Event

Research Proposal Presentation: Atefeh Ramezankhani

Tuesday, May 1, 2018 09:30to10:30
Bronfman Building Room 575, 1001 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 1G5, CA

Ms. Atefeh Ramezankhani, a doctoral student at McGill University in the area of Strategy & Organization will be presenting her research proposal entitled:

EMERGENCE OF SOCIALLY-ORIENTED MARKETS AND BROKERAGE ORGANIZATIONS

Date: Tuesday, May 1, 2018 
Time: 9:30 am
Location: Room 575 (Samuel Bronfman Building – 1001 Sherbrooke Street West)

All are cordially invited to attend the presentation

Student Committee Chair:  Professor Laurette Dubé & Professor Paola Perez-Aleman

Abstract:

This study focuses on socially-oriented market platforms from a dynamic perspective while exploring the role of strategic bridging actors in creating capacity for system-level impact. It will examine two questions: 1) How socially-oriented markets emerge in the presence of parallel interdependent communities of actors? and 2) How strategic bridging organizations transform existing socioeconomic arrangements for systemic social impact? Socially-oriented market platforms are strategic initiatives executed by an organization to alter market structure and shape market relationships and actions to create social value to address problems such as poverty, inequity, or food security among others. Sociological accounts of markets highlight the interdependence of diverse actors in ongoing exchanges within larger structures and the micro processes involved in creating markets. However, the sociology of markets literature has been one-sided by over emphasizing the supply side, which raises important unexamined questions with respect to how, at aggregate level, highly interdependent actors from supply and demand sides pass the threshold to interact socially and economically in a sustained manner for new market arrangements. To this aim, the first question is addressed by developing a mathematical model to incorporate coupled market dynamics including creation of joint market utility and interdependencies across supply and demand sides. Through analytical and numerical analysis of tipping behavior of the model, the study will advance current understanding of creating market platforms where high interdependencies exist, by integrating multi-sidedness, interdependency, and joint growth into the analysis. The second study examines the role of strategic bridging organizations in a network that bring actors and actions together for broader impact. The study uses the theory on brokerage with communal interest (iungens) to explore how bridging behaviors of such strategic actors lead to system-level outcomes. While literature explains macro-level benefits of brokerage through its catalysis or social integration roles, the pathways of such transformation are ripe for exploration. Using a longitudinal in-depth case study of the largest food security organization in Canada and its social enterprise program and by adopting a process lens, the study examines the evolution of brokerage mechanisms over time and the way brokerage organizations and their actions facilitate emergence of new organizational forms. The study will advance a process-based theory of brokerage organizations and their role in stimulating transformation in their network. It will contribute to brokerage literature in two ways. First, the process approach will produce a dynamic generative model on the evolving role of brokerage organizations. Second, the analysis of pathways to macro-level impacts of brokerage will build understanding of how brokerage actors progressively build capacity for new market arrangements and stimulate lines of action that goes beyond their circle of influence. From a policy standpoint, the study will contribute to practical understanding of levers of ecosystem change through promoting brokerage behaviors in the network.

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