Held in conjunction with Oxford University Press, the Clarendon Lectures are designed to inform a general academic audience of important issues in management and the social sciences. Mauro Guillén presents The Architecture of Collapse: The Global System in the 21st Century The global system is both highly structured and predictable. And yet, crises and other episodes of abrupt change do occur rather frequently. These three lectures will develop a new theoretical framework to think about the evolution of the global system in terms of its interactive complexity and degree of coupling. These two variables will be examined at the level of the global network of nation-states, and within countries. Economic, political and social factors will be taken into consideration when it comes to assessing the structure of the global system and its evolution over time. The lectures will show how management theory and organizational sociology can be used to understand dynamics at the global level. Lecture 3 - Isomorphism, Impermeability, and Institutional Diversity Are isomorphic forces taking over the world? To what extent are nodes in the global system impermeable to them? What are the implications for institutional diversity? In this third lecture Professor Guillen will review the evidence when it comes to institutional convergence in form and in outcomes. He will introduce the concept of "impermeability" to account for different rates of institutional diffusion across national boundaries. He will use a variety of empirical examples to illustrate the problem, focusing on central bank independence and minority shareholder protections. He will also show that the world is not getting smaller, but actually more diverse. Lecture 1 - Complexity and Coupling in the Global System http://goo.gl/dmMltZ Lecture 2 - Two Intriguing Cases of Complexity & Coupling: The Eurozone & the U.S./China Relationship http://goo.gl/uqLIXp www.sbs.oxford.edu/events @OxfordSBS

Comments

1. They come to resemble each other more and more the more they interact!
2. What's this. I think it is overwhelmingly profound that institutions come to resemble each other more and more over time...  It's not good until we know (exactly) how it interacts