Stakeholder theory has provoked controversy for more than 70 years, even though the term “stakeholder” is itself of more recent origin. The theory raises a highly contentious question: in whose interests should a business corporation or other type of organization be run? Opponents stress the primacy of shareholder rights. Supporters claim corporations have wider responsibilities
Sethi (1975) defined a “legitimacy gap” as an expectancy gap indicating a discrepancy between an organization’s actions and society’s expectations of this organization. Legitimacy gaps can threaten an organization’s image and reputation, and ultimately its existence as a legitimate member of the business community and society (Bridges 2004). Hence, legitimacy theory asserts that organizations avoid
Even after they formally become independent, many developing countries still depend on the industrialized world for many resources, including technology, financing, models, and even media content, such as films or television programs. This is a structural legacy of imperialism, with which many countries with former colonies have struggled. Only a few countries have completely overcome
The emergence of postcolonial theory as an academic tradition, particularly in the United States, can be traced to the late 1970s with the publication of Edward Said’s book Orientalism (1978). According to Said, Orientalism is a powerful body of knowledge – power/knowledge in Michel Foucault’s sense – produced by texts and institutional practices of western
The word “system” is widely used. We speak of planetary systems, transportation systems, nervous systems, number systems, filing systems, political systems, systems of checks and balances, systems of grammatical rules, systems of weights and measures, and so on as if they shared the same reality. Their common denominator is a multitude of component parts, depending
Despite acknowledgments of sport as a legitimate focus of sociological analysis from early thinkers such as Spencer, Simmel, Weber, Scheler, and Mead (Luschen 1980), the lack of development in social theory and sport studies has been well documented (Frey & Eitzen 1991), although there appears to be increased movement toward the generation and integration of
Medium theory stands apart from more generic “media theory” in its exploration of the influences of communication technologies in addition to, and distinct from, the specific content (messages) they convey. Medium theorists argue that media are not simply channels for transmitting information between two or more environments, but are themselves distinct social-psychological settings or environments
For those who are familiar with anthropology, the themes of chaos and complexity might seem intuitively related to the field. Immersion in unfamiliar cultures is understood to produce disorientation, confusion, and perceptions of the foreign culture as “chaotic.” Consequently, the relevance of chaos theory and complexity theory to anthropology might not require a detailed justification.
Chaos theory describes the motion of certain dynamical, nonlinear systems under specific conditions. Chaotic motion is not the same as random motion. It is especially likely to emerge in systems that are described by at least three nonlinear equations, though it may also arise in other settings under specific conditions. All of these systems are
In psychology, psychometric tests are standardized data collection methods. To provide significant and interpretable results in an empirical study, a test must meet specific requirements that are laid down by test theory. Only if these preconditions are given can reliable and valid conclusions be drawn with respect to the “real” value of a person’s trait