Linda Markowitz

Framing ambiguity: insider/outsiders and the successful legitimation project of the socially responsible mutual fund industry

This article uses a Bourdieuian notion of organizational field and social movement’s frame analysis to understand the successful legitimation project of the socially responsible (SR) mutual fund industry. We show how institutional entrepreneurs, as both insiders and outsiders of the dominant organizational field, compete with existing mutual fund logics and become a legitimate presence in the mutual fund industry. The SR mutual fund industry has grown exponentially since its introduction in the 1970s, even though the product it sells is ambiguous in nature (Wood, 2000). Thus, while the product could be perceived as subversive, as the SR industry is arguing that companies should act ‘responsible’ in their efforts to make money, the reality is that industry innovators do not disrupt the existing mutual fund logic of ‘fiduciary responsibility’ in order to legitimate themselves. Rather, SR institutional entrepreneurs use their social location in multiple organizational fields to argue that consumers can ‘make money while doing good’. Such a frame is not completely subversive nor completely compliant with the existing logic, yet it successfully appeals to both mutual fund insiders and social movement outsiders.

Structural Innovators and Core-Framing Tasks: How Socially Responsible Mutual Fund Companies Build Identity among Investors

Institutional entrepreneurs in organizational fields sometimes adopt collective-action frames that generate subcultural identities among consumers and mobilize them into purchasing goods. This article examines how socially responsible (SR) mutual fund companies use core-framing tasks to shore up the “corporate social responsibility” collective-action frame and to create an “SR” identity among investors. Analyzing the Web sites of thirty-four mutual fund companies that offer SR funds, the author finds that there are two types of entrepreneurs. Generalists attempt building on a universal SR identity and use core-framing tasks similar to social movement innovators. Specialists, on the other hand, nurture a specific SR identity and seem more concerned with values alignment rather than diagnostic, prognostic, or motivational framing. These two innovators stand in contrast to conventionalists, traditional mutual fund companies that respond to the entrepreneurs by offering their own SR mutual funds, yet use little framing or values alignment to attract investors.

After the organizing ends : Workers, self-efficacy, activism, and union frameworks

Because union organizing is commonly studied as a single event rather than the beginning of a process, little is understood about how union organizing strategies continue to affect workers after campaigns end. In this article, I analyze interviews with workers organized by two union campaign strategies, the “comprehensive campaign” and the “blitz,” which differ significantly in the degree of participation they foster among the rank and file. I apply Carole Patemans (1970) participatory democracy theory and Erving Goffmans (1974) framework analysis to understand the meanings workers invoke to understand the campaigns and their relations to the unions. By looking at three stages within these two union organizing processes, I examine the ways that worker activism diffuses after the campaigns and across organizations.

Employee Participation at the Workplace: Capitalist Control or Worker Freedom?

Participatory work strategies are praised by some labor advocates while condemned by others. Proponents claim that employee involvement strategies create cooperation between workers and management and that this cooperation benefits both groups. Critics argue that capitalists goal of profit makes cooperation between managers and workers impossible. Is worker participation, then, a goal for labor advocates to strive towards or an end to avoid? I agree that the nature of capitalism prohibits long-term cooperation between management and labor. However, I argue that both the tools and discourse of participation give workers more legitimacy to question managerial control than traditional Taylorist strategies.

Can Strategic Investing Transform the Corporation

The purpose of this article is to critique the main claim of the socially responsible (SR) investment industry: that through strategic investing investors can transform corporate power. I argue that businesses often respond to the demand by investors for short-term economic growth by making choices that run counter to the interests of corporate social responsibility; they reduce labor and material costs in ways that disrupt workers, communities and the environment. I demonstrate my theoretical claims using data from the 10 most common stocks selected by SR mutual funds. I call these stocks the SR Big Ten. A simple roll call of the SR Big Ten, as well as a thorough examination of each stock within it, reveals how problematic it is for individuals to rely on investments to transform the corporate world.

Using an adult development model to help explain pre-service teacher resistance to learning about race

This article shows the potential usefulness of applying Kegan’s constructive-developmental model to White teacher education students’ difficulties in understanding racial dynamics in US society. The data for this analysis come from a study examining the evolution of White teacher candidates’ understandings and practices related to diversity as they experienced different parts of an undergraduate teacher education program over a two-semester period. We describe the case of one of the students, Michelle, focusing on the contradiction between Michelle’s intense engagement, hard work and enjoyment in her required Foundations course and her simultaneous rejection of core ideas of the course. We show how Kegan’s model is helpful in explaining this contradiction and discuss implications for teacher educators.

Troubling the ontological bubble: middle school students challenging gender stereotypes

In this paper, we discuss how a selection of eighth-grade students (13–14-year-olds) responded when they were asked to publicly challenge the gender binary for a critical media literacy school assignment in the USA. We describe the ways in which students negotiated the dual projects of complying with the assignment to create video ads that challenged gender stereotypes and maintaining their gendered sense of self. While the videos had virtually all students disrupting gender in some way, many did so even as they reinforced the notion of gender as a binary. We apply the idea of ontological bubble, as well as concepts from post-structural theories, to help us make sense of the different methods students used to maintain the gender binary.

Racial Diversity in the Schools: A Necessary Evil?

White teachers see racial diversity in the schools as a “necessary evil.” Common beliefs are that a) Black students are saved by nurturing White teachers and well-behaved White children, and b) White students learn from “disadvantaged“ Black children the dual lesson of empathy and gratitude.

Structural ignorance of Christian privilege

Abstract Despite claims of a so-called war on Christmas, Christmas in the United States is still celebrated widely in public spaces. The question is why some people ignore, what some scholars call, their Christian privilege? In this paper, we explore the ignoring of Christian privilege in one public space: USA elementary schools. Using 27 interviews, we show that most of the teachers/administrators adopted what we are calling Christian ignorance –– a structural ignorance rooted in normative cognitive schemas that creates and maintains Christian privilege.

Christmas in U.S. K-12 schools: categorizing and explaining teacher awareness of Christo-normativity

ABSTRACT To reduce Christo-normativity in United States of America schools, most schools tend to only educate teachers about what religious practices are allowed by law. The question we ask is whether a focus on structural policies, like law, works. We apply Bourdieus theory of habitus, capital, and field to discuss the findings from 27 interviews we completed with teachers/administrators. We found that participants tended to fit into five categories related to their awareness of whether they promoted Christo-normativity. Those who were relatively aware were either Apologists or Non-celebrators and those who were less aware were Non-apologists, Promoters, or Deniers. We argue that while structural policies to reduce Christo-normativity in public schools may be effective for Apologists and Non-celebrators, such a policy may be ineffective or resisted among Non-apologists, Promoters or Deniers.