Hage and Hadden have another book scheduled for publication by Routledge on June 20, 2025: Solving Crises in Capitalism and Democracy: Inter-Organizational Networks, Social Inequality, and Populism Democratic. This book addresses some problems in capitalism that are producing rising inequality and growing authoritarianism. Examples include homelessness, food insecurity, child poverty, mass killings, and rising antisemitism. These problems encourage the election of authoritarian leaders. This book describes new strategies to promote inclusion and reduce inequality that do not require DEI policies or affirmative action, reduce government spending without wholesale firings and in the process make government more effective, and reduce individual distrust while increasing people’s wiliness to donate time and money to important causes that help others and the world.
The new strategies create systematic coordinated inter-organizational networks or SCIONs to achieve the following four objectives:
- Increase the amount and radicalness of product or service innovation.
- Create a more diverse skilled labor force.
- Reduce the spiral in the cost of health and welfare programs.
- Restore the balance between law and freedom in community safety.
These objectives will reduce inequality and the movement towards authoritarianism. They are also mechanisms for rebuilding trust and social capital, critical foundations of democracy.
As a new mode of coordination, SCIONs provide platforms for continued dialogue among diverse viewpoints, decentralize problem solving, and stimulate considerable organizational adaptiveness.They overcome the limitations of market and state coordination.
This macro sociological theory offers policy guidelines that might lead to future jobs for sociologists, provide tools to overcome managerial satisficing, and speed responses to change. A detailed case study is provided with a discussion of the feasibility of creating SCIONs and whether or not elites will resist this new coordination mode.
Routledge web page for Saving Societies
Hage, Valadez and Hadden’s book Saving Societies From Within: Innovation and Equity Through Inter-Organizational Networks was published by Rutledge on February 12, 2024. The social sciences are presently dominated by two disciplines and their theories of coordination: economics (market competition) and political science (elections and state regulation). However, these models are breaking down given the more complex issues involved in social and political development that are ever more evident. This book provides a new model of societal coordination, one that builds cooperation and trust and can solve complex practical problems: systemic coordinated inter-organizational networks (SCIONs). The first chapter details how SCIONs can quickly catalyze considerable amounts of organizational change, especially adaptiveness, in members of an inter-organizational network. It also provides a general framework for characterizing both individual and organizational change. Rather than being just a theoretical treatise, the second chapter outlines an epic case study of how these theoretical ideas were applied to rebuild the health care system in rural Nicaragua after a major natural disaster in 1998 (Hurricane Mitch). Each subsequent chapter provides lessons for public health program managers as well as new social science theory. Among other practical issues considered are how to establish a SCION, create effective coordination within it, and best practices for safe motherhood and child survival programs. Besides making contributions to the literature on modes of coordination, the findings indicate alternative ways of thinking about social capital and its effectiveness in changing human behavior, the role of organizational change and the importance of adaptiveness. Although this is a case study, an explanation is provided as to why its findings have considerable generalizability.
Rather than being just a theoretical treatise, the second chapter outlines an epic case study of how these theoretical ideas were applied to rebuild the health care system in rural Nicaragua after a major natural disaster in 1998 (Hurricane Mitch). Each subsequent chapter provides lessons for public health program managers as well as new social science theory. Among other practical issues considered are how to establish a SCION, create effective coordination within it, and best practices for safe motherhood and child survival programs. Besides making contributions to the literature on modes of coordination, the findings indicate alternative ways of thinking about social capital and its effectiveness in changing human behavior, the role of organizational change and the importance of adaptiveness. Although this is a case study, an explanation is provided as to why its findings have considerable generalizability.
Routledge web page for Solving Crises