Academy of Management (I)

I am currently attending the annual Academy of Management (AOM) Conference in Orlando, Florida. One of the aims for this trip is to discuss the points from my research on sustainability and management by Mining MNCs in Thailand and Laos. As I did similar presentation for scholars from Mekong region last month at the International Conference on Sciences and Social Sciences, I plan to collaborate more with scholars from the Americas at AOM.

The Academy of Management's vision statement says that we aim "to inspire and enable a better world through our scholarship and teaching about management and organizations." The recent economic and financial crises, austerity, and unemployment, and the emergence of many economic, social, and environmental protest movements around the world have put back on the agenda some big questions about this vision: What kind of economic system would this better world be built on? Would it be a capitalist one? If so, what kind of capitalism? If not, what are the alternatives? Although most of our work does not usually ask such "big" questions, the assumptions we make about the corresponding answers deeply influence our research, teaching, and service.

Three features differentiate capitalism from previous economic systems in history: (a) market competition among profit-driven firms, (b) wage employment within these firms, and (c) limited government over them. Each of these features is associated with important benefits but also with important economic, social, and environmental costs.

Partly in response to these costs, some countries have evolved variants of capitalism that differ from the canonical "free market" form, and some people argue that these differences should be enlarged - broadening the objectives of the firm to encompass social and environmental goals, deepening the participation of employees in management decision-making, and strengthening government's regulatory role. More radical critics argue that these reforms are insufficient: they urge replacing competition with collaboration, wage employment with cooperative ownership, and limited government with economic planning. Proponents of free-market capitalism respond that such reforms, whether more modest or more radical, endanger both economic growth and individual liberty.

While some aspects of these debates may be beyond our professional expertise, much of our work on organization, strategy, human resources, and behavior is directly relevant. Conversely, many aspects of these debates are directly relevant to the practice of management and therefore to our scholarship. Indeed, if, as researchers and teachers, we assume the inevitability of the prevailing economic system, we blind ourselves to the important issues posed by that system and turn our backs on debates prompted by calls to change it.

An economy based on market competition also engenders some distinctive dynamics. Four stand out. First, competition often leads to concentration, as large firms achieve economies of scale and scope and accumulate market power. Second, competition paradoxically stimulates efforts among firms to cooperate in the race to develop new products and processes, in alliances, partnerships, industrial districts, and standard-setting bodies. Third, competition drives firms to expand regionally and internationally. This globalizes both the benefits and the costs of capitalism, and in the process, it pits nations against each other in economic rivalry, which is sometimes productive and sometimes not. Finally, recent decades have seen a dramatic shift towards a financialized form of capitalism. Scholars are still divided over whether this is a long-term, structural mutation of capitalism or a symptom of the decline of one world power awaiting the ascent of another. Nevertheless, financialization, like globalization, poses important questions in our field.

I hope that I will be able to share some points for discussion from this interesting conference.