Papers presented by Alvaro Silva since 2019

2022 Mexico City

"Facing Complexity in a New Technological System: Experiments in International Business (Sofina, 1898-1938)"

Abstract:

The electric power industry became an international business since the first commercial ventures in electric lighting and power. The literature has emphasized the profusion of organizational forms assumed by foreign investment during the industry’s first decades: free-standing companies, multinational investment by manufacturing firms of electricity equipment, investment trusts, consortia of investors, and utility holdings (Haussman et al. 2008, Hertner and Nelles 2007, Neufeld 2016, Segreto 1994). The microeconomic and management challenges urging this rapid succession of organizational forms remain less well known. Moreover, the same ignorance exists regarding the influence this process of trial, adaptation, and change had on firms' internal organization and management capabilities. Thus, the methodology must combine an industry-level analysis with an in-depth study of specific companies to address these issues. The Société Financière de Transports et Enterprises Industrielles (Sofina, founded in Brussels, in 1898) constitutes an exemplary case for in-depth analysis. Its archive provides comprehensive information for reconstituting its business strategy and operations. Sofina’s evolution combined within the same firm the succession of different organizational forms for investing abroad: emergence as an investment trust, pivotal role in creating consortia of investors for launching foreign utilities, evolving later to an electric utility holding. The paper emphasizes the capital and technical challenges raised by the new electric technological system (Hughes) and its impact on Sofina’s adaptation process. At an industry level, it argues that the reconfiguration of German electrical manufacturers in the early twentieth century influenced their investment trusts and funds created abroad, as was the case of Sofina. Finally, the study explores the influence this change process had on Sofina’s managerial and engineering capabilities, explaining its ascent as one of the most prominent multinationals in the electric power industry.

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2022 Mexico City

"Embracing Complexity through Contradiction: Paradox Theory and Business History"

Abstract:

Paradox theory has developed in management studies over the last 25 years as a conceptual lens to understand contradictions persisting in organizations’ lives over time. Recent state-of-the-art articles on paradox theory recognize its relevance for understanding complex problems, its potential limits and challenge researchers to focus on time in process studies. Notwithstanding this invitation to consider time and processes as a fundamental approach for understanding tensions and complexity in organizational studies, historical analyses have rarely featured in paradox theory. Instead, paradoxes have been used as a rhetorical device in historical studies, but business history has yet to join the conversation. We contribute to a historical perspective on paradox theory, mapping three research lines to dialogue between business history and paradox theory. The first is historical studies where latent paradoxes show up, particularly analyzing ambivalent boundaries in business practices and organizations, as the relation between profit and non-profit organizations, hybrid and mixed organizations, competition and cooperation, institutions, government and business, and entrepreneurial philanthropy. The second research strand emphasizes how context-awareness, inherent to historical studies, may be deployed to understand complexity and tensions. This is particularly evident in the history of international business, with the diversity of business forms and contradictory agendas faced by multinationals, or the historical analysis of the tools deployed by organizations for managing contradictions. The third perspective emphasizes that any paradox has a heuristic function by pinpointing puzzling issues and thus raising an “incitation of insight”. Exemplary cases are the study of the psychic distance paradox in international retailing, the Icarus paradox in the movement from market dominance to irrelevance, or the paradox of firms’ nationality. Finally, the intersection between paradox theory and business history follows a growing rapprochement between management studies and history. Other keywords: Paradox Theory, Management Studies, Business History

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