This paper critically examines the claim made by previous research that companies exercise corporate social responsibility (CSR) by responding to stakeholder interests. It is based on a field study of the events following the announcement of collective redundancies at a Swedish high-tech company. Although more than 10,000 workers were dismissed, the company was accepted as being socially responsible. The study reveals that this outcome was the result of a process whereby corporate representatives managed to enrol and mobilize a network of actors into being faithful to, and defending, their definition of social responsibility. This indicates that a company can assume an active role in the construction of the same network of actors that it is asked to respond to and impose upon other actors its own definition of what it means to be socially responsible. As a result, the translation of CSR within the network of actors may reinforce the powerful position of the company, rather than curb it.
This paper examines how people are classified as part of a labour market project aimed at establishing a process for recognizing prior learning among immigrants to Sweden in order to integrate them more quickly with the labour market and society. The paper suggests that, in Sweden, this work prioritizes procedural effectiveness over a more comprehensive understanding of the competence and qualifications of the immigrant worker. By exploring the process of classification in which cognitive structuring of the perceived world results in organizational, administrative and structural enactment, the study provides further insights into how practices of classification are a central part of organizational life. The concept of intersectionality contributes by showing how individuals are situated at the intersection of a variety of classificatory schemes, and together with classification, intersectionality points to how organizational categories are never given, but a result of bureaucratic power procedures strengthening, weakening and/or negotiating away categories used to sort people out.
Life cycle management (LCM) is a concept that goes beyond traditional corporate environmental management, due to its focus on a product’s entire life cycle. The spread of such concepts is usually understood in terms of processes of “diffusion,” whereby ideas spread over time by some inexplicable force. However, diffusion has proven less adequate to describe how ideas spreads in practice. Here, we address this oversight by studying the emergence and performance of what we refer to as life cycle practices. Drawing on an analysis of the development of a sustainability portfolio within a globally operating manufacturing company, we illustrate the kinds of life cycle work involved in dealing with local activities and interests, connecting activities and interests into action nets, performing life cycle practices, and spreading the life cycle idea. Finally, we discuss implications of life cycle work for research in the field of organization and management studies and for LCM research.
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