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- Artificial Intelligence, Wicked Problem, Relational Economics, Systems Theory, AI Adoption, Shared Value Creation, Relational AI Governance, Collaborative AI Governance (1)
- Economics, institutional theory, governance, governance ethics, attention based view, climate change, global warming, banking sector, corporate strategies, corporate responsibility, transition, low-carbon economy, moral imperative (1)
- Ghana, economy, economic development, governance, institutional structures, small scale mining industry, mineral resource exploration, social conflict, conflict prevention, exploitation, human rights, child labor (1)
- Relational economics, organizational learning, relational learning, transcultural learning, organizational theory, corporate governance, methodological relationism, communities of practice, case study, organizational network, cooperation (1)
- moral compromises, gender differences, women in leadership, gender diversity in business organizations, job interest, artificial intelligence, human resource management (1)
- moralische Kompromisse, geschlechtsabhängige Unterschiede, Frauen in Führung, Gender Diversity in Wirtschaftsorganisationen, Jobinteresse, künstliche Intelligenz, Personalmanagement (1)
This study was designed to answer the question of whether resource performance depends more on good governance or rather on effective institutional structures. The specific aim is to make clear the extent to which good governance and institutions promote small scale gold mining businesses, to explain empirically the nature of human rights challenges in the small-scale mining (SSM) industry from the perspective of mining mangers, to investigate the nature, determinants, and frequency of conflicts associated with SSM, and to discuss the challenges facing SSM operations and ways to confront them. The findings show that, in the context of efforts to spur economic development, the exploitation of mineral resources has the potential to bring about far-reaching environmental and social changes. These changes can create opportunities, but they also represent a business risk for corporations and a social risk for communities. There is as a consequence a pressing need to investigate recent threats to mineral resource exploration relating to economic development, peace and stability, and the survival of private businesses. These threats are particularly serious for less-developed countries that are net exporters of natural resources. Such countries could use these resources to drive economic development and decrease their dependence on aid from developed countries. In most of them, however, owing to a lack of strong institutions, mismanagement of mineral and other natural resources has fueled social conflict without producing meaningful development.
In addition, there is often the perception in countries such as Ghana, which is the subject of this study, that mining, whatever its benefits, is responsible for significant environmental damage and for Human Rights Adverse Impacts (HRAI), including child labor and exploitation, displacement of rural households, and violence. For these reasons, investment in the mining sector and associated businesses has often faced stiff resistance. Given the right governmental institutions, small-scale gold mining and associated activities can prove beneficial to and be accepted by a society and can attract further investment; under the wrong circumstances, this type of mining can impact society negatively. At the very least, when SSM is poorly managed, the anticipated benefits to the business community and the broader society are unlikely to materialize. The evidence from large-scale mining, particularly in the wake of Ghana’s civil war, indicates a correlation between mineral resources and conflict. Less is known about the nature, frequency, and causes of conflicts that afflict households in Ghana’s artisanal mining communities. There is accordingly a need for research into ways to prevent human rights violations and to create share value in the SSM sector through social development and renewed incentives for investment in it.
This thesis represents an attempt to fill this need by exploring whether the capacity of resources—in this case, gold mining—to spur economic development—here, by creating competitive SSM businesses, improving livelihoods, or reducing poverty—depends on governance structures and whether there is a correlation between SSM and conflict outside the context of civil war.
This thesis is informed by three broad insights. The first concerns the challenges facing the SSM activities that play a vital role in the Ghanaian economy. Second, there is the importance of the role played by institutions in the development of SSM amid renewed attraction of investment in the sector. Third, changing social expectations are a crucial aspect sustainable mining and the protection of human rights.
While there is a great sense of urgency in the scientific community to act now in order to slow the imminent negative effects of global warming, most organizations continue to run their operations as though the external context has not changed significantly. For the banking sector, in particular not much research has been conducted in the area of their strategic engagement with climate change (CC), despite the fact that the engagement of this sector is crucial for the transition to a low-carbon economy. This is why this thesis focuses on the banking sector. Through an exploratory comparative case study of four banks, this thesis investigates mechanisms that have led to, or have been prevented from, the integration of climate change in the respective bank’s corporate strategies. In particular, it answers the following questions: How are banks interpreting climate change in their organizational context? To what degree does the initial individual interpretation influence the attentional distribution through structures and communication of the issue internally? Can this explain the variance in observed strategic choices? In order to answer those questions, a multi-level analysis was conducted using three different theoretical
perspectives: the macro, meso and micro.
1. The macro lens, grounded in institutional theory, is important in order to generate understanding about the perception of current institutional pressures possibly influencing corporate responses.
2. The meso lens, grounded in the Attention Based View of the Firm, serves to analyze how attention structures inside the banks influence the distribution of attention towards the topic and influence the degree of integrating climate change-related aspects across the organization.
3. The micro lens, based on the concept of moral intensity (Jones, 1991), serves as an alternative interpretation model to explore how managers make sense of climate change as individuals. Further, the concept of “issue selling” investigates what
language managers use to generate attention regarding climate change while using different attentional structures explored through the meso lens. The findings are based on four case studies of banks located in Europe, each of which show a different degree of climate change integration in their corporate strategy. The case studies drew upon field research including 23 semi-structured interviews with senior managers and members of the executive teams from those four banks, six interviews with
stakeholders and a comprehensive analysis of publicly available corporate documents, company-related media releases, videos and further interviews, but also confidential corporate material that was made available to me.
Through analysis of the data, the following findings can be made:
Most banks perceive climate change in terms of pressure: coercive pressure from clients, very limited pressure from regulators in the area of risk and as mimetic pressure to respond. Some banks, however, also perceive climate change to be a moral issue that demands their contribution to act. In those banks, climate change is regarded as a morally intense issue — this term being defined as a commonly accepted phenomenon with extreme consequences for the future of the society they are embedded in and that they serve. One bank mainly had a scientific view on climate change as a human-induced natural phenomenon. Depending on these first interpretations, the findings suggest that different languages are deployed to further distribute the issue across the organization. In the case of scientific and institutional interpretations, the main language used to sell the issue inside the organization and to justify its incorporation as part of strategy was economic. climate change was translated into financial risk, business opportunity or a potential for cost reduction. Banks that mainly interpreted climate change as a moral imperative to act, communicated this issue differently. They proffered moral arguments that were grounded in the organization’s mission to serve society and based their strategic engagement on this mission. Economic arguments were only deployed at the stage of operationalization of climate change. These different languages influenced the arenas where conversations linked to climate change took place and how widely attention was subsequently distributed across the organization. In the case of a scientific language, climate change was not incorporated into strategy and remained as a topic of general interest, managed by the corporate social responsibility (CSR) function. In the case of an economic language, climate change was strictly contained to a few of already existing governance channels and sometimes even ignored entirely. No further attention to the issue within the companies could be observed. Strategic engagement and change were strictly related to fields where economic impact could be generated at the lowest transaction cost possible. In the instances where moral language was used within governance channels, conversation yielded a different level of engagement. In these cases, governance structures provided a platform for generating a common and more holistic understanding of the phenomenon and its impacts. The attentional engagement with the complexity of the issue grew across the organization and led to creation of new governance communication channels to help address emerging issues. As a result, the strategic integration of climate change was more holistic and comprehensive. The thesis makes theoretical contributions to institutional theory, Attention Based View of the Firm, the issue selling literature and Governance Ethics. Its results also have important implications for practice.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden geschlechtsabhängige Unterschiede in der Wahrnehmung und Bewertung von moralischen Kompromissen im Wirtschaftskontext untersucht. Dabei wurde vor dem Hintergrund des weiblichen Führungskräftemangels in Deutschland das Ziel verfolgt, einen neuen, wissenschaftlich fundierten Erklärungsansatz dafür zu finden, warum Frauen in Deutschland seltener Karriere im Wirtschaftskontext machen und weniger Führungspositionen übernehmen, auch wenn sie die relevanten Voraussetzungen für entsprechenden Rollen erfüllen. Basierend auf bisherigen Forschungsarbeiten zu geschlechtsabhängigen Unterschieden im Umgang mit moralischen Kompromissen, wurde im Rahmen von drei Studien die These untersucht, dass sich Frauen deswegen seltener für Karrieremöglichkeiten im Wirtschaftskontext interessieren, weil sie dann antizipieren, mit moralischen Kompromissen konfrontiert zu sein und diese stärker ablehnen als Männer.
In Studien 1 und 2 konnte festgestellt werden, dass Frauen im Vergleich zu Männern signifikant größere Probleme mit Zugeständnissen bei moralischen Werten äußerten. Männer sahen hingegen einen höheren Geschäftssinn in moralischen Kompromissen, was durch die Identifikation mit agentischen Werten verstärkt wurde. Bei der Untersuchung der Annahme, dass genau diese geschlechtsabhängigen Unterschiede in der Wahrnehmung und Bewertung von moralischen Kompromissen ein geringeres Interesse von Frauen an Karrieremöglichkeiten im Wirtschaftskontext erklären würden, zeigte sich in Studie 3, dass sich Frauen und Männer in ihrem direkt geäußerten Interesse an Jobpositionen im Wirtschaftskontext nicht signifikant voneinander unterschieden. Es konnte allerdings festgestellt werden, dass insbesondere Frauen moralische Bedenken äußerten und im Vergleich zu Männern seltener davon ausgingen, in entsprechenden Positionen authentisch sein zu können als auch einen geringeren Perceived Person-Organization Fit sahen als Männer, was das Interesse an den beschriebenen Karrieremöglichkeiten indirekt minderte.
Die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Studie liefern damit in zweierlei Hinsicht einen praxis-relevanten und ergänzenden Beitrag zu bisherigen Forschungsarbeiten: Zum einen konnte gezeigt werden, dass Frauen im deutschen Kulturraum moralische Kompromisse im Wirtschaftskontext problematischer einschätzen als Männer und diesen geringeren Geschäftssinn zusprechen. Zum anderen kann angenommen werden, dass Frauen sich ebenso wie Männer zunehmend vorstellen können, im Wirtschaftskontext zu arbeiten, auch wenn potenziell moralische Kompromisse eingegangen werden müssen. Die dabei bestehenden Bedenken weisen allerdings darauf hin, dass Frauen größere Schwierigkeiten haben, sich in entsprechenden Jobs einzubringen und möglicherweise auch deswegen seltener im Wirtschaftskontext Karriere machen als Männer.
Basierend auf diesen Ergebnissen wird abschließend diskutiert, welche Stärken Frauen aufgrund ihrer moralischen Haltung im Zusammenhang mit Herausforderungen und Chancen der digitalen Transformation in Unternehmen einbringen können. Dabei wird mit dem Fokus auf den unterstützenden Einsatz von künstlicher Intelligenz bei Personalentscheidungen begründet, dass sich insbesondere Frauen aufgrund ihrer moralischen Haltung bei Entscheidungen im Unternehmenskontext eher an moralischen Werten orientieren, häufiger das Potenzial haben, einen ethischen Führungsstil anzuwenden, und somit einen gewissenhaften und effektiven Einsatz von algorithmischen Entscheidungssystemen begünstigen. Vor dem Hintergrund der Annahme, dass die Orientierung an moralischen Werten die Voraussetzung eines verantwortungsvollen Umgangs mit digitalen Innovationen und künstlicher Intelligenz ist, um sozio-ökonomischen erfolgreich zu sein, wird daher argumentiert, dass sich ein kritischer Anteil von Frauen auf allen Führungsebenen positiv auf zentrale wirtschaftliche Wettbewerbsfaktoren im Rahmen der digitalen Zukunft von Unternehmen auswirkt.
With pressure rising in the global economy for companies to adopt AI, responsible business conduct and the consideration of stakeholder interests become more challenging. Since scholars have repeatedly highlighted the gap for research on AI governance, this thesis presents a theoretical contribution to this young research field. Due to the recent emergence of the field, hardly any publications examine AI governance from a theoretical perspective. Therefore, the thesis initially examines the problem structure AI governance seeks to address, defining it as wicked, exceptionally complex, and characterised by high uncertainty levels. Based on this need-oriented analysis, it chooses the Relational Economics as a suitable approach to develop a theoretical AI governance model. Subsequently, it introduces and conceptualises AI within the Relational Economics in the form of an autopoietic system. Building on this first theoretical contribution, the thesis proceeds to specify the Relational Governance approach inherent to the theory for AI and to complement it with self-developed inductive categories, subsuming main research streams AI ethics literature. Lastly, it conducts a systematic literature review of advances in the field of AI governance, with particular regard to the private sector. As a result, the thesis provides a structured overview, within which it clusters its review’s findings, addressing their research focus and level of analysis. With this, it allows for the positioning of the presented theoretical contribution within the research field. The thesis closes with implications for both theory and practice and a discussion of its findings.
Organizational Learning: A Conceptualization in the Framework of the Relational Economics Theory
(2023)
In this research, a relational conceptualization of organizational learning (OL) is proposed. Following relational economics (Wieland 2020), this research conceptualizes the organization as a nexus of stakeholders' resources and interests. Stakeholders are either within or outside the institutional boundaries of the organization, which implies a view of the organization that goes beyond the intra-organizational context, coherent with an open systems view of the organization. Although the organization forms a nexus of stakeholders, it is an entity in its own right, i.e., it exists independently of individual stakeholders and is therefore ontologically real. Following the existing literature on the theory of the firm and institutional economics (e.g., the works of Commons, Coase, Williamson), transactions are considered as the unit of analysis in organization theory. Consequently, the organization as an entity is defined as a governance structure used by stakeholders to conduct transactions. Stakeholders contribute different rationalities that should be relationalized to carry out transactions. This view of the organization elucidates the ontological nature of organizations in this study and is the starting point for the conceptualization of OL as a relational process. In this framework, OL would be a process for the relationalization of rationalities for enabling the completion of multi-contextual transactions in the context of organizations intended as entities in their own right. Such a conceptualization would provide a new perspective on OL to existing theories. Indeed, much of the existing OL learning implicitly or explicitly relies on a neo-classical view of the organization and a focus on employees when conceptualizing OL (intra-organizational view of organizations and OL). Although the relevance of these theories to the field of OL, the emphasis on employees in OL models and elaborations has led to some epistemological and ontological problems in the OL literature, such as the OL paradox (can an organization actually learn? Is OL a mere metaphor?) and anthropomorphism (applying human characteristics such as the mind to inanimate entities such as organizations). This paper argues that a fundamental methodological change is required to conceptualize OL within the framework of relational economics: from methodological individualism to methodological relationism. By defining OL as a process focusing on individuals in the organization, existing OL literature can be placed within the meta construct of methodological individualism because the learning process focuses on the components of the organization. In methodological relationism, OL is defined as a micro-meso-relational process in which both the stakeholders (components of the organizational system) and the organization as an entity learn. The argument that the organization learns implies that the organization as an entity is capable of learning. This would then mean that OL is not a purely cognitive process, but a relational process which, in turn, would mean that learning could be conceptualized beyond human cognition.
