Band 1, Heft 3

Hardly any other management concept sounds as hackneyed as strategy, and at the same time hardly any other concept in organizational science is as vaguely defined. As a means of escaping the conceptual tangle, this article suggests a systems theory-based definition which allows us to sort out the various threads of the strategy discussion. Strategy, according to this interpretation, entails programs that search for the means to achieve previously defined goals. This makes it possible to systematically link classical notions of strategy to discussions concerning organizational theory. Casting the concept of strategy in terms of systems theory enables us to resolve the artificial contradiction between strategy and structure, clarify the relationship between end and means, determine the relationship between a plan and its practical implementation, relativize the importance of strategies, and explain the surprising limitation of the strategy discussion to businesses.

In contrast to the main focus on market boundaries as spontaneous orders, this article investigates how and why market boundaries are ordered through organization. It proposes three elemental ordering processes – mutual adaptation, institutions, and organization – to conceptualize individual market boundary formation. Based on a longitudinal study of a financial market, the organization of both market demarcations and boundary constitution is analysed. It is illustrated how boundaries were subject to much organization and reorganization, to protect the market’s legitimacy and function. Explanations for the use of market boundary organization suggestively stem from both boundary competition and complementarity – to replace or reinforce boundaries formed by other ordering processes, in order to direct market content.

Business Masculinity represents a distinctly English configuration of masculinity that was hegemonic in the City of London’s banking and finance industry until recently. This work uses visual semiotic analysis, historical analysis and Bourdieusian concepts to show how Rothschild reproduced the aesthetics of Business Masculinity in the portrait A View from the Royal Exchange (1817) by using clothing and other symbolic cultural capital. To secure his trajectory, Rothschild needed to align his identity with Business Masculinity and thus Englishness – and disassociate himself from Jewish masculinity – in a culture of antisemitism, as well as deal with the repercussions arising from his alleged manipulation of information about the Battle of Waterloo (1815). In this context, the portrait played a significant part in Rothschild’s public identity-management. Shortly after the portrait’s publication, Rothschild was trusted with key information and opportunities which were conducive to his enterprise growing exponentially. It is suggested that the portrait played a hitherto underacknowledged part in Rothschild’s trajectory, by disassociating Rothschild from Jewish masculinity and associating Rothschild with Business Masculinity.

A key objective in explaining how creativity occurs and novelty is generated [may it be organized or not], is allowing for a mix of determinism and chance. One of the ways to create a disconnect between the creative act and the myriad factors bearing on it is by way of external jolts, disrupting not only routines and logics, but also structures of attention. The paper highlights the role of external disruption in novelty generation, and articulates a moderating mechanism of perceptual nature by drawing on the work of Foucault. As illustration, I discuss the “externalization” of artistic attention and the construction of counter-sites in late 19 th century Western Europe by appropriating Japanese art to conceive of alternatives to academic art. I suggest that external disruptions are most consequential when they reinforce internal relational schisms.