The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

This book represents the definitive research collection for corporate social responsibility communication, offering cross-disciplinary and international perspectives from the top scholars in the field.

The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper analyses how the world's largest corporations communicate about sustainability and sustainable development in their non-financial reports. It investigates the concept use, definitions and attempts at operationalization, and the rationales that corporations give to engage with them. It is concluded that the corporations typically opt to treat sustainability and sustainable development as given and unproblematic instead of addressing the fundamental problems of today's practice or the dilemmas of the concepts. The most striking finding, however, is that so many of the corporations no longer argue that they are on a ‘journey’ towards sustainability, but that they have already integrated sustainability principles and that they have worked like this for years. Such arguments arguably inhibit the change in business models that many commentators call for. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Corporate reports on sustainability and sustainable development: ‘We Have Arrived’

The power of social capital: Adapting Bourdieu to the study of public relations

* Introduction: Applying Social Theory to Public Relations Oyvind Ihlen and Betteke van Ruler * On Beck: Risk and Sub-politics in Reflexive Modernity Magnus Fredriksson * On Berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication Mats Heide * On Bourdieu: Public Relations in Field Struggles Oyvind Ihlen * On Foucault: A Toolbox for Public Relations Judy Motion and Shirley Leitch * On Giddens: Interpreting Public Relations through Anthony Giddens' Structuration and Late Modernity Theory Jesper Falkheimer * On Goffman: Researching Relations with Erving Goffman as Pathfinder Catrin Johansson * On Habermas: Understanding and Public Relations Roland Burkart * On Latour: Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and Public Relations Piet Verhoeven * On Luhmann: Contingency, Risk, Trust and Reflection Susanne Holmstrom * On Mayhew: The Demonization of Public Relations and the Validation of the New Citizen Richard Stanton * On Putnam: Bowling Together--Applying Putnam's Theories of Community and Social Capital to Public Relations Vilma Luoma-aho * On Feminist Theory of Public Relations: An Example from Dorothy E. Smith Lana F. Rakow and Diana Nastasia * On Spivak: Theorizing Resistance: Applying Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in Public Relations Mohan Jyoti Dutta * On Weber: Legitimacy and Legitimation in Public Relations Arild Waeraas * Conclusions on the Domain, Context, Concepts, Issues, and Empirical Avenues of Public Relations Oyvind Ihlen and Piet Verhoeven * Commentary: Linking Sociology with Public Relations--Some Critical Reflections in Reflexive Times Gunter Bentele and Stefan Wehmeier

Public Relations and Social Theory: Key Figures and Concepts

This paper analyzes how central the climate change issue is and how it is treated rhetorically in the non-financial reports of the world's 30 largest corporations. The analysis shows a huge variation in the extent to which this issue is addressed, with some corporations barely mentioning it. Using an adaptation of Aristotelian topics to organize an exploration of those that do address the climate issue, I found four topics are central: (1) the environmental situation is grave; (2) the corporation is in line with the scientific consensus and the international political process on curbing emissions (testimony); (3) the corporation has to take measures to reduce its own emissions (relationship); and (4) the climate challenge poses an opportunity for business (circumstance). There is little to suggest, however, that corporations engage in the radical rethinking of systemic problems that the situation's gravity would seem to call for.

Øyvind Ihlen

Papers

The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate reports on sustainability and sustainable development: ‘We Have Arrived’

The power of social capital: Adapting Bourdieu to the study of public relations

Public Relations and Social Theory: Key Figures and Concepts

Business and Climate Change: The Climate Response of the World's 30 Largest Corporations