Editorial

Citation

Pesqueux, Y. (2008), "Editorial", Society and Business Review, Vol. 3 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/sbr.2008.29603aaa.001

Editorial

The first two papers (Jérôme Méric, “Practices and dynamics of immobility: the institutionalized control of induction in consultancy” and Rémi Jardat, “How democratic internal law leads to low cost efficient processes: practices as a medium of interaction between institution and organization”) are results from the Advanced Institute of Management/GNOSIS research program between 2005 and 2007, a research program lead by Elena Antonacopoulou, Professor at the Liverpool Business School. This project has contributed to the ongoing debates about the need to develop ways of understanding the fluidity of organizing on a practice-based thinking. This research program has been focused on both the nature of practice in organizations and the process by which practices are reconfigured on an ongoing basis. The approach was based on diverse methodological and theoretical backgrounds of an international research team, which draw from philosophy, sociology, psychology complexity theory, education theory strategy and design. A common interest among members of the international research team was the application of these diverse perspectives to organizational and management issues. These two papers refer to an institutional level to establish the link between society and business.

The following two papers are also focused on practices but on another way. Nicolas Berland and Marie-Claire Loison have co-authored a paper on “Responsible care,” an initiative developed by the chemical industry and the way through which it has fabricated management practices among companies of this sector. Joseph Achua has written a paper on corporate social responsibility in Nigerian banking system in a country where the interaction between state and business (banks here) is under question.

Gaétan Breton and Marie-Andrée Caron have written a more conceptual paper to introduce some elements for a sociology of profit.

These five papers have been presented in that order to go from empirical-based papers before a more theoretical one.

Yvon Pesqueux