Browsing Working Papers (ICM/IKL) by Year Published
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Participation and Distribution Decisions in Japan's Industrial Relations System after World War II - Evidence of Conversion and Workplace EvangelizationTackney, Charles T. (, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In this paper, and even more in presentation, I will be going out rather far out on the limb of my training in industrial relations. Such is, perhaps, the intent of the collaborative process envisioned by Lonergan, no less than the theme of this conference. It will be evident from my referencing specializations far from my field, along with the shaky tone of voice, that the limb is beginning to bend and, perhaps, may be about to give way. If the participants could offer a turning word that will aid this investigation, I would be grateful. This paper takes the form of an extended essay. We begin with a very simple and specific policy proposal for the current U.S. economic crisis, which I offer from my studies in industrial relations. Thereafter, as the section headings suggest, we will venture far afield. The distance travelled is necessary due to the topic, the nations, and the cultures involved. My aim is, first, to shed light upon one particular set of decisions taken in Japan, in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War, and how these effected industrial relations developments thereafter. Second, and on a different level of analysis, I will present evidence that singular collaboration took place in Japanese history, at a specific point in time, that certainly appears to anticipate the notion of cosmopolis as Lonergan describes this utopian scheme. Third, I will end with brief points of possible further interest to Lonergan scholars. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7919 Files in this item: 1
wp 2009-2.pdf (316.4Kb) -
Lange, Dr. Bastian (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The paper aims at discussing the issue of governance in respect to creative scenes, a central structural element of the creative economy, exemplifying the case of Berlin. Berlin has a fast growing creative industry that has become the object of the city’s development policies and place marketing. The core question is: What are the spatial-organizational driving forces of creativity in Berlin - can they be steered by public administration? I am using Berlin as a reference case to articulate the gap between ‘state-led planning’ on the one hand and the organisational practices of self-governed creative scenes on the other. I attempt to demonstrate why a perspective change in terms of re-scaling is necessary, in order to respond to the particular practices of emerging industries and their societal form “scenes”. By re-scaling I mean the conceptualization of governance in different non-hierarchical organisational as well as spatial scales, based on the observation that scenes are considered to be a central element of the functionality of creative industries. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7981 Files in this item: 1
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A critical management studies comparative assessment based on Japanese industrial relations researchTackney, Charles T. (, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: At the core of the present global crisis lies an ideological oversight that indicates standard business models are subject to fail due to moral hazard: managerial prerogative, particularly the U.S. variant, is not self-regulating in respect to either corporate risk or the stewardship of stakeholder trust. We know there is variance in national political economies, but less is known about legal factors informing firm-specific variance, especially as these regards trust and transparency. This paper reports research seeking to bridge this ‘gap’ by the introduction of comparative legal ecology employment models of the enterprise. The construct is derived from reflection upon industrial relations research into the existence and nature of Japan’s ‘lifetime employment system’. Construct parameters include employment security, labor unions and the degree of employee participation permitted (if any); model schematics are offered for the United States of America, Germany, Japan, Denmark, and the People’s Republic of China. The comparative models help to account for variance in the legal extent and nature of managerial prerogative, job security, and the degree of information, power, and resource transparency of any enterprise. These offer, in consequence, clear and clearly comparative benchmarks of industrial democracy. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7918 Files in this item: 1
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Leander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This entry gives an overview of the debate about private security. It can not pretend to cover everything in equal detail. It is geared to highlight the parts of the discussion about commercial security practices that are of most immediate interest to New Security Studies. Very succinctly put, the entry shows the pertinence of the emerging research agenda where commercial security practices are part of a broader analysis of evolving insecurities, of (in)security spaces and of everyday practices, insisting on the scope for further developments with regard to these issues (section 2). The entry also suggests that the although the more conventional literature on the subject—mostly framed in terms of privatization—has made valuable contributions to the debates about commercial security, it has limited analytical clout for analyzing the politics of commercial security. Worse it sometimes obscures it (section 1). It is therefore not surprising that commercialization is currently tending to replace privatization as the vantage point from which analysis is taking place. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7963 Files in this item: 1
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A Reflection on Historical Sociology and IRLeander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In 2004 I published an argument to the effect that “taking Tilly seriously” could help International Relations (IR) scholars understand some of the processes and mechanisms involved in state-building (Leander, 2004: the chapter is pasted in at the end of this statement). This short statement is a reflection on why, if I were to write that piece today, it would be written differently. I would still argue that we should all engage the Historical Sociology of State-Building (HSS) in a serious way (go beyond the folklore as I termed it in 2004) but my inclination today would be to be far more explicit about to the pitfalls of not going beyond the folklore as well as about the importance of studies of practices (in anthropology, ethnography, geography, regional/area studies or even IR, sic!) in signposting these pitfalls. This change in tone has less to do with any particular idea or argument in historical sociology, and even less with the work of any particular historical sociologist (seen the focus of this workshop Tilly will figure as the recurring reference point) than it does with the way the HSS is read, feeds into and shapes IR discussions (section 1). The way HSS has been integrated into IR has led scholars deeper into the pitfalls which hamper their understanding of contemporary state-building. More specifically it has perpetuated a misconstrued understanding of the inside/outside, it has obscured the nature and role of the private/public, and that it has devalued contextually specific articulations of politics and governance (sections 2-4). This “misunderstanding” is not only a scholastic matter as it translates into policies that are ineffective, inadequate not to say positively harmful (section 5). As the statement concludes, the implication is that IR scholars who decide to walk the terrain chartered by HSS would do well to observe the warning signposts set up by observers of political practices around these pitfalls. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7968 Files in this item: 1
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Thoughts from DenmarkBlasco, Maribel; Tackney, Charles T. (, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Denmark is among the world’s most competitive nations. At the same time it has a strong tradition of citizenship‐oriented tertiary education. Nevertheless, we are currently witnessing the erosion of this tradition, arguably as a result of neoliberal ideologies ushered in by globalization and internationalization processes. These processes have stirred domestic fears, evident in government reports, about the need to improve Danish higher education to ‘meet the challenges of globalisation’. Concrete instances of possible erosion include recent directives to examine and grade group work on an individual basis, the abolition of the ‘13’ grade for individual or group performance, and the introduction of measurable skills via “learning objectives,” for all tertiary education courses. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7921 Files in this item: 1
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Leander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The integration of private international security into Security Studies reflects the relatively recent nature of the market. The literature on the topic revolves around the basics of placing private international security on the agenda (1a); explaining and understanding the market (1b) and problematizing its relationship to central questions in international security (1c). The current trend in the field is to face the—still largely open—challenge of taking research further, both by completing, refining and updating current research efforts (2a) and by expanding and enriching the research agenda to more fully explore the politics of market development (2b). Paradoxically, as this entry concludes, this is leading scholars to abandon the focus on “privatization” and instead pushing them to formulate research agenda in new terms such as commercialization, commodification, governance or governmentality. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7967 Files in this item: 1
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Leander, Anna (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper analyses one influential Hollywood documentary, Edward Zwick’s movie Blood Diamond as if it were an advertising campaign. Drawing on a business school textbook: Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising, it poses the kinds of question an advertiser would: namely how the brand image is established, how it is made superior to other images and how good it is at capturing would-be-consumers. The paper suggests that Blood Diamond fares well on all three accounts and it traces why this is so. Specifically, it emphasizes the extent to which the film has contributed to establish and solidify the link between blood and diamonds in a process of "cultural cannibalism”. Second, it underlines role of "Hollywood authenticity” in establishing its very particular picture of politics as superior to alternatives. This certainly is more an unintended "collateral damage” than a part the producers’/directors’ intention. Finally, the last section suggests that Blood Diamond effectively captures the spectator by the reassuring, but illusive, plurality of images and by its visual fetichism. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7031 Files in this item: 1
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Leander, Anna (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper explains, or perhaps better rationalizes, why I have ended up thinking that so called "practice” theory provides the most adequate entry point for theorizing about business in/and global governance.1 But more than this the key ambition is to spell out what it means to work with practice theory and what kind of leverage it gives for understanding the role of business in global governance. The paper therefore begins by an account of two major difficulties thinking in terms of practices are useful for circumventing. The general thrust of that section is to underline why it may be useful to think in terms of practices in the first place rather than sticking with some of its admittedly more parsimonious and less labor intense alternatives. The rest of the paper then tries to outline what it means (in my view) to work with practices. The second section focuses on how we know whose/what practices matter. It emphasizes the importance of allowing for contextual differentiation when mapping activities and their hierarchies. It also underscores the significance of remaining open about who and what is important. It points to the centrality of different forms of capital (economic, social, cultural and symbolic) in defining whose activities matter. But even more strongly it links up with actor-network-theory’s insight that also objects and technologies "act” in social relations. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7024 Files in this item: 1
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Tackney, Charles T.; Sato, Toyoko; Strömgren, Ole (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper was composed in the fall of 2007. It was then presented on 17 November 2007 at the Matchpoints Conference at the University of Århus, a conference jointly sponsored by the Irish Embassy to Denmark and the University of Århus. We subsequently presented the paper to an internal IKL session of colleagues involved in educational research (dubbed, the "Educational Irregulars’) and then offered the paper to an internal seminar of the Asian Research Center. Throughout this process, Maribel Blasco has been particularly helpful as a colleague with knowledge and interest in the role, nature, and politics of tertiary education. We learned through this process that our Working Paper is at least four separate research journal pieces – in potential. Thus, we file this as a record of a work in progress and as a follow up to the previously filed Working Paper we now refer to as the "EU-ROPE 1” paper – our first venture into exploring the educational character and implications of the CBS SPRØK undergraduate educational model. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6939 Files in this item: 1
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Tackney, Charles T. (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This Working Paper for the Department of Intercultural Communications and Management (IKL) of Copenhagen Business School is being filed to record a path that combines educational concerns related to the European Undergraduate – Research Oriented Participatory Educational model of Copenhagen Business School with comparative industrial relations research stream concerned with labor law and contemporary enterprise ecology studies of employee participation in management prerogative. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7003 Files in this item: 1
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Lund-Thomsen, Peter (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
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Leander, Anna (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: As the scale and scope private military and security companies (PMSCs) are rapidly expanding internationally, the question of their regulation is evermore pressing. Although credible exact figures on the activities of the companies are not available, there is ample indication that the companies play a central role around the world. In Iraq, a Department of Defense survey estimates that there are some 180.000 contractors compared to 160.000 U.S. troops (Singer, 2007: 2). In Nigeria some 1000 registered security companies constitute the second economic sector in the economy after oil (Abrahamsen and Williams, 2006a). Moreover, the scope of PMSC activity is steadily expanding. The trend to privatize and outsource a growing range of activities places PMSCs in charge of an ever growing range of formerly military or policing tasks. The predictable consequence is that PMSCs are increasingly visible and controversial. Incidences such as that in the Nisour square Baghdad where Blackwater contractors were involved in an incident leaving 17 dead civilians on 16th of September 2007 focus attention around the regulatory context of PMSC work. This presentation discusses one aspect of that regulatory context, namely the existing international regulation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6992 Files in this item: 1
wp 2007-4.pdf (130.3Kb) -
The Power of the Private Security BusinessLeander, Anna (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6948 Files in this item: 1
reconfiguring security praxis-wp88.pdf (113.1Kb) -
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Abstract: In security, as in other areas, the emergence of transnational private organizations with a central role in governance poses profound challenges to established conceptions of international politics and democracy. This paper discusses one side of this challenge by looking at accountability of private security companies (PSCs). PSCs have become authorities in their own right in the security sphere. This has raised the question of their accountability and also resulted in considerable efforts to improve the accountability of the firms. This paper looks at why these efforts bear so little fruit. It begins by pointing to the tension involved in any effort to hold an authority (private or public) accountable, namely the tension between the centrality of acceptance for authority and accountability measures that necessarily involve contestation. It then proceeds to analyse this tension in the case of PSCs. The paper argues that PSCs’ status as experts on risk and entrepreneurs of security mobilizes a favourable bias, making contestation less likely. The difficulty of seeing and/or admitting that PSCs are independent actors in turn makes contestation of their activities seem ill-directed and unnecessary. The point made in this paper that this, rather than sheer complexity or hidden political agendas, is key for understanding the present rather puzzling lack of (democratic) accountability of PSCs and its likely continuation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6985 Files in this item: 1
leander_isa07_woc-wp89.pdf (174.0Kb) -
Leander, Anna (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: On September 16 2007 the employees of the U.S. security firm Blackwater became involved in a shooting incidence in the Nisour Square in Baghdad. They were escorting a U.S. State Department delegation, which according to the firm, came under attack. According to by-standers, the Blackwater employees opened fire unprovoked, shooting in all directions and seemingly at anyone moving, including those trying to flee or help those wounded. 17 Iraqis civilians died in the incidence and at least twice as many were wounded. President Al-Maliki immediately came out to "revoke Blackwater’s license” for operating in Iraq and Iraqi authorities engaged the process of ending contractor impunity in their country. However, it soon became clear that there was no license to revoke and that the Iraqi government may not have the authority to deny Blackwater the right to operate in Iraq, let alone decide the fate of private contractors more generally. On their part, the U.S. authorities promised to open their own investigation and expressed regret at the civilian casualties but did not end their contracts with Blackwater in Iraq or elsewhere. The incapacity of the Iraqi government to impose its authority and right to control the use of force on its territory, to hold Blackwater and/or its employees accountable for the incidence, made Jeremy Scahill conclude that: "nothing gives a more clear indication to the Iraqis that they don’t have a sovereign government” (2007). Scahill is right in pointing to the limitations of the Iraqi government’s role as the ultimate authority deciding on laws on Iraqi territory. However, it does not follow that the Mansour incidence is illustrative of the extent to which the private markets for force have undermined sovereignty generally. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7033 Files in this item: 1
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Sensegiving and wind power developmentRisberg, Annette; Corvellec, Herve (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This article intends to contribute to the conceptualising of organisational sensegiving. Based upon a qualitative analysis of how Swedish wind farm developers manage the permit application process for their projects, we describe in a first order analysis how they contextualise and ontologise their projects and defend them against criticisms. To emphasise the precarious conditions of agency that govern the activity of sensegivers, we introduce in a second order analysis the notion of mise-en-sens, a neologism that borrows both from the performing sens art notion of mise-en-scene and the fact that ‘sens’ can in French mean both meaning and direction. Mise-en-sens underscores that stage-setting and direction providing are key activities of wind farm developers. In our concluding remarks we even suggest that mise-en-sens could serve to describe the activity of others involved in sensegiving, for example project managers or entrepreneurs. Keywords: Mise-en-sens, sensegiving, wind power, infrastructure development URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7030 Files in this item: 1
mis en sens gri rapport.pdf (287.0Kb) -
Leander, Anna (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper focuses on the way PMCs shape security policies and more generally political priorities. Linking up with classical thinking about "civil-military relations", it suggests that preoccupation with security professionals’ role in shaping politics is as important when these professionals are privately organised in PMCs as it is when they are enrolled in public armed forces. The paper shows that existing regulation has not been adjusted to account for this fact and that the significance of regulating PMCs’ role in shaping politics is profoundly underestimated. It therefore argues that putting the issue of regulating "civil-PMCs relations" on the agenda is essential. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7019 Files in this item: 1
pmc_regulation_working_paper-2.pdf (238.0Kb) -
The Case of the 1998 UAW Strikes against General MotorsTackney, Charles T. (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In 1998, a late July settlement of the Flint, Michigan United Auto Workers strikes at General Motors narrowly averted or postponed a labor-management confrontation fully capable of precipitating an economic meltdown with far reaching consequences for our increasingly global economy. This paper uses a comparative legal ecology model of the modern enterprise to gain theoretical and empirical insight into the economic and societal costs of combining Japanese manufacturing techniques with managerial prerogative pursued "the American way." I begin by introducing the comparative legal ecology of the workplace as a theoretical concept to compare and contrast national differences in the modern industrial enterprise. This provides a standard to evaluate the extent to which General Motors had appropriately adapted the Japanese modes of social relations within the firm. The events associated with the Flint strikes evidence the cost of this oversight. The paper concludes by discussing the need to appropriately emulate Japanese modes of social relation when firms seek to successfully adapt their modes of production. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6988 Files in this item: 1
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The Case of Amnesty InternationalVestergaard, Anne (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The development of corporate communication in recent years has brought about a fading of the division of labor between commercial and non-commercial organizations. While the practices of commercial organizations are becoming increasingly ethicalized, so the practices of non-profit organizations are becoming increasingly commercialized. This paper explores the use of media discourse for the communication of ethical messages by humanitarian organizations, caught, as they are, in a tension between, on the one hand, the commercial strategies of visibility and still greater dependence on the media, and, on the other hand, the public’s skepticism toward mediated morality and what is commonly referred to as compassion fatigue. The issue is investigated through an analysis of a TV spot produced by the Danish section of Amnesty International in 2004. This spot is taken as an example of how the organization’s branding strategies testify to a high degree of reflexivity about the conditions of what Luc Boltanski calls a Crisis of Pity. The analysis illustrates how, in the face of compassion fatigue, the organization manages to carve out a new space for itself in the marketized ethical discourse, and leads to a discussion of the consequences of such rebranding for the construction of morality by the organization. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6965 Files in this item: 1