1,721,006 research outputs found
Business elites to the rescue! Reframing capitalism and constructing an expert identity: implications for Africapitalism
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Africapitalism: Rethinking the Role of Business in Africa: Edited by Kenneth Amaeshi, Adun Okupe, and Uwafiokun Idemudia
No full textAmaeshi, Kenneth, Adun Okupe, and Uwafiokun Idemudia, eds. Africapitalism: Rethinking the Role of Business in Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018
Organizing nature as business: discursive struggles, the global ecological crisis, and a social-symbolic deadlock
Full text linkDespite looming ecological disaster, a persistent state of insufficient action seems
commonplace amongst most organizations. This thesis critically explores how this impasse
is constituted by discursive struggles surrounding the global ecological crisis. These struggles
are situated within the context of global environmental governance – a power arena that has,
over the past 25 years, become a defining battleground regarding environmental
sustainability. Here, discourses of the ecological crisis are constituted by political contests
amongst, most notably, multinational corporations, civil society organizations, and
(trans)national policy actors.
This thesis draws mainly from post-structural discourse theory, coupled with critical
perspectives on organizations and the natural environment, to explore both the discursive
practices that fix meanings surrounding the global ecological crisis, and the power effects
thereof. The primary source of data is text – this study is explicitly interested in how
discourses of the global ecological crisis evolve as the natural environment is
(mis)represented in organizational disclosures. Despite recognition by management and
organization scholars that the natural environment is indeed constructed, a functional
separation between business and nature persists, the relationship of which is mostly
examined from a firm-centric perspective. However, sustainability issues such as climate
change transcend the confines of firm activity and operate across spatial and temporal
dimensions. Hence, there is an urgent need to reconsider the business-nature dualism. To do
so, this study adopts a multi-level, multi-method approach that permits a necessary degree
of analytical and theoretical flexibility.
The four individual articles that encompass this work, whilst drawing from different
theoretical approaches, along with focusing on different levels of analysis, are underpinned
by the contentious intersection between discourse, organizations and the natural
environment. The first article concerns ‘macro talk’ and, operating on the field level, explores
how a dominant understanding of business’ role in sustainable development is constituted
during the UN Earth Summits in 1992, 2002, and 2012. The second article regards ‘corporate
talk’ and, this time on an organizational level, examines how tensions between economic
growth and environmental protection are avoided by the European oil and gas
supermajors—BP, Shell and Total—through the practice of mythmaking. The third article
takes a longitudinal approach and, also concerning ‘corporate talk’, examines how BP
rearticulated a hegemonic discourse of fossil fuels, which, when enacted, reproduces
corporate inaction on climate change. Finally, the fourth article emphasizes ‘resistance talk’,
focusing on how climate activists, as part of the global fossil fuel divestment movement,
engage in certain micro-level practices as they attempt to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry.
In all, the findings from these articles suggest that organizations both represent nature as
something to be conquered, dominated, and valued economically and as a pristine wilderness
to be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations. In pursuing these two extremes
concurrently, organizations self-perpetuate a social-symbolic deadlock that hinders finding
sustainable ways for human systems to coexist with natural systems. This thesis contributes
mainly to literature on organizations and the natural environment by illustrating how certain
practices, mechanisms, and processes continuously redefine the business-nature relationship
by facilitating a discursive struggle across multiple spatial and temporal dimensions. In doing
so, there are implications both for policy and business organizations, which are discussed in
the concluding chapter of this work
Exploring middle managers sensemaking processes during the adoption and practice of sustainability strategies in organisations
Full text linkThe thesis explores middle managers sensemaking processes of a University’s social responsibility
and sustainability (SRS) strategy during a period of change. Overall the thesis establishes links
between middle managers simultaneous sensemaking processes, dynamics of loosely coupled
organizational contexts and organizational responses to unexpected outcomes as they impact
strategy creation processes in organisations. Three main issues evolve.
Firstly, middle managers in loosely coupled organisations consist of two different sets
(administrators and academics). Based on their nature of work in particular, administrators and
academics select different sets of dominant and subtle sensemaking frames to make sense of
organizational strategies. Generally, while administrators select sensemaking frames which
emanate from existing strategic processes, academics select autonomous cues which exist outside
strategic processes. Administrators and academics sensemaking processes are therefore not a
single level or consecutive processes as typically researched, but rather occur as simultaneous
sensemaking processes. Six dominant simultaneous sensemaking frames are identified and
described.
Secondly, the thesis examines less explored aspects of debates on loosely coupled systems. It
investigates specific patterns of coupledness in middle managers strategic work and relationships.
It identified and described patterns of administrative work which are tightly coupled and patterns
in academic work which are loosely coupled.
Thirdly, distinct links are identified between middle managers simultaneous sensemaking
processes and unexpected strategy outcomes. This further led to exploring how organizations
respond to unexpected sustainability initiatives, especially in light of integrating them into already
existing strategy outcomes. Three integration strategies are identified and described
Sustainable banking: identity. logics.liabilities
No full textThis thesis examines the phenomenon of sustainable finance and banking. It explores
how organisations simultaneously pursue the community development and the profitability
goals, therefore, combining the behaviour of the economic and the ethical actor. It features the
Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV), an international network of 62 financial
institutions and 16 strategic partners operating globally. Drawing from the existing theories of
the firm, this thesis discusses how the combination of the economic and the ethical goals
creates identity plurality in sustainable banks. It further examines the associated liabilities of
identity plurality and the ways they could be resolved by sustainable banks.
The existing theories of the firm provided insufficient insights on the ways
organisations experience and resolve the challenges of identity plurality. Current research
contributes to the existing theories of the firm and helps synthesise the economic and the
ethical perspectives on the role of the firm. Sustainable banks combine the community
development and the banking identities at their core and, as a result, face competing identity
demands. The identity plurality affects their organisational structures, processes and
meanings. Findings from this study show that sustainable banks face regulatory, governance,
stakeholders relations project assessment challenges due to identity plurality.
Through a qualitative analysis of interviews, participant observations and documents,
this study discovered that challenges of identity plurality experienced by sustainable banks
result in two types of organisational liabilities: liabilities for multiple goals and liabilities to
multiple principle stakeholders. Sustainable banks address liabilities for multiple goals
through a combination of identity work tactics, namely critiquing, contextualising and
intervening. Sustainable banks further approach their liabilities to multiple principle
stakeholders through the relational identity orientation expressed in such behaviours as
inclusion of affected communities, full incorporation of local needs, philanthropic
inclusiveness, transparency and power balance among stakeholders, governmental
commitments and collaborative hiring as well as socialisation.
This thesis extends current theoretical understandings of identity plurality as a
combination of the economic and the ethical goals within an organisation. It shows to which
extent identity plurality is experienced by sustainable banks, what are the liabilities of
organisational identity plurality and how sustainable banks resolve these liabilities. These
findings contribute to earlier conceptualisations of the hybrid identity organisation and the
multiple identities organisation and supports the development of the pluralistic identity
organisation theory
Advertising greenness in China: a critical discourse analysis of the corporate online advertising discourse
Full text linkA growing number of companies, both multinationals and local firms, have begun to
adopt the idea of sustainability development, and develop and market their green
products/services with green advertising in developing countries. However, in the
context of China where the idea of commercial environmentalism or green
consumption is emerging and transported from the West, it is not clear that how the
green consumption is advocated and how consumption practices are connected to
environmental protection, and how the meaning of green consumption is constructed
by firms operating in China.
This study explores the Internet as a rich text for environmental marketing by
analyzing the ways firms showcase details of their green products/services,
production methods, business philosophy and other facets of their environmental
practices and values. The online promotional information can be seen as corporate
green advertising. Focused on the advertisings from corporate websites, and through
the analytical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (e.g., Faircloug, 1992;
1995(a) (b); Wodak and Chilton, 2005), this study presents how a number of
environmental conscious firms in China are portraying and promoting their
environmental responsible image and green products/services, and aims to examine
what firms are really telling and how they are discursively constructing corporate
“greenness”.
Based on the analyses of green advertisements from websites of four case companies
(two MNCs in China: General Electric in China, Unilever in China, and two Chinese
local firms: BYD automobile, and Landsea Real Estate), the study suggests that
corporate green advertising discourse plays an active role in defining “reality” of
greenness and imbuing meanings of consumption into environmentalism, as well as
in achieving the hegemonic construction of corporate greenness. In addition, the
corporate greenness is anthropocentric and embraces consumerist and
post-materialist values. Instead of endorsing the environmentalism which appeals for
a change of the current over-consumption lifestyle in capitalist development, the
corporate green advertising strategically integrates lineages from green discourse of
ecological modernization and political discourse of neoliberalism.
In addition to similarities, dissimilarities existing between discourses from MNCs’
and Chinese local firms are identified in two aspects: greenness integration and
greenness level. The differences in advertising discourses derive from both
organizational resources and firms’ embedded economic, historical, and
social-cultural contexts. Such differences prove the mutual constitutive or dialectical
relationship between language and society and develop the argument that although
firms play active role in constructing discourse, and green advertising discourse can
be seen as corporations’ discursive approach to achieve environmental governance,
their discourse is nevertheless constrained by both organizational internal and
external influences
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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