Organizational Search Research Articles

Harnessing Human Rights to the Olympic Games: Human Rights Watch and the 1993 ‘Stop Beijing’ Campaign

In 1993 Human Rights Watch, one of the two most influential human rights organizations in the world, launched a major campaign to derail Beijing's bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games. This article situates this highly publicized campaign in the context of Sino–US relations, the end of the Cold War, and the ‘victory’ of human rights as a global moral lingua franca. It argues that Human Rights Watch's decision to oppose Beijing's bid stemmed from its new post-Cold War focus on China combined with the organization's search for new ways to secure media attention and the funding that flowed from publicity. The campaign most likely swayed the International Olympic Committee's close vote in favor of Sydney. It also brought Human Rights Watch a windfall of favorable publicity among new audiences. The article argues that the campaign irrevocably inserted broad-based human rights considerations into the Olympic Games, decisively moving moral claims-making around the Olympics beyond the playing field. It also linked Human Rights Watch's moral legitimacy to US power in problematic ways and triggered a powerful anti-US backlash in China.

An organization's search for meaning: A humanistic and existential theory of organizational identity and voice

AbstractDrawing on humanistic and existential psychology, the author suggests that organizations are similar to living entities that experience emotions and struggle with questions of meaning and existence and that the work of leading human organizations is similar to the work of counseling human beings. From this foundation, he characterizes organizational development work as the maturing capacity of organizations to create meaning in the context of dynamic and multifaceted change. The author provides summaries of the major components of existential and humanistic psychology and applies them to organization theory. He concludes by presenting a synthesized model for humanistic‐existential organization theory while integrating implications for practice and future research.

Ética y estrategia en un marco teórico referencial de la ética de negocios

En este artículo, definimos la Ética de Negocios como una disciplina de estatuto académico que estudia los negocios desde un punto de vista ético. Como tal, exige la articulación integrada entre sus dos componentes, la ética y la empresa. Delante de la multiplicidad conceptual de la estrategia, señalamos como punto común de algunas definiciones la búsqueda de adecuación de la organización a su ambiente. Para comprender el lugar de esta concepción de estrategia en el marco teórico de la Ética de Negocios, partimos de la presentación de dos tipos de reduccionismo de que la Ética de Negocios es víctima. Enseguida, proponemos, a la luz del modelo de Lozano (1999), un marcoteórico referencial triple de la Ética de Negocios. Desde este enfoque, procuramos demostrar que, si por un lado, la administración estratégica de la empresa ha sido obligada a considerar la ética como una exigencia de la sociedad civil organizada, por otro la gestión estratégica, sensible a la demanda de la sociedad por respeto al consumidor, al medio ambiente y a la calidad de productos y servicios, no agota lo que llamamos de Business Ethics. La relación entre ética y estrategia debe ser objeto de la pregunta: ¿se trata de una estrategia organizacional que envuelve la ética o de una ética organizacional que envuelve estrategia? Esa es la cuestión a la cual intentamos traer algunacontribución de respuesta. En el ámbito de una Ética de Negocios teóricamente bien articulada, consideramos que solamente la segunda opción debe ser acepta.

Information, market imperfections and strategy

In this paper we argue that the organization's search for market imperfections reflects the information dispersion in the economy. We describe, within a Bayesian framework, the relative importance of and the mechanisms by which externally- and internally-based informational rents arise endogenously. We argue that, rather than viewing the strategic planning process as one where the firm must pursue only one source of information, search should be viewed as evolving within a dynamically related system; progressing from externally-based to internally-based sources of rent as markets evolve.