß dafür gesehen, ob und wie erfolgreich der organisationale Lernprozeß verlaufen kann." (Autorenreferat) "This article explores the wide range of roles that consultants can play to either enable or hinder organizational learning processes. A core concept in this analysis is the achievement of an appropriate 'marginality' of the consultants' role, in order to allow the organizational members to maintain the 'centrality' for themselves that is needed to assure that learning is retained in the organization. The article argues that a number of forces can conspire to propel the consultants to central roles, and thereby impede rather than promote organizational learning. The clarification and negotiation of roles between the consultants and the members of the organization are therefore treated as a key process in determining the impact of consultants' interventions on organizational learning." (author's abstract)