http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/2890/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37771/ 2012-06-01T00:00:00Z Purpose: This paper aims to provide an introduction to the special issue on the theme of sustainability and the need for change. Design/methodology/approach: The paper gives an overview of sustainability and its managerial and policy dilemmas for organizations. It also outlines the topics covered in the papers in the special issue. Findings: The question that the papers seek to answer is: how can organisations deal with the sustainability challenge? The papers cover the key sustainability dilemmas: how to balance short term priorities with long term vision, organisational change with stability, strategic goals with day to day implementation, domestic with international responsibilities; how to manage the corporate brand, image and reputation; how to influence policies nationally and internationally, and foster relations, all in the realm of effecting the change in attitude and behaviour that sustainability demands. Originality/value: The paper introduces an eclectic collection of papers that are intended to inform, challenge and stimulate continuing debate. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37770/ 2012-05-01T00:00:00Z Purpose: A concept of culture as a solid black box of mental software is gone from serious research surviving in consulting modules and undergraduate teaching. Cultural values evolve and are more frequently examined in public through filters of institutional patterns and frames. The new, emergent cluster of sustainability values dominates and realigns all other values in unpredictable ways. One of the most relevant consequences consists of reinventing democracy, even within business corporations, Large Hadron Colliders and office work floors. The paper aims to define and interpret the cultural dimension of the emergent value of sustainability, which migrates towards the center of core values in the management of organizations. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a theoretical interpretation with cutting-edge empirical reports on the most complex research projects and their management based on negotiating values, goals and pragmatics. The paper also applies Boisot's information space model. Findings: It is through continuous organized renegotiations that we learn how to construct a multiple, multilevel, ongoing platform for a global governance in the face of serious challenges. Practical implications: The practical implications of the paper include a possible redesign of complex research projects with diverse organizational members (public authorities, business companies, NGOs, communities of knowledge) and a revision of the curricula of business schools from the point of insertion of the humanities. Originality/value: The paper is the first attempt to draw a road map for a multidimensional information-space inspired approach towards organizational change as a renegotiated process. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20295/ 2010-06-01T00:00:00Z This a commentary on the paper by Fink and Mayrhofer published in European J. Cross-Cultural Competence and Management, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009, pp.42-65 http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19653/ 2010-05-18T00:00:00Z Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to reinterpret rhetorical inventions in global multimedia and to re-conceptualize the theoretical analysis of processes of sentimental representation of global inequalities, unfair terms of exchange and attempts to balance them ("Bollywood" of Mumbai vs Hollywood of LA). Design/methodology/approach: Philosophical and qualitative analysis of the rhetoric of communication forged by global power games and applied to symbolic strategies of resistance, with a case study of a particular highly successful movie in global multimedia network, namely Slumdog Millionaire, which had been coproduced jointly by professionals from the former "colonial power" (the UK) and from the former "conquered colony" (India) in order to challenge the latest superpower (Hollywood and the USA). Findings: Yesterday's underdogs are talking back and winning the symbolic game of multimediated communications by inserting a new professionally shaped response to the international inequalities laid bare and exposed to a growing critique. However, the ironies of the international division of labor and local cultural contexts can turn "sweatshops" into " boudoirs" subverting the rhetoric of Western domination. More Bollywood-like strategies are needed to redress the imbalance. Originality/value: Apart from the very specialist studies in the aesthetics of the film as an art form, this is the first attempt to demonstrate the common theme of resistance to the dominant rhetoric of multimedia industries on the level of coding symbolic meanings and disseminating them through aesthetically successful cultural commodities by groups and regions "cast" in subordinate roles by cultural industries. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19745/ 2009-09-01T00:00:00Z ‘Crosscultural Life of Social Values’, a conference organized by the Rotterdam School of Management, Department of Organization Studies and Human Resource Management (Erasmus University, May 18—19, 2007) and International Association for Crosscultural Competence and Management (IACCM) signaled major challenges to the dominant theories of national and organizational cultures. Growing criticism of quasi-paradigmatic model of national culture (the Hofstedian canon) manifested increasing awareness of the need for a sustainable, ‘culturally attentive’ perspective on cross-cultural comparative studies. Latest AoM publications confirm post-paradigmatic shifts in theories of national and organizational cultures and in professionalization of cross-cultural competence. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20296/ 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z The concept of diversity should be disentangled from the 'neodarwinist' interpretations, liberated from close affinities with the equally ambiguous concept of 'identity' and become more 'relational' and 'socialised' in order to become a robust foundation of a promising research program. Celebrating differences, we should be careful not to legitimise inequalities inherent, implicitly included in 'otherness' and 'difference'. Critical social researchers have to reach towards sweatshops, sex workers and domestics in order to understand the 'unnatural selection of tolerated versus opposed forms of systematic inequalities'. Neodarwinism is wrong; diversity management does not necessarily have to be. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/15391/ 2008-12-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/7645/ 2006-03-30T00:00:00Z The case of the Danish “cartoon war” was a premonition of things to come: accelerated social construction of inequalities and their accelerated symbolic communication, translation and negotiation. New uses of values in organizing and managing inequalities emerge. Values lead active social life as bourgeois virtues (McCloskey, 2006), their subversive alternatives or translated “memes” of cultural history. Since social life of values went global and online, tracing their hybrid manifestations requires cross-culturally competent domestication (Magala, 2005) as if they were “memes” manipulated for further reengineering. Hopes are linked to emergent concepts of “microstorias” (Boje,2002), bottom-up, participative, open citizenship (Balibar,2004), disruption of stereotypical branding in mass-media (Sennett, 2006). However, Kuhn’s opportunistic deviation from Popperian evolutionary epistemology should fade away with other hidden injuries of Cold War, to free our agenda for the future of social sciences in general and organizational sciences in particular (Fuller, 2000, 2003). http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1583/ 2004-09-10T00:00:00Z The present backlash of neo-neopositivism has been academically justified either with a biological or evolutionary ideologies. How did academic intellectuals respond? First, by developing a concept of professional self-identity and institutional peer-control and making it independent of empirical and third-party verification Both these concepts are purely formal and allow for an autonomous self-regulation of a professional community minimizing external influences. Honing ourselves is about the self-reflection of the academic intellectuals who are caught in the networks and hierarchies of the emergent industrial, academic and public organizations Second, by continuous critical re-engineering of the Enlightenment project in the post-communist, post-liberal, complex world on the edge of chaos, in which the retreat of the state and the emergence of complex networks has diminished the role of national culture as the basic frame and blueprint for socialization. Third, by an attempt to form a democratic community of academic citizens. Will a loose collection of researchers and teachers ever rise to the level of principled citizens of a scientific community? http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1584/ 2004-09-10T00:00:00Z Cultural background of identities calls for upholding of values, but realities of multicultural interactions require cross-cultural compromises. Compromises begin already with the introduction of the term multiculturalism, which served both as a platform for cross-cultural urban policies in major western cities and for a non-class analysis of a new class structure. The unexpected result of the popularity of the concept of multiculturalism in urban policies is its managerial application in knowledge intensive organizations. Multiculturalism in inter-organizational uses justifies empowerment, learning organization and attempted emancipation of corporate citizens. Robustness of Hofstede’s model of national cultures’ dimensions lies in his correct prediction of the evolution of hierarchic bureaucracy, while weaknesses result from the extended scope of dimensions, which require “unzipping” and from excessive reliance on the nation-state led process of socialization. Unzipping, already started in research communities (both friendly, unfriendly and neutral with respect to the author of “Culture’s Consequences”) is being slowed down by Hofstede’s precarious institutional embedding in academic communities. De-nationalization is accelerating due to the new integrating processes of regional globalization. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/974/ 2003-10-17T00:00:00Z Modern European identity has been forged in class struggles between the French revolution and fall of the Berlin Wall, which fell twice. Once, with the rest of the city in May 1945, when a national socialist alternative to a modernizing mix of parliamentary democracy and market economy crumbled after the hot WWII, and second time in November 1989, when a state socialist alternative crumbled after the Cold War. At the same time working class in the USA abandoned trade unions and class struggle buying shares, dreaming of upward social mobility within a middle class show and re-enchanting consumer lives in Las Vegas and Disneyland. Meanwhile, American intellectuals servicing the US power elite dismiss European elites as "Euroweenies" unable to stand up for "the West" against "the rest" of the world. Are they right? Have Europeans ungratefully forgotten the US support in times of two world wars? Aren't European professional elites able to convince the rest of citizens about advantages of western solidarity in view of terrorist threats? Are the identities of the US and European professional elites tightly linked or loosely coupled? Are European elites more successful in preventing masses from bowling alone? http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/864/ 2003-09-12T00:00:00Z Comparative cross-cultural studies and identity research in social psychology focused on national and organizational differences, clashes and dimensions (Hofstede, Barsoux & Schneider, Jackson, Ward, Bochner & Furnham, Capoza & Brown). Mapping cultural software of individuals and dynamics of small groups was supposed to provide additional managerial knowledge and skills indispensable for global expansion of stable organizational bureaucracies. However, social constructivists and critical social scientists have also exposed a contingent nature of managerial skills in complex and chaotic environments and demonstrated arbitrariness of sense-making in organizations (cf. Weick, Hatch). Increasing frequency of individual interactions and accelerated evolution of organizational forms drew attention of research communities to the unhealthy (irrational, pathological) paradoxes of what used to be considered healthy organizational identities (Alvesson, de Vries, Gabriel, Carr). Problems of identity and identization (cf. Honneth, Sievers, van Riel) acquired growing significance viewed against the background of three paradoxes. First, managerial ideologies call for flexible networks of empowered individuals, but managerialist ideologies tacitly support hierarchic control. Second, there is no sustainable "fit" between new psychologized individualism and evolving "organizationalism" (Leinberger & Tucker). Robust identities and sustainable fit are continually challenged by unhealthy shadows of authoritarian "psychostructures" and dominant forms of organizationalism (Negri, Melucci, Stehr, Beck). Third, emergent alliances in social and managerial sciences have not succeeded yet in changing the methodological and ethical landscape of research in order to challenge dominant modes of organizing, social embedding and self-reflection. Such a shift could offer insights into the unhealthy paradoxes of healthy identities assumed by functionalists and criticized by constructivists, contingency theoreticians and evolutionists (Abrahamsson, Boje,Featherstone, Clark & Fincham, Denzin & Lincoln). http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/335/ 2003-05-07T00:00:00Z Tracing Cold War in post-modern managerial science and ideology one encounters hot issues linking contemporary liberal dogmas and romanticized view of organizational leadership to the dismantling of a welfare state disguised as a liberation of an individual employee, empowerment of an individual consumer and a progressive, liberal and global development of a market/parliament mix. The concept of totalitarianism covers fearful symmetries between three modes of paying the bills for western modernization; liberal, communist and the emergent "egalibertarian"(1), while the ideologies of organisationalism and globalization testify to a search for a post-Cold War mission statement. Messiness of re-engineering the enlargement of the European Union testifies to the hidden injuries of Cold War, not all of them caused by a class and class struggle. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/238/ 2002-10-22T00:00:00Z Most of contemporary individual and social identities (constructed with societal, cultural and technological resources) are radically autonomous, nomadic and virtual - i.e. they are de-traditionalized, open to negotiation and not based on a single interpretation of a tradition. Identizations can be recycled - elements of former identities are being re-used in constructing later ones or identities emerging in one context can be implanted in another or hybridised - a nation state as a model for socio-political identity is a case in point (and so is its recent crisis). Values, political, cultural and social identities - elective identities of "nomads of the present", often emerging out of new social movements or informal networks - play an important role in determining choices of information codes, images and identities. Theories of clashes of civilizations and of fundamentalists versus modernists should be seen against the background of increasingly complex and successful attempts at global governance and increasing criticism of the ideologies of status quo. They may testify to the success of globalization instead of demonstrating its failure. The rise of religious fundamentalism and the emergence of network types of organization contribute to further acceleration of identization processes. "Girotondi della liberta" in Berlusconi's Italy and radical re-evaluation of cosmopolitanism as a family of images of representation are cases of emergent identizations with unclear but potentially critical political implications. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/230/ 2002-09-23T00:00:00Z Academic communities in social sciences are still dominated by neo-positivist paradigm, but communities of practice developing social constructivism have started to redress paradigmatic imbalances. According to the latter man-made organizational reality is processual and saturated with sensemaking (Weick). Social constructivists succeeded in reconstructing complex organizational disasters and contributed to organizational innovation and change (for instance in the wake of ICT challenges). They belong to postmodernist critics of modernity's failure to regulate social development and contribute to a better understanding of organizing (e.g. implementing a new technology or managing knowledge production) as patchworking and improvising. In spite of discriminating practices, they survive in academic communities. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/185/ 2002-03-13T00:00:00Z Measuring culture originated in cultural anthropology, but all social sciences contributed to comparative cultural studies. Tracing critical approaches towards a measurement of cultural values one is bound to strip the biases and stereotypes bare and to invade numerous academic fiefs. Hofstede defined interdisciplinary cultural dimensions but failed to anchor studying of culture's consequences in the academia. Measuring culture (rituals, patterns, business recipes, symbols, standards) we end up measuring values and competence in management of knowledge and skills, of norms and behaviours, cutting many corners of established disciplines. Demanding, but should we fail to do so, our cross-cultural experiment with the European integration could result in the corrosion of character and bowling alone. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/124/ 2001-11-01T00:00:00Z HRM research rarely focusses on ethical issues and on moral legacies embedded in employees' cultural software. Ignoring the latter can result in a failure to assess important criteria of strategic HRM policies, which should not stop at the factory door nor at the state borders. Recent HRM problems experienced in the post-communist countries are cases in point. Hidden injuries of cold war include not only the obsolete Russian nuclear submarines waiting for their radioactive spills to enter global food chains. Less visible, but equally dangerous is a moral and an ethical fallout of Stalinism and the failure to de-stalinize. Authoritarian mind-set prevents ex-Soviet citizens from discovering, developing and maintaining civic entrepreneurship. Might (of the state) becomes right (for an individual). Lack of civic entrepreneurship makes redefining collective identity and coming to terms with responsibilities difficult. The emergence of a symbolic cemetary of the Polish officers, prisoners of war murdered on Stalin's orders in 1940, allows us to trace a mechanism for making state violence transparent and for acknowledging collective responsibilities. Is there a lesson to be learned in managing a social learning process in spite of a learned irresponsibility of the "authoritarian personalities"? Can coming to terms with state-controlled genocide provide a starting point for a re-educational campaign and for a coaching of civic virtues? Can management of moral legacies and ethical responsibilities become part and parcel of a future HRM policy for a globally networked world? http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/284/ 2001-09-28T00:00:00Z Address given in shortened form at the occasion of accepting the appointment as Full Professor of "Cross-Cultural Management" at the Rotterdam School of Management / Faculteit Bedrijfskunde of Erasmus University Rotterdam on Friday, September 28, 2001 http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/84/ 2001-03-29T00:00:00Z Most of modern identities emerge from mediated interactions in public and virtual spaces. There are no acknowledged authorities to watch over organizational identities and grant them legitimacy. These identities are renegotiated in real and virtual communities, often carry a permanent label 'under construction' and can be violently contested in public space. Garrulous behaviour stimulated by interactive media and by the forthcoming Evernet allows for a gradual build-up of individual and social response to the visual overkill in media-regulated societies. Voicing the images over, we mobilize for action, dismantle institutional structures and generally speaking mix gate-keeping with data-dating, thus contributing to the overall change of world's cultural climate - one of bricks, clicks and flicks. Benetton's Toscani campaign and Napster's ordeal are cases in point. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/14917/ 2001-01-01T00:00:00Z Works of art and educational products are being marketed. In order to reach the upper segments of consumers they have to be packaged and advertised. Gentrifying cultural consumption of art can easily be compared to the upgraded and commercialized forms of the individualized mass education. Once upon a time the European social democrats opened up the "gardens of artistic treasures" and "gardens of educational advancement" to the masses. Malraux dreamed of an imaginary museum belonging to everybody. Popular access, however, changed the museum and the university more than expected. «The map of the museum had to be remade, its calendar adjusted to the latest beginning» (Lyotard, 1999: 305). Masses came, but failed to become passive consumers of artistic values prescribed by cultural elites. Today's musea are catering to the broader public and entering the emergent networks of virtual exhibition spaces, but artistic values are as prone to crises as shares on a stock exchange. Likewise, in the last quarter of the century, Trojan horses of the expanding forms of university-level education and of the MBA programs entered the turreted walls of the universities. Macdonaldization and lasvegasification of higher education followed. Pragmatic checklists and multiple choice tests replaced methodological apprenticeship and individual research assignments. Open and flying universities, virtual universities and faculties multiply and inhabit the educational earth. The roulette tables have also been turned in the academic casinos of universities, associations, conferences, networks, publications and the like: paradigms started winning and losing without metaphysical guarantees and without methodological credit cards. The metaphor of knowledge gambles appears to offer much better insights into the daily processes within complex, knowledge-intensive casinos (where governments and companies bet on future outcomes) than the metaphor of organizational learning, which coloured the vocabulary of organizational sciences at the turn of the century. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/45/ 2000-09-22T00:00:00Z Will the reconstructed library of Alexandria prevent a forthcoming clash of civilizations? Inventing and re-inventing traditions requires total quality management and multiple networking in shifting alliances in the information space. Stock exchange of cultural forms has long abandoned the golden standards of Enlightenment and follows a theory of cultural relativity and an international political economy of attention. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/11/ 2000-03-28T00:00:00Z The concepts of critical theory require critical changes. Strategies of a Frankfurt school had been transformed in the new academic and institutional environment. The development of scientific research programs resulted in a flexible restructuring of research communities. The new complexity of research networks is less hierarchic, more mobile, not easily centralized. Theories of organizational learning reflect methodological compromises with respect to the paradigms and political compromises with respect to the governance structures. Nomadic, virtual and flexible research communities float in cyberspace discovering the fundamentals of democracy in an era of informational affluence