Engaging Ostrom: Why and How Organizational Theorists Should
Friday, Aug 1 2014
10:15AM - 12:15PM
Pennsylvania Convention Center in Room 122 A
PDW organizers:
Jan Lepoutre; ESSEC Business School;
Marc Ventresca; U. of Oxford;
Mike Valente; York U.;
Invited distinguished scholars:
Shaz Ansari; U. of Cambridge;
Frank Wijen; Erasmus U. Rotterdam;
Michael L. Barnett; Rutgers U.;
Desiree F. Pacheco; Portland State U.;
Barbara Gray; Pennsylvania State U.;
Jill M. Purdy; U. of Washington, Tacoma;
Aseem Prakash; U. of Washington;
Alfred Allen Marcus; U. of Minnesota;
Questions of collective action, sustainability, and the governance of common resources are prominently back on scholarly and policy agendas. These issues speak to core concerns of theories of organizations and institutions. Our proposal is that, despite many strengths, work in organization and management theory has struggled to incorporate questions of collective action and commons governance. This despite much useful work on areas as diverse organizational change, intra- and cross-sector collaboration, collective entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial initiative, studies of infrastructure and emerging markets, corporate and sector governance, and the broad set of vexed, lively issues in business and society. This PDW assembles leading scholars from several of these areas who share a common concern with the potential contributions of political scientist Elinor Ostrom and her work on the governance of common-pool resources for organization theory. The intent of the PDW is to bring the work of Ostrom and her colleagues into the current vocabulary of researchers concerned with organizations and institutions, in order to provide participants with research ideas, theoretical insights, publication strategies and potential research partners and further research on the governance of common-pool resources. To accomplish this, we propose an interaction- rich format that includes a panel with authors who have recently published Ostrom-inspired research, a sustained period of analytic problem-focused roundtable discussions, and a closing panel with distinguished scholars whose work intersects with core Ostrom themes.
Mike Valente
York University
Toronto, Canada