Data, Karl Marx and the End of Money

tl;dr: Data will succeed money as the lifeblood of the economy thus making money irrelevant.

What is going to be the lubricant of the Next Economy? The go-to answer most likely is “data”.  My interest here is not so much on the more technical aspects of data gathering, mining, artificial intelligence and what other buzzwords might be up in the air. I am more curious about larger scale transformations in the fabric of the economy, especially when it comes to the role of data and money. … Read more

Towards the Next Economy

tl;dr: The Next Economy is signified by Digitalization as a social phenomenon, Postgrowth as economic context, and Sustainability as normative reference frame.

Recently I was provided the opportunity to speak about my research at 12min.me in the co-working/social start-ups incubator Wizeman.Space in Stuttgart. The format is intended to give you 12 minutes of concentrated presentation followed by 12 minutes of discussion (YouTube vid of my talk is available, but only in German). Focusing the past years of research so that they could fit into 12 minutes was a challenge, but it proved to be very productive and inspiring.… Read more

Notes from AOM 2017

tl;dr: Putting politics in management and organization research while managing cultural differences in transatlantic scholarship.

Attending a large international management conference with more than 10,000 participants from all over the planet is a great opportunity for some second-order observations: observe how others observe. This exercise in the sociology of international, cross-cultural scholarship reveals some interesting insights. One of these insights is the lack of politics in management research, the blindness to the political economy – in Paul Adler’s words – in which managerial activities take place and organizations thrive, survive, struggle and die.… Read more

The Future of Systems is in the Past: From the Laws of Form to System Storytelling

tl;dr: Form theory as hardware enables systems research to tell formalized system narratives by (1) formalizing systems and their working as well as (2) enable understanding of systems.

The initial promise of systems research, providing a unique conceptual lens for addressing complex real-world problems, is probably more in demand in our age than ever before. Messy and intertwined problems like climate change mitigation and adaptation, managing the digital transformation of economy and society, as well as finding a new global governance framework in a time of resurgent nationalism and authoritarianism, defy classical predict-and-control approaches in the fields of economics or political sciences.

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Management Beyond Growth

Welcome to the Online Community on Degrowth & Postgrowth for Management Scholars.

Since 2011 critical perspectives on the paradigm of economic growth are being discussed at the Academy of Management Annual Meetings in the form of professional development workshops, caucuses and symposia dedicated to Degrowth and Postgrowth. Degrowth, dating back to Serge Latouche and his “word grenade” of décroissance, is a political-economic concept for abandoning the fixation on economic growth as well as a battle cry for a contraction-based society – to think the unthinkable, a world beyond growth.… Read more