Alejandro Agafonow

Verified

Alejandro verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Alejandro verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at ESSCA School of Management

YouTube series from the United States Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE), featuring the presentation of the following paper on multinational enterprises (MNEs): Agafonow, A., & Perez, M. (2024) “Overhauling multinationals for the Anthropocene: How a rogue subsidiary offers a blueprint for sustainable development,” Ecological Economics, Vol....

This research explores how stakeholder scholarship can evolve into a puzzle-solving tool, akin to more advanced scientific fields. Only a unified stakeholder management science can address issues like firms that, despite the looming threat of climate disaster, prioritize profits over environmental concerns. Such unification, however, depends on a c...

YouTube series from the United States Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE), featuring the presentation of the following paper on the new Patagonia Purpose Trust: Agafonow, A., & Perez, M. (2024). “In search of a non-anthropocentric middle-range theory of the firm: On how the Patagonia Purpose Trust granted a controlling stake to nature,” Ecolo...

This research addresses the question of how multinational enterprises (MNEs) can be overhauled to reckon with the finite ecosystem services that characterize the Anthropocene epoch. A comparative mechanism-based methodology is employed to seek an answer in the class of entities that MNEs are benchmarked against the unorthodox organization of a rece...

Patagonia, an outdoor clothing company thrust into the limelight by a New York Times full-page ad that in 2001 invited customers not to buy its own gear, has recently responded to the inherently low capacity of firms to supply ecosystem services. Since the firm is a generic term encompassing many different bundles of property rights, the specific m...

Sometimes a section of a paper stands out on its own but might be overlooked if the paper's title doesn't do it justice. To ensure it reaches the right audience, we've pulled out this section as an excerpt for you to download and read.

This paper disputes the thesis that a self-reported mental condition of apparent genetic origin makes its carriers entertain entrepreneurial intentions and assesses its implications for entrepreneurship-driven economic development. The findings are that the research in question mistakes true causative agents for superficial cause-hiding vectors, th...

Sometimes a section of a paper stands out on its own but might be overlooked if the paper's title doesn't do it justice. To ensure it reaches the right audience, we've pulled out this section as an excerpt for you to download and read.

Sometimes a section of a paper stands out on its own but might be overlooked if the paper's title doesn't do it justice. To ensure it reaches the right audience, we've pulled out this section as an excerpt for you to download and read.

Sometimes a section of a paper stands out on its own but might be overlooked if the paper's title doesn't do it justice. To ensure it reaches the right audience, we've pulled out this section as an excerpt for you to download and read.

On account of the leverage that the Academy of Management (AOM) has, via its positioning in the highest tiers of the A-journal lists currently used to adjudicate promotions and tenure evaluations, it is urgent to assess the premises and assumptions upon which the so-called pluralist model of scholarly impact, advocated by academics with executive r...

Notorious cases of corporate misconduct often revolve around the misapplication of pay to performance. Yet many business schools have too easily given themselves up to these kinds of high-powered incentives in the management of research. This practice is contrary to the very management knowledge taught in business school classrooms and it can wreak...

Notorious cases of corporate misconduct often revolve around the misapplication of pay sensitivity to performance. Yet many business schools have too easily given themselves up to these kinds of high-powered incentives in the management of research. This practice is contrary to the teachings of the very management knowledge taught in business schoo...

Strategic management and economics are jammed with thin accounts of the firm, where the inner workings of enterprises are left unexplained. This has been carried over to stakeholder scholarship, where sustainable enterprise behavior is a matter of ethical willpower rather than organizational mechanisms. This topic forum invites academics to contrib...

Insofar as business ethics is defined as a “branch of applied ethics that studies the moral dimensions of commercial activity, frequently but not exclusively with respect to corporations” (Encyclopædia Britannica 2016), the role of transaction costs in business ethics becomes evident: The methods and strategies to carry out commercial activities be...

Sometimes a section of a paper stands out on its own but might be overlooked if the paper's title doesn't do it justice. To ensure it reaches the right audience, we've pulled out this section as an excerpt for you to download and read.

This article fathoms how a social enterprise wanes by applying the construct of imperative credible commitments from transaction cost economics to the case of Etsy.com, an online marketplace created to connect artisans and craftwork enthusiasts. In the absence of imperative credible commitments, Etsy’s social mission was bound to change, leaving th...

This chapter takes organization scholars and economists beyond the idea that scientific discoveries are first and foremost the product of a stroke of genius. Although that has been the dominant belief in the domain of 20th Century philosophy of science, there is today enough evidence that scientific discoveries pivot on more than ingenuity. By shed...

This chapter delves into how organizational structures bear upon scientific production, answering the question: What kinds of organizational structures are in keeping with hospitable conditions for scientific discoveries? Thus, there is every indication that the organizations that are most propitious for scientific discoveries consist of functional...

Patrons of think tanks—for example, governments, corporations, philanthropists, NGOs, and so forth—may control think tanks’ boards, that is, their highest decision-making body. Whether patrons are likely to control boards is a question that remains under-explored and under-theorised in public administration and governance scholarship. It is posited...

It is beyond question that advanced engineering applications would be impossible without the insights of natural science theories. In the field of management, however, the profession is still debating the relevance of theory for management research and practice. To introduce this Handbook section, this chapter builds on a paradigmatic case of theor...

It is beyond question that advanced engineering applications would be impossible without the insights of natural science theories. In the field of management, however, the profession is still debating the relevance of theory for management research and practice. To introduce this Handbook section, this chapter builds on a paradigmatic case of theor...

This chapter explores the possibility of a second revolution in the sector of energy utilities. The first revolution in the production of energy occurred at the turn of the 20th century, when it became possible to open up the use of the utility infrastructure to multiple providers. The second revolution concerns a new kind of provider, i.e., social...

Building on Oliver E. Williamson’s work, this article lays the basis for a transaction cost theory of social enterprises. It is submitted that the more proprietary-centred the creation of value is, the lower the governance costs of economizing on bounded rationality to protect patrons from the hazard of opportunism. Since not all productive activit...

Psychiatry as a medical science has debunked contextual definitions of disorders for a good reason. This exchange article seeks to assist entrepreneurship scholars in assessing the risks of building scholarship upon a notion that has proved to be problematic. Thus, four reasons why entrepreneurship scholars may want to distance themselves from cont...

Had we had the vantage point of centuries of experimentation with social enterprises, separating the wheat (i.e., successful social enterprises) from the chaff, empirical social enterprise research could be on the verge of making a contribution. But since social enterprises as a mass phenomenon are relatively new, the output of empirical research m...

If board voting membership for stakeholders is inefficient and thus likely to be unfeasible, as Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) posits, how can Ben & Jerry’s (B&J) be accounted for? This question, overlooked by TCE scholars and stakeholder advocates alike, is answered in this paper. Shareholder-centric corporate boards are the only feasible option...

Scientific literature on social enterprise is at an impasse. Either social enterprises maximize profits to have a chance of impact investment or they prevent mission drift by avoiding profit maximization along the lines of traditional philanthropy. This article breaks this stalemate by building on the facts that constrain the daily operation of a s...

This article's purpose is to set out the economic rationale that underpins social businesses, engaging in a research agenda's conceptual development on hybrid firm ecosystems. A different form of business is needed to prevent dividend-distributing companies from abusing the market power allowed by barriers that keep competitors away at the expense...

In a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, Filipe M. Santos posits that social entrepreneurs maximize not on value capture, but on value creation, only satisficing on value capture to fuel operations, reinvesting in growth, whatever the specific combination of institutional means is deemed appropriate. No doubt the analytical framework of...

The lack of a well-defined business model is a major obstacle for a successful regulation of social enterprises. Current regulation efforts, while valuable, have largely ignored early research in sectors where the first social enterprises emerged. Such a business model is becoming more of a necessity than a normative proposal because in an era of a...

The aim of this paper is to explore the implications of the debate on the dehomogenization of Hayek and Mises. The Misesian thesis about the vulnerability of the Hayekian argument prevails, and that its implications have thus far not been fully appreciated. These implications consist, on the one hand, of the correct integration of the proto-Hayekia...