Proudly elitist and undemocratic?:The distributed maintenance of contested practices

This study examines the maintenance of highly institutionalized practices during periods of vehement contestation and changing external demands. Employing a cross-level longitudinal research design, we explore how the recruitment model of elite French Business Schools persisted, remaining fundamentally intact despite serious questions raised about its functional utility and social legitimacy. Comparing three periods of contestation, we document shifting coalitions of dispersed actors that were incentivized to "thematically" maintain the practices in the focal field with little formal orchestration. Our findings indicate that practices which contribute to social stratification often foster meta-routines that cajole constituencies in multiple fields to, collectively and self-interestedly, promote and regulate conservative change. We identify three meta-routines - referential comparison, generative improvisation, and distributed monitoring and policing - that introduced flexibility and encouraged "unforced" adaptations. In elaborating these meta-routines, we contribute to extant theory on the mechanisms of institutional maintenance, and shed further light on the role of complex embeddedness as a constraint on institutional processes

Rhetoric, organizational category dynamics and institutional change : a study of the UK Welfare State

Accounts of institutional change and categorization conventionally assume that high-status change agents can impose change, even to stable category systems, which lower-status actors accommodate in order to ensure social approval and material resources. By exploring the UK Conservative-Liberal Coalition's rhetorical efforts to reform the welfare state, how welfare providers are categorized and the subsequent response of implicated category members, we offer instead an account of institutional change that exposes the agentic limitations of high-status actors. Whilst governments may well be in a position to impose changes in the formal rules of the game through manipulation of material resources (fiscal contraction, privatization, open markets, deregulation), we find that they cannot necessarily monopolize symbolic resources (identities/cultural features). We also find that deviation from cultural expectations is not only available to large, high-status organizations, low-status actors too have discretion over their responses to institutional pressures regarding how they are categorized and subsequently judged

Эпидигматический модус английских квантитативных единиц

В работе исследуются лингвокогнитивные аспекты квантитативных единиц – числительных, денумеративов, слов меры и веса, которые рассматриваются на векторах самостановления, самоорганизации и самоконтроля. Диахронический анализ свидетельствует о принадлежности исследуемых слов к лексико-семантическому полю количества. Фокусируется внимание на синкретах предметности, нумеральности. терминологичности, детерминологичности, лексикологизации, полифункциональности, поолиаспектности, эпидигматичности и семантической девиации. Осмысливаются процессы эволюции и инволюции квантитативных единиц. Верифицируется валоративность рабочей гипотезы: слова с общими семами подвергнуты общим тенденциям становления и функционирования. Объективируется сукцессивность семантических модификаций квантитативных единиц – от предметного значения к количественному, а затем к качественному и опустошенному

Maintenance of cross-sector partnerships: the role of frames in sustained collaboration

We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership (XSP) that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first eight years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphorus, a nutrient that is critical to crop growth but whose natural reserves have dwindled significantly. Drawing on 27 interviews and over 3,000 internal documents, we study the evolution of different frames used by diverse actors in an XSP. We demonstrate the role of framing in helping actors to avoid some of the common pitfalls for an XSP, such as debilitating conflict, and in creating sufficient common ground to sustain collaboration. As opposed to a commonly held assumption in the XSP literature, we find that collaboration in a partnership does not have to result in a unanimous agreement around a single or convergent frame regarding a contentious issue. Rather, successful collaboration between diverse partners can also be achieved by maintaining a productive tension between different frames through ‘optimal’ frame plurality – not excessive frame variety that may prevent agreements from emerging, but the retention of a select few frames and the deletion of others towards achieving a narrowing frame bandwidth. One managerial implication is that resources need not be focussed on reaching a unanimous agreement among all partners on a single mega-frame vis-à-vis a contentious issue, but can instead be used to kindle a sense of unity in diversity that allows sufficient common ground to emerge, despite the variety of actors and their positions

Intravascular Profile of Coronary Artery Disease in Diabetic Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome: Results of the Saudi Coronary Athero-Thrombotic Disease (SAUDICAT)

peer reviewe

Problematizing fit and survival: transforming the law of requisite variety through complexity misalignment

The law of requisite variety is widely employed in management theorizing and is linked with core strategy themes such as contingency and fit. We reflect upon requisite variety as an archetypal borrowed concept. We contrast its premises with insights from the institutional literature and commitment literature, draw propositions that set boundaries to its applicability, and review the ramifications of what we call “complexity misalignment.” In this way we contradict foundational assumptions of the law, problematize adaptation- and survival-centric views of strategizing, and theorize the role of human agency in variously complex regimes

Testlangleine im Offshore-Bereich. Projekt Marikultur in Offshore-Windparks.

Information über die Offshore-Testlangleine zur Gewinnung von Saatmuscheln, deren Ausbringung in der Nähe des geplanten Bürgerwindparks Butendiek, Aufbau und damit verbundene Fragestellungen aus dem biologisch-technischen und organisatorischen Bereic

Marikultur in Offshore-Windparks. Methodik, Stand der Arbeiten und weitere Zeitplanung.

Stand der Dinge im Projektverlauf: Befragungen und Ergebnisse, Ausbringung einer Test-Langleine zur Saatmuschelgewinnung im Offshore-Bereich, Wirtschaftlichkeitsstudie, Untersuchung einer Nearshore-Langleine und die Kooperation der Beteiligten in diesem Projek