Polanyi in his analysis of market dis-embedding suggests a drift in economic relations from the social to the fictitious. The purpose of this paper is to add two crucial…
Abstract
Purpose
Polanyi in his analysis of market dis-embedding suggests a drift in economic relations from the social to the fictitious. The purpose of this paper is to add two crucial components to the dis-embedding dynamic: rule of law discourse as a market force away from the social, and through suspension of imagination and of disbelief, the incongruous compatibility of actual and fictional markets that further works against embedding.
Design/methodology/approach
Theory building through the application and testing of the Polanyian market dis-embedding analysis is a central concern for the paper. Through the example of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the manner in which the rule of law discourse masks neo-liberal development inequities, the paper offers an understanding of the forces behind market dis-embedding North to South Worlds and the manner in which through the collusion of legal orientalist, the true impact of the development inequities are concealed.
Findings
The empirical value of the theorising is to allow for studies on the impact of FDI on fragmented South World market economies using Polanyian dis-embedding refined by the suspension of critique which the rule of law discourse enables.
Originality/value
The masking functions of the rule of law discourse in global trade contexts, the paper argues, conceal stark market power asymmetries hardwired into South World development policy through post-colonial free-trade regimes. The legal certainty and commercial predictability that the institutions and processes of dispersed law are said to ensure, have an established market relationship with global trade. However, while resting on ideologies of liberty and equality, the rule of law discourse hides their market suspension in favour of stabilising and auctioning universally inequitable market conditions for the purposes of the neo-liberal global trade agenda.
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Crime as a force in globalisation has largely escaped analysis. Even crime as a natural product of modernisation and social development is concealed or ignored in both the…
Abstract
Crime as a force in globalisation has largely escaped analysis. Even crime as a natural product of modernisation and social development is concealed or ignored in both the literature of development studies and criminology. In order to understand globalisation fully, and its paradoxical progress, crime provides an interesting and dynamic insight as a force within world cultural transition.
Patricia Findlay, Alan McKinlay, Abigail Marks and Paul Thompson
Research on organisational learning is limited in three ways; in terms of the type of organisation and the type of employees which are seen to benefit from a learning culture; and…
Abstract
Research on organisational learning is limited in three ways; in terms of the type of organisation and the type of employees which are seen to benefit from a learning culture; and in terms of the consensual assumptions made about the nature of learning within the workplace, assumptions which contradict the reality of the workplace for most people. Other researchers have attempted to form a typology of learning; they are narrowly constructed and often internal to the enterprise; learning is often de‐contextualised from other organisational processes. In response to these criticisms, we have framed and measured a holistic concept of learning that more readily takes account of organisational context. This paper presents data on learning within two traditional companies operating in the food and drinks sector. In particular it is concerned with long‐term organisational learning in light of discussions of the mutual gains workplace, reflecting more general concerns about organisational behaviour.
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Abigail Marks, Patricia Findlay, James Hine, Paul Thompson and Alan McKinlay
The paper focuses on the formation and implementation of new manufacturing strategies in two UK drinks conglomerates ‐ United Distillers (UD) and Allied Distillers (ADL)…
Abstract
The paper focuses on the formation and implementation of new manufacturing strategies in two UK drinks conglomerates ‐ United Distillers (UD) and Allied Distillers (ADL). Traditionally both companies have been marketingled and relatively indifferent to the achievement of marginal gains in operating efficiencies. But recently each has launched major innovation programmes, ADL's ‘Project Star’, and ‘Towards World Class’ in the case of UD.
Both the particular contexts of socioeconomic development, and the unique post‐colonial/post‐indcpendence agendas of small states in the Pacific, present predictable invitations…
Abstract
Both the particular contexts of socioeconomic development, and the unique post‐colonial/post‐indcpendence agendas of small states in the Pacific, present predictable invitations for the creation of corruption relationships. The two case studies discussed in this paper provide scenarios common to this region wherein customary structures of power and influence converge on modern commercial institutions and instruments to produce corrupt consequences. However, the contextual analysis of these as corruption, from a developed or global perspective, is neither straightforward nor uncontested. And the challenge inherent in their regulation is problematic. The integration of such relationships within deeply rooted and accepted customary authority structures qualifies their description as corrupt, and tends towards a process of reinterprctation and denial which prevents the effective intervention of regulation and control processes. The integration of these relationships within otherwise legitimate structures of economic development and promotion makes their perpetuation likely, and even their exposure largely inconsequential in conventional control or sanctioning terms.
What seems like a new social anthropology of global regulation is an endeavour much too grand for this paper, even though it has much merit. To contain the analysis which follows…
Abstract
Purpose
What seems like a new social anthropology of global regulation is an endeavour much too grand for this paper, even though it has much merit. To contain the analysis which follows, the discussion of social embeddedness will be restricted to a comparison of markets which retain some local or regional integrity from those which have become largely removed from cultural or communal social bonds. An example is between markets trading in goods and services with a consumer base which is local and subsistence, and markets in derivative products that are inextricably dependent on supranational location. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
North World regulatory principle operates within consolidated state frameworks, dislocated market societies and reflects socially disembedded productivity relationships. The same could be said for dominant economic regulatory scholarship. More recent efforts to develop critical analysis of South World regulatory problems and answers have consistently remained connected to the referent of the regulatory state. This paper questions the utility of such a comparative conviction in a global governance reality wherein South World regulatory environments are largely subject to North World state interests and multi-national opportunism fostered by disaggregated, often dysfunctional, domestic states.
Findings
If, as in many South World contexts, the state is dysfunctional or destructive in translating regulatory principle, then what are the social bonds which advance the integrity of regulatory principle, and what of externalities which work to draw culturally located principle towards a more hegemonic regulatory project? Could appreciating the relationship between regulatory principle and social bonding be exhibited in degrees of market embeddedness? Might the reimagining of regulatory principle be possible by reflecting on motives and outcomes for regulation that have other than wealth maximization as core value? The paper answers these conjectures as a basis for empirical research.
Research limitations/implications
In the spirit of regulatory anthropology it is not helpful to remain immersed in some strained geographic regulatory dichotomy, employing some good state/bad state polarity. Neither World exists in regulatory isolation. International regulatory organizations ensure this through their Western/Northern development models, and perpetuate post-colonial influences over South World development agendas. That said, there are two regulatory worlds, and hybrids between. Despite this, regulatory principle is not immune from cultural forces and social bonding. The paper addresses various dualities in order to propose a new way of viewing South World regulatory paradigms.
Practical implications
The framework for analysis will enable a repositioning of critical scholarship and regulatory policy away from the model frameworks of consolidated states and towards the real regulatory needs and potentials of the South World.
Social implications
Through applying the analytical technique of social embeddedness above market community paradigms this analysis offers a novel approach to exploring economy in contexts where markets are not dislocated and products are not fictitious. In this way the contemporary materialist economic crisis can be viewed against principles of sustainability rather than growth, productivity and exchange.
Originality/value
The paper draws upon established scholarship regarding market embeddedness and social bonding but unique in applying this to a South World void of regulatory discourse set free of comparison with inappropriate regulatory state referents.
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This ethnographic revisit of a general hospital aims to critically explore and describe the mechanisms of corporate culture change and how institutional excellence is facilitated…
Abstract
Purpose
This ethnographic revisit of a general hospital aims to critically explore and describe the mechanisms of corporate culture change and how institutional excellence is facilitated and constrained by everyday management practices between 1996/1997 and 2014/2015.
Design/methodology/approach
A five-month field study of day-to-day life in the hospital's nursing division was conducted by means of an ethnographic revisit, using participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, free conversations and documentary material.
Findings
Using labour process analysis with ethnographic data from a general hospital, the corporate culture is represented as faceted, complex and sophisticated, lending little support to the managerial claims that if corporate objectives are realised, they are achieved through some combination of shared values, beliefs and managerial practices. The findings tend to support the critical view in labour process writing that modern managerial initiatives lead to tightened corporate control, advanced employee subjection and extensive effort intensification. The findings demonstrate the way in which the nursing employees enthusiastically embrace many aspects of the managerial message and yet, at the same time, still remain suspicious and distance themselves from it through misbehaviour and adaptation, and, in some cases, use the rhetoric against management for their own ends.
Practical implications
What are the implications for clinical and managerial practitioners? The recommendations are to (1) develop managerial practitioners who are capable of managing change combined with the professional autonomy of clinical practitioners, (2) take care to practise what you preach in clinical and managerial reality, as commitment, consent, compliance and difference of opinion are signs of a healthy corporate culture and (3) consider the implications between social structures and human actions with different work behaviours on different levels involved.
Originality/value
This ethnographic revisit considers data from a labour process analysis of corporate culture change in a general hospital and revisits the ways in which contradictory expectations and pressures are experienced by nursing employees and management practitioners spread 17 years apart.
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Robert F. Bruner and Fadi Micaelian
This introductory case considers the very sudden and large drop in market value of Oracle Systems' equity associated with two announcements in 1990. These announcements cause…
Abstract
This introductory case considers the very sudden and large drop in market value of Oracle Systems' equity associated with two announcements in 1990. These announcements cause investors to revise their expectations about the future growth of Oracle Systems, perhaps the most rapidly growing U.S. corporation in the 1980s. The tasks for the student are to evaluate both the import of the announcements and the company's financial health. The case provides a first exercise in financial statement analysis and lays the foundation for two important financial themes: the concept of financial health and the financial economic definition of value and its determinants. The case also presents an interesting profile of an aggressive chief executive officer and suggests some potential unintended financial consequences of extreme aggressiveness.
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The purpose of this paper is to critically examine reasons for disproportionately high levels of exclusion from the workplace of adults with Asperger syndrome.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critically examine reasons for disproportionately high levels of exclusion from the workplace of adults with Asperger syndrome.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology adopted involves empirical analysis of secondary, qualitative datasets. The twin datasets applied are examined using labour process analysis.
Findings
The main findings highlight the role of new and subtle forms of management control, a deficient yet necessary conflict dynamic in the employment relationship, and a reluctance of employers to involve third parties, in the exclusion process.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited because of the use of secondary datasets. Further research should be based on primary data collection and analysis, particularly in terms of seeking the views of other important parties to the exclusion process.
Practical implications
The problem of exclusion is unlikely to be improved without considering strategies to address the challenging customary social relations between employer and employee.
Social implications
Improving employment inclusion is likely to reduce mental health problems for adults with Asperger syndrome and reduce the burden on those who play a broader supporting role.
Originality/value
The topic of Asperger syndrome and employment has yet to permeate the academic literature on human resource management, employment relations and organisation studies.