bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Boom and Bust Behavior: On the Persistence of Strategic Decision Biases
Authors: Gary Michael Shayne , Dosi Giovanni , Lovallo Dan
Published: September 2009

This article examines the underlying cognitive and behavioral factors responsible for strategic decisions driving B&B dynamics, discusses the reasons firms do not learn to avoid boom and bust, and identifies tentative strategies for mitigating B&B (Boom and Bust) behavior. At the same time, it conjecturally concludes, there might be a positive collective side to B&B behavior fostering accumulation of knowledge and physical infrastructure, especially regarding new technological paradigms. The next section discusses a number of real world cases of B&B dynamics. The examples illustrate quite common dynamic behaviors and highlight the crucial role of capacity investment decisions in B&B outcomes. Subsequent sections review the findings from prior experimental research on B&B dynamics and discuss some key decision biases and heuristics that play important roles in B&B decision making. The final section outlines some tentative strategies for moderating B&B decision making. The conclusion highlights some of the collectively positive aspects of booms and busts.
Information Overload Revisited
Authors: Sutcliffe Kathleen M. , Weick Karl E.
Published: September 2009

Individuals typically describe information overload as the situation of receiving too much information. Organizational scholars define overload as a state induced when the amount of input to a system exceeds its processing capacity or when information processing capabilities and the information loads encountered are mismatched. Perception plays a key role in overload as in this definition: overload is the “perceived inability to maintain a one to one relationship between input and output within a realizable future with an existing repertoire of practices and desires”. Prevailing treatments of overload posit that when a system (individual or organization) is no longer able to process information and becomes overloaded, primary and secondary symptoms are manifested.
Facing the Threat of Disaster: Decision Making When the Stakes are High
Authors: Tamuz Michal , Lewis Eleanor T.
Published: September 2009

The first part of this review examines decision making under the threat of disaster; the second part concentrates on decision making in the midst of disaster; and the third focuses on the choices made during post-disaster investigations. For ease of presentation, the article considers these disaster-related phases separately, but in practice, they circle back and interlink in a mesh of feedback loops. Often only a post-disaster investigation, for example, clarifies what occurred in the midst of disaster. The article concludes with a discussion of several decision-making practices that organizations have developed to help address some of the challenges for decision makers identified throughout the review.
Employing Adaptive Structuring as a Cognitive Decision Aid in High Reliability Organizations
Authors: Roberts Karlene H. , Yu Kuo Frank , Desai Vinit M. , Madsen Peter
Published: September 2009

The article begins by discussing processes contributing to high and low reliability decision making. It then discusses three cases, covering similar processes used in the three situations and notes what managers can take from this. Finally, the article argues for research that does not concentrate on a single organization but examines interactions among geographically distributed units addressing the same problem.
Expertise and Naturalistic Decision Making in Organizations: Mechanisms of Effective Decision Making
Authors: Rosen Michael A. , Salas Eduardo , Lyons Rebecca , Fiore Stephen M.
Published: September 2009

This article aims to address various issues as seen through the naturalistic decision making (NDM) perspective, a relatively nascent yet vibrant research tradition that seeks to understand how professionals are able to translate their experience into quality decisions within complex “real-world” environments. It documents the types of adaptations that experts make within organizations that enable decision-making effectiveness in the face of complexity. To this end, the article first provides an overview of the NDM movement. Secondly, it explores the role of individual expertise in decision making in NDM environments. Thirdly, it explores the issue of expert teams. This article draws from NDM investigations of individual and team decision making within organizations from a variety of domains as well as basic research on the nature of expertise.
Cognitively Skilled Organizational Decision Making: Making Sense of Deciding
Authors: Balogun Julia , Pye Annie , Hodgkinson Gerard P.
Published: September 2009

This article aims to bring the organizational cognition approach to decision making together with a sensemaking perspective on deciding, in an endeavor to bring real people and processes into the picture to develop a more integrative understanding of how people “do decision making”—an enterprise which has both academic and practical relevance. The article begins by positioning this approach within decision-making research. It then explains the concepts of sensemaking and deciding, and sensereading and sensewrighting; explores why such skills are critical to the processes of organizational decision making; and finally, why this is an important area for future research.
What Lies Behind Organizational Façades and How Organizational Façades Lie: An Untold Story of Organizational Decision Making
Authors: Abrahamson Eric , Baumard Philippe
Published: September 2009

The article's first section describes the case. Then, the second section discusses the conclusions drawn from the case. As becomes apparent, this case study undermined many aspects of the orienting framework. The study suggested that façades, far from being unitary, have different facets serving very different roles with respect to stakeholders' decision making. Moreover, the case study revealed that not only entire organizations, but also headquarters, departments, small units, even individuals decide to display façades. Finally, the case study demonstrated that façades do not only serve to legitimize organizations—they serve many other functions. Some of these functions do in fact deceive stakeholders, but this deception, as well as façades other functions, can also benefit stakeholders.
Do Activities of Consultants and Management Scientists Affect Decision Making by Managers?
Authors: Kieser Alfred , Wellstein Benjamin
Published: September 2009

In order to assess what kind of knowledge consultants and management researchers can contribute to support managers' decisions, one first has to find out how managers make decisions. Hence, this article starts by discussing some results on decision making by managers. It then analyzes what kind of knowledge consultants produce and how they produce it. The article also asks why there has been such an enormous growth in the demand for consulting. This growth seems to indicate that managers appreciate the consultants' contributions to their decision making. Then the article argues that the system of science follows its own logic and dynamics and thus necessarily produces a rigor relevance gap: the problems that management researchers analyze are not the problems that managers experience.
Risk Communication in Organizations
Authors: Maule A. John
Published: September 2009

This article primarily aims to review theory and research on risk communication and identify gaps and limitations in this body of knowledge; to identify current trends and findings in this area; and to determine whether there are any general principles that organizational decision makers can use to improve their own communications. To achieve theses objectives the article contains short reviews of the primary areas of research on how people perceive and act in the face of risk. Following each of these reviews is a brief discussion of the implications of this work for the development of effective communication about risk. The recurrent theme running throughout the article is that effective communication depends upon taking account of a range of social factors that are not included in formal risk assessments.
Introduction
Authors: Adler Paul
Published: September 2009

The field of organization studies has become well established in both sociology departments and professional schools, most notably in business schools. However, in the course of this institutionalization, the field has progressively lost contact with its founding writers. The classics, this volume argues, serve both as a source of specific insights and also as encouragement for broader aspirations. This Introduction first explains why organization studies should reconnect with these classics, and then provides a sketch of the discussions in this book.
The Value of the Classics
Authors: Thornton Patricia H.
Published: September 2009

Exemplary research begins by identifying an empirical observation and examining extant theories that might best explain the empirical observation. It is possible that there is no extant explanation or theory and so such empirical observations are seeds for the development of new theory. This article suggests that whatever form new theorizing will take, a good way to conduct such research and for organization and management studies to remain a vital segment of the social sciences is to examine and consider building on the foundations of the classics. To support this argument, the article sketches three mini-cases to illustrate how the classics have been used to develop cumulative research programs.
Tocqueville as a Pioneer In Organization Theory
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: September 2009

That Tocqueville wrote so much about topics that are central to organization theory is perhaps not so peculiar, since he considered ‘the science of associations’ to be absolutely central to modern society. But even if one can easily show that Tocqueville for some reason has been passed over in organization theory, it is more difficult to decide what constitutes the best way to show the merits of his case and why he should be regarded as a classic. One possibility is simply to go through Tocqueville's work, extract everything he has to say about organizations, and discuss this. While this is a reasonable (and economic) way of proceeding, it also builds on some silent assumptions, which need to be discussed. This article makes an attempt both to provide a straightforward account of which parts of Tocqueville's work are relevant for a discussion of ‘Tocqueville as a pioneer in organization theory’ and to show what Tocqueville meant with the terms he used and the problems he addressed. The same goes for paying attention to the general context of his work and the state of social science in Tocqueville's day.
Weber: Sintering the Iron Cage Translation, Domination, and Rationality Stewart Clegg
Authors: Clegg Stewart , Lounsbury Michael
Published: September 2009

This article emphasizes how Weber's approach to bureaucracy was first and foremost a cultural theory. In addition, it shows how the very notion of rationality for Weber was multiplex and culturally embedded. Conceptualizing organizational environments as comprised of multiple modes of rationality and forms of domination can lead to an understanding of the ‘iron cage’ as more porous than is traditionally thought, thus opening up new lines of multilevel analysis. This article therefore aims to sinter the iron cage. Sintering is a method to make metal porous, and the porosity allows lubricants to flow through the medium of the metal. The article briefly highlights some of Weber's key works and reviews scholarly developments in organizational theory that have stemmed from his scholarship. It then discusses how some lines of inquiry have been eschewed in favor of others, and how a reengagement with some core foundational ideas can spur new lines of theoretical development.
On Organizations and Oligarchies
Authors: Tolbert Pamela S. , Hiatt Shon R.
Published: September 2009

This article argues that Michels's core arguments about the nature of oligarchies in organizations, and research generated in response to his work, are not only relevant to understanding the dynamics of political organizations but can be extended as a useful framework for thinking about important aspects of contemporary economic corporations as well. In making this argument, the article highlights the parallels between Berle and Means's analysis of modern, publicly held corporations and that of Michels. Both analyses address the general organizational problem of ensuring representation of members' interests. In political organizations, it is the rank-and-file members' interests that leaders are charged with representing; in publicly held organizations, leaders are primarily responsible for representing the interests of stockholders, as the nominal ‘owners’ of the firm. In this context, the article considers evidence and research on problematic corporate behavior to show how Michels's work provides a useful framework for understanding these problems and for formulating ways of addressing them.
Gabriel Tarde and Organization Theory
Authors: Czarniawska Barbara
Published: September 2009

In his lifetime, Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) was a competitor of Émile Durkheim and, judging from many contemporary accounts, a victorious one. Although his works were translated into many languages and were well-known in social psychology and the sociology of law, they were forgotten by the early 1970s. At present, there is a strong renewed interest in Tarde's work, to the point of some critics talking of a ‘Tardomania’. This wave has not yet reached organization studies; however, this article claims that it should. In the text, it first offers differing interpretations of Tarde's work that might explain the changing fate of his reputation. This article scrutinizes several Tardean concepts, illustrating their potential relevance for understanding organizations.
Georg Simmel
Authors: Scott Alan
Published: September 2009

This article has two basic tasks: firstly, to extract from Simmel's sociology those strands of potential significance for the analysis of organizations; and secondly, to locate those elements within, and identify their significance for, his wider analysis. These are potentially conflicting aims. The former treats Simmel as a resource for contemporary analysis; the latter seeks to relocate those arguments in the context of authorial intentions. While the former risks the danger of presentism, the latter can lead to undue deference towards the texts. The article seeks to avoid either extreme. In order to avoid presentism it should be noted in the first place that it was not Simmel's intention to contribute to, or assist the emergence of, the (sub- or trans-)discipline we now call organization studies. Anything in his work of relevance to understanding organizations is the by-product of an analysis with wider, or at least other, aims, namely understanding types of ‘sociation’ (Vergesellschafung).
Schumpeter and the Organization of Entrepreneurship
Authors: Becker Markus C. , Knudsen Thorbjørn
Published: September 2009

This article first briefly introduces Schumpeter, the issues he tackled in his work, and the contributions he is best known for. It then offers a concise guide to Schumpeter's works and the secondary literature and discusses the evolving pattern of citations to Schumpeter's work in the social sciences. It then provides a comprehensive assessment of Schumpeter's works on entrepreneurship in order to identify insights of practical and theoretical relevance to contemporary research. It draws on sources that are little known, rarely referenced, and in most cases only published in German, in order to distill Schumpeter's insights on entrepreneurship. The article concludes with an assessment of why, even today, Schumpeter's insights can help to further our understanding of entrepreneurship and its organization.
Thorstein Veblen And The Organization of the Capitalist Economy
Authors: Hamilton Gary G. , Petrovic Misha
Published: September 2009

This article emphasizes three of Veblen's most important observations about early twentieth-century capitalism: an interpretation of economic development as the evolution of economic institutions; the importance of consumption, and of factors that drive consumption, for capitalist growth; and the recurring organizational (and ideological) tension between ‘industrial arts and craftsmanship’, on the one hand, and ‘business strategies and salesmanship’, on the other hand. The article then shows how Veblen's insights of a century ago are, if anything, more useful today than they were when he first wrote them. Here the article stresses, in reverse order: the importance of analyzing firms as both producers of goods and services (industrial arts and craftsmanship) and market makers (business strategies and salesmanship); the significance of consumer goods markets for driving contemporary capitalism; and the need to revise economic and sociological theories of capitalism and business enterprise towards Veblen's developmental conception of cumulative causation and away from approaches having equilibrium or productionist biases.
After James on Identity
Authors: Carlsen Arne
Published: September 2009

The article has four main parts. First, it introduces some context on James and his work, points to strands of influence on organization studies, and discusses how his conceptions of self were shaped by historical circumstances and personal experiences. Second, it briefly overviews key tenets of organizational identity theory and argues that it has been predominantly focused on the equivalence of what James called ‘self-as-object’. Third, it gives a treatment of what James meant by ‘self-as-subject’ and how that may be understood as collective processes of authoring, rooted in practice. Finally, it discusses two sets of the implications that follow from James's view of self: bringing identity into organizational practice and into social change.
Reading Dewey
Authors: Cohen Michael D.
Published: September 2009

This article explores some of the reasons for Dewey's appeal by spelling out several difficulties that have plagued our efforts to understand routine activities and by suggesting how Dewey's point of view might be especially helpful in crafting an effective response to those problems. In recent years a large and varied set of scholars has been investigating what may be called ‘recurring action patterns’. Frequently they have worked with the label ‘routine’, but they have also worked with closely related concepts such as ‘practices’ or ‘collective mind’, or even in apparently distinct subfields such as organizational culture or organizational identity. Work on this topic has deep roots in modern organization theory, going back to ideas about routines in Simon's Administrative Behavior, ‘programs’ in March and Simon's Organizations, and ‘standard operating procedures’ in Cyert and March's A Behavioral Theory of the Firm.
John R. Commons
Authors: Van de Ven Andrew H. , Lifschitz Arik
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on a review of The Economics of Collective Action. It is logically the first book for understanding Commons's thought, for in it Commons presented a simplified statement of issues that he had argued more fully in The Legal Foundations of Capitalism (1924) and Institutional Economics (1934a). Although complex and difficult to comprehend in a single reading, the work of Commons provides a treasury of suggestions for those who seek insight and inspiration in dealing with issues of institutional innovation and change. This article presents an interpretation of the work of John R. Commons and its relevance for current developments in organization studies. The first part of the article summarizes Commons's pioneering perspective on institutions and institutional change. Based on this review, it discusses some implications of Commons's ideas for advancing contemporary approaches to the study of organizations.
The Problem of the Corporation
Authors: Clemens Elisabeth S.
Published: September 2009

Liberal political theory is populated by individuals: they have natural rights, enter into social contracts, and retain the right of revolution against sovereign power. Formulated in opposition to monarchical rule, this liberal vision informed the political constitution of what came to be the industrial democracies, polities entwined with economies dominated by large organizations rather than individual entrepreneurs and small enterprises. The result was a problematic combination of political commitments and economic practices that infused debates—both academic and electoral—over the proper form of twentieth-century democratic society. The dilemma was captured in the words of the Fund for the Republic, a 1950s project dedicated to ‘clarifying fundamental questions concerning freedom and justice that emerge when the forms and principles developed by Eighteenth Century America meet the ideas and practices of today's highly developed industrial society’.
Origins in the English Tradition
Authors: Fox Michael
Published: September 2009

It has repeatedly been remarked that early medieval theology is conservative, derivative, and primarily oriented towards practical application. Nevertheless, at the significant points of intersection between theology and the earliest English literature, such as in Cædmon's Hymn, The Dream of the Rood, Beowulf, and the Genesis poems, one sees a highly sophisticated ‘blending of traditions’. Mainly, these traditions are Christian and pagan and Latin and vernacular, but there is also evidence of an innovative blending of styles or genres, particularly between poetry and homiletic prose, in ways that anticipated and influenced the literature and thinking of post-Conquest England. Just as how, for Gregory, the race of the Angles signified, in their appearance, angels and salvation to come, so too did what must originally have been a completely pagan notion of fate, or wyrd, become subordinated to a Christian God.
Song of Songs
Authors: Cheryl Exum J.
Published: September 2009

The Song of Songs, the Bible's only love poem, contains arguably the most lyrical poetry in the Bible. Nowhere else can one find such rich, sonorous, and sensuous vocabulary, such densely metaphorical language, such vibrant and striking imagery, such imaginative flights of fancy, and such freedom from formal poetic conventions, except perhaps in Deutero-Isaiah and Job. In the Song, couplets and triplets display little of the regularity or balance that are the hallmarks of ancient Hebrew poetry. Rather, they seem to rush forward, spilling over each other, as though impelled by the desire they communicate. Unlike the lyricism of Deutero-Isaiah and Job, the Song's erotic lyricism seems to exist purely for the pleasure of the reader.
The Synoptic Gospels
Authors: Aichele George
Published: September 2009

No other texts in the Bible have been so received or transformed in English literature as the texts of the Gospels. The multiple canonical Jesus narratives have been resurrected again and again in the poems, dramas, and stories of generations of English writers, and these narrative afterlives reflect and transfigure both the content, what Jesus says and does, and the form, how his words and deeds are represented, in the biblical accounts. Both facets confront readers with complicated questions of narrative truth and meaning, structure and ideology. This article considers how the Synoptic Gospels are themselves the subject of literary study, and how they have lent themselves to successive literary creations within the tradition.
Langland and Chaucer
Authors: Watson Nicholas
Published: September 2009

When Langland and Chaucer were writing, in the last decades of the fourteenth century, Christian theology had much of the intellectual and cultural authority that science does now. Like modern science, late-medieval theology – especially the scholastic theology developed in the universities from the twelfth century on – was a specialized, sophisticated, and constantly developing body of thought and experiment. Caught between competing views of the role of the church, the responsibilities of the individual Christian, and the possibility of salvation for all but the most pure, Langland and Chaucer are among those who refuse to take sides, focusing their energies on analysing both the problems and their possible, often mutually incompatible, solutions. Both Langland's Piers Plowman and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, left unfinished at the poet's death in 1400, are much engaged with Christian theology, its incarnation in the church, and the religious role played by secular society.
Shakespeare and Marlowe
Authors: Healy Thomas
Published: September 2009

Theology infuses the plays and poems of Shakespeare and Marlowe. The questions are, what theology, and is there any consistency in its employment? Some contemporaries or near contemporaries showed unease over what were perceived as unorthodox religious positions in both of the dramatists' plays. Three issues notably complicate attempts to explore religion with Shakespeare and Marlowe. First, the understanding of the complexities surrounding the nature of both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in England at the end of the sixteenth century is still far from secure. Second, English drama as a literary genre in the late sixteenth century departed from being part of its society's wider religious observances, as it had been in the Middle Ages. Third, and in some respects most significant, Renaissance drama is designed as performed language. This makes these playwrights something of an anomaly in this section called ‘theological ways of reading literature’.
Herbert and Donne
Authors: Wilcox Helen
Published: September 2009

‘Interpretations of religious meaning have always been central to the criticism of certain sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers who engaged closely with the religious cultures and controversies of their day’. This article suggests that this statement is more applicable to George Herbert and John Donne than to any of their contemporaries. It aims to demonstrate that the critical fortunes of these two poets over the centuries have been dependent not only on changes in literary taste, but also on shifts in theological readings and devotional interests. The article falls into three parts, each defined by a chronological focus: the first locates Donne and Herbert in their seventeenth-century devotional cultures; the second examines the theological nature of later critical responses to their writings; and the third highlights the religious issues inherent in any interpretation of their poetry.
Wordsworth and Coleridge
Authors: Bainbridge Simon
Published: September 2009

In the last few years, the historicizing approach to the religious dimensions of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's writing has begun to be challenged by work that draws on the so-called ‘theological turn’ in Continental philosophy, signalling a revitalized and often highly theorized interest in issues which many of the poets' early readers had responded to, such as the nature of God and the idea of transcendence. As these developments suggest, the issue of the relationship between literature and religion is regaining a central place in the study of the writing and culture of the Romantic period, and the ongoing debate about how best to read Coleridge and Wordsworth theologically is a crucial part of this process.
Eliot, David Jones, and Auden
Authors: Medcalf Stephen
Published: September 2009

This article examines three of the greatest writers of Christian poetry in English during the twentieth century. They were converts of varying kinds, whose conversions were fundamentally involved with their special geniuses as poets. David Jones (1895–1973), whose conversion carried him least far, from a not very sacramental Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, moved because of his understanding of symbolism. W. H. Auden (1907–73) returned, from Anglicanism through unbelief and Marxism, to Anglicanism again, through his awareness of inspiration, of guilt, and of what he learnt from Kierkegaard, to call the three stages of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) moved in the widest arc, from Unitarianism, which in later life he did not count as Christian, through agnosticism and a close encounter with Buddhism, to Anglicanism at its most sacramental, by an engagement with time and consciousness that took him all his poetic life.
Feminist Revisioning
Authors: Walton Heather
Published: September 2009

This article explores the literary revisioning work as it is displayed in the work of two women writers whose attention has been largely focused on the Jewish and Christian traditions. Alicia Ostriker and Michèle Roberts are women whose work arises out of direct political involvement with the women's movement. Both are authors who are deeply immersed in contemporary critical debates and both acknowledge their conversational relationships with other female creative artists. As such, it is possible to view their work as representative of a revisionary movement within contemporary women's literature concerned with nothing less than the radical revisioning of religious traditions.
John Henry Newman
Authors: Ker Ian
Published: September 2009

This article argues that Newman was a minor poet and novelist, but one of the great writers of non-fictional prose, whose real literary achievement is to be compared with such Victorian contemporaries as Carlyle, Arnold, and Ruskin. The Oxford Companion to English Literature, therefore, by shying away from the theological writings and concentrating on the overtly literary Newman, succeeds in almost totally missing the point. In particular, Newman was one of the greatest controversialists in English literature, whose satirical writings are also ignored by the Companion. The only literary influence he himself ever acknowledged was that of the Roman orator Cicero, whose rhetoric and satire he paid tribute to. Even the Apologia, which unusually – with one exception – avoids controversy and polemic, is to a considerable extent the record of past controversies and is abundantly documented with copious quotations from controversial and polemical writings.
Matthew Arnold
Authors: Ferretter Luke
Published: September 2009

Although some critics continue to defend the value of Matthew Arnold's thought for liberal theology, his biblical criticism is based on axioms no longer shared in the twentieth, let alone the twenty-first, century. After the horrors of the two World Wars, publicly shared values no longer seemed to constitute a certain basis for anything. Arnold's work has been more influential in literary studies than in theology. The very concept of ‘literature’ derives in part from Arnold's belief that poetry is a modern substitute for religion. Furthermore, he has continued to be influential in the interdisciplinary study of literature and theology. Arnold's argument that the Bible is a literary work, and must be read as such in order to be rightly understood, is still axiomatic in this field, even among those who continue to believe that it is also the Word of God.
C. S. Lewis
Authors: Filmer-Davies Cath
Published: September 2009

Often referred to as the greatest Anglican apologist of modern times, C. S. Lewis is also regarded as a ‘popular’ theologian. His theology seems to be primarily encapsulated in his theological digest Mere Christianity, but that work contains only a pale reflection of most of his theological thought. Lewis's academic writings have a clarity and lucidity that makes them attractive to the general reader. His theological works have the same qualities, but are written from his own perspective as a layman. Lewis's theology might be divided into three parts, each representing a stage in his own spiritual development. The three parts of his theological vision are supernaturalism, the nature of good and evil, and the process of redemption. Each aspect of this vision emphasizes the key issue of his Christian faith: the surrender of the self to God.
Liturgy as Literature
Authors: Nichols Bridget
Published: September 2009

Popular discussion often treats ‘liturgy’ and ‘worship’ as related but different entities. Liturgy is identified with text, worship with action; liturgy connotes intellectual activity, while worship suggests something affective and directly of the heart and spirit. This article refuses the distinction, and uses the two terms more or less interchangeably. In its most elementary form, it asks how liturgy can be admitted to the category of literature. The discussion takes up the question, broadening the scope from the kinds of liturgical texts that might be read as literature, to a consideration of how liturgical texts might be literary.
The Passion Story in Literature
Authors: Fiddes Paul S.
Published: September 2009

The story of the passion of Jesus Christ, in its earliest forms, was already shaped by interpretation. This was the story of a man – who had announced the coming of the Kingdom of God and who had presumed to offer forgiveness, healing, and an acceptance of social outcasts on behalf of the God whom he called Father – which ended in agonizing execution and an experience of forsakenness by friends, fellow countrymen, and his God. The four Evangelists try to grapple with the mystery of ‘atonement’, the belief that through this death a union has been achieved between the Creator and a rebellious creation. When the story of the passion is told in English poetry and prose, one can identify versions of the great models and metaphors of atonement that were developed in Christian theology.
Feminism and Patriarchy
Authors: Anderson Pamela Sue
Published: September 2009

A major obstacle inherent in patriarchy remains its barely perceptible reality for all of those women and men whose lives have been decisively ordered by the rule of the father. Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, captures the imperceptible reality of racial domination with imagery of a fishbowl. Her imagery reveals the ways in which apparently invisible structures of domination can suddenly become visible. With Morrison's cogent use of imagery in mind, this article examines patriarchy by revealing the transparent structure of male domination that has contained women's lives, and the ways in which feminism has emerged with this revelation. The bare outlines of the former are made evident here in a reading of English literature and theology; the latter can be seen as if the writer and reader were outside that ordered life, tackling ‘the obstacle which does not speak its name’.
Introduction
Authors: Casson Mark , Yeung Bernard , Basu Anuradha , Wadeson Nigel
Published: September 2009

The book is intended to be an authoritative survey of recent academic research into entrepreneurship. It aims to meet the needs of those researching in all major academic fields to which entrepreneurship is relevant: industrial economics, business strategy, organizational behaviour, finance and venture capital, and business and economic history. The approach taken in this book construes entrepreneurship in terms of arbitrage, innovation, and risk-taking. Entrepreneurs specialize in taking difficult and complex decisions for which other people do not want to take responsibility.
Theories of Entrepreneurship: Historical Development and Critical Assessment
Authors: Ricketts Martin
Published: September 2009

The historical evolution of ideas about the entrepreneur is a wide-ranging subject and one that can be organized in different ways — theorist by theorist, period by period, issue by issue and so forth. What follows is a compromise between these possibilities. This article starts with some very broad reflections about economic change over thousands of years and the connections between these changes and the economic thinking of the time. A recognizably ‘modern’ idea of the entrepreneur begins to emerge in the eighteenth century and part of this article is devoted to the role of entrepreneurship in classical and neoclassical economic theory. In the next five sections, the article looks at particular areas that have been associated with debates about the entrepreneurial role — uncertainty, innovation, economic efficiency, the theory of the firm, and economic development. A final section presents a brief summary and comments on the place of the entrepreneur in evolutionary models.
Entrepreneurship: An Evolutionary Perspective
Authors: Metcalfe J. S.
Published: September 2009

This article suggests that an evolutionary market perspective provides a powerful framework for bringing the entrepreneur back into economic theory precisely because enterprise is the activity of introducing new activities, production methods and products into an economy. Economic variation is the prerequisite for economic transformation and development and this is why enterprise and the entrepreneur are central components of the evolutionary approach to economics. Indeed, the fundamental historical fact about capitalism is its internal capacity for transformation, and the corresponding transience of the activities and ways of life that it supports within a more slowly evolving set of institutions. Economists have for a long time recognized a capitalist, market economy as a self-organizing system sustaining a spontaneous order; far less well recognized is its capacity for spontaneous transformation, and it is this theme that forms the core of this article.
Cognitive Aspects of Entrepreneurship: Decision-Making and Attitudes to Risk
Authors: Wadeson Nigel
Published: September 2009

This article reviews literature on the study of the cognition of entrepreneurs, and how this affects their attitudes to risk. The review begins with the heuristics and biases approach. Various decision-making biases related to over-optimism are then considered. Following this perceived self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation and intentions-based models are discussed. Some theories dealing specifically with attitudes to risk are then covered. These include prospect theory, Kahneman and Lovalo's model of risk-taking, and Das and Teng's theory of risk horizons and future orientations. Finally, the option value and information cost approach to the analysis of entrepreneurs' decision-making is discussed. Some relevant references to culture research are also given in the conclusion.
Entrepreneurship and Marketing
Authors: Carter Martin
Published: September 2009

Entrepreneurship and marketing are intimately related. This article examines their relationship from three perspectives, the market process perspective, the marketing perspective, and the perspective of the entrepreneurial firm. These provide complementary insights into the connections between the two concepts. The article briefly considers definitions of entrepreneurship and marketing. It then discusses the three complementary perspectives in turn. The final section provides a summary and identifies areas for further research.
Determinants of Small firm survival and growth
Authors: Cressy Robert
Published: September 2009

Many excellent surveys of the literature on business growth and survival have appeared in the last decade. This article focuses on small firm literature on survival and growth, drawing on largely non-size-specific surveys only when the intersection between their subject matter and that of small firm growth and survival is significant. The focus is moreover primarily on testable or tested theories, implying a neglect of theory, however intrinsically interesting, which offers no (immediately) testable or tested implications. It is important to note at the outset that the industrial economics literature in general has a rather disparate definition of the term ‘small firm’ from the small business literature as located in the small business journals.
Entrepreneurship, Growth and Restructuring
Authors: Audretsch David B. , Keilbach Max
Published: September 2009

The purpose of this article is to suggest that a more recent literature has emerged which identifies how and why entrepreneurship in the form of new and small firms is a driving engine of industrial restructuring and economic growth. The starting point of this literature is the consideration of entrepreneurial opportunities and how they relate to opportunities generated by incumbent corporations. Entrepreneurship is distinguished from incumbent organizations with respect to both opportunity creation and exploitation. According to the ‘Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship’, entrepreneurial opportunities are not exogenous to the economy, but rather systematically created by incumbent organizations investing in new knowledge and ideas but unable to fully commercialize that new knowledge.
Venture Capital
Authors: Cressy Robert
Published: September 2009

Venture capital has, in recent years become a substantial and growing area of academic research. It is still a comparatively young field and several of the fundamental questions raised by scholars working within it remain to be answered. The survey in this article aims to provide an overview of the current scholarly answers to several questions. In doing so it attempts as far as possible to cut through the jargon and hyperbole endemic to the subject and to provide convenient access to the main issues.
Corporate Venture Capital: Past Evidence and Future Directions
Authors: Dushnitsky Gary
Published: September 2009

This article reviews the academic literature on corporate venture capital, that is, minority equity investments by established corporations in privately-held entrepreneurial ventures. It starts with a detailed definition of the phenomenon. An historical background of Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) is presented, followed by an extensive review of CVC investment patterns. The article then presents scholarly findings beginning with firms' objectives, through the governance of their CVC programmes and the relationships with the portfolio companies and ending with a review of corporate, venture and CVC programme performance. The article concludes with directions for future research.
Entrepreneurship and Management Buy-outs
Authors: Wright Mike , Burrows Andrew
Published: September 2009

This article takes a broader perspective that encompasses both traditional agency-based explanations of buy-outs as well as recognizing the buy-out phenomenon as a vehicle for entrepreneurial innovation. Although early studies suggested that buy-outs involved both agency cost reduction and entrepreneurial aspects, they did not formally conceptualize these two approaches. The agency theory approach conceptualizes buy-outs as a tool that facilitates cost efficiencies. The entrepreneurial perspective sees buy-outs as a means for implementing new innovations and strategic change that enable fuller exploitation of firm resources that may have been blocked by prior ownership arrangements, such as being part of a large diversified firm or a privately-owned firm with leadership succession problems. The article first elaborates the definitions and sources of buy-outs. Secondly, it reviews theoretical perspectives relating to buy-outs, notably the agency approach and an entrepreneurial perspective which draws on the theory of entrepreneurial cognition. The third main section reviews a model to explain different types of buy-out drawing on these two perspectives. The fourth section reviews studies of the effects of buy-outs, identifying evidence consistent with agency and entrepreneurial views of buy-outs. The final section provides discussion and conclusions.
Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship
Authors: Basu Anuradha
Published: September 2009

This article reviews the existing theoretical and empirical literature on ethnic entrepreneurship. It primarily focuses on empirical research conducted in Britain and the United States. It examines the definition of ethnic entrepreneurship and evaluates the forces affecting entry into ethnic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial survival and success, as well as the factors underlying the heterogeneity in entrepreneurial behaviour and performance among ethnic minority groups.
Women Entrepreneurs: A Research Overview
Authors: Brush Candida G.
Published: September 2009

Despite the proliferation of research, the population of women entrepreneurs is vastly understudied. This is surprising considering women are one of the fastest rising populations of entrepreneurs, and contribute significantly to innovation, job creation, and economies around the world. Why are women entrepreneurs comparatively understudied? What have we learned about women entrepreneurs in the past few decades? What are the future research directions? This article addresses these questions. It begins with a brief overview on the extent of research on women's entrepreneurship and considers reasons why they are under-studied. The article also explores empirical findings in terms of similarities and differences between men and women entrepreneurs, then it concludes with suggestions for future research.
International Expansion: Foreign Direct Investment by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Authors: Buckley Peter
Published: September 2009

International expansion by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has long been a subject of research. The fact that internationalization begins earlier in a firm's life cycle has attracted attention to international new ventures as ‘a business organization that, from inception, seeks to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries’, ‘early internationalizers’, and ‘born global firms’. This article analyzes the internationalization of SMEs and examines the role of entrepreneurship in the literature. McDougall and Oviatt define international entrepreneurship as ‘a combination of innovative proactive and risk-seeking behaviour that crosses national borders and is intended to create value in organizations’. This definition provides a wide scope for research but also poses problems in terms of the level of the analysis and difficulties with respect to outcomes that are so far unresolved.
Human Resource Management
Authors: Boxall Peter , Purcell John , Wright Patrick M.
Published: September 2009

Human resource management (HRM), the management of work and people towards desired ends, is a fundamental activity in any organization in which human beings are employed. It is not something whose existence needs to be elaborately justified: HRM is an inevitable consequence of starting and growing an organization. This article focuses on the scope of HRM and its major subfields. For example, Micro HRM (‘MHRM’) covers the subfunctions of HR policy and practice.
Economics and HRM
Authors: Grimshaw Damian , Rubery Jill
Published: September 2009

The article is organized in three parts. In the first, it considers the development of personnel economics and argues that there are shortcomings that reflect the one-sided integration of economics into HRM. The second considers a selection of studies that provide a more integrated attempt to span the economics and HRM boundaries. The third, turns to the neglect of variations in national institutions and business systems in the analyses of HRM policies within organizations.
HRM and the Worker
Authors: Thompson Paul , Harley Bill
Published: September 2009

This article argues that there are at least three core claims to which most scholars of HRM subscribe. The first is that major changes in the nature of the environment in which organizations operate have placed pressure on organizations to be more strategic in their management of employees. This is the familiar view that most organizations are now operating in increasingly global, competitive, and volatile markets in which they must be flexible and able to develop unique products and services which are not easily imitable. Whilst some sector differentiation is made, according to most of the HRM literature it is through employees that such competitiveness can best be developed, because employees possess the kinds of skills that allow flexibility and which are difficult to imitate.