A critical review of two articles relating to aspects of contemporary organisational design - Book Report/Review Example

If a company is to remain competitive it should address the issues of the new generation knowledge, its organization propagation, as well as, its subsequent retirement. This paper critically reviews two articles relating to the aspects of contemporary organization design The article ‘Resisting a corporate code of ethics and the reinforcement of management control’ by Sven Helin and Johan Sandstrom is a study about how corporate ethics codes travels into a subsidiary of a multinational corporation, focusing on how the subsidiary members recontextualize, relabel, as well as, explain the code.

The authors state that a story of the code that is not liked by those who hear it, yet they all sign avowing to have read, is what emerges. The authors also argue that the seeming contradictions have an explanation where the receivers resist the code by not associating with it through devaluation of the social referents, the core ethical code content, and the outcome that is expected from implementing the code. Those distancing processes make it possible for the receivers to pose as though outside of power, thus being in a position to sign the code (Lawrence & Weber2013, p.30). The second article, ‘Stakeholder Theory and Globalization: The Challenges of Power and Responsibility,’ by Tommy Jensen and Johan Sandstrom builds on the attempts of Edward Freeman together with his colleagues to construct stories that are divergent, on the way to create corporation, as well as, stakeholder value when developing a theory of the stakeholder that is more globalization sensitive.

The authors try to achieve this by highlighting challenges that globalization brings to the theory of the stakeholder. They state that the first challenge is to recognize new power relations, and secondly, to recognize new responsibility dimensions. Sven Helin and Johan Sandstrom used structural interviews, where they had a one-page manuscript that contained open questions, which were used for the conversations. The questions were aimed at probing how the respondents edited the code. Sample questions included; when they first came across the code, the way it happened, their reactions or associations, their views concerning the code, whether there had been a code or something that was similar before, whether they had read the code, whether they know it, whether there was anything that they had reacted to whether good or bad, whether they discuss the code, its relevance to what they do, its reception in the organization, their thoughts of any episodes, stories, or examples that are related to the code, Whether the code was necessary The advantage of this method of research is that the researchers were able to interact with the interviewees directly and get a first-hand experience as they collected the information.

However, the disadvantage lies in the possibility of the interviewees not being honest in the information they were giving. They could have just said what they thought would be right to say and not what their view would be (Helin &Sandstrom2010, p.586). In the second article, Tommy Jensen and Johan Sandstrom relied on two case studies that had been previously published to explore power, as well as, responsibility in further detail. The first case was the attempt of Shintech Inc., a Japanese-owned company, to establish a chemical plant in Cancer Alley that is in the Convent small community, in St.

James Parish, in southern Louisiana, United States. The Japanese corporation Shin-Etsu American subsidiary was ready to invest $700 million for the construction of chemical facilities, three in number, on a