Incomplete Institutional Change and the Persistence of Racial Inequality: The Contestation of Institutional Misalignment in South Africa*

Abstract

This study explores the role that organizations and institutions play in reproducing inequality even after significant political transitions intended to undermine the sources of such inequality. Our analysis reveals how incomplete institutional transitions may give rise to contradictory institutional logics and how this can contribute to high levels of contestation as actors and organizations vie to maintain, disrupt, and create new institutions. We analyse the dynamics of a conflict set within a broader institutional contestation in post‐apartheid South Africa by examining the farmworkers strike and unrest of 2012. We expose a complex interlocking system of exploitation and oppression at micro, meso, and macro institutional levels and highlight misalignments between de facto and de jure institutional environments. Our study shows how actors and organizations can exhibit and constrain agency legitimating the unequal access to resources and opportunities and why this can result in the persistence of inequality.

A Faith-based Entrepreneurial Sensemaking Lens: Empowerment, Risk, and Agency

“…The result is that about half of all South Africans live below the national poverty line, and the country's Gini coefficient of 0.66 (measuring income inequality) makes it amongst the most unequal globally (Adams & Luiz, 2022). The unemployment rate of 32.9% is underpinned by structural unemployment where skills mismatches result in both shortages and surpluses in the labour market.…”

Shared value as shared power: Business in South Africa’s democratic transition

“…Despite vague promises to 'help where it can' (Duma & White, 2022), organised business does not appear to have taken consequential action against its own, allowing companies such as Bain and McKinseynamed entities in the State Capture Report (Zondo Commission, 2022) -or Shell -a sanction-busting company under apartheid and now a repeat player in court cases finding that it has failed to appropriately consult and include affected communities in decision-making (Mongabay, 2021) that all the same remains an NBI member -to continue to hold themselves out as partners in shared value creation as they concentrate most evidently on their own profits. Rather, business leadership predominantly remains trapped in the economic logic of the past (Adams & Luiz, 2022).…”

Axes and fluidity of oppression in the workplace: Intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality

“…At a wider level, South Africa remains a deeply racialized and unequal society with the world's highest Gini coefficient of 0.66 -the richest 10% of the population earns 60% of national income and owns 95% of all wealth; and more than half of all South Africans live below the poverty line (these schisms are largely racially defined). Adams and Luiz (2022) unpack what they refer to as the incomplete institutional change, which continues to reproduce inequality, with structural contradictions between the ambitions of the 1996 liberal constitution and the historical legacy that persists in defining the present reality.…”

“…Given that vast parts of the world still operate in such environments, our contribution is instructive (Hamann et al, 2020). Lastly, we contribute towards understanding the organizing of in/equality more broadly by analyzing how organizations, institutions, and individuals reproduce inequality through intricate, interwoven practices of oppression (see Adams & Luiz, 2022).…”

“…Likewise, racial inequality persists despite legislative efforts to undo this legacy. As a result, organizations, institutions, and individuals continue to play a role in reproducing inequality through complex interlocking systems of oppression at micro, meso, and macro institutional levels (see Adams & Luiz, 2022). This, in turn, affects how individuals draw on their identity facets to respond to and decipher encounters with others.…”