“The Cowl <Emphasis Type="Italic">Does</Emphasis> Make The Monk”: Understanding the Emergence of Social Entrepreneurship in Times of Downturn

In order to contribute to the debate about social entrepreneurship, we take an empirical perspective and describe the phenomenon in Catalonia, Spain, during the financial crises of the early twenty-first century. For this aim, we conducted 43 in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs, launched a web-based survey with 90 responses, and built a database with 347 organizations and/or ventures settled in Catalonia with an explicit social/environmental goal. The data show that many social/environmental initiatives emerged during the economic crisis, either as a self-employment alternative to unemployment, or as a commercial venture started by nonprofit organizations as a reaction to the reduction in public expense in this sector. In addition, the crisis fueled the emergence of ventures oriented to non-market exchange and social currencies. As a whole, we argue that this new reality can be conceptualized as the emergence of an unsettled Strategic Action Field where banks, business schools and public administrations alike promote the label of “social entrepreneurship” through awards and startup services, whereas other groups claiming the same social/environmental goals contest this market-oriented definition of the field.     

Autonomist and secessionist parties in post-communist democracies. Structural and institutional factors in the study of a dynamic phenomenon

This article analyzes the structural and institutional conditions related to the presence of autonomist and secessionist political parties. Since not every multinational or plurinational democracy presents demands of secession or redefinition of the political community in terms of the demos, the main hypothesis here is that there exists a combination of structural factors that explains the phenomenon. Adopting a non-probabilistic approach (csQCA), this article finds that regional concentration together with legacies of self-government plays a necessary role to explain the emergence of parties that articulate minorities’ territorial demands in post-communist countries.     

More than a method? Organisational ethnography as a way of imagining the social

The authors – two anthropologists and an organisational theorist, all organisational ethnographers – discuss their understanding and practices of organisational ethnography (OE) as a way of imagining and reflect on how similar this understanding may be for young organisational researchers and students in particular. The discussion leads to the conclusion that OE may be regarded as a methodology but that it has a much greater potential when it is reclaiming its roots: to become a mode of doing social science on the meso-level. The discussion is based on an analysis of both historical material and the contemporary learning experiences of teaching OE as more than a method to our students.     

Working with Language: A Refocused Research Agenda for Cultural Leadership Studies

This paper critically reviews existing contributions from the field of cultural leadership studies with a view to highlighting the conceptual and methodological limitations of the dominant etic, cross‐cultural approach in leadership studies and illuminating implications of the relative dominance and unreflective use of the English language as the academic and business lingua franca within this field. It subsequently outlines the negative implications of overlooking cultural and linguistic multiplicity for an understanding of culturally sensitive leadership practices. In drawing on lessons from this critical review and the emergent fields of emic, non‐positivist cultural leadership studies, this analysis argues that the field of cultural leadership studies requires an alternative research agenda focused on language multiplicity, which enables the field to move towards emic, qualitative research that helps to empower individual cultural voices and explore cultural intra‐ and interrelationships, tensions and paradoxes embedded in leadership processes. The paper concludes by offering suggestions on methodological approaches for emic cultural leadership studies that are centred on the exploration of language as a cultural voice.     

Drug discovery in neurodegenerative diseases

This meeting report documents the exciting ongoing research aimed at developing new therapeutic agents for neurodegenerative diseases at the interface between academia and industry, and illustrates the direction the NIH "roadmap" for medical research is taking. Some of the projects have resulted in very promising drugs, identified and developed by academic centers, entering clinical trials.     

Strangers in a Strange Land: Shock,Disappointment, and Adjustments Experiences of Expatriates in Central Asia

Increasing globalization is driving an increase in diversity and interaction. A more mobile and international workforce frequently requires that individuals try to understand the norms of their “new” society. This paper provides a preliminary exploration of the types of issues and concerns raised by expatriates working in a new foreign environment. In particular, the paper uses a hybrid survey/interview methodology to identify specific issues raised by expatriates working in Kazakhstan, Central Asia.

Italo Calvino and the organizational imagination: Reading social organization through urban metaphors

This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, a provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bidirectionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities), the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of ‘lightness’ provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the ‘projective city’. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization.     

Toward a New Conceptualization of Settlements for Demography

It has long been recognized that where people live and work can be a relevant factor in helping to explain demographic behavior, yet the treatment of location in censuses and surveys remains surprisingly crude. Emphasis is still being given to the urban–rural dichotomy based on definitions that most countries around the world introduced 40 to 50 years ago and have modified little since. Given the increase in the complexity of settlement systems in recent decades in less developed as well as in more developed contexts, this simple classification is no longer adequate for examining the role of settlement in demographic processes. The time has come to rethink how settlement should be differentiated in population data collection and analysis. Contemporary technologies and methodologies make it possible to analyze spatially referenced data in ways that are more rapid and sophisticated than could have been imagined when the conventional approach was devised.     

Informal Caregiving and Quality of Life Among Older Adults: Prospective Analyses from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH)

Social Indicators Research - Providing unpaid informal care to someone who is ill or disabled is a common experience in later life. While a supportive and potentially rewarding role, informal care...     

Prostitution as a Male Object of Epistemological Pain

It is not, in the first place, prostitutes’ physical and psychological pain that is examined in this article, but the pain encountered in trying to come to terms with the studying of prostitution. Prostitution upsets consciousness’ efforts and confuses its epistemes of representation. It reveals issues of (male) avoidance and over‐rationalization that apply just as well to how business and organization are (not) studied, as to prostitution. Following Artaud, we examine how, because prostitution is both consciousness (idea, theory, representation) and body (sex, body, the physiology of the brain), it poses the problem of doubling. How can one apprehend both: (i) that one is the physical hyle (materiality) of thought and also (ii) remain aware of the contents of consciousness? Artaud claimed that only in ‘cruelty’ and the ‘scream’ could the mind and body be grasped at once. By contrast, Derrida proposes via the subjectile to glide over the space between consciousness and body, trying to acknowledge but not be stymied by the double. Finally, we turn to Irigaray who has accepted doubling and has made it epistemologically productive.