A Decolonial Critique of the Racialized “Localwashing” of Extraction in Central Africa

Responding to calls for increased attention to actions and reactions “from above” within the extractive industry, we offer a decolonial critique of the ways in which corporate entities and multinational institutions propagate racialized rhetoric of “local” suffering, “local” consultation, and “local” fault for failure in extractive zones. Such rhetoric functions to legitimize extractive intervention within a set of practices that we call localwashing. Drawing from a decade of research on and along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline, we show how multi-scalar actors converged to assert knowledge of, responsibility for, and collaborations with “local” people within a racialized politics of scale. These corporate representations of the racialized “local” are coded through long-standing colonial tropes. We identify three interrelated and overlapping flexian elite rhetoric(s) and practices of racialized localwashing: (a) anguishing, (b) arrogating, and (c) admonishing. These elite representations of a racialized “local” reveal diversionary efforts “from above” to manage public opinion, displace blame for project failures, and domesticate dissent in a context of persistent scrutiny and criticism from international and regional advocates and activists

The moderating role of transformational leadership on HR practices in M&A integration

Scant research exists examining the effect of HRM practices on employee behavior in M&A integration and the role that leaders play within this. This paper develops a conceptual framework that focuses on the moderating role of transformational leadership on the achievement of human integration and organizational identification in M&A integration. We argue that communication, employee involvement, teamwork, and training and development have a positive effect on employee behavior and their identification with the newly formed organization. Moreover, we argue that transformational leadership behaviors will moderate the implementation of HRM practices in M&As, leading to positive employee behavior and employee identification in the new organization. We suggest that further research is necessary to test propositions of the present study in order to achieve finer-grained understanding of the role of transformational leadership on the achievement of human integration and organizational identification in M&A integration

Measuring the Potential Power Elite in the UK and Sweden

This paper proposes a methodology for using survey data to understand the composition of elites, through analysing the pool of potential members. An occupational-based measure of ‘potential power elite' (PPE) is created and compared with other measures of occupational advantage. It is argued that this measure can be utilised to explore if the processes causing certain social groups to be under-represented in elite positions are around selection or the population recruited from. We provide analysis of elite positions in the UK and Sweden, demonstrating differences in terms of the potential pool of elite members and the occupational histories of people of those employed in roles associated with elite recruitment. We argue that understanding the composition of the PPE provides a more nuanced analysis of the processes of meritocracy in accessing positions of power and social influence

Student-Parent attitudes towards Filipino migrant teachers in Indonesia

Using ethnographic data gleaned from a foreign managed Christian school in Indonesia, this article situates the ethnic prejudices of Indonesian Chinese parents and students towards Filipino teachers within the organizational and cultural politics of private schooling. It is argued that the commoditization of education as a form of market consumption alongside the masculinized international curriculum help shape the feminization of teachers from the Philippines. Catering to the aspirations of the country’s minority ethnic Chinese, privately managed schools actively recruit trained teachers from the Philippines, many of whom are female and are perceived by students and their parents as exhibiting negative symbolic capital. In the process of their employment, they encounter occasional moments of less than complete success and challenges in their jobs. This article situates this prejudice within the cultural politics of masculinized Chinese schooling in Indonesia, while seeking to shed light on the role of Filipino work migrancy in Indonesia’s formal employment sector

Promotion Determinants in Corporate Hierarchies: An Examination of Fast Tracks and Functional Area

This chapter estimates a dynamic reduced-form model of intra-firm promotions using an employer–employee panel of over 300 of the largest corporations in the United States in the period from 1981 to 1988. The estimation conditions on unobserved individual heterogeneity and allows for both an endogenous initial condition and sample attrition linked to individual heterogeneity in demonstrating the relative importance of variables that influence promotion. The role of the executive’s functional area in promotion is considered along with the existence and source of promotion fast tracks. We find that while the principal determinant of promotions is unobserved individual heterogeneity, functional area has a high explanatory power, resulting in promotion probabilities that differ by functional area for executives at the same reporting level and firm. No evidence is found that an executive’s recent speed of advancement in pay grade has a positive causal impact on in-sample promotions after conditioning on the executive’s career speed of advancement, except for the lowest level executives the data. Fast tracks appear to largely result from heterogeneity in persistent individual characteristics, not from an inherent benefit in recent advancement itself

Nose to Tail: Using the Whole Employment Relationship to Link Worker Participation to Operational Performance

Although many employers continue to adopt various forms of worker participation or employee involvement, expected positive gains often fail to materialize. One explanation for the weak or altogether missing performance effects is that researchers rely on frameworks that focus almost exclusively on contingencies related to the workers themselves or to the set of tasks subject to participatory processes. This study is premised on the notion that a broader examination of the employment relationship within which a worker participation program is embedded reveals a wider array of factors impinging upon its success. I integrate labor relations theory into existing insights from the strategic human resource management literature to advance an alternative framework that additionally accounts for structures and processes above the workplace level — namely, the (potentially implicit) contract linking employees to the organization and the business strategies enacted by the latter. The resulting propositions suggest that the performance-enhancing impact of worker participation hinges on the presence of participatory or participation-supporting structures at all three levels of the employment relationship. I conclude with implications for participation research

The curious compatibility of consensus, corporatism, and neoliberalism : The Finnish business community and the retasking of a corporatist welfare state

This article addresses the apparent paradox of simultaneous neoliberal change and welfare-statist, corporatist continuity by presenting an empirical case study of the advent of neoliberal ideas in Finland in the 1970s and 1980s. The article focuses on the attempts of a free-market think tank, EVA, and the employers’ association, STK, to advance policies such as economic deregulation, international competitiveness, welfare retrenchment, and active social and labour market policies through the neoliberal retasking of the corporatist Finnish welfare state. EVA and the STK utilised seemingly non-neoliberal means, that is an economic policy consensus and tripartite corporatist arrangements, and reformulated their content to better correspond with business interests. Instead of demolition, the outcome has been the redefinition and incremental transformation of the state from a provider of welfare to a promoter of competitiveness, productivity, and employment.Peer reviewe

Legitimacy, Visibility, and the Antecedents of Corporate Social Performance: An Investigation of the Instrumental Perspective

Using institutional theory as the foundation, this study examines the role of organizational visibility from a variety of sources (i.e., slack visibility, industry visibility, and visibility to multiple stakeholders) in influencing corporate social performance (CSP). The conceptual framework offers important insights regarding the instrumental motives of managers in performing CSP initiatives. Based on a sample of 124 S&P 500 firms, the authors found that it is a firm’s visibility to stakeholders, rather than its economic performance, that has the larger impact on managers’ decisions regarding how much CSP their firms exhibit. The results show that more profitable firms may not be motivated to engage actively in CSP unless they are under greater scrutiny by various firm stakeholders. The authors also found that organizational slack (estimated as cost of capital) is positively associated with a Social CSP dimension but negatively associated with a Strategic CSP dimension. This research contributes to the current CSP literature by demonstrating that motivations in addition to normative or ethical ones may be at play in the decisions firms make regarding their CSP.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline