Christina Garsten

In search of corporate social responsibility: Introduction to special issue

This introduction to the special issue aims to contextualize and critically comment on the current trajectory of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in both scholarly inquiry and business practice. It suggests that we must place it within the milieu of the ongoing economic crisis and the failure of a number of important opportunities to make business ethical (e.g. the 2012 Rio + 20 Earth Summit). It then suggests possible future terrain for tenable CSR research (and practice), especially in the context of widespread cynicism and disbelief regarding the claims of business ethicists in industry and the academy.

Post-Political Regulation: Soft Power and Post-Political Visions in Global Governance

The debate on global governance points to shifts in the type and nature of regulation as well as in the set of actors involved. The article introduces a novel way of conceptualizing the changes, namely a move towards post-political forms of regulation (see also Garsten and Jacobsson, 2007). Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s notion of ‘the post-political vision’, the article argues that many contemporary forms of regulation are premised on consensual relationships as the basis for regulatory activity. These regulatory practices tend to narrow down the conflictual space, thereby exerting a form of soft power. Moreover, in the post-political forms of regulation, unequal power relations tend to be rendered invisible. The empirical cases discussed are voluntary regulatory arrangements, more specifically the Open Method of Coordination of the EU (OMC) and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives.

The cosmopolitan organization : An essay on corporate accountability

Transnational corporations increasingly seek to present a vision of social responsibility alongside the business vision. This reflects greater awareness of ‘the world as one single place’, of globa ...

Introduction: examining the politics of transparency

Transparency is a concept that has gained increasing currency and favour as an organizing principle and administrative goal in recent years. We note calls for greater transparency directed towards states, markets and corporations, in civil service, in local and national political processes, and in regard to large agglomerating institutions such as the European Union and the World Trade Organization. In a wide variety of situations the idea of transparency is held up as a panacea for the ills that a concentration of power can imply; a way in which citizens can attain a level of justice and control vis-a-vis institutions that affect their lives. We observe transparency in organizational policy, not least in relation to discussions of democracy and electoral procedures. It is invoked in fights against corruption and bribery, and in efforts to promote ‘good governance’. In the financial world, transparency is closely linked to pressures for more open and just accounting and auditing procedures. Transparency is also invoked more generally by protective state agencies as a set of technologies that promise to render life safer for ordinary people by close monitoring of risky elements, human and other. We observe transparency not only in organizations, but also more widely in our changing material world – in architecture, design and fashion. Clothing becomes more and more revealing, transparent social life ‘on exhibit’ is celebrated in endless reality shows and revealing documentaries are praised – subtlety and fiction take a back seat to ‘what’s really happening’. The call for transparency intensifies at a time when the modern nationstate is faced with the challenge of governing financial flows of capital, cultural influences and organizational impacts. Transparency runs alongside attempts to organize and control beyond local and cultural particularities. It suggests that visibility, information and openness are closely linked with organizing, and that what is visible can also be represented, objectified, measured and compared. One of the prerogatives of late capitalism, it seems, is making the world hospitable for translocal, universal forms of administration and governance and this entails making the world legible and transparent. As James C. Scott (1998) has shown for the development

Colleague, Competitor, or Client: Social Boundaries in Flexible Work Arrangements

In the world of organizations, a long term, permanent employment relation has been vital in the maintenance of organizational boundaries. It has provided a base for organizational action as well as a sense of loyalty and community. As organizational fashions and new ways of organizing production lead organizations to change, this model of relationship is also changing. The idea of “lifelong permanent work” is now increasingly being eroded. Standard contracts covered by collective bargaining agreements, the concentration of work in large factories or office sites, and the expectation of permanent employment are being questioned and increasingly dissolved (Allen and Henry 1996, 67; Beck 1992).

Ethical Dilemmas in Management

1. Introduction: Dilemmas of Ethical Organizing (Christina Garsten and Tor Hernes) 2. Risk, Responsibility and Conscience (Tore Bakken) 3. White as Snow or Milk? (Tor Hernes, Gerhard E. Schjelderup and Anne Live Vaagaasar) 4. Does Rule-Based Moral Management Work?: A Case Study in Sexual Harassment (Steve McKenna) 5. Challenges to Leader Integrity (Steven L. Grover and Robert Moorman) 6. Transparency Tricks (Christina Garsten and Monica Lindh de Montoya) 7. The Power of Activism (Debora L. Spar and Lane T. La Mure) 8. Thoughts and Second Thoughts About Enron Ethics (Ronald R. Sims and Johannes Brinkmann) 9. No Smoke Without Fire? (Todd Bridgman) 10. Overmanagement and the Problem of Moral Consciousness (Herve Laroche) 11. Tying Some Ends Together (Christina Garsten and Tor Hernes)

The naked corporation: vizualization, veiling and the ethico-politics of organizational transparency

The naked corporation: vizualization, veiling and the ethico-politics of organizational transparency

Magical formulae for market futures: Tales from the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos

Markets are often portrayed as being organized by way of rationalized knowledge, objective reasoning, and the fluctuations of demand and supply. In parallel, and often mixed with this modality of k ...

Local worlds of activation: the diverse pathways of three Swedish municipalities

Abstract Much welfare research is based on the assumption that welfare regimes are homogenous entities. Nevertheless, the practice of activation may vary considerably within states. This is especially so in a country such as Sweden where municipalities and state agencies are both involved in activation. This article studies local activation policy and practice in three Swedish municipalities, representing three distinct ‘local worlds of activation’. The analysis shows that policy orientations in the municipalities studied ranged from ‘work-first’ to ‘life-first’ approaches to activation. Governance arrangements and the role of private services and actors in service delivery differed significantly too, ranging from strictly market-based forms of governance to classical public administration. The article moreover shows how the different activation approaches were reflected in the radically different usages of Coordination Unions, as multi-party collaborate organisational structures established for activation policy implementation for certain target groups. Thus, activation must be approached not as a fixed and universal policy for social inclusion, but as susceptible to local practice and hence open to influence from local politics, established local traditions, patterns of networking and modes of collaborating, as the notion of ‘local words of activation’ intends to capture.

Mirrors of organizing : Plots, anxieties, and potentialities in the work of Henrik Ibsen

Playwrights can work as mirrors for ideas or problems that occupy us in academic writing. They can serve as reflexions of our thinking and sources of inspiration. They feed our imagination with plots, characters, and consequences of action. I remember this happening as I was working on the bottom-line oriented culture of corporate business and I went to see a play by August Strindberg, called There are Crimes and Crimes. It is about a man, actually a dramaturgist, who experiences great success and who gets intoxicated by his own grandiosity and elevation, and who gets into all kinds of relational and social troubles. Strindberg was, through his dramaturgical technique, able to summon and direct attention to subtle aspects of the emotional consequences of success and stardom. And he did this not through novelistic narration, or a retrospective description of past events, but through an unfolding succession of dilemmas, tensions, and conflicts. Aspects of this play spurred my thoughts further, and shed some light on issues I had not seen or been able to pinpoint in my analysis. In the anthropological sense, playwrights may enhance the critical engagement with society and the ways of people by providing a looking glass into the rounds of life we are attempting to understand. The works of Henrik Ibsen are particularly interesting in this sense.