Corporate Scramble for Africa? Towards a postcolonial framework for transglocal development governance

Abstract

Building on postcolonial critical organization and development studies, this paper explores the neo-colonial drive of a global development initiative. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NA) was launched in 2012 and provides a governance framework for partnerships between donors, governments, and companies that applies principles and practices of market-led growth as means to the end of inclusive development. Through an in-depth, multilevel analysis that juxtaposes the NA’s stipulated framework with the lived experiences of smallholder farmers in Malawi, one of ten African countries to participate in NA, the paper shows how local consequences are decoupled from global goals through governance gaps in both the horizontal and vertical dynamics of implementation. This decoupling of intention and consequence, we argue, happens at the national level of translating global principles into local practices. On the basis of this analysis, we suggest that vertical and horizontal governance must be integrated in one framework. Thus, we contribute to ongoing efforts to improve the theory and practice of the organization of development by introducing a framework of transglocal governance.

Implementing social sustainability through market pressures: an inter-organizational network analysis in the Pakistani apparel supply chain

“…Postcolonial scholars highlight the problem of social sustainability in developing countries' supply chains as voluntary practices guided by stakeholders from the Global North (Drebes, 2016; Gammelgaard et al. , 2020; McCarthy et al.…”

Biomateriality and Organizing: Towards an Organizational Perspective on Food

“…Examples include slaughterhouses (Fitzgerald, 2010; Glozer, Caruana, & Hibbert, 2019), hothouse vegetable production and fast-food restaurant chains. Governments, companies and non-governmental organizations struggle to negotiate food security for developing countries (Gammelgaard, Haakonsson, & Just, 2020), while the meat lobby tries to damage the business opportunities of firms producing plant-based meat alternatives ( Manager Magazin , 2020).…”

“…For example, food production has been examined as embedded in political struggles between mass production and alternative modes of production, such as micro-breweries (Kroezen & Heugens, 2019) and so-called alternative food networks (Ehrnström-Fuentes & Leipämaa-Leskinen, 2019). Combining insights from development studies and post-colonial scholarship, Gammelgaard et al (2020) analysed the local experience of farmers in Malawi with the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NA). The NA was launched in 2012 at the initiative of then US president Obama by the G8 and three African countries.…”

Metaphorical and Interlingual Translation in Moving Organizational Practices Across Languages

“…Even studies likely to have been conducted in multilingual settings (e.g. Gammelgaard, Haakonsson, & Just, 2019; Tyllström, 2019) do not give an account of interlingual translation and consequently some of the translation work remains hidden. In order to make it more visible, we now turn to the field of translation studies, the discipline that deals with interlingual translation.…”