Alternative Organizational Forms Research Articles

The Revolutionary Potential of Food Sovereignty: Applying Lenin’s Insights on Dialectics, the State, and Political Action

This essay elaborates a conception of sovereignty that highlights its revolutionary potential. Its argument addresses the nature of different movement strategies in the ongoing struggle for food sovereignty and how movements ought to confront the state while simultaneously using it to create a transformative, potentially anticapitalist form of governance. This claim is built from critiques of the state and sovereignty in studies of radical democracy. The essay then presents how Lenin connects sovereignty to proletarian governance. A revolutionary conception of sovereignty, developed by placing discussions of Lenin’s work in dialogue with practices of food sovereignty, is found in collective political action that suspends state power and challenges private property to create alternative economic and noneconomic forms of organization. This dialectical rendering of sovereignty entails constructing a new order by simultaneously conflicting with and acting through the existing one.

Against management: Auto-critique

In this review I consider the 20 years that have passed since the publication of my book Against Management. I begin by locating it in the context of the expanding business schools of the UK in the 1990s, and the growth of CMS in north western Europe. After positioning the book within its time, and noting that the book is now simultaneously highly cited and irrelevant, I then explore the arguments I made in the final chapter. If the book is of interest for the next two decades, it because it gestures towards the importance of alternative forms of organization, which I continue to maintain are not reducible to ‘management’. Given the intensifying crises of climate, ecology, inequality and democracy, developing alternatives must be understood as the historical task of CMS within the business school and I propose a ten-point manifesto in support of that commitment.

Workplace spirituality and social enterprise. A review and research agenda

Workplace spirituality is a social movement about purposeful work that has both personal and broader societal considerations. Social enterprises are alternative organizational forms that strive to create value by simultaneously pursuing social, economic and environmental goals. Both workplace spirituality and social enterprise discourses have a value creation orientation for self and others, framed as serving and contributing towards the common good. However, only a few studies have addressed the relevance of workplace spirituality for social enterprises. Based on the literature for workplace spirituality and social enterprise, respectively, this paper argues that these phenomena have a common ground: prosocial motives, doing well (value creation) and being well (flourishing). Workplace spirituality can help preserve social enterprises’ integrity, while the social enterprise context can support the incorporation of workplace spirituality to generate positive outcomes. Further studies could explore this potentiality, and the present paper provides some future research suggestions.

Time's up: Analyzing the feminist potential of time banks

AbstractTime banks are an alternative economic system proposed to address social problems by stimulating work and exchange through time‐based currency. They aim to redefine work and money, through building social capital to alleviate social problems. As women are disproportionately affected by these problems, it follows that membership is predominantly female, often poor. This article takes the position that time banks provide a lens through which to theorize the feminist potential of alternative forms of economic organization. It examines the ways in which feminists, and time banks, have sought to redefine the concepts of work and money, as well as the context of time banks within the Third Sector. “The reality” of these concepts in practice is then critically analyzed using empirical data from a year as an active participant within a time bank. The findings demonstrate the complex issues regarding how the time bank functioned in practice, particularly in relation to how members engaged with it, and articulated their participation. Further, the way in which the system co‐opted feminist potentials of alternative economic practices as part of the Third Sector, through a conception of social capital, is shown to be problematic in terms of exploiting the energies of already exploited women. This research shows the need for ongoing critical examination of initiatives targeted at social problems, particularly those mirroring feminist activism, in order to prevent the co‐option of energies and work.

State Legitimacy and Religious Accommodation

Abstract In this paper, we put forward a realist account of the problem of accommodation of conflicting claims over sacred places. Our argument takes its cue from the empirical finding that modern, Western-style states necessarily mould religion into shapes that are compatible with state rule. At least in the context of modern states, there is no pre-political morality of religious freedom that states ought to follow when adjudicating claims over sacred spaces. Liberal normative theory on religious accommodation which starts from the assumption of a pre-political morality of religious freedom is therefore of limited value. As an alternative, we suggest that the question of contested sacred places should be settled with reference to the purposes of the state, at least as long as one is committed to the existence of modern states. If one finds the treatment of religion by the state unsatisfactory, our argument provides a pro tanto reason for seeking alternative forms of political organization.

Fine-scale habitat heterogeneity favours the coexistence of supergene-controlled social forms in Formica selysi

BackgroundSocial insects vary widely in social organization, yet the genetical and ecological factors influencing this variation remain poorly known. In particular, whether spatially varying selection influences the maintenance of social polymorphisms in ants has been rarely investigated. To fill this gap, we examined whether fine-scale habitat heterogeneity contributes to the co-existence of alternative forms of social organization within populations. Single-queen colonies (monogyne social form) are generally associated with better colonization abilities, whereas multiple-queen colonies (polygyne social form) are predicted to be better competitors and monopolize saturated habitats. We hypothesize that each social form colonizes and thrives in distinct local habitats, as a result of their alternative dispersal and colony founding strategies. Here, we test this hypothesis in the Alpine silver ant, in which a supergene controls polymorphic social organization.ResultsMonogyne and polygyne colonies predominate in distinct habitats of the same population. The analysis of 59 sampling plots distributed across six habitats revealed that single-queen colonies mostly occupy unconnected habitats that were most likely reached by flight. This includes young habitats isolated by water and old habitats isolated by vegetation. In contrast, multiple-queen colonies were abundant in young, continuous and saturated habitats. Hence, alternative social forms colonize and monopolize distinct niches at a very local scale.ConclusionsAlternative social forms colonized and monopolized different local habitats, in accordance with differences in colonization and competition abilities. The monogyne social form displays a colonizer phenotype, by efficiently occupying empty habitats, while the polygyne social form exhibits a competitor phenotype, thriving in saturated habitats. The combination of the two phenotypes, coupled with fine-scale habitat heterogeneity, may allow the coexistence of alternative social forms within populations. Overall, these results suggest that spatially varying selection may be one of the mechanisms contributing to the maintenance of genetic polymorphisms in social organization.

Cosmolocalism: Understanding the Transitional Dynamics Towards Post-Capitalism

Over the last decades, the proliferation of ICTs and capitalist markets has created a new social-historical reality for communication, production and societal organisation, while social inequality has deepened. In this context, alternative forms of organisation based on the commons have emerged, challenging the core values of capitalism. Within this new form of egalitarian and transnational collaborative networks, a new concept of social coexistence has been proposed: cosmolocalism. This article presents the genealogy of cosmolocalism and compares it to previous conceptual universalist reconfigurations, namely cosmopolitanism and internationalism. While the current discourse on cosmolocalism focuses on production and distribution, its political dynamics and limitations remain unexplored. Our ultimate goal is to open a path of inquiry for further reflection and deliberation.

Corporations and The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

The main unit for organizing economic activity in the world today is the corporation. No other form of organization has come close to it in its effectiveness in generating wealth. This has, however, come with considerable costs, the most pressing being environmental degradation and climate change. In 2015, the United Nations agreed upon 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Given the legal structure of corporations and their past history, the problems they may pose to achieving some of those SDGs need to be examined. The most problematic areas are climate action, justice and strong institutions, reducing inequalities, and decent work. It is also worth noting that the SDG of economic growth may be oxymoronic and incompatible with some of the other goals. A key problem posed by the corporation as a legal entity is that its directors are legally required to maximize shareholder profits. That goal requires holding down costs, and the most effective way to do so is to externalize them. When the costs of corporate actions to the rest of society are fully calculated, their economic benefits begin to look less appealing than their balance sheets would indicate. The benefit corporation offers an interesting alternative form of business organization. There are also many sensible proposals for limiting the harm of regular corporations; however, the prospects of altering public policy on the basis of such proposals appear politically unattainable.

Maternal effect killing by a supergene controlling ant social organization

Supergenes underlie striking polymorphisms in nature, yet the evolutionary mechanisms by which they arise and persist remain enigmatic. These clusters of linked loci can spread in populations because they captured coadapted alleles or by selfishly distorting the laws of Mendelian inheritance. Here, we show that the supergene haplotype associated with multiple-queen colonies in Alpine silver ants is a maternal effect killer. All eggs from heterozygous queens failed to hatch when they did not inherit this haplotype. Hence, the haplotype specific to multiple-queen colonies is a selfish genetic element that enhances its own transmission by causing developmental arrest of progeny that do not carry it. At the population level, such transmission ratio distortion favors the spread of multiple-queen colonies, to the detriment of the alternative haplotype associated with single-queen colonies. Hence, selfish gene drive by one haplotype will impact the evolutionary dynamics of alternative forms of colony social organization. This killer hidden in a social supergene shows that large nonrecombining genomic regions are prone to cause multifarious effects across levels of biological organization.

The Nature of the Social Firm: Alternative Organizational Forms for Social Value Creation and Appropriation

I assess how alternative organizational forms affect the ability of multiple actors to appropriate economic rents in activities expected to create social value—defined as broad social benefits to a...

Living with Ambivalence: Bureaucracy, Anti-Statism and 'Progressive' Politics

This paper addresses a paradox. Bureaucracy, I argue, can be viewed as an ideological construct mobilised in both in the anti-statist rhetoric of neoliberalism, and in discourses of the 'progressive' left. But it is also integral to a range of contemporary calls for the regulation of corporate power, public action and personal conduct. Does left/progressive politics, then, mean rescuing bureaucracy in a reimagined polity capable of protecting citizens from harm and restoring notions of the state as a guarantor of public rights and justice? Or are left-inclined movements right to critique bureaucratic institutions and search for alternative organisational forms more capable of engaging or even 'empowering' citizens? The paper traces the slips and slides between negative representations of bureaucracy, regulation and the state itself, and asks how far emerging work can offer counter-narratives that serve to reimagine or reclaim them for 'progressive' purposes.

Dissipative Self-Assembly of Dynamic Multicompartmentalized Microsystems with Light-Responsive Behaviors

Summary Living cells are compartmentalized systems operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium and consume energy from the environment to carry out their functions. The construction of biomimetic synthetic compartments has both scientific and technological value. Despite many advances, the assembly of synthetic compartments that present nonequilibrium behaviors based on dissipative (or transient) self-assembly remains a grand challenge. Here, we describe the design and synthesis of multicompartmental systems with an active microstructure and complex behaviors. By including an artificial pathway for energy dissipation, we demonstrate the autonomous generation of active polymeric systems using a strategy based on polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA), driven by chemical fuel. Remarkably, these self-organized synthetic systems exhibit a dynamic change in their multicompartmental structures when exposed to light. This work introduces a strategy toward the design and construction of synthetic compartments with a dynamic structure and also presents pathways to engineer materials with spatially controllable structures and functionalities.

They don't represent us? Synecdochal representation and the politics of occupy movements

The aim of this article is to better understand the function and place of representation in the politics of occupy movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Spanish 15-M movement. It is often assumed that these movements categorically dismissed any form of political representation, as they criticised representative democracy in its current state and instead experimented with alternative forms of organisation and decision-making. My claim, however, is that these movements employed various forms of representation. In order to establish this, I distinguish between various notions of ‘representation,’ which are then applied to the practices and rhetoric of these movements. Engaging with the work of Ernesto Laclau, I then construct a particular – distinctively synecdochal – concept of representation that I claim is key to an adequate understanding of these movements and their radical-democratic repertoire.

Popular Consultation and Referendum in the Making of Cuban Socialist Democracy 2.0 Through the Lens of Cuba's 2019 Constitutional Reform Project

The language of democracy and democratic organization is usually spoken only in the vernacular of liberal democracy. Liberal democracy, mostly of western origin centers legitimacy of a political order on open, full, and free election for representatives, as well as a substantially unregulated civic space in which individuals and others can engage in political discourse. This essentially exogenous form of democratic organization has been increasingly challenged in the 21st century by an alternative model of endogenous democracy more compatible with states organized along Marxist Leninist principles. These emerging forms of endogenous democratic practices have been developed along two distinct lines, one embedded in developing principles for Chinese Marxism-Leninism, and the other grounded in the history and context of Cuban Leninism. While adherents to orthodox principles of liberal democracy have rejected any efforts to consider the plausibility of Marxist-Leninist democratic practice (principally because it requires suspension of the core operating principles of liberal democracy, though not its effects), these emerging alternative forms of democratic organization are worth serious study, if only because of their potential influence on the development of the optimal model of developing states. This article focuses on the development, since the 1959 Revolution, of a Cuban version of Socialist Consultative Democracy. The article traces the origins of the contemporary expression of Cuban Socialist Consultative Democracy in two early attempts by the revolutionary government to transform the practices of bourgeoise democracy into something different. These attempts, one at direct popular affirmation of leadership policies, and the other an institutionalized system for popular consultation, emerged in new forms after 2011 and have found their most complete expression in the complex processes of popular consultation and popular affirmation that marked the Cuban constitutional reform process of 2018-2019. What makes this particularly interesting is the way that it may provide a glimpse at the development of a set of practices (and the theory seeking to legitimate its forms) that might provide other developing states with an alternative path to democratic engagement that minimizes the risks of traditional liberal democratic practice. The article starts with context, considering the contours of the fundamental problem of ordering democracy and its compatibility with the political model for illiberal states. It then turns to the development of what will become Cuban Socialist Democratic models. To that end, it looks to the two principal sources from which these principles were developed. The first is the development of mechanisms for popular affirmation of the actions of the vanguard party; the second is the development of models of popular consultation under the guidance of the vanguard party and structured through a representative assembly. Taken together, these two elements contributed to the production of the initial or 1.0 version of Cuban Socialist Consultative Democracy. The article then considers how that more primitive model developed (along with Cuban Leninist theory) under the leadership of Raul Castro from 2011. It traces the pragmatic and theoretic developments from early efforts around the development of the Guidelines for Reform of 2011, through the articulation of a new political and economic model in 2016, and then emerging in its current 2.0 form in the elaborate process of popular consultation and affirmation of the 2019 Cuban Constitution. The paper covers the challenges, contradictions, and potential for this endogenous form of democracy

Public Versus Private Management in Water Public Services: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead

Governments have largely turned to public-private partnerships (PPPs) to manage public services. Although it is difficult to analyze PPPs as discrete and alternative forms of public service organization, they all constitute some forms of partial outsourcing of activities that contribute to the realization of a public service. In water industries, the most common form of PPPs is the concession, in which a private firm finances and operates the public service of water while the infrastructure remains public. This report seeks to answer the question of whether PPPs have contributed successfully to the quality and improvement of water public services all around the world. The paper is organized in three sections. In the first section, the different supposed advantages and costs of PPPs are presented. The second section reviews some of the most important studies on the efficiency of PPPs in water industries. The last section provides some recommendations to improve the use of PPPs in water public services.

The Sharing Economy and its Paradoxes: A Sociological Study of Sharing Communities in Russia

Citation: Shmidt M. (2019) The Sharing Economy and its Paradoxes: A Sociological Study of Sharing Communities in Russia. Mir Rossii, vol. 28, no 2, pp. 148–171. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2019-28-2-148-171
 Over the past decade there has been an enormous rise in alternative forms of economic organization, such as the sharing economy – an under-theorized and contradictory empirical phenomenon. The paper studies the variety of interaction practices and motivations for participation and identifies common and specific features of self-organization by comparing three platforms: Darudar (sharing goods), Bank Vremeni [Time Bank] (sharing time and services) and Couchsurfing (sharing accommodation and leisure). The data, which was triangulated, includes: (i) 25 in-depth interviews conducted with experts and active users of the platforms, (ii) ethnography from participant observation of users’ offline meetings, (iii) systematic online observation. This study employs a blended ethnography/netnography approach – studying the sharing economy communities both online and face-to-face to provide ‘thick’ description of community-building. We theorize that sharing in the sharing economy is a separate principle of resource allocation, which is characterized by the priority of goods over the structure of relations between parties. In contrast to the reciprocity principle, the recipient in sharing is selected with respect to a fixed amount of resources which the donor possesses. Sharing is moving far beyond the boundaries of kindred, friend, partner or other personal relationships, as far as the counterparty is selected among the participants of an extended network of social contacts. The circle of people who can enjoy the benefits of a joint resource expands to the many thousands of users of the virtual sharing platform. What motivates the well-resourced users of the sharing economy platforms, who possesseconomic and cultural capital, to become practitioners of sharing? Aspiration for communitybuilding, deriving from the extrapolation of the self to the aggregate level: the ‘extended self’. Sharing contributes to a sense of an imaginary community, making ourselves an integral part.Practically, sharing transforms into a ritual chain: from the preparation of resources for exchange to the choice of counteragent, communication before the act of sharing, during and after, all of which create a full part of social life. When offering to share material and immaterial objects, participants of the platforms offer a part of themselves – talents and opportunities, communication and empathy, belonging to cultural tradition. In return, they receive a means of reducing loneliness and overcoming social alienation.

Firms, Markets and Crowds: Information and Economic Organizing in the Digital Economy

The rise and prominence of platform-based organizations in recent years has attracted tremendous research interest by management and economics scholars. We focus on crowdsourcing, a particular type of platform-based form of organizing. We first inquire into the information efficiency properties of crowdsourcing, exploring why and how the underlying mechanisms can enable it to be more efficient than alternative organizational forms in organizing economic activities. We then emphasize the role of the firm as market designer as well as orchestrator of market resources in bringing about such efficiencies. We argue that the concept of firm-designed market represents a distinct institutional arrangement, demonstrating a new gain to management that is structured not around authority in producing orders but instead around orchestrating the market mechanism.

La Agricultura Familiar frente al modelo extractivista de desarrollo rural en Colombia

La Agricultura Familiar se reafirma a partir del debate mundial sobre el campesinado y su papel fundamental en la sociedad respecto a intereses globales como la sostenibilidad ambiental, la seguridad y soberanía alimentaria, la creación de mercados de proximidad entre productores y consumidores, la alimentación sana basada en formas de agricultura sostenible y la superación de la pobreza rural. Dada su relevancia, diversas organizaciones y movimientos sociales promueven la Agricultura Familiar como forma alternativa de producción y organización social; este es el caso de la Red Nacional de Agricultura Familiar (RENAF) que busca visibilizar la importancia de esta categoría y respaldar la promulgación de políticas públicas diferenciales en Colombia. Este artículo proporciona una reflexión sobre la construcción multidimensional de la Agricultura Familiar en el país y sobre las posibilidades que ofrece para enfrentar la crisis generada por el modelo extractivista del régimen agroalimentario. Se resaltan las características particulares de los agricultores familiares, en especial su racionalidad productiva, social, ambiental y económica, que constituyen estrategias de resistencia frente al modelo extractivista y fuentes de autonomía para reproducir sus condiciones sociales de vida.

Parker, M. (2018). Shut down the business school. What’s wrong with management education. London, England: Pluto Press.

The book’s hyperbolic title caught my attention as somebody who is involved in business and management education. As the title suggests, Parker’s work is admittedly polemical rather than a detailed analysis (xiii). One could be tempted to dismiss a book with such a seemingly exaggerated title as a marketing ploy to sell books by the droves, with the purpose being to enrich both author and publisher. But Parker’s book offers a serious, yet humorous, evaluation of the history and status quo of the business school, which unsurprisingly, is less-than-favourable. Martin Parker is currently a Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Bristol and thus an insider of the very institution that he so fiercely attacks (he is well aware of the irony that he bites the hand that feeds him (15)). Professor Parker is a prolific writer, and this book is the most recent in a series of four books that explore alternatives to the current business school models as well as alternative forms of organisation. (The previous three publications of this tetralogy are Against Management (2002), The dictionary of alternatives (2007) and Companion to Alternatives (2014).

COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY OF AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES AND CONVENTIONAL FIRMS IN A SAMPLE OF QUASI‐TWIN COMPANIES

ABSTRACTThe resilience of cooperatives and their positive contribution to employment in times of crisis is well established. However, their overall economic performance relative to conventional firms is still controversial, casting doubt on the ability of this alternative organizational form to govern the fundamental drivers of productivity. To shed new light on the issue, we study the comparative technical efficiency of agricultural cooperatives (ACs) and conventional firms (CFs), drawing on a unique data set comprising all wine‐producing companies in Sardinia (Italy) from 2004 to 2009. Due to the similarity of the habitats in which the firms operate and the careful measurement of several key inputs, the observed units are ‘twins’ in all non‐organizational respects, providing an ideal setting for comparison. Having generated efficiency scores through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we regressed the scores on external covariates and ownership type using a pooled truncated maximum likelihood formulation. Our findings, which survive correction for spatial correlations, indicate that cooperatives are less technically efficient than their capitalist counterparts and struggle more to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations. Both results are particularly worrying in light of the main challenges facing the wine industry in the near future: liberalization of EU planting rights and climate change.