Organizational Sociology

In February 2014 at the WIPP transuranic waste repository in New Mexico, a drum erupted in fire. It exposed 22 people to radiation, shut down the underground facility for 35 months and cost the United States over a billion dollars. Heat and pressure had built up in the drum due to chemical reactions with an organic kitty litter, Swheat Scoop, which had been mistakenly added to it at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. This article disrupts two prominent narratives: (a) that the accident was induced by a typographical error made after a waste packaging operations supervisor misheard 'inorganic kitty litter' as 'an organic kitty litter' during a meeting, and (b) that it was induced primarily by 'mismanagement' at WIPP, Los Alamos and the DOE's New Mexico field offices. It does so by exploring how a series of overambitious political initiatives, fraught labor relationships, financialized subcontracting arrangements and US Department of Energy (DOE) performance incentives set the stage for Los Alamos's notorious error by accelerating US waste packaging, shipping and repository emplacement rates beyond systemic capacity. Attention to operational temporalities shows how an often-overlooked nexus of schedule pressures, political-economic imperatives and regulatory breakdowns converged to modulate nuclear waste management workflows and, ultimately, trigger a radiological accident.

Corrupt exchanges are often brokered by a third party, but this phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explored by researchers of corruption. Literature on brokerage in general provides interesting models but they have not previously been applied to corrupt exchanges. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents who participated in actual corrupt transactions, this paper identifies several distinct brokerage types in low-level corruption in contemporary Hungary. The paper also provides explanation of variation in corruption brokerage in terms of actors' group affiliations, forms of the corrupt exchanges, brokerage mechanisms, as well as neutrality, benefit and motivation, risk distribution, and stability of the brokerage structure. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of corruption brokerage.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

This paper reviews the notion of power in general and in concrete how this is applicable and present in business organizations today, more precisely a review and account of power embedded in elements of the structure of the  organization is given.

This chapter takes stock of interdisciplinary research on Multinational Corporations (MNCs) by elucidating paradigmatic shifts in the world of MNCs in the new millennium and analysing more recent developments in the disciplines of International Business (IB) and Organization Theory (OT). The chapter also introduces the altogether 14 individual contributions of this 49th volume of the Research in the Sociology of Organizations series. It closes by looking into the questions of where interdisciplinary OT/IB research on MNCs is now and where it is likely to go in the future.

When individuals exchange gifts, social bonds are strengthened and reciprocity is created. If the gift and the reciprocation both come from private resources, it is clearly a gift. If what is reciprocated after a gift is given comes from an organization, or is a government resource rather than from " one's own pocket " then it is most likely a bribe. This study reviews the anthropological literature on gift giving and constructs a typology for examining the gift/bribe distinction in public administration. This classification helps distinguish analytically among different gift practices and clarify conceptual ambiguity of the terms gift and bribe.

Goffmanowska koncepcja instytucji totalnych stępiła się i rodzi dziś więcej py-tań, niż udziela odpowiedzi. Z perspektywy ponad pięćdziesięciu lat od wydania Asylums, narosło wokół pracy wiele nieporozumień, a defi nicja stała się rozmyta i niejasna, umożliwiając używanie jej do opisu nieomal każdej instytucji społecznej. Artykuł ma na celu zmianę tej sytuacji i zaproponowanie skorygowanej, wyostrzo-nej i dostosowanej do zmieniającej się rzeczywistości społecznej defi nicji koncepcji instytucji totalnych. Tok argumentacji rozpoczyna ulokowanie koncepcji w historii badań społecznych oraz w kontekstach jej aplikowalności. Kolejny krok stanowi rekonstrukcja krytycznych stanowisk na przestrzeni lat, pozwalająca zidentyfi kować słabe i mocne punkty Goffmanowskiej propozycji. Następnie artykuł podąża za in-telektualnymi dłużnikami Goffmana, którzy udoskonalają lub budują konkurencyjne propozycje teoretyczne na bazie przemyśleń dotyczących instytucji totalnych. Na końcu, korzystając z prezentowanych wcześniej w artykule uwag oraz pomysłów innych badaczy, zostaje przedstawiona autorska rekonfi guracja koncepcji instytucji totalnych. Główne pojęcia: Goffman; instytucja totalna; organizacja totalna; instytucja za-chłanna; instytucja przenikalna; instytucja reformująca.

Resumen — Este esbozo de sociología organizacional tiene como objetivo señalar algunas nociones básicas acerca del tema visto desde la teoría sociológica y la psicología social. Las organizaciones no han reconocido lo importante que puede ser contar con un sociólogo en sus nomina. En el artículo se muestran algunos aspectos relevantes a tener en cuenta al momento de analizar una organización. Primero se desarrolla el tema desde tres ideas principales: el ser humano como núcleo de la organización; la organización como la forma mas efectiva de alcanzar las metas personales y por ultimo, la cooperación como forma de alcanzar las metas. Se destacan también otros elementos importantes para el análisis de la organización como el papel de los roles y estatus, el papel de las normas, los valores y las emociones como control de las acciones sociales, el entorno social en el que está inmersa la organización, la forma de producción capitalista. El aporte de la teoría de sistemas nos ayuda a interpretar las acciones de la organización como complejas, interconectadas y sobre todo entender que las situaciones sociales que afectan las organizaciones son problemas de tensiones dadas por la interacción de los actores afiliados. La sociología tiene mucho que aportar al campo de los estudios organizacionales y es muy importante que las organizaciones cuenten en sus sistemas de adaptación con sociólogos que estudien las dinámicas tanto micro como macro sociales y permitan a la organización mejorar y alcanzar las metas que se trazaron a través de planes de mejoramiento y desarrollo de la capacidad de los seres humanos vinculados a ellas. Abstract — Este This sketch of organizational sociology aims to identify some basic notions about the subject seen from sociological theory and social psychology. The organizations have not recognized how important it can be to have a sociologist on the payroll. The article shows some important aspects to consider when analyzing an organization. First develops the subject from three main ideas: the human being as the core of the organization, the organization as the most effective way to achieve personal goals and finally, cooperation as a means of achieving goals. It also highlights other important elements for the analysis of the organization and the role of the roles and status, the role of norms, values and emotions as social control actions, the social environment in which the organization is involved, the capitalist mode of production. The contribution of systems theory helps us to interpret the actions of the organization as a complex, interconnected and above all to understand that social situations that affect stress problems organizations are given by the interaction of actors affiliates. Sociology has much to contribute to the field of organizational studies and it is very important that organizations have to adapt their systems with sociologists to study the dynamics both micro and macro social and enable the organization to improve and achieve the goals that were set to plans through improving and developing the capacity of human beings associated with them.

3P derives from the three very important categories / areas in defining a reform process of the national security intelligence analysis, namely : – Process (the analysis activity, with his entire set of methods or means, internal procedures and standards, but also, with its variou s types of organization); – Product (the results of the analysis activity, the p roducts which are sent to beneficiaries / users and the feedback or the requests for inform ation from the intelligence consumers); – Personnel (the intelligence analyst, as well as the process of its selection and training). Why these three P? I must confess that the idea of trying to define the analysis activity, and implicitly, the main parts of a reform in this important area for the activity of each intelligence service came following some discussion I had with colleagues, experts and intelligence analysts. I worked, as co-author, to a paper (presented within an international forum) concerning the evolution of intelligenc...

Introduction chapter to book on "Politics, Power and Conflict in Multinational Corporations: Foundations, Applications and New Directions", edited by Florian August Arthur Becker-Ritterspach, Susanne Blazejewski, Christoph Dörrenbächer and Mike Geppert, published by Cambridge University Press, 2016

"Corruption has become one of the most popular topics in the social scientific disciplines. However, there is a lack of interdisciplinary communication about corruption. Models developed by different
academic disciplines are often isolated from each other. The purpose of this paper is to review several major approaches to corruption and draw them closer to each other. Most studies of corruption fall
into three major categories: (i) rational-actor models where corruption is viewed as resulting from cost/benefit analysis of individual actors; (ii) structural models that focus on external forces that determine corruption; and (iii) relational models that emphasize social interactions and networks among corrupt actors. Focusing on actors’ behavior and the social context, this article explains corruption concepts taken from sociology, economics, organization studies, political science, social anthropology, and social psychology."

"In der öffentlichen und der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion werden internationale Organisationen häufig verkürzt dargestellt. Der Band zeigt, dass sie sich weder auf ihre Mitgliedsstaaten noch auf ihre Verwaltungsstäbe reduzieren lassen. Nur ein komplexes Verständnis internationaler Organisationen, das Erkenntnisse aus der Organisationsforschung und aus den Internationalen Beziehungen integriert, kann uns helfen, die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen internationaler Organisationen im globalen Regieren richtig zu verstehen

Die Sprache der Bürokratie genießt, wie wohl 'Bürokratie' insgesamt, ein eher zweifelhaftes Ansehen. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht Ursache und Berechtigung der so eher intuitiv vorgenommenen Zuschreibung nach und diskutiert Rahmenbedingungen und Strukturelemente, die die Sprache der Bürokratie als Instrument rationaler Herrschaft und insofern als "Sprache der Folgerichtigkeit" auszeichnen.

This study provides an empirically based analysis of corrupt governmental networks. We conducted 45 interviews in Hungary with different organizational actors who were actually participating in corrupt transactions or at least had first-hand experiences of corruption. Given the secret nature of the topic, this article provides a unique insight into the phenomenon. Our findings show that corrupt elite cliques consciously design and coordinate multilevel structures of corrupt networks within and among organizations that involve a large amount of people. We identified the major network elements and their functions in corrupt transactions. The article also provides a typology of corrupt networks. The networks have different structural characteristics based on location of the “cash cows,” points from where the system is fed, and the actors’ positions of power. Our findings are compared with the already existing literature on dark networks, terrorist, and organized crime formations.

Green technologies have become a field of competition between countries that are looking for new areas of economic growth and building low-carbon economies. This paper focuses on the case of electric vehicles (EVs) to look at the various actors embedded in the innovation network and explore the progress of and challenges to the diffusion of EVs in China. It complements a systems of innovation approach with the theory of institutional legitimacy, and discusses the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive types of legitimacy for different EV-related actors in China. We argue that the EV industry has gained a certain level of regulative legitimacy from the Chinese central state and some local states, but because of power struggles among stakeholders, it has not achieved much normative or cultural-cognitive legitimacy. In fact, it seems that what consumers want is different from what the central and local states have promoted. The discrepancy in different types of legitimacy is also because state investment in green technologies is more of an industrial policy than an environmental policy, seeking to leapfrog China into a technological powerhouse. We thus propose that when studying systems of innovation, it is important to take into account power dynamics across actors and the interactive process of establishing legitimacy, because institutions should not be taken as static, pre-given structures. The different layers of institutions are not always congruent, and when faced with conflicting institutional demands, actors may develop strategies to adapt and change the institutions.

Organizations are everywhere, as Perrow (1991, as cited in Hall & Tolbert, 2005) said, " we have become a society of organizations ". Our life is highly dependent on the functions of the various organizations existing in our society. Our economic activities, spiritual needs, leisure and entertainment are all provided by the organizations that exist in our society today. Since organizations are prevalent in our societies, it is imperative that these must be studied. Organizational studies must encompass the wide array of organizations that prevail in our society. Organizations must be subjected to evaluation regardless of its nature and goals. In this study, the researcher focused in an organization that is involved in promoting financial literacy and providing financial education programs in the Philippines. Financial literacy and financial education are crucial concerns in developed and developing countries. This research analyzed the structures and processes of a pioneering global company that serves as an avenue to attain financial security. This study used a qualitative research design to answer its objectives. A qualitative approach was used by the researcher to gather in-depth data about the structures and processes of the organization. This study required two types of data sources, these are transcript of interviews and document analysis. Data were collected using key-informant interview, in-depth interview, and document analysis. A total of seven members were interviewed for this study. The study found that the organization and its members highly value rules, its implementation, and rule observation. The organization has a combination of both minimal and maximal formalization. Rules help the organization in fulfilling their roles and contributing to the overall efficiency of the organization. However, the organization does not have a codified set of rules for its members to follow. The decision-making process in the organization provided an understanding about the dimensions of power and degree of centralization in the organization. The study found that the power structure is highly evident and well distributed among its members. This means that the organization is highly centralized. Some members in the organization are given opportunity to make decisions and strategies for their respective teams through delegation for roles and power, however, all the decisions they will make are actually within the boundaries of the existing rules of the organization. Change is viewed positively by the participants of the study. Organizational changes may result to both negative and positive effects. As one of the participants said, change in organization is inevitable, it is like flowing water which cannot be stopped. Since this is the nature of change in organizations, the challenge lies on the capacity of the members and the whole organization to make the necessary adjustment and be a team player in order to adapt and be triumphant amidst the inevitable changes that occur in organizations.

To gain an in-depth understanding of legitimacy as a general social process, we review contemporary approaches to legitimacy within two areas of sociology: social psychology and organizations. A comparison of these distinct approaches allows us to explain the process, both in implicit and explicit ways at different levels of analysis, through which a social object is construed as legitimate. This comparison also suggests four stages in the process by which new social objects, both individual (worthy/unworthy individuals) and collective (organizational forms), gain legitimation: innovation, local validation, diffusion, and general validation. We then show how legitimation of the status quo---that is, the acceptance of widespread consensual schemas/beliefs in the larger society---often fosters the stability of nonoptimal actions and practices that are created as a result of these new individual and collective social objects. Finally, we discuss how consensual beliefs such as status beliefs and cultural capital fuel the reproduction of inefficiency and inequality in groups and organizations.

The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) conducted more than 100 atmospheric atomic detonations at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) between 1951-1962 depositing radioactivity throughout the United States but particularly the rural communities just “downwind.” The monitoring of radioactivity and efforts to warn downwind residents, however, failed to ensure their safety. I engage in archival analysis of AEC documents to examine decision-making in reference to radioactive fallout. In recounting the socio-natural history of atmospheric testing at the NTS, the present study argues operational conduct was lethargic due to the adoption of specious organizational heuristics. They included the assumption that fallout is subject to predictable atmospheric dispersion, has non-cumulative, undifferentiated effects on people, and that downwind residents were prone to unreasoning panic. Thus AEC officials were continually chasing problems after they arose and in the absence of containment of fallout focused on containment of public perception and dialogue. The study concludes by highlighting the lessons relevant to contemporary socio-technical activities.

On May 19 this year, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to permanently cancel U.S. payments to the World Health Organization (WHO). One month earlier, Trump had already announced that the U.S. would not honour its biannual 500 million USD commitment. The next day, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stated that they
would donate an additional 150 million to the WHO, on top of a previous 100 million USD. The Gates’ largesse precedes COVID19. Since 2000, their foundation has granted almost four billion USD to the WHO to support a gigantic program against polio, and additional hundreds of millions for other programs on malaria, HIV, and maternal health, and the escalated use of technology in health. The Gates Foundation is a crucial contributor to the WHO, second only to the U.S.

Vom Scientific Management bis zum Lean Management ist noch jeder betriebswirtschaftliche Ansatz mit dem Anspruch angetreten, die Welt zu verbessern. Nur die Frage für wen bleibt meist im Dunkeln. Ausgehend von einer Kritik herkömmlicher Menschenbilder in der BWL werden fundamentale Kategorien für ein am Menschen orientiertes Denken in Betriebswirtschaftslehre und -praxis entwickelt, um Humanitätspotentialen in der Wirtschaft auf die Spur zu kommen.

Objective: Strategic Management has traditionally borrowed and translated insights from Economic Sociology and Sociology of Organizations. Throughout this discipline, students will be exposed to seminal articles that theorized on how firms' and individuals' strategic action is allowed and constrained by social structures. Further, students will explore how scholars have translated these insights into empirical research into strategic management discipline.

Readers/Learning Objectives
 To understand the importance of higher education in Nigeria using functionalists perspectives.
 To identify the roles of federal universities in the production of manpower in Nigerian societies.
 To examine the historical development of universities in line with the level of graduate productivity in Nigeria
 To understand Nigerian education system and how it has helped in producing a self-reliant individual.

The current research investigates the impact of Information Technology (IT) on the working life of
the staff of industrial organizations and relies on the study which was carried out on the staff of Pars Khodro
Company. This study enjoys a qualitative approach to social studies and is conducted on the basis of
biographical-narrative interviews with the staff of Pars Khodro Company, documentation and the researcher’s
observations. The results of the current study indicate that Information Technology holds different
consequences, some of which have not primarily been of any concern to manufacturers and executives. The
approach towards effective Information Technology is quite complicated. It is a combination of an evolution
in financial instruments and constructs and involves an improvement in relationships, hierarchies and
conceptual implications among those who are in action. The impacts of Information Technology are described
through four models in the following areas: 1. Action Disembedding besides Trust and Risk, 2. Hierarchy and
Symbolic Violence, 3. Competition and Expertise and finally 4. Acceptance of Information Technology. It is
worth mentioning that the results of the current research show not only does Information Technology have
an impact on working atmospheres, but also it encompasses people’s personal lives.

This paper explores the issue of the socio-cultural transformations implicating a change in the learning and teaching processes due to the extensive digitization of human environments. The purpose of the research is to deliver a contextualized insight into the effects of the digitalization of learning and other parts of the public sphere. This issue is being investigated through such notions as nostalgia, retromania, and retro learning with the methods of discourse analysis and elements of ethnography of organizations. It is thus important to point out the most important cultural tendencies in the dynamics of this change by bringing out the significance of non-digital learning patterns. The research's outcome highlights these patterns which build so-called analog cultures, i.e. specific forms of identity construction in the digital setting which emphasizes the importance of the relations between man and machine in the context of skills acquisition for example. The takeaway from the research might be implemented in fields like organizational studies and schooling reforms aimed at improving the effectiveness of digital learning.

The Foundations of a Theory Explaining Organizational News: The VT4 Framework of Organizational News Content and Five Levels of Content Production.  We examine the influence of journalists, routines, news organizations, influences external to news organizations (PR, advertising, interlocking boards, technology, economy, media systems on the news about organizations. For any one organization, we consider its media visibility, media tone, media topics, media ties, and timing.

From its founding in 1987, the Alliance of Baptists’ stance on women in ministry served as the nexus point from which the small denominational body departed from its denominational forebears in the Southern Baptist Convention. As the Alliance adopted more and more progressive theological and social ideas, Southern Baptists adopted more and more conservative counterpoints, at times in response to each other. In 2021, the divergence of these two bodies came to the fore. As members of the Alliance of Baptists adopted a new covenant Statement committing the denomination to “act to dismantle systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and abusive power,” the Southern Baptists had walked away from working through their pro-slavery past and were agitating against Critical Race Theory. Theological moves that began in a debate over women’s ordination morphed into larger shifts that redefined what it meant to be a Baptist in the modern United States. How both denominational bodies came to embrace different systems of authority and governance in the late 1980s set both groups on divergent paths, leading to strikingly antithetical positions not only on issues of gender but also race. The contrast further affirms that questions of gender and religious authority and questions of racism and white supremacy within denominational contexts are not isolated, separate questions, but rather they are deeply intertwined and related to one another. Overall, this SBC-Alliance history demonstrates how denominational bodies actively consider proximate organizations as they develop their own policies, processes, and public proclamations.

El artículo presenta resultados de una primera búsqueda de criterios claros, funcionales y mesurables que permiten la consideración objetiva y comparativa del desempeño de asociaciones de muy diverso tipo. Para ello parte de la identificación de algunas variables significativas de las que depende la capacidad de las asociaciones para enfrentar con éxito diversos retos en la búsqueda del cumplimiento de sus objetivos y la satisfacción de sus demandas (relaciones con las autoridades, formulación de políticas, creación de redes, cumplimiento de metas, transparencia, innovación y cambio). En la búsqueda de estos criterios y variables se exploran las contribuciones y hallazgos provenientes de la sociología de la acción colectiva y la sociología de las organizaciones. En ambas literaturas teóricas se identifican algunos conceptos útiles y modelos de análisis que permiten un acercamiento analítico a las diversas formas de asociación y sus prácticas.

This article focuses on labour relations in hospitals, the claim being that collective mobilization in this sector is not just a matter of protest but may also involve consensual efforts to improve conditions. To demonstrate this, types of protest movements in the hospital sector are reviewed and hypotheses put forward to explain the empirical rarity of such movements in the sector in France. Subaltern status (in terms of class, gender, etc.) is not sufficient to explain the moderation of conflicts in the sector. The symbolic "public service" and practical "care" dimensions, both relevant to the public hospital framework, play an ambivalent role. An examination of organizational contexts leads to the development of an explanation of the "silence" of hospital nurses by identifying modes and conditions characterizing what I call a "consensual" mobilization dynamic: intense cooperation in some units, participant campaigns to improve care quality, interprofessional coordination on ad hoc projects, and the influence of practical representations produced by earlier (consensual) mobilizations. These fundamental components of healthcare contribute to creating a profound adherence to a profession that is both demanding and valuable, even though local responsibilities of this sort only raise the same question concerning the boundaries for action by caregivers in hospitals at a more general level. "Hospital-silence": the well-known sign is emblematic of the social climate in hospitals. It is a paradoxical situation: how can we explain why a growing mass of qualified employees concentrated in large public institutions , (1) exposed to more and more stressful and divisive working conditions, but with comparatively secure statuses, (2) do not make more "noise"? 316 R. franç. sociol., 53-3, 2012, 316-346 * I would like to thank Guy Groux, Lilian Mathieu, Muriel Surdez, Anne Vega greatly for rereading this article and making suggestions, as well as the anonymous members of the editorial committee. (1) In 2004, in more than 1,000 public health institutions, 31 centres hospitaliers universitaires (CHU) [university hospitals] accounted for 35% of employees, 560 centres hospitaliers [main hospitals] 50% = and 350 hôpitaux locaux [local hospitals] 5%. The average institution size is 1,200 employees. (2) Of the non-public hospital employees, the proportion belonging to category C reaches two thirds, but "only" 13% of caregivers belong. On the caregiving side, which represents 70% of non-medical staff in public hospitals, 50.4% of employees belonged to category C at the end of 2007. In other words, while healthcare assistants can be insecure, nurses are much less so, although, unlike doctors, part-time working has increased (by 3% on average since 2004, according to the report of the DGAFP [2009]).

Le relazioni e gli interventi che si sono succeduti nel seminario si prestano ad alcune considerazioni d'insieme, che ci permettono di evidenziare questioni cruciali riguardo al rapporto tra welfare aziendale, imprese-rete e sistemi locali. Una prima questione è quella della responsabilità civile d'impresa-nel mondo anglosassone direbbero della "cittadinanza d'impresa". È evidente come l'impresa che fa welfare avoca a sé un ruolo di cittadinanza attiva, che pertanto afferma essere sua prerogativa e non solo di singoli cittadini. E ciò si manifesta proprio nel farsi carico di istanze e di bisogni che emergono dalla comunità locale, così da dimostrare di voler assolvere una responsabilità rispetto al territorio non solo di natura economica, ma anche civica e sociale. Una seconda questione è l'impresa integrale. Come ha evidenziato Emmanuele Massagli, il welfare sviluppato in azienda può corrispondere a una scelta di convenienza economica o ad una naturale propensione filantropica dell'imprenditore, ma dispiega la sua piena efficacia se si lega coerentemente con le diverse componenti del sistema aziendale: corrisponde ad una scelta strategica compiuta dal consiglio di amministrazione, richiede adeguamenti organizzativi, contempla conseguenze gestionali sui sistemi operativi, viene gestita da logiche di marketing communication ed è inquadrata entro le politiche di gestione delle risorse umane. Ecco che il caso illustrato da Michele Mannella è rappresentativo non semplicemente di una vicenda che riguarda la remunerazione non monetaria del personale, ma di uno spaccato di vita aziendale che tocca gli aspetti del clima organizzativo, degli effetti gestionali, della reputazione d'impresa, della qualità del lavoro. La terza questione è quella delle reti fra imprese. Per una micro o piccola impresa può essere troppo oneroso-dal punto di vista economico-e troppo complesso-dal punto di vista gestionale-offrire da sola servizi di welfare ai propri collaboratori. Ecco perché assistiamo da più parti in Italia alla costituzione di reti territoriali di welfare aziendale, secondo la geografia disegnata da Franca Maino. Federico Butera ha messo poi in evidenza che queste sono delle forme organizzative e non semplicemente un aggregato di relazioni spontanee fra attori diversi; quando durano nel tempo, assumono la configurazione di un "sistema governato", ispirato a una visione condivisa e sostenuto da una pattuizione chiara 2 Vice-presidente di TSM-Trentino School of Management, consulente di strategia e organizzazione.

Seit den 1980er-Jahren haben sich Wahrheitskommissionen zu einem wichtigen Instrument entwickelt, um nach politischen Umbrüchen schwere Menschenrechtsverletzungen aufzuarbeiten. Doch wie konnte sich diese Organisationsform, mit politisch motivierten Verbrechen umzugehen, über kulturelle und politische Unterschiede hinweg weltweit verbreiten? Anne K. Krüger schildert die vier Phasen der Entstehung und Verbreitung dieses Standardinstruments der Transitional Justice. Dabei beantwortet sie die Frage, wie sich das kulturelle Modell einer »Versöhnung durch Wahrheit« zum Bestandteil einer gemeinsamen Weltkultur entwickelte.

This qualitative study examines the role of clients in petty corruption by analyzing actual corrupt exchanges between ordinary citizens and low level public and private employees in post-communist Hungary. Using a grounded theory approach, interviews reveal how clients from different social strata deal with low-level agents in corrupt situations. Findings suggest two contrasting forms of low-level corruption: transactions where the client and the agent do not have a prior relationship and where external factors dominate the relationship; and cases with stronger social ties between the actors, where the client has more freedom to structure the transaction. However, a client's social background frequently determines the form of corrupt transaction and the form of resources illegally exchanged in the deal.