A Neo‐Gramscian Approach to Corporate Political Strategy: Conflict and Accommodation in the Climate Change Negotiations*

ABSTRACT A neo‐Gramscian theoretical framework for corporate political strategy is developed drawing from Gramsci's analysis of the relations among capital, social forces, and the state, and from more contemporary theories. Gramsci's political theory recognizes the centrality of organizations and strategy, directs attention to the organizational, economic, and ideological pillars of power, while illuminating the processes of coalition building, conflict, and accommodation that drive social change. This approach addresses the structure‐agency relationship and endogenous dynamics in a way that could enrich institutional theory. The framework suggests a strategic concept of power, which provides space for contestation by subordinate groups in complex dynamic social systems. We apply the framework to analyse the international negotiations to control emissions of greenhouse gases, focusing on the responses of firms in the US and European oil and automobile industries. The neo‐Gramscian framework explains some specific features of corporate responses to challenges to their hegemonic position and points to the importance of political struggles within civil society. The analysis suggests that the conventional demarcation between market and non‐market strategies is untenable, given the embeddedness of markets in contested social and political structures and the political character of strategies directed toward defending and enhancing markets, technologies, corporate autonomy and legitimacy.     

Unsilencing power dynamics within third spaces. The case of Renault’s Fab Lab

Our paper explores the under-examined political dimension of space in organizations through the study of power dynamics in third spaces, i.e., hybrid spaces characterized by an inclusive and permissive social context. Our context is the pioneering corporate Fab Lab at Renault car manufacturer where we conducted a two-year study of participant observation and 42 interviews. Building on the power literature, we demonstrate how Fab Labs can be supportive of empowerment through self-governing regulation accomplished via the control of meaning, resources, and processes. Consequently, we suggest defining the corporate Fab Lab as a hybrid and inclusive workspace dedicated to exploration activities supportive of the empowerment of low-power actors in an organization. Overall, by articulating – or unsilencing – the empowerment that “takes space” within and beyond walls, we hope to contribute to an understanding of organizational space as a place of practice rather than a neutral container.     

Introduction: Towards a Political Understanding of New Ruins

This debate section gathers together contributions from cultural historians, political geographers, urban sociologists and architectural writers on new forms of ruination in contemporary landscapes. Their case studies span examples of ruins in China, North America, Ireland and Ukraine, as well as reviewing cultural representations of ruined, remote and peripheral spaces in England and Greece. Many wider cultural representations of ruined landscapes are primarily visual; whilst these have great value in alerting wider publics to the debris of global capitalism, neoliberalism and state‐sanctioned processes of cultural imperialism, what is needed within academic contributions to the ruinology literature is a deeper understanding and articulation of the wider contexts within which ruination occurs. Therefore, several contributions supplement visual representations of ruination with ethnographic and first‐person accounts of places on the ground, whereas other contributions offer readings of ruined landscapes that are rich in political histories and policy details. Connections are made to wider contemporary debates around ‘forensic architecture’ and critical archaeologies of the present and recent past. What connects these contributions is a commitment to situating ruins within their historical, policy and social contexts, and working through ruination to open out political readings of landscape.     

Stages of Organizational Transformation in Transition Economies: A Dynamic Capabilities Approach

How do organizations previously dominated by the state develop dynamic capabilities that would support their growth in a competitive market economy? We develop a theoretical framework of organizational transformation that explains the processes by which organizations learn and develop dynamic capabilities in transition economies. Specifically, the framework theorizes about the importance of, and inter‐relationships between, leadership, organizational learning, dynamic capabilities, and performance over three stages of transformation. Propositions derived from this framework explain the pre‐conditions enabling organizational learning, the linkages between types of learning and functions of dynamic capabilities, and the feedback from dynamic capabilities to organizational learning that allows firms in transition economies to regain their footing and build long‐term competitive advantage. We focus on transition contexts, where these processes have been magnified and thus offer new insights into strategizing in radically altered environments.     

Managers' Innovations and the Structuration of Organizations

Drawing on interview data from managers in three organizations a theoretical framework based on structuration theory is offered for understanding the social construction of innovation in a way that overcomes the duality of individual and structural perspectives that fragments the literature on innovation and other related domains. Three case studies, one from each organization, illustrate and help link the elements of an argument that focuses first on how an organization's openness to its external environment allows for conflicting interpretations of necessary action. Individual agents exploit the ambiguity, making choices which help sustain or develop their self-identities, drawing on experience to shape innovations that promise to reconcile the constraints of the personal and organizational domains. Their capacity to transform circumstances in the desired direction depends on the extent to which they can deploy personal and organizational resources to negotiate appropriate meanings through social and political relationships with relevant others. The socio-political process and the substance of the innovation have reciprocal effects, yielding the possibility of agreement on a ‘working innovation’ which, once institutionalized, modifies the existing system and structures in ways that constrain, in new modes, the behaviours of all of those involved     

Understanding organizational justice and its impact on managing employees: an African perspective

The past decade has witnessed dramatic social and political changes on the African continent. The present article argues that these political and social changes may spill over in the workplace in the form of a quest for justice and empowerment. Based on the organizational justice literature, the article develops a conceptual framework that advocates the integration of justice concepts in managing African organizations. It also explains how African managers can anticipate this trend by developing and implementing fair organizational practices.     

Cognitive style: Some human resource implications for managers

Cognitive style may be defined as an individual’s inherent and consistent way of organizing and processing information. It is independent of cognitive ability and may have an important bearing on individual performance within and across organizational settings, for example in the areas of selection, vocational and occupational preferences, management competence, team composition and performance, occupational-stress training and development and organizational learning. A model is suggested in which it is argued cognitive ability, cognitive style and cognitive strategies are intervening variables between individual/organizational processes and individual/organizational performance. It is suggested that managers and others within organizations who have a responsibility for human resource issues need to consider ways in which a knowledge of style may be integrated into these important areas of activity.     

Sustainable Development in Supply Chain Management: The Role of Organizational Learning for Policy Implementation

Implementing sustainable policies in supply chains is a significant challenge for businesses. Recent evidence has shown that failure to manage supply chains responsibly can have significant impacts on firms' reputation and financial performance. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework, which focuses on organizational learning, and outline specific channels through which firms can generate learning processes and build appropriate capabilities to successfully implement social and environmental supply chain policies. Drawing on 57 in‐depth interviews from a cross‐sectional sample of seven UK and nine German companies, we empirically assess our conceptual framework in accordance with a grounded, in‐depth case study analysis approach. We find compelling evidence to suggest that organizational learning is an important factor for a successful implementation of sustainable supply chain management. Organizational learning is often established as a result of training, knowledge acquisition, stakeholder engagement and collaboration between intra‐organizational and inter‐organizational partners, including suppliers and NGOs. Nonetheless, our results also emphasize that firms often have few systematic processes through which organizational learning is developed, and that such learning processes are often ad hoc at best, which in turn has significant implications for the responsible supply chain practices. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

A Belief-focused Process Model of Organizational Learning*

Applying the property of learning to organizations has caused confusion. The paper develops a proposed model or framework for capturing the essential process of organizational learning, and adopts a definition of learning which is applicable to both individual and organizational learning. A discussion of emergent and planned learning enables a case to be made for the importance of understanding organizational learning in a competitive and changing environment, and for the key role of senior managers in managing this process. The theoretical orientation is the social rather than the information processing perspective in that organizational learning is reflected in the construction, modification and maintenance of beliefs; particularly the beliefs towards those stakeholders who are instrumental in achieving an organization's mission and strategic goals. Theories and concepts are explored which account for these belief systems, and for the interaction between individual and organizational learning. They include: reinforcement, modelling, mental models and sensemaking, tacit and explicit knowledge, memory and culture. The paper concludes by examining a number of concerns in the literature in the light of the assumptions and suggestions incorporated in the model. The hope is that these will provoke discussion (and initiate learning) among practitioners and academics.     

The complexity and embeddedness of grief at work: A social-ecological model

Grief – a physical, emotional, and psychological reaction to loss – reflects a fundamental human experience with significant implications for organizations. Although there is a voluminous research literature reflecting the complexity of grief, I argue more could be done to integrate existing work into organizational theory and practice. Grief is not a unidimensional construct and yet research suggests the ways in which organizations support grieving employees often fail to recognize the varieties of their experiences. Effective grief support therefore requires a better understanding of the complex interplay between the individual, interpersonal, organizational, and societal factors that shape the experience of loss. This paper embeds the multi-level forces that influence grief into a social-ecological framework and subsequently applies it to advance the idea that flexibility within social systems is needed to optimize support for grieving employees.     

Absorptive Capacity in a Non-Market Environment

Abstract

Improved performance by public sector organizations is a political imperative in numerous countries. There are particular challenges in turnaround of poorly performing organizations. Theoretical explanations of the performance trajectories of public organizations, and especially the causes of failure, highlight the importance of knowledge processes, often from an organizational learning perspective. Absorptive capacity provides an alternative way of theorizing the relationships between organizational performance and knowledge processes, derived from the resource-based view of the firm and the broader concept of dynamic capabilities. The article reviews the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological implications of applying absorptive capacity to the performance of public organizations. It concludes that the approach has value and presents a number of propositions to be tested through empirical study, alongside some more general challenges for researchers who wish to study the concept further. The high political salience of public organizations' performance, and the costs of failure, mandates a major research effort on these issues.     

Cost allocation in Britain: towards an institutional analysis

This historical investigation attempts to gain insight into some of the socioeconomic factors surrounding the development and functioning of cost allocation practices in Britain. These factors are conceived in this study as isolated neither from the nature and structure of human behaviour, nor from the dynamic changing world in which individuals, firms and other constituent elements of society exist, act and interact. The institutional approach taken in this paper is contrasted with the transaction cost economics and labour process approaches. The historical analysis focuses on the emergence of uniform costing systems, government contracting in wartime, and the effects of collective trade agreements, and it reveals some of the wider economic, organizational, legal and political contexts in which cost allocations evolved and developed over the years. In addition, it demonstrates the complex and changing framework of norms, working rules and institutional arrangements within which cost allocation systems came to function in industrial and social organizations. The study concludes that although cost allocation systems have over the years remained simple, procedural and repetitive, their wider meanings and significance have served a variety of interests and needs in different times and in different socio-economic environments.     

The Politics of Post‐Suburban Densification in Canada and France

This debate specifically focuses on densification as a particular dimension of (post‐) suburbanization. In the introduction, we discuss densification, along with ‘compactness' and ‘intensification', conceptual terms that have become buzzwords within urban planning. Objectives associated with these tend to be presented in the literature within a normative framework, structured by a critique of the negative effects attributed to sprawl. The perspective here is different. It is not normative but critical, and articulated around the analysis of political and social issues, related to the transformation of wider metropolitan space. Three main themes are developed: (1) the politics of densification (the environmental arguments favouring densification are highly plastic, and are thus often used to defend projects or initiatives which are actually determined by other agendas); (2) why morphology matters (a similar number of houses or square metres can be established in many different ways, and those different ways have political and social meaning); (3) the diversity of suburban densification regimes (it is not only the landscapes of the suburbs that are diverse, but also the local bodies governing them—between the small residential municipalities of the Paris periurbs and the large inner suburbs of Toronto lies a broad spectrum).     

Learning and relationship orientation: an empirical examination in European museums

• The purpose of this paper is to assess the interrelations between learning orientation, innovation strategy, relationship orientation and economic and social performance in the management of cultural organizations such as museums. We first provide a review of the literature addressing the main constructs involved in the research: learning orientation, innovation, relationship orientation and performance, and we detail the model's hypotheses reflecting the interrelations amongst the proposed variables. Building on extensive literature, a model is developed and empirically tested using survey data collected from 491 European museums in Spain, France, Italy and the UK. Data are analysed through structural equation modelling. In the present study, evidence is found to support the positive and significant link between learning orientation and internal (organizational innovation) as well as external (relationship orientation) changes in museums. Further, we find that organizational innovation and relationship orientation aid the introduction of greater technological developments in these organizations. We also find evidence to support the idea that learning orientation, innovation strategy and relationship orientation impact the economic and social performance of museums. Findings clearly show that achieving organizational objectives through learning processes necessarily entails the introduction of internal changes—innovation—and external relationships—relationship orientation.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influences On Knowledge processes In Organizational Learning: The Psychosocial Filter

This paper reports a segment of broader theory-building case study research exploring organizational learning and knowledge processes in a bio-medical consortium. Its focus is the individual-level factors that influence knowledge processes associated with organizational learning. As we explored how rganizational learning occurred, the underlying knowledge processes came forward as complex and idiosyncratic. In an unanticipated finding, micro-processes emerged as highly influential, with individual perceptions of approachability, credibility and trustworthiness mediating knowledge importing and knowledge sharing activities. We introduce a model – the psychosocial filter – to describe the cluster of micro-processes that were brought forward in the study. Firstly, scientists filtered knowledge porting by deciding whom they would approach for information and from whom they would accept input. The individual's confidence to initiate information requests (which we termed social confidence) and the perceived credibility of knowledge suppliers both mediated knowledge importing. Secondly, scientists mediated knowledge sharing by actively deciding with whom they would share their own knowledge. Perceived trustworthiness – based on perceptions of what olleagues were likely to do with sensitive information – was the factor that influenced knowledge-sharing decisions. Significantly, the psychosocial filter seemed to constitute a heedful process with high functionality. Its effect was not to block knowledge circulation, but instead to ensure that nowledge-sharing decisions were made in a thoughtful and deliberate way. The psychosocial filter suggests an initial framework for conceptualizing the role that individual-level processes play in organizational knowledge sharing. Building on this, the model provides a platform for more focused exploration of knowledge processes and social relationships in organizational learning.     

DIVERSIFICATION WITHIN AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE

This study examines diversification of the activities of business organizations. The meaning of diversification has been ambiguous in many studies that have used the concept as a way of describing strategic resource allocation decisions within firms. Many previous studies of diversification have suffered from a number of deficiencies. Some studies have observed the consequences of firms’ resource allocation and made inferences about the influence of organizational and external environmental factors on managers’ decisions affecting diversification. Other studies, that have been concerned with investigating diversification from a focus within the firm, have often adopted a molecular approach, being concerned with a limited number of organizational or environmental characteristics. In an attempt to redress these deficiencies, a contingency theory framework is used to describe and, in part, explain the formulation of decisions affecting diversification. This involves developing an unambiguous definition of diversification, and identifying organizational and external environmental characteristics that may be used to aid understanding of why firms diversify their activities in different ways.     

The HR ecosystem framework: Examining strategic HRM tensions in knowledge-intensive organizations with boundary-crossing professionals

In this article, we use Snell & Morris' (2021) new HR ecosystem framework to empirically examine strategic fit and alignment tensions for knowledge-intensive organizations and professional knowledge workers. Rich data were collected through in-depth interviews with 75 members of faculty engaged in knowledge-intensive work for Business and Management Schools (B&M), and the analysis of strategy documents. The application of the framework enables us to contribute to dynamic capabilities theory and SHRM in four ways. Firstly, drawing on the findings, we propose an adapted HR Ecosystem framework for analyzing knowledge-intensive organizations, which incorporates tensions across the four subsystems of an HR ecosystem (strategy, capabilities, composition, and cultures). These tensions are shaped by interactions within and between levels (meso, macro and micro) and ecosystems. Secondly, our findings underscore the need for knowledge-intensive organizations to engage with a plurality of collaborative and competing internal and external stakeholder interests, including those of knowledge workers who constitute key organizational stakeholders. Thirdly, our analysis shows how the views and behaviors of internal organizational stakeholders are affected by ecosystem dynamics within and beyond the physical boundaries of an organization. Fourthly, we reveal how conflicting organizational cultures connect with other HR ecosystem subsystems to constrain collegialism and cohesion. By evidencing how knowledge-intensive organizations are in a constant flux of alignment and misalignment, the article demonstrates the value of the HR ecosystem framework in examining and informing SHRM in organizations in other industries.     

An alternative employee rights paradigm: Labor process theory

A dialectical relationship exists between the capitalist desire for accumulation of wealth and profits, and the rights of employees. Labor process theory exposes facets of the fundamental incongruity between the interests of employers and workers in a capitalist political economy. An analysis of employee rights through the labor process framework facilitates the potential for human emancipation by illuminating the ideological, political, and economic sources of domination and repression that are embedded in the capitalist system. In this article, three core elements of labor process theory—the social relations of production, the managerial control imperative, and the restructuring of work—are used to highlight ways in which organizations maintain their hegemonic position. This exposé offers the basis for an alternative paradigmatic view of the employment relationship and informs our thinking of how employee rights are impacted, and often tempered, in work organizations. Portions of this article were presented by both authors at the 12th Annual International Labour Process Conference March, 1994 in Birmingham, England.     

Understanding the dynamics of learning across social worlds: A case study from implementing IS in the Ethiopian public health care system

This paper adopts a novel learning perspective on information systems development. Building on the works of Anselm Strauss we conceptualize development processes as “negotiated orders” where members from different “social worlds” encounter and negotiate differences and tensions. We argue that processes of inquiry and action are interwoven, and this is what facilitates and stimulates learning. Based on a case study where different versions of open source software were customized, further developed and implemented in the Ethiopian public health care system, this paper explores the interplay between participation, politics and learning in IS implementation and use. We consider learning to be an integral part of the social practice, and it occurs mainly through encounters and negotiations between actors from different social worlds who might have competing interests and values. The paper also analyzed how the software in question functioned as a boundary object, not just in the traditional sense by facilitating cooperation among these actors. An even more significant role of the boundary object was in bringing the existing differences to the foreground and thus stimulating negotiations and learning. As such, this paper contributes to three discourses: organizational learning, boundary objects and health information systems in developing countries in particular and more specifically to IS implementation in settings with scarce resources, heterogeneous stakeholders, and diverse interests.     

Emotion and power (as social influence): Their impact on organizational citizenship and counterproductive individual and organizational behavior

Emotion and power as manifested in forms of social influence have been studied throughout millennia, and have recently enjoyed intense scientific scrutiny. However, their joint effects on important classes of discretionary behaviors in work organizations have not been well elaborated. This paper provides a theoretical framework derived from past research within which these joint effects are described, and offers hypotheses to guide future research. A primary theme is that emotion and social influence, when considered at individual, dyadic and organizational levels, have a reciprocal causal relationship and jointly affect organizational behavior, especially behavior that is largely discretionary, including organizational citizenship and counterproductive work behavior (OCB and CWB), as well as counterproductive organizational behavior (COB).