Author: Jerry Davis Presented at the 2015 Alberta Institutions conference www.albertainstitutions.com

1. New institutions
for a new
economic order
Jerry Davis
13 June 2015

2. 2

3. What I am going to say
• Society is in the midst of a regime shift in the costs of
organizing due to information technologies
• Information enables pervasive markets
• Markets undermine institutions (like organizations)
• Institutional collapse can be liberating or
immiserating (or both)
• Organizational researchers are in the best position to
illuminate a more humane path forward
3

4. A REGIME SHIFT IN THE COSTS OF
ORGANIZING
4

5. How to get 250,000 people to show up and protest, 1963
• Eight months
• Six major sponsoring
organizations
• 200 activists coordinating
transit by bus, train, plan,
carpool
• 4000 volunteer marshals
on site
5

6. How to get 250,000 people to show up and protest, 2011
• Four weeks
• Two online activists
• A Facebook page (“We
are all Khaled Said”)
• A challenge:
– “January 25 is Police Day
and it’s a national
holiday… If 100,000 take
to the streets, no one can
stop us… I wonder if we
can??”
6

7. OMT, 1995
•5 paper copies of ~300 papers
mailed in
•Sorted, assigned reviewers,
anonymized, mailed out (via USPS)
by staff; reviews mailed in, entered
into database, evaluated;
decisioned, with decision letter and
copies of reviews mailed; assigned
to panels, scheduled by staff
OMT, 2005
•429 papers and symposia uploaded
electronically
•Each assigned to 3 reviewers,
decisioned, assigned to panels,
scheduled by one person
•[NB: This is why there are more free
drinks at AOM these days…]
7
How to organize a conference with 100s of papers

8. Blockbuster, 2005
• 83,000 employees
• 9000 stores in strip
malls across America
Netflix, 2015
•2000 employees
•Rents server space from
Amazon
8

9. Sony, 2010
•10.1% market share for
LCD televisions (Q4)
•150,000 employees
Vizio, 2010
• 27.6% market share for
LCD televisions (Q4)
• 196 employees
9

10. It’s a lot cheaper to coordinate the actions of many
actors these days
10

11. PS: These days everybody has their own journal
11

12. INFORMATION ENABLES PERVASIVE
MARKETS
12

13. Does everything have a price?
13

14. 14
Student
Loan-
Activated
Volatile
Employment™

15. 15

16. Not all transactions require cash
16

17. MARKETS UNDERMINE INSTITUTIONS
(LIKE ORGANIZATIONS)
17

18. 18

19. The number of public corporations in the US has
dropped by over half since 1997
19
Source: World Bank World Development Indicators 2014

20. 20
The “going public” fad of the 1990s is long gone
Source: Jay Ritter, University of Florida

21. And the companies going public today ignore basic
standards of corporate governance
21

22. Some companies going public since 2010 with dual-
class voting rights (the “Zuckerberg grip”)
22
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc Groupon Constellium NV
Crude Carriers Corp Manning & Napier RCS Capital Corp
MaxLinear Inc Zynga Coty Inc
First Interstate BancSystem In Renewable Energy Group Truett-Hurst Inc
DynaVox Inc Yelp Luxoft Holding Inc
PAA Natural Gas Storage LP Vantiv Silvercrest Asset Management
S&W Seed Co Digital Cinema Destinations Noodles & Co
Niska Gas Storage Partners LLC Edgen Group Inc NRG Yield Inc
Oxford Resource Partners LP The Carlyle Group LP UCP Inc
Ameresco Inc Tilly's Inc Jones Energy Inc
Green Dot Corp Facebook Inc Intrexon Corp
Chesapeake Midstream Ptrs LP KAYAK Software Corp Pattern Energy Group
Rhino Resource Partners LP Globus Medical Inc Premier Inc
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Co Manchester United PLC RingCentral
FXCM Inc Workday Inc RE/MAX Holdings
Swift Transportation Co Seadrill Partners LLC LDR Holding
Adecoagro SA The WhiteWave Foods Co Veeva Systems
MagnaChip Semiconductor Restoration Hardware Hldg Inc JGWPT Holdings LLC
Apollo Global Management PBF Energy Inc Zulily
GNC Holdings Zoetis Inc AMC Entertainment Holdings
TMS International Health Ins Innovations Inc EP Energy Corp
Arcos Dorados Holdings Artisan Partners Asset Mgmt In Malibu Boats
Box Ships Inc Taylor Morrison Home Corp uniQure BV
Air Lease Corp Fairway Group Holdings Corp Ladder Capital
LinkedIn Corp Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc Lumenis Ltd
Yandex NV PennyMac Finl Svcs Inc Castlight Health Inc
KiOR William Lyon Homes Inc Phibro Animal Health Corp
Zillow Tableau Software Inc Moelis & Co LLC
Source: Jay Ritter, University of Florida

23. Nobody actually works at these new companies, and
most will not last long
Company Employees (most recent)
Zynga 1974
LinkedIn 6897
Groupon 3525 (North America)
Zillow 1215
Yelp 2711
Facebook 9199
Kayak 205
Tableau 1947
Zulily 2907
Box 1158
TOTAL 31,738
23Circuit City employees fired in January 2009: 34,000
Source: 10-K statements via EDGAR

24. Meanwhile, corporations in every industry are de-
composing back into a primordial soup
24

25. Corporations have no clue what to do with their money
25
How are corporations like elders giving their
money away to their grandchildren?

26. Meanwhile, back in retail and food service…
26
Organization design
is now a sub-field of
computer science

27. IF COASE IS RIGHT, WHAT WOULD
HAPPEN TO ORGANIZATIONS IF THERE
WERE READY PRICES FOR ALL THE
INPUTS?
27

28. 28
The webpage enterprise

29. 29

30. 30

31. Yep, The Matrix was a documentary
31

32. How-to guide for an instant startup, ca. 2015
• Product: iPhone “remote drone assassin”
• Target market: neo-mercenary firms

33. 1. Rent a desk in a shared office

34. 2. Incorporate online in Liberia for $713.50

35. 3. Crowdsource the funding at Kickstarter

36. 4. Hire programmers for the app at oDesk

37. 5. Find a drone manufacturer at Alibaba.com

38. 6. Set up a payment system at Square

39. 7. Get it shipped from the dock to our customers

40. BUT WHAT IF I NEED ACTUAL
PEOPLE TO SHOW UP?
40

41. 41

42. 42

43. After Nikefication: Uberfication
43
As of Dec. 2014, Uber
has 2000 employees
and 162,000 “driver-
partners” in the US
Source: Hall & Krueger, 2015

44. In contrast, GM has 120,000 North American workers left
Source: Moody’s, EDGAR, Compustat

45. 45
What we think corporations are: What corporations really are:

46. INSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE CAN BE
LIBERATING OR IMMISERATING
46

47. 47

48. When Royston was a lad…
48

49. Goodbye, corporations; hello, precariat
49
3236404448
GiniCoefficient
02468
RatioofTop10EmployerstoLaborForce
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year
Employment Concentration Income Inequality
r = -.89

50. Some precedents
50
1815(ish) 1915(ish) 2015(ish)

51. ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCHERS ARE
IN THE BEST POSITION TO ILLUMINATE
A MORE HUMANE PATH FORWARD
51

52. Possible paths going forward
• Dystopian cyber-Fordism: the global
online assembly line (brought to you by
Amazon’s Mturk™)
• Locavore wiki-everything (in which one is
a genetic engineer in the morning, an
urban fish farmer in the afternoon, and a
mash-up DJ in the evening)
52

53. Reasons for optimism
53

54. OMT is an intellectual crossroads
Nodes=biggest
divisions,
size scaled to
membership
Ties=500+ shared
members
Strategy
Micro
Joint division
memberships among
the largest AOM
divisions
OMT

55. 55
Organization theory is an estuary

56. 56

57. • The categories we use
to apprehend the
economic world
(“corporation,”
“employee”) no longer fit
the world we live in
• Organization theory
offers the best path for
comprehending and
acting on our emerging
system
• But: we have work to do
57