Economic Development in the Shadow of the Consensus: A Strategic Decision-Making Approach

Review of Social Economy

Sugden

2009

The paper introduces mental proximity as an ideal-type criterion for assessing the organization of production, and positions it as a benchmark alongside markets and hierarchies in a three dimensional space. Following a Deweyan approach, the criterion is focused on democratic deliberation espoused by necessary values: the rejection of controlling influences; positive freedom; inclusion on equal terms; informed participation; the desire to reach a consensus; sympathy; mutual respect; reciprocity; continuous learning. We also identify a community network as a complex of people who seek to relate to each other in accord with mental proximity, and discuss influences on their search. JEL CLASSIFICATION D20, L10, L23, R30

mentioning

confidence: 67%

The Organization of Production and its Publics: Mental Proximity, Market and Hierarchies

Review of Social Economy

Sugden

2009

“…Systemically, exclusion contributes to accentuate the incoherence between community needs and production system, furthering the distance between production choices and community development objectives (Sugden and Wilson, 2002;Mori, 2014).…”

Section: Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Social Enterprises are Asking to Be Multi-Stakeholder and Deliberative: An Explanation Around the Costs of Exclusion

Borzaga

2015

SSRN Journal

The study of multi-stakeholdership (and multi-stakeholder social enterprises in particular) is only at the start. Entrepreneurial choices which have emerged spontaneously, as well as the first legal frameworks approved in this direction, lack an adequate theoretical support. The debate itself is underdeveloped, as the existing understanding of organisations and their aims resist an inclusive, public interest view of enterprise. Our contribution aims at enriching the thin theoretical reflections on multi-stakeholdership, in a context where they are already established, i.e. that of social and personal services.The aim is to provide an economic justification on why the governance structure and decisionmaking praxis of the firm needs to account for multiple stakeholders. In particular with our analysis we want: a) to consider production and the role of firms in the context of the "public interest" which may or may not coincide with the non-profit objective; b) to ground the explanation of firm governance and processes upon the nature of production and the interconnections between demand and supply side; c) to explain that the costs associated with multi-stakeholder governance and deliberation in decision-making can increase internal efficiency and be "productive" since they lower internal costs and utilise resources that otherwise would go astray.The key insight of this work is that, differently from major interpretations, property costs should be compared with a more comprehensive range of costs, such as the social costs that emerge when the supply of social and personal services is insufficient or when the identification of aims and means is not shared amongst stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs derived from exclusion are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multistakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives.

“…This particular critique of globalization shares a concern for the fact that production choices have become increasingly a prerogative of restricted elites, mostly sitting in large transnational corporations. Authors have argued that the current situation compromises the principles of self-determination of communities and democracy, whilst perpetuating uneven development and strategic failure (Hymer 1972;Cowling and Sugden 1998a;Cowling and Tomlinson, 2000;Sacchetti, 2004;Sugden and Wilson, 2002).…”

Section: Corporate Hierarchy and Strategic Failure: Widening The Consmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inclusive and Exclusive Social Preferences: A Deweyan Framework to Explain Governance Heterogeneity

2013

J Bus Ethics

We suggest that the pragmatist theory of public interest has implications for the contraposition between self-regarding and other-regarding preferences in economics. We reconsider this distinction and replace some of the existing categories with the idea of inclusive and exclusive social preferences over both organizational and strategic decision-making domains. The value is in the idea of both exclusive and inclusive preferences being social in nature and in the application both to the internal organization and its impacts on people outside. Our framework explains governance heterogeneity by contrasting exclusive and inclusive social preferences in cooperatives, social enterprises, as well as traditional corporations. A discussion of the evolution of social preferences is addressed through examples and regional experiences. We argue that the social preferences perspective contributes to understand the cause of strategic failure in the development of localities and regions.JEL: B00, L2, L3