Breaking Up Old Marriages: The Political Process of Change and Continuity at Work

This article contends that political processes are essential dynamics in creating continuity and change in organizations. A central aim is to inform the debate on change in organizations by conceptualizing and exploring the interplay between actors' political rationales, organizational culture, and new management concepts. Attention is given to the introduction of technical-bureaucratic management concepts for Occupational Health and Safety and the environment through presenting a case study, where both managers' and shop-floor personnel's political behaviour can be examined. The findings illustrate how continuity rather than change often prevails through the existence of more stabilized patterns of politics. The establishment of shared systems of meaning, conceived as the social constitution of the company, is shown to be a central mechanism for the regulation of politics, explaining the selectivity of politics regarding issues, arenas, arguments and actors. In particular, the relative importance of shop-floor personnel's politicking is discussed, and it is shown how their way of politicking differs from the forms found in management. Consequently it is suggested, that studies of political processes, which seek to encompass these forms of politics would benefit from the insights gained in cultural studies.     

Social Justice and Varieties of Capitalism: An Immanent Critique

This article emphasises how labour codes of conduct mediate a series of complex and evolving power relations that span the politics of consumption through to the politics of production. It argues that codes of conduct not only reflect an uneven division of labour – in which firms are stratified in size, productivity and labour conditions – but actively shape it. Using examples drawn from light-manufacturing industries in China, it illustrates how labour codes of conduct feed into these processes of uneven development. In their reaction to the implementation of codes of conduct across global supply chains, some Chinese suppliers at the higher tiers of industrial structure have sought to substitute capital for labour as a way to increase productivity beyond abusive labour conditions. Simultaneously, many smaller firms at lower tiers that are reliant on cut-throat forms of discounting have evolved elaborate schema of falsifying code of conduct processes and reports. Finally, mid-tier firms tend to display a strategically partial degree of compliance. Code provisions that empower workers to self-organise are commonly undermined because such trends threaten the very political basis upon which the restructuring the global division of labour over the past four decades has been predicated.     

Political markets? Politics and economics in the emergence of markets for biodiversity offsets

This paper analyses the relationship between politics and performativity of economics in the emergence of markets for biodiversity offsets. While the role of economics in constructing markets has been demonstrated by sociology and social studies of science, it has also become apparent that politics plays an important role in the material outcome of economic experiments. Two case studies of the creation of markets for biodiversity offsets are analysed, in the United States and England. The findings suggest that the creation of both markets is rooted in the language, concepts and models of economics. Politics, on the other hand, functions as a mediator of the material expression of those models. Through this mediation effect, similar economic models are performed differently, resulting in a variety of markets. This suggests that the material outcomes of processes of market creation are not defined at the outset, but can be influenced by political processes.     

Tensions in co-evolutionary processes: Three Swedish seed organizations in the 20th century

This paper addresses the issue of which societal actors have the capability and willingness to finance and organize search processes, in order to introduce commercial innovations, over a longer time period. The long-term development of agriculture depends upon innovations within a variety of technologies, markets, organizational forms as well in the seeds themselves. This involves points of tensions between continuity and change as well as co-evolutionary processes organized around the innovation processes. This article explores the tensions between continuity and change, by focusing on three dimensions, namely: (1) regional location versus global interactions; (2) static specialization versus experimentation in knowledge and products; and (3) relative success versus failure. The historical development of three Swedish agricultural seed organizations, Hilleshög, Svalöf and Weibulls, during the 20th century, provides an empirical probe within which to address the more fundamental theoretical problems.     

Beyond the obvious: Examining ways of consolidating early detection schemes

In the domain of futures studies, the need to develop methods and concepts to identify risks or opportunities “early enough” has become an issue and almost a discrete sub-field with its own debates, specialties and schools of thought.Our examination of the literature in this domain shows that early detection, early warning or weak signal analysis, to mention just a few of the terms being used, tends to convey the idea that finding faint evidence of possible futures is actually rather easy. We, however, believe that it is far from being an off-the-shelf process for whoever wants to detect early signs of changes. At the very least it raises cost/benefit questions, and it may have some shortcomings which, if ignored, could substantially increase the vulnerability of an organization. Our goal in this paper is to explore ways of going beyond an overly optimistic approach and provide a basis for the pragmatic use of weak signals and similar notions in strategic management and policy-making processes.After browsing through the several approaches that propose methods for the “early” tackling of trends, uncertainties, risks or opportunities to come, we will focus on the approaches defined by 1) weak signals and 2) early warnings or equivalents for the analysis of possible futures. We will in particular examine how mainstream claims have been presented then improved in the last 25 years, as well as how some of the problems involved have been insufficiently addressed so far. We will then show how these problems (closely linked to how the early perception claims are configured — how they are framed and modeled but also made affordable and useful) can directly impact the performance and management style of the organizations and societal settings in which they are deployed. The concluding section will propose a pragmatic approach to the problems raised: paradigmatic weaknesses or forms of blindness. This precautionary principle should lead to a real option approach in terms of futures to be considered and evaluated, so as to enhance the chances of avoiding risks, as well as following up promising directions, radical innovations or, more generally, strategic decision-making processes in both the corporate and policy-making arenas.     

Crisis of Capitalism and (De-)Politicisation of Monetary Policymaking: Reflections from Hungary and Turkey

This article explores the changes in monetary policymaking in Hungary and Turkey in the context of the post-2008 global financial crisis and restructuring. Both countries went through a thorough restructuring process in the pre-2008 context. While this process has introduced and consolidated depoliticised forms of governing to a certain degree in both countries, we suggest that the latest crisis has contributed to the emergence of a politicisation process. In the Hungarian case, these processes are reflected in both discursive attempts and the instalment of visible centralised control over the management of money. In Turkey, intensifying discursive attempts to politicize monetary policy have not led to an explicit change in the formally depoliticised character of central banking until recently but politicised other policy areas. In both countries, the process has accompanied the entrenchment of increasingly oppressive discourse and practices as part of the overall management of the crisis-ridden capitalist social relations. The paper aims to explore these similarities and differences within a critical political economy approach to state, governing strategies and (de)politicisation and to contribute to advancing research beyond the established case studies in the existing literature.     

The Culture of (Dis)Contentment

John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1992 The Culture of Contentment was written to assess the long-term impact of the Reagan/Bush era on American culture and politics. In light of recent electoral politics and outcomes, this article revisits Galbraith’s central argument to consider how the culture of contentment influences our discontented politics today. To do so, the author briefly examines the recent findings of sociologists and political scientists to examine the culture and politics of discontent in the United States at present. The article concludes with a brief examination of Veblen’s views of democracy as a lens through which to examine the foregoing.     

Strategic Management and the Politics of Production in the Development of Work: A Case Study in a Danish Electronic Manufacturing Plant

After presenting different conceptions of work politics in industrial sociology and sociology of organization, the authors argue that changes in work and technology, and hence the politics of work, may be better comprehended through a concept of the social constitution of the company. Subsequently, this concept is used as a theoretical and methodological basis for an in-depth case study of the processes of social change connected with the introduction of semi-autonomous working groups in a Danish electronic manufacturing plant. It is shown that the historically developed norms and culture of the organization - referred to here as the social constitution of the company - contribute to the creation of profound, ambivalent attitudes among management as well as workers towards more fundamental changes of work content and organization. Finally, the implications for strategic management for the development of work at the company level are discussed.     

The Ventriloquist's Dummy? The Role of Technology in Political Processes

This article examines the active role of technology in political processes, drawing on organizational politics and sociology of technology. A case study of the processes of the management of technology demonstrates the multiple roles that technology plays in developing a promoting coalition with a political programme. This programme joins and directs the actors. Technology is part of the structural context of the process, the process itself and the competing political programmes. The active role of technology in the process is examined through recurring and reciprocal patterns of social control over technology and vice versa. In some phases, actors master the technology to the same extent as a ventriloquist masters his dummy. In other phases, however, actors find themselves working hard, 'negotiating' with the technology. The management of technology is characterized as a consequence of these multiple roles of technology by dynamic shifts in power balances between different actors as well as those in relation to the technology itself.     

The Ventriloquist's Dummy? The Role of Technology in Political Processes

This article examines the active role of technology in political processes, drawing on organizational politics and sociology of technology. A case study of the processes of the management of technology demonstrates the multiple roles that technology plays in developing a promoting coalition with a political programme. This programme joins and directs the actors. Technology is part of the structural context of the process, the process itself and the competing political programmes. The active role of technology in the process is examined through recurring and reciprocal patterns of social control over technology and vice versa. In some phases, actors master the technology to the same extent as a ventriloquist masters his dummy. In other phases, however, actors find themselves working hard, 'negotiating' with the technology. The management of technology is characterized as a consequence of these multiple roles of technology by dynamic shifts in power balances between different actors as well as those in relation to the technology itself.     

Strategic Management and the Politics of Production in the Development of Work: A Case Study in a Danish Electronic Manufacturing Plant

After presenting different conceptions of work politics in industrial sociology and sociology of organization, the authors argue that changes in work and technology, and hence the politics of work, may be better comprehended through a concept of the social constitution of the company. Subsequently, this concept is used as a theoretical and methodological basis for an in-depth case study of the processes of social change connected with the introduction of semi-autonomous working groups in a Danish electronic manufacturing plant. It is shown that the historically developed norms and culture of the organization - referred to here as the social constitution of the company - contribute to the creation of profound, ambivalent attitudes among management as well as workers towards more fundamental changes of work content and organization. Finally, the implications for strategic management for the development of work at the company level are discussed.     

Agency through Development: Hausa Women's NGOs and CBOs in Kano,Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Analyzing the participation of Hausa women in religiously influenced nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) devoted to development work provides critical insights into the complex intersection of gender, religion, class, culture, and politics and economics. Based on interviews with leaders and employees of various NGOs, including community-based organizations (CBOs), in Kano, Nigeria, in 2010–11, this in-depth case study provides important examples of how various types of NGOs navigate political pressures when it comes to funding; it recognizes the understudied importance of women's labor contributions in the context of the development apparatus in Africa; it highlights the role of women as progenitors rather than benefactors of economic development; and it illustrates the unique role that faith-based organizations (FBOs) can and do play in terms of reaching certain marginalized segments of the population.     

The Good Wife’s (Geo)Politics Between Originality and Stereotypes: A New Wine or Just a New Bottle?

In the last 15 years, a new generation of TV series based on complex storytelling and frequently focused on politics has emerged. Critics and commentators have identified this as a new golden age for television, frequently emphasising the accuracy and originality of this generation of TV series, and highlighting its capacity to represent different aspects of our world in an effective and innovative manner. Peculiar and original characters in political TV series are also being recognised in academic studies; in particular, these programs have attracted diffused interest in cultural and political studies and more recently also in popular geopolitics. The aim of this article is to contribute to this debate by analysing the ambivalent geopolitical perspectives transmitted within these forms of contemporary media products. By focusing on the political and legal series The Good Wife, produced by CBS between 2009 and 2016, the paper shows how original and challenging representations of politics and society pair well with very traditional and stereotyped geopolitical representations. Consequently, the paper suggests that in many cases, the acclaimed originality in the form of TV series conceals old and stereotyped contents.     

The automobile road to technological change : Diffusion of the automobile as a process of technological substitution

Advancement of the motor vehicle and its production methods is analyzed as a process of technological change. In a broader context, motor vehicles evolved as an integral component of road transportation through a series of interlaced substitutions of old by new technologies. Building on a large number of studies that described technological substitution processes, first it is shown how new energy forms replaced their predecessors and how the old marine-transport technologies were substituted by new ones. These examples constitute some of the oldest, empirically documented technological changes and show that many events in the dynamics of energy substitution and marine transport are related to technological changes in road transportation. It is shown that these substitution processes can be described by simple rules and that the replacement of old by new technologies in the energy and transport systems lasted about 80 years. The technological changes within road transportation, however, were more rapid. Replacement of horses by automobiles and older by newer generations of motor vehicles and production methods lasted only a few decades in the United States. Thus, technological substitutions within the road-transportation system were considerably shorter than the expansion of railroads, surfaced roads, all road vehicles together, and the more recent expansion of air transportation.     

Good in a crisis: the ontological institutionalism of social constructivism

This paper seeks to recover and establish the distinct (and distinctly) institutionalist social ontology that underpins social constructivism as an approach to political economic analysis. It views social constructivism as a profoundly normative mode of political inquiry which seeks to discern, interrogate and elucidate the contingency of social, political and economic change – restoring politics (broadly understood) to processes and practices typically seen to be inevitable, necessary and non-negotiable. More controversially, perhaps, it also sees social constructivism, after both Berger and Luckmann and Searle, as ontologically institutionalist. Social constructivism, it is argued, has its origins in the attempt to establish the ontological distinctiveness of institutions as ‘social’ (as distinct from natural or ‘brute’) facts. This leads it to a distinct understanding of the relationship between actors and the environment (both natural and social) in which they find themselves and to its characteristic emphasis on the ideational mediation of that relationship. That in turn leads it to a particular type of analytic purchase on political economic realities, reflected in its distinctive emphasis on interpretive ambiguity, the social construction of political and economic imperatives and on disequilibrium. The argument is illustrated and developed further through an elucidation of the implications of such a social constructivism for the analysis of the period of crisis through which we now acknowledge ourselves to be living.     

Coordination failure, property rights and non-profit organizations

This paper advances a socio-economic theory of nonprofit organizations aiming at conceiving this organizational form in its complexity and at analysing it from both the viewpoints of its economical and political (democratic) dimensions. This theoretical approach accounts for the existence of nonprofit organizations and the reasons why nonprofit organizations are relatively more efficient when compared with for-profit and government organizations in particular circumstances. The various current explanations of the existence of nonprofit organizations (contract failure, government failure, philanthropic failure) are regrouped around the concept of coordination failure. The paper then examines how nonprofit organizations are able to mitigate these coordination failures. The central thesis is that the specific distribution of property rights characterizing nonprofit organizations results in a particular type of governance structure which allows them to mitigate coordination failures. In turn, the ability of the organization to mitigate coordination failures and therefore its efficiency is conditioned on its democratic functioning.     

员工政治技能对建言行为的影响——组织信任、一般自我效能感的作用

政治技能是员工在组织中生存与发展的必要条件,鲜有研究探讨员工政治技能与个体行为倾向的关系。以华东与华北地区26家企业203名员工为被试,综合计划行为理论、印象管理理论、社会交换理论,采用多元回归统计方法探讨员工政治技能对建言行为的作用机制。结果表明:员工政治技能对组织信任、一般自我效能、建言行为有显著正向影响;组织信任、一般自我效能感对建言行为有显著正向影响;组织信任在员工政治技能与建言行为关系中起到中介作用;尽管一般自我效能感与政治技能与建言行为都显著相关,但并未在政治技能与建言行为中表现出所期望的中介效应。     

Watering Down Austerity: Scalar Politics and Disruptive Resistance in Ireland

Across Europe, resistance to austerity takes place in the household, the local community, and the everyday. Disruptive practices of refusal and subversion leave elite domination incomplete in the age of austerity. Under what conditions, disruptive resistance affects national and international policy-making is less clear. The article uses the analytical concept of scalar politics to engage this question. Exploring anti-water charges/anti-austerity protests in the Republic of Ireland, I highlight the importance of the scalar dimensions of materiality and culture in making disruptive resistance partially successful in this case. Economic crisis allowed Irish elites to transfer water reforms onto international and European political scales. The physical conditions required for reform meant that sustained local disruptions rendered implementation impossible. Irish history and culture provided semiotic signifiers to mobilise against an overwhelming force of domination. Scalar politics constitutes a useful theoretical frame for analysing the social embeddedness of the economy beyond the Irish case. If political economists acknowledge the social construction of scalar arrangements, we can investigate how political actors use dimensions of scale strategically to pursue their goals. We can also pay analytical attention to how certain normative preferences come to dominate certain policy domains through processes of scalar contestation.     

The political economy of IMF conditionality and central bank independence

International organizations (IOs) often drive policy change in member countries. Given IOs' limited political leverage over a member country, previous research argues that IOs rely on a combination of hard pressures (i.e., conditionality) and soft pressures (i.e., socialization) to attain their political goals. Expanding this literature, we hypothesize that IOs can enhance their political leverage through loan conditions aimed at enhancing the political independence of key administrative units. Studying this mechanism in the context of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), we argue that through prescribing structural loan conditions on central banks (CBI conditionality), the IMF empowers central banks to gain more political leverage with the aim to limit a government's ability to (ab)use monetary policy for political gain. Divorcing monetary authorities from their respective government, the IMF intends to alter political dynamics towards achieving greater program compliance and enhance long-term macro-financial stability. Relying on a dataset including up to 124 countries between 1980 and 2012, we find that the IMF deploys CBI conditionality to countries with fewer checks and balances, a less independent central bank, and where the government relies more heavily on the monetization of public debt.