Oxford professor to present seminar at The Open University Business School

The Open University Business School’s Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise is hosting a seminar presented by Professor Alex Nicholls, a lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford in Milton Keynes on Tuesday 1st March 2.00-3.30pm.

Professor Nicholls will be presenting a paper entitled Caught On the Boundary? The Micro-Processes of Social Movement-Corporate Relationships that will examine recent developments in social movements from an explicit focus on political structures towards harnessing economic systems for societal change.

This change is establishing a new set of relationships between social movements and business organizations. However, whilst new sets of relations between social movements and corporations are clearly observable, both groups remain grounded in distinct sets of values, institutional logics and social worlds.

Fair Trade’s relationship with corporation will be the case study for micro-processes of institutional conflict and rapprochement. The Fair Trade certification mark acts as a ‘boundary object’ to facilitate interaction between Fair Trade organizations that have entered mainstream markets and incumbent retailers and multi-national corporations.

The seminar will aim to provide competing logic analysis of the micro-processes of interactions between a social movement and corporation. It will also bridge institutional theory to show how contested organizational relationships can be held stable in the presence of effective boundary objects.

The seminar will take place on Tuesday 1st March 2011 at 2.00 – 3.30 at the Michael Young Building, The Open University in Milton Keynes.

To reserve a place please contact Beryl Ridgway at The Open University on e-mail: b.a.ridgway@open.ac.uk or tel: 01908 655872.