both a negative brand image and workplace disruption, alongside the desire to maximize the IPO valuation, likely shaped Armstrong’s engagement with the voices in the firm urging a stronger stance on a dominant social issue of the time. Connecting Coinbase and the CTF This case lays bare many of the issues brought up in the preceding chapters; it also illustrates why a Communicative Theory of the Firm is conceptually crucial for the OS field. The case revolves around the firm’s purpose (Armstrong used the term ‘mission’) and returns to the point made in the
these changes. Undoubtedly, scholars can produce interesting studies of affect capture, platformization, and branding without theorizing the firm, but because such theories are onto-epistemological fundaments that guide claims of consequentiality, it’s necessary to consider whether existing theories of the firm allow the sort of reconceptualization needed to enhance OS’s capacity to produce novel and useful stances on the multiplicity of purpose. This chapter, accordingly, will start with theories that serve as the central vehicles for providing coherence for
This chapter makes a crucial link between Chapter 2 ’s consideration of the shortcomings of existing theories of the firm and Chapter 3 ’s vision of organizations – and the world – as communicatively buzzing assemblages of objects, actions, signs, and passions. In sketching the contours of a Communicative Theory of the Firm (CTF), my hope is to provide a new option for understanding the firm, an option that will prove analytically novel and empirically fruitful. In Chapter 2 I described how existing theories frame firms as nexuses of contracts, sites that
described the in fluence of Coase's theory of the firm (1937) and in particular his use of transactions cost on his own theory of the committee (late 1940s through 1958). Black wrote up his reflections on discussions with Coase in the 1930s and 1940s which led to their respective contributions. Black sincerely felt their two theories had common roots. Th i s paper examines Black's argu ments and concludes that Coase had a long lasting effect on Black's thinking although some of the ideas Black saw in reflection were never fully developed in his work. Keywords
claims to legitimacy in shaping decision-making is more a matter of contending for legitimate influence than of the imposition of will associated with conventional conceptions of power . In other words, purpose and influence go hand in hand. But, as I’ll argue in the chapters to follow, the way firms’ strategic managers, as well as our theories of the firm, think about purpose provides an illusion of control that blinds them (blinds both the theories and the managers, that is) to the forces of desire shaping authority in corporate practice. What’s the problem
“Corporate purpose” has become a battleground for stakeholders’ competing desires. Some argue that corporations must simply generate profit; others suggest that we must make them create social change.
Leading organization studies scholar Timothy Kuhn argues that this “either-or” thinking dramatically oversimplifies matters: today’s corporations must be many things, all at once.
Kuhn offers a bold new Communicative Theory of the Firm to highlight the authority that creates corporations’ identities and activities. The theory provides a roadmap for navigating that battleground of competing desires to produce more responsive corporations.
Drawing on communicative and new materialist theorizing, along with three insightful case studies, this book thoroughly redefines our understandings of what corporations are “for.”
with French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The latter half of the chapter uses Deleuzian work to prepare the ground for the distinctive theory of the firm articulated in Chapter 4 . Communication as constitutive of organization In the 1990s, a body of theorizing picked up on some of the currents moving OS. As mentioned in preceding chapters, a move away from the field’s historical bias toward organizational entitativity was afoot since the 1970s, congealing in ‘turns’ linguistic, interpretive, cultural, discursive, and practice-based ( Ashcraft et al, 2009
property and value inhabited by AmpVille – its brand – was simultaneously the reason startups congregated in that Boulder office building basement and the vehicle for the valorizations seen here. The final section returns to the notion of orders of worth to explore the implications of this particular configuration of wanting. Conclusion This chapter addresses the theory of the firm questions regarding the mode of (‘internal’) organizing and the generation of profit. AmpVille’s funding depended on the financial success of the startups it nurtured (and in which
on claims to property and promises of value: what is ours and what is not, what is ‘proper’ and what is not, what will bring benefit and what will not. These are tenets ‘written’ into an authoritative text. Though competence theories of the firm see authority as affixed to persons and positions in ways that appear stable, the CTF holds that authority requires ongoing communicative work for its (re)creation – a view that fits well with the ambiguous and tenuous character of distinctive competencies noted earlier. The notion of the authoritative text is
The current automation debate neglects the social conditions underpinning technological change. Following recent labour process analysis (LPA) concepts and the Regulation School theory of the firm, I apply a firm-level strategic choice approach to trace the political-economic and organisational conditions associated with automation in logistics. To this end, I reconstruct the strategic choice of industrial automation in a German parcel logistics firm. Moreover, I compare two types of distribution centres on the level of task automation in the company and discuss the failed implementation of the automation project. I employ qualitative data about the company and four of its facilities to trace the process. The case selection fits the current debate as logistics has a high share of routine jobs, and therefore – according to labour economists – the industry faces a high risk of automation-induced job displacement. The analysis yields that actors drew on six essential conditions for the automation project at the firm and the political-economic level. The case study demonstrates the working of an ambivalent causal mechanism and stresses the relevance of organisational affordances and material-technical requirements for successful automation projects. The results synthesise the political-economic and organisational conditions that need to be considered in technological change in logistics. Thereby the article adds to a political economy of automation. Ultimately, the findings also emphasise the need for labour strategies centring on technological change in logistics.
