Call for Papers - Economic Studies of Organizations

The broad field of organizational studies brings together different types of organizational analysis. One of these types, anchored in the developments of organizational economics, enjoys a national and international audience for its emphasis on the structuring and functioning of organizations, especially those involved in competitive relationships. It could even be said that this analysis occupies the central position as mainstream in organizational economics studies. However, the relationship between "economics" and "organizations" is much broader than the most frequent theories and their guiding questions, such as, following Barney & Hesterly (1996), transaction cost theory (why do organizations exist?), agency theory (how should organizations be managed?), strategic management theory (why do some organizations outperform others?), and organizational cooperation theory (how can organizations cooperate?). In the background, one often finds a kind of (ontological) admission of the legal nature of organizations (cf. Lawson, 2019, pp. 85-124) and performative operationalization as scientific criteria, as alluded to in the guiding questions above.

Directly or indirectly, such theories have ancestry to the so-called neoclassical school which has historically received considerable scrutiny regarding its fundamental limitations, to name a few, in terms of the unrealism of its core models, the lack of recognition of social contradictions, the taxes paid for its adherence to positivism/neopositivism, and capitulation to economic interests. This scrutiny has come from different sources over at least the last hundred years, and we can briefly indicate some of them.
Criticism of political economy (in the general figure of a so-called "Marxist economics") has never ceased to insist on the contradictions and class relations of the process of capital accumulation as the basic axis of the analysis of enterprises and the state. From this, we can delimit a political economy of organizations interested in this type of analysis and its unfoldings (Clegg & Dunkerley, 1980, Türk, 1999, Marens, 2009, Vidal, Adler & Delbridge, 2015, Guedes & Paço Cunha, 2021), including organizational analysis from the observation of the structural links between organizations, economy and politics in the figures of political administration (Cristaldo, 2021) and the political economy of power (Faria, 2017).

Institutional economics, at least since Veblen and Commons, had part of its historical start in the critique of the unrealism of the neoclassical school, whose static models were unable to reflect economic dynamics or the regulatory role of institutions. This opened a vein of development to institutionalism in different ramifications and with wide repercussions in organizational studies (Tolbert & Zucker, 1996, Machado-da-Silva & Gonçalves, 1999, Scott, 2014, Rossoni, 2016).

Economic sociology, not without connections with previous trends, has promoted a certain widening of mainstream economics by "applying sociological reference schemes, variables and explanatory models to the complex of activities involved in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of scarce products and services" (Smelser & Swedberg, 2005, p. 3). The recognized limitations of the result-maximizing agent that permeates the neoclassical school found in economic sociology the attention on other modes of rationality that matrix social life and therefore permeate the dynamics of organizations. This economic sociology has also obtained considerable profusion in the country (Moreira & Goia, 2017, Santos, Serafim & Pinheiro, 2020).

These indications are only summary and do not exhaust other sources of criticism or comprehensively discuss their subsequent developments. But they all point to at least two fundamental issues. The first, already alluded to, is that the neoclassical school is considerably narrow for the scientific ambitions that lie in the relationship between "economics" and "organizations." So too are those theories in the field of organization economics whose ancestry goes back to the neoclassical school. The second fundamental issue is the recognition of the economic factor as a kind of rational explanatory basis for the organizational phenomenon. This recognition is not a privilege of Marxist economics, permeating, in one way or another, the other alluded tendencies. And this is aggravated by today's conditions of recurring economic crises that are at the core of the current societal inflexions that foment social inequalities and, simultaneously, reactionary ideologies, in addition to the climatic threats arising from the current global productive pattern, generically called capitalism, without a worthy adversary until now.

The purpose of the present special call is precisely to promote other types of organizational analysis that, equally grounded on economic and macro-generational basis, establish reflexive-critical parameters of organizations and of the most visited theories in the field, fostering different economic studies of organizations. Therefore, the present call has as thematic lines the theoretical-empirical approaches and their debates:

- Political economy of organizations
- Institutional economics
- Economic sociology
- Debates within and between such theoretical-empirical approaches
- Critical evaluation of hegemonic theories of neoclassical rise

Each of these lines can be broken down into different specific themes. Preferably, theoretical works that deepen the approaches, their problems, and critical debates between such approaches are welcome. Empirical works are also recommended as long as they serve to problematize such approaches and not only their conceptual operationalization.

References

Barney, Jay B. & Hesterly, William (1996). Organizational economics: Understanding the relationship between organizations and economic analysis. In Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, & Nord, Walter R. (Eds.). The SAGE handbook of organization studies (pp. 111-148). London: SAGE.

Clegg, Stewart & Dunkerley, David (1980). Organization, class and control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Cristaldo, Rômulo C. (2021). Gestão do desenvolvimento e administração política. Revista Internacional de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales, 17(1), 143-157.

Faria, José H. (2017). Poder, controle e gestão. Curitiba: Juruá.

Lawson, Tony (2019). The nature of social reality: issues in social ontology. Routledge: New York.

Machado-da-Silva, Clóvis & Gonçalves, Sandro A. (1999). Nota técnica: a teoria institucional. In Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, & Nord, Walter R. (Orgs.). Handbook de estudos organizacionais (pp. 218-225). São Paulo: Atlas.

Marens, Richard (2009). It's not just for communists any more: marxian political economy and organizational theory. In Paul Adler (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of sociology and organization studies (pp. 92-117). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Moreira, Gustavo H., & Goia, Marisol R. (2017). A nova sociologia econômica em pesquisas de administração no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisas de Marketing, Opinião e Mídia, 10(3), 375-388.

Guedes, Leandro T. & Paço Cunha, Elcemir (2021). Financiamento do capital fixo (1970-2012): dissolvendo o paradoxo aparente entre financeirização e autofinanciamento em contexto de queda da taxa de lucro. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Organizacionais, 8(1), 16-54.

Rossoni, Luciano (2016). O que é legitimidade organizacional? Organizações & Sociedade, 23(76), 110-129.

Santos, Laís S., Serafim, Maurício C., & Pinheiro, Daniel M. (2020). Desafios à compreensão do comércio justo como modelo econômico viável: um olhar a partir da sociologia econômica para os estudos organizacionais. Reuna, 25(1), 73-89.

Scott, W. Richard (2014). Institutions and organizations: ideias, interests, and identities (4th ed). London: Sage.

Smelser, Neil J. & Swedberg, Richard (2005). Introducing economic sociology. In Neil J. Smelser & Neil Swedberg (Eds.). The handbook of economic sociology (2nd ed.) (pp. 3-25). New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Tolbert, Pamela S. & Zucker, Lynne G. (1996) The Institutionalization of institutional theory. In Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, & Nord, Walter R. (Eds.). The SAGE handbook of organization studies (pp. 175-190). London: SAGE.

Türk, Klaus (1999). The critique of the political economy of organization. International Journal of Political Economy, 29(3), 6-32.

Vidal, Matt, Adler, Paul, & Delbridge, Rick (2015). When organization studies turns to societal problems: the contribution of marxist grand theory. Organization Studies, 36(4), 405-422.

Modalities of Contribution

Farol – Journal of Organization Studies and Society accepts contributions in the form of Covers, Articles, Essays, Debates, Provocations, Interviews, Testimonials, Reviews (of books, films, exhibitions, artistic performances), Photographic and Video records. The languages accepted in the contributions are Portuguese, English and Spanish, as long as they are in accordance with the editorial policy and guidelines for authors. To access the general guidelines, go to: https://revistas.face.ufmg.br/index.php/farol/about/submissions.

Submission

Whatever the type of contribution (Covers, Articles, Essays, Debates, Provocations, Interviews, Testimonials, Reviews, Photographs or Videos), authors should inform the editor, in the item "Comments to editor", that they are submitting specifically for the thematic dossier "Economic Studies of Organizations". To submit contributions, go to: https://revistas.face.ufmg.br/index.php/farol/index.

Deadline

The deadline for contributions to the "Economic Studies of Organizations" thematic issue is December 5, 2022 (Monday).

Further Information

If you have any questions about this special issue, please contact the special editors: Rômulo Carvalho Cristaldo (romulocristaldo@gmail.com) or Elcemir Paço Cunha (paco.cunha@facc.ufjf.br). If you have any questions about the journal itself, please contact the editorial office (farol@face.ufmg.br).