Research seminars

Professor Dr. Alessia Contu

Prof. Geppert begrüßt Prof. Contu

Foto: Alessia Contu

Professor Dr. Alessia Contu

"Exploring resilience and other issues in hybrid organizations: the case of workers buyout in Italy"

am 26.06.2018 von 12.00 bis 14.00 Uhr, Ort: Besprechungsraum des Lehrstuhls Makroökonomik (Raum 4.157) Carl-Zeiß-Straße 3, 07743 Jena

Abstract

The financial and economic crisis has had a clear global dimension. In Italy one of its dire consequences, also evident in other European but also in Latin American countries, has been the increased number of firm shutdowns. Since 2008 about 82000 firms have declared bankruptcies (Cerved, 2015); and many more have closed down their activities. It is in such a scenario of crisis that we have witnessed the emergence of workers-recovered firms.
In this paper we analyse the Italian situation showing the key similarities and differences between the Italian context and experiences with the well-known cases in Latin America. Our comparison centres on Argentina because the phenomenon of the empresas recuperadas has significant proportions and has been well documented (e.g. Vieta, 2015).
In Italy the phenomenon was already present in the 80s as a result of the crisis of Fordist system that invested the Milan-Genoa-Turin 'industrial triangle'. At present there are about 252 (Vieta et al. 2015) workers' recovered firms mostly located in Centre-North regions.
The contribution of this paper is to highlight the fundamental and discerning role the institutional environment plays in Italy and the opportunities and challenges this opens up in relation to a number of questions on local economic development, and organisational and managerial dilemmas and options including those of low-power actors.
A key point of distinction we highlight in our study is how in Italy there is an institutional terrain that facilitates and supports workers' recovered firms. Zooming in on the legislative framework (based on the Marcora Act n. 49, 1985) we show how this creates the conditions that allow workers to become owners of the firm. The expectation is that such institutional framework facilitates the re-constitution of the firm as a solid economic, productive actor. This would include fruitful relationship with banks and investors with access to credit flows and options for consolidation and growth, for example through investments in technologies and human resources. We explore if and how such expectations are realised by focusing on the actual practices and experiences of reconversion of Isolex a chemical firm in the north of Sardinia. The company shutdown occurred in October 2014. Twenty workers recovered the firm and are currently continuing production. Using the normative instruments of the Lega Nazionale delle Cooperative, Cooperazione Finanza Impresa (CFI) and Fondo mutualistico della Lega Coop (Coopfond) workers initiated a process of by-out which ended up with the transformation of the company into a workers cooperative.
Our study overall opens up a number of reflections and fruitful research questions on the following areas: 1. Identification of differences between workers-buy out and the empresas recuperadas; 2. Exploration and explanation of territorial heterogeneity and it diverse conditions of possibility in the uptake and diffusion of practices of recuperation 3. Analysis of governance, entrepreneurial, managerial and organizational dilemmas faced by recovered firms and low power actors.
Professor Dr. John Child

Während des Vortrags

Foto: Mike Geppert

Professor Dr. John Child

"Relations between International Firms and External Institutions: A Political Action Perspective"

am 03. Mai 2017 von 12.00 bis 14.00 Uhr, Ort: Hörsaal 3, Carl-Zeiß-Straße 3, 07743 Jena

Short Bio

John Child received his PhD and ScD from the University of Cambridge. He is Professor at Birmingham, Plymouth, and Sun Yat-Sen Universities. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business and the British Institute of Management. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the prestigious British Academy [FBA]. His papers have appeared in many international journals. Among Professor Child's 24 books, Corporate Co-evolution, co-authored with Suzana Rodrigues, won the 2009 Terry Book Award of the Academy of Management. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Aston University, Aalborg University Denmark, the Helsinki School of Economics, and Corvinus University Hungary. His current interests focus on organizational hierarchy and governance, and the internationalization of SMEs.
Dr. Mika Skippari

Dr. Mika Skippari

"Emergence of institutional pressures upon market entry: insights from the case of Lidl Finland"

am 13. Januar 2015 von 16.00 bis 18.00 Uhr,
Ort: Fakultätssitzungszimmer 2.43
Carl-Zeiß-Straße 3, 07743 Jena

Short Bio

Mika Skippari, PhD., currently works as a research director at the University of Tampere, School of Management. He has earned his doctoral degree at Tampere University of Technology in 2005. His work has been published in several international management and business history journals. His current research interests include internationalizing strategies, institutional pressures upon market entry and HRM management in the retail sector.
Professor Dr. Brendan McSweeney

Professor Dr. Brendan McSweeney

"A Science of Human behaviour? GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington, Trompenaars: Common Foundations, Common Flaws"

am 13. November 2014 von 16.00 bis 18.00 Uhr,
Ort: Fakultätssitzungszimmer 2.43
Carl-Zeiß-Straße 3, 07743 Jena

Abstract

A critique of the claims of GLOBE, Geert Hofstede, Samuel P. Huntington and Fons Trompenaars to have identified distinct, enduring, shared, determinate national or regional cultures defined as values.
The notion that a single, enduring, shared national culture (defined as values) shapes the behaviour of the populations in discrete territories (countries) both within and outside of organizations has extensive support within both the academic and management consultancy communities. Research, teaching and training which attribute such causal power to a national culture relies heavily on the extensively cited work of Geert Hofstede; the multi-authored Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project (GLOBE); or Fons Trompenaars. Although the Trio have at times engaged in intense criticisms of each others' research they have much in common. The postulates they share include - national cultures are: (1) values - defined as invariant transituational preferences; (2) universally shared by the population of a country; (3) coherent (contradiction-free/integrated); (4) the fundamental cause/source of behavior and artefacts; (5) stable; (6) identifiable from the mean scores of answers to self-response survey questions from a minute portion of a national population; (7) depicable in league (ranking) tables (indices) of 'dimensions' (quantifiable comparators). Each purports to have unlocked a science of human behavior. At the heart of this 'science' is a simple but sweeping idea - that 'national culture' is the wellspring of our behavior. In short, each national population location is conceived of as a container of an undifferentiated measurable culture which moulds the social in its supposed geographical domain. The presentation will principally consider those aspects which have received comparatively little attention in the management literature. These are: downward conflation (the belief or assumption that the macro (in this instance the national) is replicated at, indeed creates, lower hierarchical levels (organization, individuals, etc.). More specifically, it discusses a crucial methodological error (the ecological fallacy), which characterises an extraordinarily large number of papers which purport to apply the findings of one or other aspect of the Trio's work: culture cannot logically be said to have uniform and enduring national "consequences" without that invalid assumption. We will further discuss discuss the supposition of the fixity of national boundaries within which enduring national cultures are said to be located. An increasingly popular representation of intra-national variation - the view that countries are composites of multiple mono-cultures is critically considered. Finally, the presentation will challenge the possibility of identifying national/regional cultures through analysis of answers to survey questions. The discussion of these matters will be preceded by a commentary on the notion of culture employed by the GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington and Trompenaars viz. values defined as transituational preferences.

Short Bio

Brendan McSweeneyExterner Link (PhD LSE) is a chaired professor of management at Royal Holloway, University of London and a visiting professor at Stockholm University. He is member of the advisory board of the Europe, Middle East and Africa division of globally located Japanese company. Prior to becoming an academic he was a banker (retail and venture capital); a trade union official, and head of research of an international accountancy body. His work has been published in a wide range of journals including: Accounting, Organizations & Society; Human Relations; Journal of International Business Studies; Organization Studies; and The Political Quarterly. His most recent book is the jointly edited: Remaking Management: Beyond Global and Local (Cambridge University Press).