Humanistic Perspectives on International Business and Management

N. Lupton, M. Pirson, N. Lupton, M. Pirson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137471611
• eBook ISBN: 9781137471628
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Estrategia empresarial

In Humanistic Perspectives on International Business and Management, the authors provide space to global perspectives on how we can rethink and reposition international business and management practice to be a part of the solution to our global problems. These contributions provide impetus for further research, practice and pedagogy development.

Part I

Conceptual Perspectives

1

Global Tensions between Mainstream Economic Discourse and International Humanistic Management Agendas: Investigating the Challenges Facing Organizational Stakeholders in Modern Market Societies

Thomas S. Calvard and James Hine

Introduction and overview

This chapter argues that there is a persistent, growing, unabated global discontent with mainstream, orthodox and excessively liberal or neoliberal economic discourse. This discontent is vague and complex, but it emanates from various populist sources outside the discipline of economics, from various critical quarters across the social sciences and from heterodox voices and associations within the field of economics (e.g., The World Economics Association [WEA]; The New Economics Foundation [NEF]).

This chapter focuses on long-standing, highly challenging questions about the powerful effects of economic discourse on the various strains of political and (inter)national economy interpreting it, and the future possibilities for economic and management thought. The latter possibilities are typically those trying to understand and shape market society away from purer forms of shareholder capitalism and toward something more ethically and socially palatable within modern market societies. These debates take place against the backdrop of continuing twenty-first century globalization, a seemingly hegemonic status quo of chasing rapid global growth and financialization, the enduring presence of large multinational corporations, the failure of mainstream economics to reform itself in spite of corporate scandals, a global financial crisis, occupy protests reflecting a significant sense of alienation from those accumulating wealth, shifting divisions of world power, informal economic or black market participation and a thirst for more humanistic solutions to global crises.

Mainstream economic discourse as it stands is really more like a set of interlocking discourses, with complex roots in neoclassical, neoliberal, utilitarian, individualist, Darwinian and shareholder or consumer capitalist modes of thought. The calls for change or counter-discourses are also striking, although in some cases more cautious, tongue-in-cheek and ambivalent than others. The word “economics” has more or less become semiology in its own right. A cursory search of any library or bookstore economics/business section will often reveal more titles questioning the fundamental nature of economics than titles merely giving a neutral overview. Flashy titles do sell books, but names also abound in journal articles and enjoy a wider subsequent usage. Labels include freakonomics, freeconomics, sickonomics, bleakonomics and economyths. The societal excesses of laissez-faire neoliberal market capitalism around inequality and environmental depletion are also frequently alluded to via disease metaphors such as “Anton’s blindness” (a rare brain condition where one cortically blind still affirms confidently that they can see; Patel, 2009) and “Affluenza,” where a growth in material affluence in developed economies is ironically detrimental to humans’ well-being (James, 2007).

Having set this scene, the purpose of this chapter is not to attempt to unpick the finer points of all these issues – which would be a monumental technical undertaking, one that will doubtless continue for many years. Rather, we aim to explore the key effects of mainstream economic discourse on corporate stakeholders in market societies and to encourage broader, more coherent humanistic engagement with it. We consider the constrained sense of agency that is experienced by market players acting in the face of economic orthodoxy, alongside some contextual reference to globalization and international business. At the heart of the chapter, we briefly summarize the key tensions that hinder more humanistic engagements with mainstream economics and outline directions for partially overcoming these obstacles. We conclude with some implications for research and practice relevant to the humanistic management agenda (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010; Spitzeck et al., 2009).

Mainstream orthodox economic discourse: recurring, persistent and uneasy discontent

We acknowledge debates about whether mainstream, orthodox economic discourse is in fact “all one thing.” We would argue that at times it can seem so, although we also acknowledge the rich complexity of international variations in corporate governance, species of capitalism, political rhetoric, academic communities and so on. Nevertheless, digging at core economic issues can enable almost anyone to strike at some relatively durable elements of recurring, persistent and uneasy discontent.

Economics is still frequently referred to as a “dismal science” (e.g., Wheelan, 2002), a phrase coined by the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle in the nineteenth century, reflecting the depressing, harsh global realities explored during the classical era of the discipline and to be contrasted with more arts-oriented, life-affirming “gay sciences” such as the writings of song and verse. The “death of economics” has also been proclaimed, in terms of its abstract, static detachment dooming it to never fully understand dynamic socio-political issues (Ormerod, 1995). Also, in particular, the mainstream “neoclassical” label has been argued to have potentially outlived its relevance, dating back to the early twentieth century or further and not reflecting recent broader developments of the discipline and its future (Colander, 2000).

As well as being “neoclassical,” mainstream economics is also affiliated with “neoliberalism” (Steger & Roy, 2010), a global set of political forces dating from the 1970s or so that are reconstituting the role of the state and financial systems in supporting freer market processes and that are enacted today largely through transnational institutions such as the international monetary fund (IMF) and the World Bank, among others. More than just “market fundamentalism,” the term remains in widespread use but is contested, often poorly conceived and ripe for potential political and regulatory revisions, particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis (Josifidis et al., 2010; Mudge, 2008). The term also more subtly emphasizes free and fair competitiveness as a core value. This value is in turn ambiguously linked to other moral issues; for example, elitism, widespread self-interest, rights and responsibilities, welfare, tragedy of the commons (resource depletion) and efforts to shape more acceptable forms of capitalism (Amable, 2011).

We argue that these messy ongoing debates belie a general sense of unease and discontent surrounding economics. Despite an explosion of decades of interdisciplinary and populist literature, trying to take on economic doctrine has come to feel not only wearily unoriginal but also like wrestling with a creature of intimidating proportions. The ambitious scope of the language, meaning and knowledge surrounding economics – ostensibly a discipline about what everyone in the world stands to get out of life – makes it a particularly powerful (and you might even say ultimate) candidate for discourse. Its componential richness, durability and scope can lead us to refer to mainstream economic discourse as somewhat hegemonic or dominant, muscular, grand, mega, meta and so on (Phillips & Oswick, 2012). Given the turn-of-the-century ethical business scandals (e.g., Enron, Worldcom) and the 2008 global financial crisis, market individualist ideology and inherently unstable financial capitalism should be ripe for reform (Hodgson, 2009), although questioning them is likely to prove difficult given vested interests and real-world complexities that need to be addressed. Politically, to the extent that governmental states and markets work hand in glove (Marglin, 2008), there is a sense of relative obsolescence of the left and right in progressive political thought (Lasch, 1991), which is accompanied by a potential need for market society stakeholders to somehow make smarter demands of a triumphantly indestructible power core of global capitalism and liberal democracy (Žižek, 2007). This power core in turn vaguely assimilates politics to economics itself – blurring the two – and drives them both some distance away from ethics, throwing the latter at risk for being stereotypically confined to more personally private, Kantian matters (Parker, 2003).

There are two main ways to challenge mainstream economics (Marglin, 2008). The first is structural; to look at how to make markets work better or describe them with greater technical accuracy by questioning the structural assumptions around their mechanisms. The strongest of these attempts include those that have tried to technically debunk orthodox economics, by dismantling some of its curves, predictions, modelling assumptions, proxies and other relationships (Keen, 2001). The second way to critique is foundational; to fundamentally question, challenge and investigate the societal logic and limits of markets (Marglin, 2008). This might include more radical communitarian, critical, Marxist or postmodern views, denouncing the market fundamentalism arising from economics as an authoritarian grand narrative to be greeted with skepticism, favoring placing greater emphasis on dissent, pluralism, and cultural difference (Sim, 2011). This is where postmodernism starts to potentially clash with humanism’s emphasis on the universal; although we might wish to argue for a “postmodern humanism” of multiple cultural “humanisms” (Epstein, 2009).

A wealth of social science research breeds in the middle of these two arms of critique, implicitly or explicitly questioning market and institutional functioning on various technical and/or social grounds as well as the implications for market stakeholders. Currently, we find economics struggling to break with centuries of discontented past and create a newer, more humanistic, twenty-first century paradigm from its heterodoxy (Coleman, 2002; Lee, 2012). Influential twentieth century socio-economic thinkers like John Kenneth Galbraith and Thorstein Veblen await greater retrospective consideration and potential successors.

In the following sections of this chapter, we trace these issues with reference to globalization and the international business arena, and present our approach to engaging and summarizing the key humanistic tensions raised by mainstream economic discourse.

Mainstream economic discourse in relation to globalization and international business

The foregoing discussions of mainstream economics and the discourse-based tensions arising take on new intensities and complications in relation to persistent globalization and topics on the international business agenda. The hallmarks of contemporary globalization – intensified flows and interconnected patterns of capital, knowledge, trade, migration and other socio-economic or political activity – step up the scope of mainstream economic mandates, emphasizing global incentives, transactions and market equilibria. Developmental or comparative subfields of economics have evolved in tandem with international global economic discourses, debating neoliberal and socialist policies, and exploring a variety of capitalist institutional possibilities, where market institutions, multinationals and governments try to work together as skilfully as possible (Djankov et al., 2003; Piasecki & Wolnicki, 2004).

From a humanistic standpoint, clearly there are limits to development in terms of global economic growth (i.e., it needs to be sustainable and environmentally friendly), and despite the purported inclusiveness of globalization, market forces and free trade are not enough to lift some populations out of extreme poverty. Specifically, a combination of increased foreign aid and more scientific understandings of national infrastructure and geography are needed (Sachs, 2005). This is where development economics needs to be linked to international business. Yet, in a situation that mirrors the orthodox-heterodox tensions in economics, the field of international business also has a navel-gazing mainstream and a neglected, indignantly critical heterodox set of views. Specifically, there are critical concerns that mainstream international business has adopted a culture-free or Western bias focused on the machinations of multinationals, neglecting important, fruitful understandings of First/Third world and other global culture rifts emphasized by postmodern and postcolonial perspectives (Özkazanç-Pan, 2008).

Mainstream international business and management research indeed retains a sound technical commitment to understanding the structures of internationally operating firms and the cost-benefit implications of crossing national boundaries (Rugman et al., 2011), but it seems to be struggling with fully engaging globalization contexts beyond the scope of firms or developing genuine leaps in conceptual or theoretical thinking (Griffith et al., 2008). Clearly, critical international management scholarship and less orthodox, emerging subfields of economics (e.g., economic geography; Beugelsdijk et al., 2010), if amenable, can contribute in part to better understandings of local culture and socio-political global differences. The business need for this dialogue, and its relevance for globalization, is underscored by the use of confusingly rich terms like “glocalization” to capture emerging social and organizational realities (Roudometof, 2005) and the significant levels of global population that remains almost exclusively within the informal economy (Neuwirth, 2012).

To return to links between economics and globalization, an orthodox economic hegemony seems to be maintaining a partly undesirable state of highly financialized instability overall. This is profoundly connected to the political dimension of globalization and a strained ultimate debate around whether a mutually tolerant global ideal can be realized or whether instability and pluralist national resistance will prevail (Steger, 2013). We believe that improved reflection and practice around forms of economic and social scientific discourse can help ground these otherwise intimidating issues. To the extent that mainstream economic doctrine has run its course and left the world in something of a cultural and political limbo, we might expect to see a continuance of commentary invoking “late” capitalism or “end of times” rhetoric (Fukuyama, 1993; Žižek, 2011). There is even some credence to the argument that the world – partly because of its interconnectivity – is regr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: International Business and International Management in an Era of Globality
• Part I Conceptual Perspectives
• Part II Business Practice and Policy
• Part III Humanistic Pedagogical Innovations
• Conclusions: Toward a Humanistic Agenda for International Business and Management
• Index