Can solidarity be organized "from below" in global supply chains? The case of ExChains

Global supply chains in the garment industry are marked by labour standard violations in factories as well as retail stores. Against this background it is important to strengthen the bargaining power of workers along the supply chain. Establishing direct relationships among workers along the supply chain could be one way to achieve this aim. This paper builds on extant literature on transnational solidarity and highlights the specific challenges of understanding solidarity in a transnational social space by looking at the empirical context of global garment supply chains. It hereby seeks to go beyond treating "solidarity" as a mere metaphor for any form of transnational union or worker cooperation, and instead engages with the cultural-normative dimensions of the concept as referring to mutual bonds among groups of workers. By looking at the case of the ExChains network, this paper examines some of the opportunities and challenges involved in establishing and maintaining transnational worker solidarity. The paper concludes by discussing the transformative potential, but also the limits of transnational labour solidarity regarding substandard working conditions in global supply chains.Globale Lieferketten in der Bekleidungsindustrie sind durch Arbeitsstandardverletzungen in ihren Produktionsbetrieben, aber auch zunehmend im Einzelhandel gekennzeichnet. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es wichtig, die Verhandlungsmacht von Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmern entlang der Lieferkette zu stärken. Ein Weg, dies zu erreichen, ist die Schaffung von transnationalen Beziehungen zwischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern. Basierend auf der bestehenden Literatur zu transnationaler Solidarität hebt dieser Artikel die spezifischen Herausforderungen des Verständnisses von Solidarität im transnationalen Raum am Beispiel der globalen Bekleidungskette hervor. Dabei wird versucht, über "Solidarität" als bloße Metapher für jegliche Form der transnationalen Zusammenarbeit zwischen Gewerkschaften und Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmern hinauszugehen und stattdessen die kulturell-normativen Dimensionen des Solidaritätsbegriffs als gegenseitige Bindung von Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern zu verstehen. Am Fall des ExChains Netzwerks werden die Möglichkeiten und Herausforderungen der Schaffung und Aufrechterhaltung transnationaler Solidaritätsbeziehungen beispielhaft untersucht. Abschließend werden das transformative Potential, aber auch die Grenzen transnationaler Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Solidarität hinsichtlich der Arbeitsbedingungen in globalen Lieferketten diskutiert

Can business collaborate to save the planet?

In a world fractured by conflict, the difficulty in intergovernmental coordination to avoid climate catastrophe is apparent. Can business step in and help speed up collaboration? Sarah Ashwin, Nora Lohmeyer, and Elke Schüßler consider a mechanism enabling firms to cooperate with each other to address systemic problems: the creation of market-protected spaces through collective regulation

Gendered publication patterns in Socio-Economic Review

Creating interdisciplinary dialog in the field of socio-economics cannot be separated from the social diversity among scholarly voices within its community. In marking the 20th anniversary year of Socio-Economic Review (SER), this article examines the role of gender among authors and reviewers in SER. Our findings show that women remain underrepresented in terms of authorship and reviewing. While no gender differences exist in overall acceptance rates for submitted papers, a substantial gender gap exists in the number of submissions. Our analysis also highlights how the persistence of gender segregation is related to the predominance of male-only author teams and male-dominated research topics. The article concludes with suggestions for further research and a discussion on gender disparities in socio-economics and other social science fields

Spillover Effects Across Transnational Industrial Relations Agreements:The Potential and Limits of Collective Action in Global Supply Chains

Using qualitative data from interviews with multiple respondents in 45 garment brands and retailers, as well as respondents from unions and other stakeholders, the authors analyze the emergence of the Action Collaboration Transformation (ACT) living wages initiative. They ask how the inter-firm coordination and firm–union cooperation demanded by a multi-firm transnational industrial relations agreement (TIRA) developed. Synthesizing insights from the industrial relations and private governance literatures along with recent collective action theory, they identify a new pathway for the emergence of multi-firm TIRAs based on common group understandings, positive experiences of interaction, and trust. The central finding is that existing union-inclusive governance initiatives provided a platform from which spillover effects developed, facilitating the formation of new TIRAs. The authors contribute a new mapping of labor governance approaches on the dimensions of inter-firm coordination and labor inclusiveness, foregrounding socialization dynamics as a basis for collective action and problematizing the limited scalability of this mode of institutional emergence

Differences in female representation in leading management and organization journals: Establishing a benchmark

In the most prestigious journals of many disciplines, female researchers are underrepresented. To better understand this phenomenon, we compare the proportions of female authors in all leading management and organization studies (MOS) journals, explore underlying gendered publication patterns, and analyze factors explaining differences between journals. We examine the gendered distribution of authorship in these journals using a complete, original time series. The comprehensive data set includes all articles published in fourteen leading journals in the MOS field, comprising 77,472 cases (authors) and 43,673 articles. The findings show that women have been underrepresented in all leading MOS journals until now. However, our findings reveal significant differences between journals, with some journals lagging far behind their peers. We ask why some journals score much higher than others and show that gendered authorship constellations and research topic specialization consistently explain female representation differences between journals. More specifically, we find a dominance of ‘men's clubs’ when it comes to authorship constellations and thriving ‘male islands’ when it comes to research topics. In contrast, ‘women's clubs’ are far less prevalent and no ‘female island’ exists. Interestingly, female authorship and ‘shared islands’ play a particularly powerful role in narrowing the gender gap in leading journals. Our results provide a benchmark for female representation across leading journals and allow for the formulation of concrete research policy goals and directions for change

Interessenvertretung in globalen Wertschöpfungsnetzwerken - Theoretische Perspektiven und empirische Befunde

Globale Wertschöpfungsnetzwerke haben als Organisationsform ökonomischer Aktivitäten in den letzten Jahrzehnten deutlich an Bedeutung gewonnen. Zurückgeblieben ist demgegenüber trotz der massiven Betroffenheit vieler Interessengruppen - nicht nur, aber besonders der Beschäftigten - eine effektive Vertretung der Interessen. Dies gilt zwar auch für die zumeist im globalen Norden angesiedelten Leitunternehmen solcher Netzwerke, mehr aber noch für die an den Netzwerkrändern im globalen Süden zu verortenden Organisationen. Gleichwohl finden sich hier wie dort Ansatzpunkte für eine effektive Vertretung nicht nur, aber vor allem der Interessen von Beschäftigten.Global production or value networks have gained significantly in importance as organizational forms of economic activity over the past decades. A by-product of this development, however, despite the widespread concern it has caused among many interest groups - not only, but especially among employees -, is an effective interest representation. This applies to the leading firms of such networks, most of which are located in the global North, but even more so to the organizations located at the networks’ peripheries in the global South. Nonetheless, starting points for effective representation of the interests of employees and others are emerging here and there

We can't compete on human rights: creating market-protected spaces to institutionalize the emerging logic of responsible management

To what extent are multinational corporations (MNCs) able to address grand social challenges through corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of a dominant market logic? Based on an in-depth qualitative study of how apparel MNCs have addressed labor standards violations since the deadly 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse, we show how CSR managers navigate the tension between the emerging responsible management logic and the highly institutionalized market logic, revealing how some go beyond accommodating responsible management within the market by prioritizing responsible management in market-protected spaces. We theorize the construction of market-protected spaces as a multi-level mechanism for institutionalizing an emerging logic in the context of a field dominated by the market logic via three forms of institutional work: restraining the jurisdiction of the market logic, infusing the responsible management logic with non-market elements, and maintaining market-protected spaces against resistance. A market-protected space is an institutionally bound space that suspends the dominance of the market logic on selected issues based on a binding regulatory infrastructure that allows prioritizing responsible management practices, unlike voluntary CSR. The concept of a market-protected space maps a path for policy makers, managers, and other actors interested in institutionalizing responsible management in the global economy

HOSTILE FRAME TAKEOVER:CO-OPTING THE SECURITY FRAME IN THE GERMAN NUCLEAR ENERGY DEBATE

Despite growing attention to framing contests as important discursive struggles in articulating societal challenges and their solutions, most research has focused on competition over which frame becomes dominant. Less attention has been devoted to how macro-level master frames themselves are subjected to processes of meaning elaboration, although these are central for understanding field level dynamics. In this paper, we focus on how a master frame—seen as a relatively stable macro-level meaning structure—can be co-opted, meaning that it is reinterpreted to support a logic of action that is contrary to the original set of meanings