It’s Not Just About the Mafia! Conceptualizing Business–Society Relations of Organized Violence
概念化有组织暴力在商业-社会关系中的角色，提出国家-企业-公民社会治理三角中的六个命题和三种末日情景，帮助管理学者理解当代经济中的暴力动态。
While there is some scholarship in management and organization studies on forms of organized violence, it has rarely focused on the role of organized violence within wider business–society and governance relations. In this article, we argue that conceptualizing the role and capacity of the state is still paramount, precisely because it is normally the state that holds a monopoly on violence. Yet this state monopoly has been continuously eroded as private firms and civil society actors are increasingly involved in paramilitaries, trafficking, mafia-like and terrorist organizing, and other forms of organized violence. To help management and organization scholars appreciate and make sense of these dynamics in contemporary economic affairs, this article puts forward a conceptualization of business–society relations of organized violence. We develop six propositions that seek to understand organized violence within what we call the governance triangle of state–firm–civil society relations. These propositions give rise to three “doomsday scenarios”: 1) rise of military dictatorships, 2) rise of private security monopolies and oligopolies, and 3) rise of civil wars. We conclude the article by outlining the implications of such a violence-based view for management and organization scholars.