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

In this rejoinder to Priem and Mowday, the author amplifies and critiques some of their ideas on the proliferation of special issues in management journals. The author interprets special issues as vertical integration moves by journal editors operating in a context of perceived resource scarcity. He also argues that the proliferation of special issues is contributing to the fragmentation of the organization studies discipline, thus contradicting Priem's notion of a command economy of ideas via special issue and Mowday's sanguine view of special issues. The author offers suggestions for future research on the causes and consequences of the proliferation of special issues in management journals.

Economic activities require the existence of rules and their enforcement as preconditions that the market cannot generate itself. Property rights, contractual rights and obligations are minimal conditions that in modern societies are provided and enforced by the state. Without such rules, the market cannot flourish. The state thus determines regulations and delineates the sphere of private freedom, within which individual citizens and private institutions are entitled to conclude contracts amongst each other but are as well forced to abide by the contracted rules. In line of the development of modern nation states, the state has not only been the guarantor of civil rights, e.g. the right to own property, to enter into private contracts, and to engage in market activity. In its role as a democratic constitutional state it has also been the guarantor of political participation rights, the right of the citizen to take part in the processes to determine public rules and issues of public concern. Finally, in its role as a welfare state it has provided social rights for citizens, such as the right to education, to healthcare and welfare (Marshall, 1965). The combination of state-guaranteed civil, political, and social rights provided modern society with welfare, legitimacy and solidarity, thereby contributing to peacefully stabilize the community of anonymous individuals (Habermas, 2001). Following Matten and Crane (2005) we refer to this triad of rights as citizenship rights.

Globalization can be seen as a process of worldwide interlinkage of social actions, which transcends local contexts and institutions and thus increases in importance beyond the regional level (Giddens 1990; Scherer 2003; Scherer/Palazzo 2008). This is particularly true in the case of economic activity. In globalization, doing business crosses territorially defined borders, leading to a mismatch between political control on the one hand and economic activity on the other. The congruence between the area covered by state regulation and the area where economic and social interaction actually unfold thus disappears (Zürn 1998). Under these conditions the private economy no longer develops within the rules dictated by state politics; rather, the economy is likely to dictate to politicians (Gray 1999; Höffe 1999).

Economic activities require the existence of rules and their enforcement as preconditions that the market cannot generate itself. Property rights, and contractual rights and obligations, are minimal prerequisites for modern societies that are provided and enforced by the state. Without such prerequisites, the market cannot flourish. The state thus determines regulations and delineates the sphere of private freedom, within which individual citizens and private institutions are entitled to conclude contracts with one another, to which the system of property and contractual rights compels obedience. In the development of modern nation states, the state has not only been the guarantor of civil rights, e. g. the right to own property, to enter into private contracts, and to engage in market activity. In its role as a democratic constitutional state, it has also been the guarantor of political participation rights, the right of the citizen to take part in the processes that determine public rules and issues of public concern. Finally, in its role as a welfare state, it has provided social rights for citizens, such as the right to education, to health care, and to other forms of welfare (Marshall 1965). The combination of state-guaranteed civil, political, and social rights has provided legitimacy, solidarity, and welfare to modern society, thereby contributing to peaceful, stable communities of anonymous individuals (Habermas 2001). Following Matten and Crane (Matten/Crane 2005) we refer to this triad of rights as citizenship rights.

Legitimacy can be understood as the conformation with social norms, values, and expectations (Oliver 1996). It is subjectively perceived and ascribed to actions or institutions by social construction (Berger/Luckman 1966). Legitimacy is vital for organizational survival as it is a precondition for the continuous flow of resources and the sustained support by the organization’s constituents (Parsons 1960; Pfeffer/Salancik 1978; Weber 1978). Persons or institutions who lose legitimacy find it difficult to enter into processes of social exchange as their partners do not rely on their compliance with social rules.

The analysis of global governance processes, referring to rule making and rule enforcement on a global scale, clearly demonstrates that the formulation of rules is no longer a task managed by the state alone (see, e.g. Braithwaite and Drahos 2000; Brozus et al. 2003; Günther 2001; Kingsbury 2003; Shelton 2000; Zürn 1998). Rather, in recent years, civil society groups as well as TNCs increasingly participate in the formulation and implementation of rules in policy areas that were once the sole responsibility of the state or international organizations (Matten and Crane 2005). Rule making activities of TNCs and civil society groups include, e.g. protecting human rights (Breining-Kaufmann 2004; Kinley and Tadaki 2004; Campbell and Miller 2004; Cragg 2005), implementing social and environmental standards (Christmann 2004; Scherer and Smid 2000), or involvement in peace-keeping activities (Fort and Schipani 2002). Such activities indicate the shift in global business regulation from state-centric towards new multilateral and non-territorial modes of regulation with non-state actors involved (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000).

„Corporate Citizenship“ ist in den vergangenen Jahren zum Schlagwort für unternehmerische Verantwortung avanciert. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt die Herausforderungen auf, die sich im Zuge eines Engagements als Corporate Citizen an die Unternehmung stellen. Die Art und Weise der Unternehmenskommunikation spielt bei der Umsetzung von Corporate Citizenship eine wesentliche Rolle. Besonders geeignet erscheint das Kommunikationsinstrument des Unternehmensdialogs. Dies wird anhand einer Fallstudie des Sportartikelherstellers Nike verdeutlicht, an der sich zeigen lässt, welche Formen der Unternehmenskommunikation auf dem Weg zur Legitimierung unternehmerischen Handelns ergriffen werden.

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Our work on this Special Issue began with a showcase symposium on the philosophical foundations of knowledge management (KM) at the AoM 2004 Meeting and was continued through KM tracks at the EURAM 2005 and EGOS 2005 Conferences. Our hope was to corral the variety of approaches in the KM literature and expose solid underpinnings against which the field's development might be gauged. We were unclear whether these would be axiomatic principles that defined the field or a set of professionally accepted KM practices. The call for papers went out in Fall 2004 and was published in the November 2004 issue ofOrganization. In our call we asked for advances to the discussion rather than mere reiteration of the already appreciated. Our authors and reviewers made great efforts and we learned much from their submissions, both those included and those turned away, and from the many reviews. However, we found deep disagreements, both among our reviewers about the submissions—and among everyone about the topic area generally. Clearly KM frustrates readers, authors, and reviewers alike; hence the temptation to dismiss it as yet another management fad, as many do. But there is an undeniable enthusiasm for KM among managers and academics, so our first thought was ‘To what problem is KM the answer?’. Framing the question well often takes one towards the answer—so if we puzzle out KM's problematics we may find ourselves moving towards the underpinnings we are looking for.

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We review two important schools within business and society research, which we label positivist and post-positivist corporate social responsibility (CSR). The former is criticized because of its instrumentalism and normative vacuity, and the latter because of its relativism, foundationalism, and utopianism. We propose a new approach, based on Jürgen Habermas's theory of democracy, and define the new role of the business firm as a political actor in a globalizing society.

Given the rising importance of the global media and the relative unwillingness of democratic publics to accept casualties in war, decision makers have increasingly relied on the strategic dissemination of rhetoric in order to justify military engagements. They "talk intervention", that is, they justify foreign engagements in terms of an emerging global norm that finds the international community "responsible to protect". Adversaries of interventions, in contrast, emphasize the inherent uncertainties and risks associated with such undertakings, taking advantage of the "body-bag-effect". This book identifies prevalent foreign policy frames and analyzes their impact on individual attitudes towards foreign policy decisions. It argues that framing effects can be best understood as an interaction between message content and personal traits. A case study on Germany bolsters this argument, providing experimental evidence that interventionist talking and its counter-rationale exert some influence on the formation of political preferences. It also shows that the magnitude of this influence is very much contingent on the individuals' political sophistication and prior dispositions.

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Research evaluation is praised as the symbol of modern quality management. We claim firstly, performance evaluations in research have higher costs than normally assumed, because the evaluated persons and institutions systematically change their behavior andndevelop counter strategies. Moreover, intrinsic work motivation is crowded out and undesired lock-in effects take place. Secondly, the benefits of performance evaluations are questionable.nEvaluations provide too little information relevant for decision-making. In addition, they losenimportance due to new forms of scientific cooperation on the internet. Thirdly, there existnsuperior alternatives. They consist in careful selection and supportive process coaching – and then leave individuals and research institutions to direct themselves.

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