Concept talks

Here we have collected short lectures or interviews on core concepts relating to the management of transformation and change, corporate responsibility and sustainable future practices.

Key reference: Wright, E. (2010). Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso

Real Utopias as a Pathway to an Alternative Future

Erik Olin Wright, Professor of Sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison and former president of the American Sociology Association, speaks on Real Utopias at the Alternative Futures Conference held at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, CA.

Key reference: Schor, J. (2020). After the Gig. How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back. California University Press.

The Sharing Economy – From Utopia to Dystopia?

Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and has led one of the largest research projects on the sharing economy to date. In this interview she talks about her research and vision of a sustainable future.

Key reference: Wenzel, M., Krämer, H., Koch, J., & Reckwitz, A. (2020). Future and Organization Studies: On the rediscovery of a problematic temporal category in organizations. Organization Studies, in print.

Reimagining Futures

A reflection by Professor Matthias Wenzel, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany, on the role of the yet-to-come in sustainable development

Key reference: Linnenluecke, M. K. (2017). Resilience in business and management research: A review of influential publications and a research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), 4-30.

Resilience – a Concept for the Future?

Interview with Professor Martina Linnenluecke, Head of the Center for Corporate Sustainability and Environmental Finance at Macquarie University, Australia, on the multi-level concept of resilience

Key reference: Bansal, P., Kim, A., & Wood, M. O. (2018). Hidden in plain sight: The importance of scale in organizations’ attention to issues. Academy of Management Review, 43(2), 217-241.

Sustainability & Systems Thinking

Interview with Professor Tima Bansal, Canada Research Chair in Sustainability at Ivey Business School, Western University, on Sustainability and System Thinking.

Key reference: Marquis, C. (2020). Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism. Yale University Press.

Reimagining Capitalism: B Corporations

Chris Marquis is the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University. In this video he talks about how the B Corp movement is helping us to reimagine a capitalism that cares about more than shareholders.

Key reference: Crane, A., Matten, D., & Spence, L. (Eds.). (2019). Corporate social responsibility: Readings and cases in a global context. Routledge.

Imagining the End of CSR

Dirk Matten, Professor of Strategy; Hewlett-Packard Chair in Corporate Social Responsibility; Director of Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business at the Schulich School of Business, York University, is interviewed by Charlene Zietsma, Penn State University, on imagining the end of CSR.

Key reference: Mazzucato, M. (2018). The value of everything: Making and taking in the global economy. Hachette UK.

Reimagining Economic Value

A Ted Talk by economist Mariana Mazzucato (University College London) on “What is economic value, and who creates it?

Key reference: Palazzo, G., Krings, F., & Hoffrage, U. (2012). Ethical blindness. Journal of business ethics, 109(3), 323-338.

Shedding Light on Ethical Blindness

Guido Palazzo is a professor of Business Ethics at the University of Lausanne. He is passionate about the dark side of the force and in his research examines unethical decision making from various angles. He is mainly known for his studies in globalization, in particular on human rights violations in global value chains, but he also studies the reasons for unethical behaviour in organization and the impact of organized crime on business and society.

Key reference: Dobusch, L., & Heimstädt, M. (2019). Predatory publishing in management research: A call for open peer review. Management Learning, 50(5), 607-619.

Open Science as a Promising Future Practice

A short lecture on “Open science, data and commons” by organization scholar Leonhard Dobusch (University of Innsbruck)

Key reference: Helfen, M. (2015). Institutionalizing precariousness? The politics of boundary work in legalizing agency work in Germany, 1949–2004. Organization Studies, 36(10), 1387-1422.

Imagining Sustainable Work in the Platform Economy

Markus Helfen, Freie Universität Berlin, discusses why and how the sustainability of work and employment is a fundamental societal challenge in the platform economy.

Key reference: Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books.

A Future without Surveillance Capitalism?

Shoshana Zuboff talks about “Surveillance Capitalism and Democracy” at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin