Sustainability and Business Scalability of an Indian Social Enterprise

The ever-changing dynamics of modern business form new mechanisms for achieving high performance, ensuring business continuity and attaining adaptability. The features that describe the same in the organisational context are referred to as sustainability and scalability of an enterprise. One of the key challenges is to map how Social Enterprise effectively scale up and sustain to reach the communities that could benefit from their innovations.This paper attempts to evaluate sustainability and scalability for PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action), an Indian Social Enterprise (SE) using the Case Study approach.Though, PRADAN is found to be positive on most of the indicators on sustainability and scalability; it is also highlighted that there is no “perfect” way to scale- up any business and therefore, it requires a more comprehensive understanding of the ecosystem in which the venture operates.The findings help in understanding the intricate path of sustainability and growth for a social enterprise.

Catch-22: Token Women Trying to Reconcile Impossible Contradictions between Organisational and Societal Expectations

Extending tokenism theory, and Kanter’s work on numerical representation within organisations, we emphasise the societal context of gender inequality in order to understand token women’s lived experiences at work. Based on analysis of 29 in-depth interviews in a multinational (MNC) situated in the distinctive socio-institutional setting of Saudi Arabia, the article expands Kanter’s typology of roles, to capture token assimilation in a context-embedded way. In particular, we explore the interaction of a seemingly Western MNC espousing liberal values, rules and norms with the enduring patriarchal and traditional context of Saudi Arabia. Further adding texture to Kanter’s theory, this study reveals that the organisational context cannot be seen as fundamentally neutral and inevitably interacts with the societal context, resulting in unique manifestations of tokenism.

Inverted Hierarchies on the Shop Floor: The Organisational Layer of Workarounds for Collaboration in the Metal Industry

Workarounds, or practices that deviate from the official pathway to a target, are frequent phenomena in the organisational context. With respect to collaboration, they highlight an area of mismatch between normative versus lived work practices, and therefore depict a relevant research area deeply rooted in computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Building on the theory of hierarchical opposition by Louis Dumont and empirical data collected through ethnographic research at a company classified as a small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) in the German metal industry, this paper addresses the emergence of workarounds in collaborative work processes by setting them into the wider organisational context. The organisational layer of analysis reveals that workarounds emerge to cater for inversed information power relations and information asymmetries in the shop floor setting, which require communication to flow against the hierarchical slope between planning and execution functions. By applying an organisational lens to the concept of workarounds, this paper contributes a novel empirical analysis that confirms the value of workarounds as a source of insight into collaborative practices.

Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of Their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust

<p>Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years independently asked how so many ordinary Germans (most of whom in the 1930s had been moderately anti-Semitic) could become by the early 1940s willing murderers of Jews. Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had years before been interested in finding answers to similar questions, and to that end in the early 1960s carried out his widely debated "Obedience to Authority" (OTA) experiments at Yale University. Drawing on previously unpublished material from Milgram's personal archive at Yale, this thesis investigates how Milgram developed his research idea to the point where, by the time he ran his first official experiment, he was able to convert the majority of his ordinary subjects into torturers of other people. It is argued that Milgram's experiments were in themselves structured as a bureaucratic microcosm, and say less about obedience to authority, per se, than about the ways in which people in an organisational context resolve a pressing moral dilemma. The thesis uses insights gained from Milgram's experimental innovations to assist in answering the question posed by Bauer and by Browning, focusing on the Nazis' progressive development of mass killing methods, from 1941 to 1944, during Operation Barbarossa and Operation Reinhard. It is shown how these methods were designed to diminish perpetrators' perceptual stimulation, in order to make the "undoable" increasingly "doable", in ways that were later reflected in Milgram's development of his own experimental methodology.</p>

Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of Their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust

<p>Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years independently asked how so many ordinary Germans (most of whom in the 1930s had been moderately anti-Semitic) could become by the early 1940s willing murderers of Jews. Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had years before been interested in finding answers to similar questions, and to that end in the early 1960s carried out his widely debated "Obedience to Authority" (OTA) experiments at Yale University. Drawing on previously unpublished material from Milgram's personal archive at Yale, this thesis investigates how Milgram developed his research idea to the point where, by the time he ran his first official experiment, he was able to convert the majority of his ordinary subjects into torturers of other people. It is argued that Milgram's experiments were in themselves structured as a bureaucratic microcosm, and say less about obedience to authority, per se, than about the ways in which people in an organisational context resolve a pressing moral dilemma. The thesis uses insights gained from Milgram's experimental innovations to assist in answering the question posed by Bauer and by Browning, focusing on the Nazis' progressive development of mass killing methods, from 1941 to 1944, during Operation Barbarossa and Operation Reinhard. It is shown how these methods were designed to diminish perpetrators' perceptual stimulation, in order to make the "undoable" increasingly "doable", in ways that were later reflected in Milgram's development of his own experimental methodology.</p>

Complexity and Knowledge in Organisational Context: Concepts, Approaches, Boundaries and Relations

The study sought to understand the relationship among organisations, knowledge and complexity so that managers could develop more effective strategies when working with organisational knowledge and complexity. The theoretical framework of the theme was elaborated from Web of Science and then an analysis of identified approximations, relations and boundaries was carried out. Aiming at greater consistency regarding the approximations and boundaries among the studied themes, we sought complex organisations that contemplated knowledge as a resource. The initial search retrieved 95 articles, and after content analysis was performed, we identified 25 articles considering complex organisations as social organisms and knowledge as a resource. In this sense, difficulties were observed regarding the definition of the concept of complex organisation, as well as regarding the understanding of knowledge as a resource. After the analysis of the 25 articles, eight pointed to some characteristic of complex organisations, and this corpus does now allow to relate and identify the impact of knowledge on complexity, or complexity on knowledge. From these considerations, we discuss ways to manage complexity and knowledge as elements inserted in the organisational context.

Labour Controls, Unfreedom and Perpetuation of Slavery on a Tea Plantation

This article examines labour controls in traditional tea plantations in Bangladesh. This study finds how social and economic exclusion through discriminatory labour laws and labour–manager relations rooted in the ‘coolie’ system have built a captive workforce separated from the mainstream workforce. This ultimately produces and reproduces slavery–laden labour controls. An opaque but punitive incentive system, sunset-sunrise working hours, maximum engagement, and the restrictions of promotion to managerial posts are constant reminders of the historically rooted indentured labour system. This article contributes to understanding modern slavery in an organisational context and the obstacles that prevent ‘free’ labourers from walking away from exploitative conditions. Organisational sites such as tea plantations present clear examples of how specific types of labour control restrict freedom of choice and produce ‘willing slaves’.