17 research outputs found
Voiceless but empowered farmers in corporate supply chains: contradictory imagery and instrumental approach to empowerment
There have been calls for a shift of focus towards the political and power-laden aspects of transitioning towards socially equitable global supply chains. This paper offers an empirically grounded response to these calls from a critical realist stance in the context of global food supply chains. We examine how an imaginary for sustainable farming structured around an instrumental construction of empowerment limits what is viewed as permissible, desirable and possible in global food supply chains. We adopt a multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the sustainable farming imaginary for smallholder farmers constructed by one large organization, Unilever, in a series of videos produced and disseminated on YouTube. We expose the underlying mechanisms of power and marginalization at work within the sustainability imaginary and show how âempowermentâ has the potential to create of new dependencies for these farmers. We recontextualize the representations to show that while the imaginary may be commercially feasible, it is less achievable in terms of empowering smallholder farmers
Development Discourse and Practice: Alternatives and New Directions from Postcolonial Perspectives
Development and aid programs, such as those aimed at promoting economic growth and prosperity in âThird Worldâ nations and transition economies, often arise out of Western and neo-liberal policy ideologies and practices. These programs may, in some cases, provide useful guidelines for restructuring institutional structures and governance mechanisms in nations that have long struggled with poverty, economic instability, health crises, and social and political turmoil. However, a growing number of critical voices are raising concerns over the guiding assumptions and inclusiveness of these policies and programs in their aims to promote economic development and social well-being in non-Western nations. We join these critical perspectives by way of postcolonial frameworks to highlight some of the problematic assumptions and oversights of development programs, while offering new alternatives and directions. By doing so, we contribute to organizational theorizing in a global context, as postcolonial insights provide much needed engagement with international aid policies and programs, as well as development organizations and institutions. To accomplish this, we offer a historical perspective on development, present a critique of the policies and practices guiding many aid programs, and conclude with suggestions emanating from postcoloniality
Writing differentlyAlisonPullen, JennyHelin and NancyHarding (Eds.) Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2020, 248 pp., ÂŁ75.00.
Humanistic Values in the Gulf Cooperation Council: An In-depth Study of Humanistic Dimensions in the Region
Introduction: International Business and International Management in an Era of Globality
The politics of kitchen work: Coâproduction of a retired man's âhegemonic masculinityâ during the COVIDâ19 quarantine
Reconstructing the indigenous in African management research: implications for international management studies in a globalized world
The primary aim of this article is to help lay the foundations for mainstreaming indigenous research within international and cross-cultural management studies, taking sub-Saharan Africa as the primary and initial focus, and using the informal economy as an example. It sets out to critically examine the concept of indigenous, looking at how concepts and scholarship have been shaped by global dynamics, and the implications for developing empirical research. It then discusses a research agenda and methods for undertaking indigenous management research, going on to discuss the importance of this to the further development of international and cross-cultural management within a global and changing context.
Its contribution to scholarship is a more systematic re-examining of the concepts of indigenousness and indigenous knowledge and what these concepts mean to undertaking management research that more thoroughly reflect global realities, while evaluating indigenous research methods that could be used effectively and appropriately in this endeavour