Contributions published at Foundations of Business Administration and Theories of the Firm (Andreas Scherer)

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Corporate governance practice is mainly centered on the protection of investors’ rights. However, this view neglects the fundamental changes in the operating conditions of business due to globalization and the weakening of regulatory frameworks. Weak or absent enforcement of contracts, increasingly unfettered negative externalities of corporate action, and involvement of private actors in the provision of public goods change the role of business in a fundamental way, rendering it a political actor. Resulting in the extension of corporate power these developments challenge the very assumptions of efficiency based corporate governance theory. Recurrent misuse of power poses a threat to organizational legitimacy as well as to the legitimacy of the capitalist system. Drawing on suggestions to restore organizational legitimacy by means of discursive processes, we argue that opening corporate governance to such processes is a suitable means to safeguard organizational legitimacy in a globalized world. Based on these considerations, basic requirements as well as limits for modification of current corporate governance practice are introduced.

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In this paper we address the democratic deficit that emerges when private corporations engage with public policy, either by providing citizenship rights and global public goods (corporate citizenship) or by influencing the political system and lobbying for their economic interests (strategic corporate political activities). This democratic deficit is significant, especially when multinational corporations operate in locations where national governance mechanisms are weak or even fail, where the rule of law is absent and there is a lack of democratic control. This may lead to a decline in the social acceptance of the business firm and its corporate political activities and, thus, to a loss of corporate legitimacy. Under these conditions corporations may compensate the emerging democratic deficit and reestablish their legitimacy by internalizing democratic mechanisms within their organizations, in particular in their corporate governance structures and procedures. We analyze the available corporate governance models with the help of a typology and discuss the possible contributions of a new form of democratic corporate governance.

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In der Wissenschaft sucht man immer wieder Qualität und Output der Arbeit zu messen und die Effizienz zu ermitteln. Die Autorin des folgenden Beitrags zeigt auf, welche Nebenwirkungen damit verbunden sind und welche Regeln produktiver wären.

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This article presents a conceptual model of entrepreneurial opportunity production from a constructivist perspective. The model assumes that opportunity production proceeds through several stages, including conceptualization of an opportunity idea by an entrepreneur, objectification of that idea, and enactment of the opportunity into a new venture. However, not all opportunity ideas survive this full process. Between the conceptualization stage and the objectification stage, some ideas are abandoned due to inadequate objectification. Also, between the objectification stage and the enactment stage, some objectified opportunities are abandoned due to insufficient resource support. We identify variables that influence the likelihood that opportunity ideas will be objectified and other variables that influence the likelihood that objectified opportunities will be enacted, and these variables are incorporated into empirically testable propositions. In the discussion section, we describe several boundary conditions for our theory, contrast the theory with objectivist (discovery) theory, and derive implications for future research.

Academic rankings today are the backbone of research governance, which seem to fit the aims of “new public management” on the one side and the idea of the “republic of science” on the other side. Nevertheless rankings recently came under scrutiny. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of academic rankings, in particular their unintended negative consequences on the research process. To counterbalance these negative consequences we suggest (a) rigorous selection and socialization, and (b) downplaying the impact of rankings in order to reconcile academic self-governance with accountability to the public.

The literature on organization design is dominated by ideas and theories on how to manage manual work. This understanding is driven by a division of labor based on clear-cut responsibilities and by focusing on hierarchical organization structures like the U-form, M-form, and matrix. Governance mechanisms, for the most part, have been focused on transactional solutions, that is, on the monitoring of work behavior and monetary rewards. Today, knowledge workers dominate the workforce, and the integration of distributed, cross-functional knowledge is crucial. The most important governance mechanisms are no longer based on transactional but rather on transformational solutions that focus on the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers and their willingness to collaborate. We provide theoretical insight into the collaborative process and discuss three evolving organizational designs that enable knowledge workers to collaborate.

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