Colleagues:
This special issue for Organization: The critical journal of organization,
theory & society may be of interest to members of SIM.
Best wishes,
Linda
Linda Smircich
Professor of Organization Studies
Isenberg School of Management
University of Massachusetts
Amherst Massachusetts 01003
Call for Papers
Capitalism in Crisis: Organizational Perspectives
Deadline for submission: 1 March 2010
Special Issue Editors
Glenn Morgan, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK
glenn.morgan@warwick.ac.uk
Julie Froud, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK
julie.froud@mbs.ac.uk
Sigrid Quack, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany
sq@mpifg.de
Marc Schneiberg, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, USA
marc.schneiberg@reed.edu
The financial crisis, which began in mid 2007 and reached a crescendo in
September 2008 with the fall of Lehman Brothers and its immediate aftermath,
ushered in a severe period of doubt for those who had expounded the benefits of
free market capitalism. Gillian Tett, one of the Financial Times most
insightful reporters on the crisis wrote on 10 March 2009 that not only is the
financial system plagued with losses of a scale nobody foresaw, but the pillars
of faith on which this new financial capitalism were built have all but
collapsed. That has left everyone from finance minister or central banker to
small investor or pension holder bereft of intellectual compass, dazed and
confused. She quotes the head of Merrill Lynchs Moscow operation as stating
that Our world is broken and I honestly dont know what is going to replace
it.
Whilst the dominant system has been weakened, it is clear that there are many
efforts in place to rebuild it. The degree and nature of the changes are being
debated and fought over by interested parties. The push for radical reform in
the aftermath of the immediate crisis may be weakening due to pressure from
insiders and supporters of the free market. For the moment, however, there
still remains a space in which critical social science can engage and explore
more deeply the roots of the crisis, the impact it is making on organizations
and the role of different actors in these processes. Many of the potential
tools and theoretical resources for such alternatives have already been
developed over the last decade e.g., in theories of financialization, social
studies of finance, critical accounting, cultural economy, elite studies,
critical management studies, comparative capitalisms, neo-institutionalism.
This Special Issue calls for papers that address this crisis of capitalism from
an organizational perspective. We aim to focus particularly on theoretically
informed empirical studies of organizations involved in the crisis. We are
therefore interested in:
Studies of the internal dynamics and structuring of financial
institutions. This includes studies of traders and trading rooms with their
incentive structures, their technologies, and their distinctive forms of social
interaction. It also includes studies of how risks were measured and managed
inside financial institutions as well as the instruments and markets, which
were developed to hedge risk more broadly.
The complex structures of off balance sheet entities, which were
created by financial institutions and how they were managed and coordinated,
e.g., what sort of organizations are Special Investment Vehicles etc.?
Organizational studies of regulatory agencies, international
institutions, and central banks: how did they monitor risk? What were the
mechanisms whereby they oversaw the private sector? How were they staffed? What
knowledge and networks did the regulators and central bankers bring to the
task?
What role has been played by professional services firms, e.g.,
accounting firms, law firms, management consultancies, and other forms of
expert and industry associations in precipitating, shaping, and repairing the
financial crisis?
What are the organizational capacities being leveraged by states such
as the US, the UK etc. to gain control over financial institutions?
How might state policies to revive the economy contribute to shifts in
resources to investment in climate change technologies and what organizations
are influencing this process?
How might the public sector and its delivery of services to its
citizens be affected as the financing of the response to the crisis leads to
cash constraints in the future?
Has the financial crisis led to new social movements or impacted on
existing social movements in ways that have implications for organizations as
they respond to these changes? What new forms of legitimation are contesting
the causes, consequences, and outcomes of the financial crisis and through what
organizational forms?
What forms of organizational restructuring are emerging as responses to
the financial crisis? What sorts of management strategies are emerging to cut
employment costs, e.g., in terms of lay-offs, short-time working, reduced
pension rights, extended holidays etc.? How are employees and unions responding
to these processes?
How has the crisis impacted on organizations and employees in extended
global supply chains, such as in China, India, and elsewhere? Also, what is the
impact on the South of this crisis generated in the metropolitan heartlands of
New York and London?
Submission: Papers must be sent electronically by 1 March, 2010 via the
Organization manuscript submission website
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/organization
Papers should be between 5000 and 8000 words, and will be blind reviewed
following the journals standard peer review process. Accepted papers will be
published in early 2011. For further information contact the special issue
editors.
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