Purpose of the Seminar Series
In 2026, we launched a monthly online seminar series on societal governance to support the development of research ideas and papers. Our central goal is to equip our field with the conceptual and methodological foundation to study societal governance in the face of polycrisis from an international and comparative perspective, and to do that by engaging (1) the variety of perspectives in our organization studies field, (2) perspectives from adjacent disciplines such as public management, public policy, political science, and comparative social sciences, and (3) perspectives from the major regions of the world.
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Seminar Series Organizers
- Zlatko Bodrožić, University of Liverpool
- Paul S. Adler, University of Southern California
- Alfred Tat-Kei Ho, City University of Hong Kong
- Nicole Ning Liu, City University of Hong Kong
Seminar Format
Seminars are held on the first Friday of each month and last one hour. They take place at 13:00 UK / 08:00 US Eastern / 20:00 Hong Kong (21:00 Hong Kong in winter). Guest speakers and chairing rotate across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Schedule
Seminar Series #1 Comparative Organization Theory and Societal Governance ▶
Speaker: Jerry Davis
Affiliation: University of Michigan
Date & Time:
May 8, 2026, 8:00am-9:00am, ET
May 8, 2026, 1:00pm-2:00pm, UK
May 8, 2026, 8:00pm-9:00pm, China
Abstract
Organizations vary widely around the world. Even firms in the same industry, creating essentially similar products or services, can look very different in their ownership, their size, their central aims and power structures, where they place their boundaries, and how they balance their commitments to different stakeholders. For example, half of the world's carbon emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel companies -- with 17 of the 20 biggest owned by governments. Any approach to societal governance must build in an understanding of the connections between public policy and the shape of business in different countries, as must any efforts at large-scale reform. I propose 'institutional terroir' as a metaphor and a set of directives to think about how national institutions shape firms.
Background Readings
Videos Repository
- Seminar 1 – [Watch]
- Seminar 2 – [Watch]