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

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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.

Die erfolgreiche Internet-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia demonstriert das Potential alternativerProduktionsmodelle für bedeutende Innovationen, die mit traditionellen Methoden nicht erreichbarsind. Sie arbeitet einerseits mit einem barrierefreien Zugang und setzt andererseits – etwa bezüglich Umfang und Aktualität – neue Maßstäbe. In der Rechtsentwicklung wird dies noch kaum berücksichtigt. Die laufende Regulierung des Internets zielt fast ausschließlich darauf ab, die herkömmlichen, auf umfassenden immaterialgüterrechten basierenden Produktionsmodelle zu stärken. Alternative Produktionsmodelle wie Wikipedia sind dadurch bedroht und damit auch die Innovationen, die sie hervorbringen.

Performance evaluation in research is more and more based on numbers of publications, citations, and impact factors. In the wake of New Public Management output control has been introduced into research governance without taking into account the conditions necessary for this kind of control to work efficiently. It is argued that to evaluate research by output control is counterproductive. It induces to substitute the “taste for science” by a “taste for publication”. Instead, input control by careful selection and socialization serves as an alternative.

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Although corporate acquisitions are ubiquitous a large number of M&A fails. One explanation for such failure is the hubris hypothesis for corporate takeovers. A decision maker affected with hubris (or overconfidence) will overestimate his abilities in raising potential synergies and is likely to make investment decisions destroying shareholder wealth. The growing literature on CEO hubris proposes various ways to measure hubris. We present these indicators and discuss possible advantages and drawbacks.

Performance evaluation in research is more and more based on numbers of publications, citations, and impact factors. In the wake of New Public Management output control has been introduced into research governance without taking into account the conditions necessary for this kind of control to work e ciently. It is argued that to evaluate research by output control is counterproductive. It induces to substitute the 'taste for science' by a 'taste for publication'. Instead, input control by careful selection and socialization serves as an alternative.

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In this essay I argue that organization theory has witnessed a significant displacement of ends over the last 30 years. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s the dominant goal of the discipline was achieving consensus on the validity status of theories, today the overriding goal appears to be development of new theory. Formerly new theory development was considered a means to the end of attaining consensus on theory validity, but was not the only activity deemed necessary to accomplish that goal. In addition, instrumental standardization and replication were viewed as important. The contemporary displacement of ends toward new theory development creates the paradox that organization theory today is both epistemologically simpler (in terms of the intellectual activity deemed desirable) and more complex theoretically than it was 30 years ago. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the displacement of ends toward new theory development in organization theory, and offer some possible remedies that are designed to reallocate priorities and resources toward the instrumentation, theory testing, and replication components of the research process. I also propose an agenda of future research in the history and sociology of organization science that would study the displacement of ends hypothesized here, with a view to improving our understanding of how organization theory has evolved and how its knowledge could be made more useful to managers.

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In this paper we discuss the strengths and limitations of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory as a theoretical lens for studying organisations. We outline the main contributions of his work to contemporary organisation studies: the differentiation between social and psychological logics, the differentiation between different social systems, the radical process character of organisations, and the embeddedness of his organisation theory into a larger theory of society. Based on a discussion of the main limitations of Luhmann’s theory we propose an agenda for the future development of his theory.

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a large set of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards. However, our knowledge is limited on how and why certain CSR initiatives diffuse extensively whereas others do so only partially or not at all. One of the rare examples of a rapidly and widely spreading CSR standard are the "Equator Principles" (EP), a global standard in international project finance to base investment decisions for large infrastructure projects (e.g., a river dam) on social and environmental criteria. In our qualitative study, we explore the constitutive conditions which facilitated the EP standardization process. First, we track the initiative’s evolution in form of a historical analysis. Second, we conduct 20 semi-structured interviews with relevant actors, e.g., representatives of banks or NGOs. Our study shows that the EP’s diffusion is fostered by dynamic negotiation processes. Instead of viewing organizational fields as relatively stable, we conceptualize them as relational, fragmented and open issue spaces where subject matters are prone to negotiation, interpretation, and contestation.

The emerging process view in organization studies conceptualizes organizations as fluid streams of organizing. If, however, organizations are conceived as consisting of something as ephemeral as processes, the question arises how the organization is then able to interconnect the very processes that constitute its existence. For studying this issue of connectivity we draw on one particular stream of process theorizing, that is, the theory of social systems by Niklas Luhmann. He argues that organizations are fundamentally grounded in paradox: they continuously require both to visibilize and to invisibilize the inherent contingency (i.e. alternativity) of processes in order to allow for interconnectivity between them. In this paper, we therefore examine one organizational form where the connectivity between processes is particularly at stake: the project organization. We present the findings of an empirical case study at a globally operating business consulting firm. The study involved the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 565 textual documents collected from cross-project learning databases as well as 14 qualitative interviews. We found that usually all that remains after a project has been completed is a collection of highly condensed PowerPoint documents. The narratives contained in those documents focused on consistency (e.g. highlighting "best practices" or "success stories") rather than contingency (e.g., doubts, mistakes, or alternative paths considered). Consequently, the processuality and contingency of each project remained opaque to non-participants. This also found expression in established practices of hiding the elephant, i.e. disguising the vast contingencies inherent to the processes that constitute the organization.

Die Dualität von staatlicher Regulierung und unternehmerischer Selbstregulierung basiert auf dem Vertrauen zwischen Staat und Privaten. Selbstauferlegte Regeln können sogar wirksamer sein als neue Gesetze, wie die «Equator Principles» in der Finanzindustrie zeigen.

In diesem Beitrag führen wir in das Themenheft ein. Wir skizzieren das Grundanliegen des Projektes, legen die erforderlichen begrifflichen Grundlagen und charakterisieren Unternehmensethik und CSR als Herausforderungen der betriebswirtschaftlichen Teildisziplinen. Wir beschreiben einige der Push- und Pull-Faktoren, die eine stärkere Institutionalisierung von Unternehmensethik und BWL in den Teildisziplinen zur Folge haben: die Nachfrage der Praxis, die Ethics Codes von Professional Organizations, die Anforderungskriterien von Akkreditierungsinstitutionen für Studiengänge, Social Responsibility Rankings und der Entwicklungsstand der internationalen betriebswirtschaftlichen Forschung.