Market-based Logic Research Articles

Technocracy without society: a critique of nudging as an approach to managing risk

ABSTRACT This article considers the evolution of public risk management over the past half century in the United States, focusing on ‘nudging’ as a technique to manage a variety of risks – environmental, health, and financial – through shifts in individual behaviour. I argue that nudging operates according to a privatised, market-based logic of security that displaces more democratic approaches. I further show how nudging aims to go beyond the political – which is to say beyond the realm of democratic contestation over the assessment and mitigation of risk, thereby reinforcing an unsustainable view of risk management as an apolitical set of ‘best practices’. I further argue that this technocratic approach to risk has become particularly problematic amid a populist backlash against scientific expertise and elite institutions, and may even leave advanced democracies less able to manage the risks they face: the erosion of public trust in experts and government undermines both the attempt to nudge individuals towards ‘prudential’ choices and government mandates to manage risks through more aggressive regulatory means.

The Value of Work: The Gendered Outcomes of Organizational Wage Reforms

ABSTRACT This study explores the influence of organizational practices on gender in/equality in a unique setting: the reformed Israeli kibbutz. The transition of the kibbutz from all members receiving an allowance to waged labor provides an opportunity to explore the impact of wage determination systems on gender pay inequality. The study uses a mixed-method approach: descriptive statistics of administrative data, in-depth interviews, and a focus group with kibbutz management. The findings demonstrate that a “market-based logic,” embedded with gendered preconceptions of “women’s work,” can seep into an organization through a shift in the wage determination system, and increase gender inequality. The findings also highlight the lack of organizational awareness about the gendered consequences of this shift, or even their uncritical acceptance of the “value hierarchy” as ordained by the market. The study thus supports the theory positing gender as a hidden but integral aspect of reward systems in contemporary labor markets. HIGHLIGHTS The choice of a wage determination system is critical for gender inequality. “Women’s work” is valued higher by analytical job evaluation systems, which reduce gender biases. Market-based wage determinations introduce biases and increase organizational gender inequality. Management prefers market-based wage determinations due to competition and costs. The “free market” not only obscures gender hierarchies but also legitimizes them.

The Transnational Social Contract in the Global South

Abstract How does labor emigration affect state–society relations across postcolonial states? We argue that the opportunity to pursue employment abroad alters a fundamental component of postcolonial states—the post-independence social contract. Such states’ inability to sustain post-independence levels of welfare provision first leads to the development of “emigration management institutions,” which seek to encourage and regulate citizens’ labor emigration, and second, to the widening of the “remittance-welfare gap,” where labor emigration and remittances outpace state-sponsored welfare provision. These mark the emergence of a “transnational social contract,” as states leverage access to employment abroad in exchange for social and political acquiescence. This de-territorialization of the postcolonial social contract leads to de jure and de facto forms of state coercion toward its citizens/migrants, who are commodified by the market-based logic of transnational neo-patrimonialism. We test this argument through a paired comparison and within-case analysis across two postcolonial states in South Asia and the Middle East: Nepal and Jordan. We offer an interregional, South–South migration analysis and a novel framework of understanding the politics of mobility across non-Western states as “migration from below,” which acts as a corrective to the dominance of South–North migration research in international studies.

Intermediary Organizations, Technocratic Discourses, and the Rise of Accountability Regimes in Teacher Education

Intermediary organizations’ (IOs) involvement in teacher education policies has grown in recent years. Apart from advocating for the introduction of alternative routes into the teaching profession, IOs have facilitated the spread of outcomes-based teacher preparation accountability. While previous studies examined the neoliberal market-based logic of their proposals, less is known about technocracy as a discourse informing teacher education redesign. To address this gap, I use the tools of critical policy and critical discourse analysis to examine how IOs advocated for and participated in the construction of outcomes-based accountability regimes. This analysis captures key elements of technocracy, such as the depoliticization of social issues, scientism, and the dismissal of opposition on which accountability regimes are built. By attending to the assumptions and inherent contradictions of technocratic discourses, I shed light on the ways in which accountability regimes dismiss opposition and seek to refashion governance structures in teacher education.

The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism

The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism

Campground or losing ground for adaptation? A case study of coastal change under neoliberal settings in New South Wales

Coastal areas are at risk from the dual burden of climate change and rapid development. Coastal areas are significant as contested interfaces where social, cultural and environmental values vie for attention amongst economic and political aspirations. As a political logic, neoliberalism favours market-based logics, privatisations and commodification. Under neoliberal settings, planning for coastal adaptation is constantly tempered by an economic agenda. This case study analyses the management of a particular coastal land use in New South Wales, Australia following a change in management which signals a move to the market-based settings of neoliberalism. Specifically, this paper examines the case of campgrounds on public lands following a State-led change of management from local municipality to a state-run enterprise. I draw on a critical discourse analysis to study local and national media articles and coastal and campgrounds management documents. Findings highlight the influence of neoliberal settings on community consultation, local knowledge and community connections to the coast; management of coastal risks and responsibilities; and the change from nature-based holidays to a more commodified experience. Discussed is how this change and approach is likely to impact on climate change adaptation, with a call for more ambitious and inclusive conversations around coastal futures under a changing climate.

Trade-offs or synergies? Hybridity and sustainable performance of dairy cooperatives in India

• Analyses the effect of National Dairy Plan on Indian dairy cooperatives. • Conceptualizes dairy cooperatives as hybrid organizations. • Regression analysis using 2-stage augmented inverse probability weighted estimator based on potential outcomes framework. • The performance of dairy cooperatives is affected by their hybrid characteristics. • Indian dairy cooperatives are characterized by synergetic outcomes, not trade-offs. India has come a long way in achieving milk security since it attained independence in 1947. During the 1950s India had to import about 55,000 tons of milk powder. By the year 2018–19 it had become one of the largest producers of milk in the world. The credit for this goes to the successful promotion of dairy cooperatives (DCs) in India. However, milk productivity in the country has continued to lag behind global averages. To increase milk productivity in India, the National Dairy Plan (NDP) was launched in 2011–12. Limited research appears to have been conducted on the effect of NDP on DC performance. Therefore, this article analyzes the effect of NDP on DC performance by conceptualizing DCs as hybrid organizations. However, there is limited research on how the hybrid character of cooperatives affects their performance. Regression analysis using 2-stage doubly robust, augmented inverse probability weighted (AIPW) estimator based on the potential outcomes framework on DC data collected via surveys and secondary reveals that NDP is imbibing characteristics of hybrid organizations in Indian DCs. Hybridity is statistically significant after controlling for village-level and DC-level variables. Financial hybridity is significant for four dependent variables: unit profit, quality of milk, human capability-building and community support. Autonomy, the other measure of hybridity, is significant for two dependent variables: growth of sales and unit profit. In other words, Indian DCs with hybrid characteristics actually pursue three different kinds of objectives: a) maximization of market-based logics (pursuit of self-interest, economic efficiency and profit maximization); b) maximization of community-oriented logics (pursuit of values such democracy, solidarity and autonomy); and, c) maximization of public benefit (public-sector led local economic development). The above discussion shows that Indian DCs are characterized by synergetic outcomes and not by trade-offs which contrasts with theoretical literature.

UMap: A Free Open-Source Alternative to Google My Maps

Since their release in 2005, Google Maps-based tools have become the de facto solutions for a variety of online cartographic projects. Their success has been accompanied by a range of critiques denouncing the individualistic market-based logic imposed by these mapping services. Alternative options to this dominant model have been released since then; uMap is one of them. uMap is a free, open-source online mapping platform that builds on OpenStreetMap to enable anyone to easily publish web maps individually or collaboratively. In this paper, we propose to reflect on the potential and limits of uMap based on our own experiences of deploying it in six different mapping projects. Through these experiences, uMap appears particularly well-suited for collaborative mapping projects, due to its ease in connecting to remote data and its high level of interoperability with a range of other applications. On the other hand, uMap seems less relevant for crowdmapping projects, due to its lack of built-in options to manage and control public contributions. Finally, the open-source philosophy of uMap, combined with its simplicity of use and its strong collaborative capacity, make it a great option for activist mapping projects as well as for pedagogical purposes to teach a range of topics including online collaborative cartography.

Introducing the YIMBYs: Renters, housing, and supply-side politics in Los Angeles

This paper advances debates around the financialization of housing with a case study of Los Angeles’s yes-in-my-back-yard (YIMBY) groups. In response to the post-2008 affordable housing crisis, YIMBYs have emerged in support of orthodox economic policies that deregulate land use, expedite construction, and intensify financial accumulation in rental housing. Using detailed empirical analysis collected from YIMBY housing activists, this paper examines how the market-based logics they advance take root in local land use issues. It focuses specifically on the impact of YIMBYs on existing divisions within urban politics, including the scale at which housing is contested. By conceptualizing the YIMBY position as one that facilitates financialization, this paper reveals the ways financialization is more than a mode of accumulation: it is a political process embedded in the state from the bottom up and inside out.

A Signaling Theory Perspective on Social Impact Accelerators' Selection Decisions.

Understanding entrepreneurial actions that addresses pressing social and environmental challenges has become an emergent and important area of research interests. Blending of market-based logics and social welfare logics has created new opportunity spaces for prosocial ventures, albeit it comes with acute challenges of resource acquisition. This gap can be filled by social impact accelerators (SIA)s short-term, limited duration, cohort-based educational programs for nascent prosocial ventures, that apart from providing seed funding often utilize extensive consultation with mentors, program directors, customers, guest speakers, alumni, and peers, help solidify their value proposition. Hence it is crucial for prosocial ventures to get selected into the accelerator programs as that could later translate into venture success. Despite the recent proliferation of accelerator research, research on Social impact accelerators (SIA)s has been limited. SIA is a new form of accelerator that selects prosocial ventures, those ventures that display potential to generate financial returns along with social impact into their cohort-based programs. Specifically, how SIAs process external information to make cohort admission decisions. This study uses signaling theory layered with pecking order and static trade-off theory to conceptually analyze how entrepreneurial behaviors about capital structure decisions impact selection decisions into SIA.

The meaning of career success among managers in contemporary China: distinctive themes and societal logics

This study focuses on distinctive themes of career success and their relationship with fundamental societal logics. Drawing on theoretical insights from neo-institutionalism, and adopting a mixed-method approach based on semi-structured interviews and questionnaire surveys with Chinese managers, we conducted a qualitative and quantitative study on the meaning of career success in a typical ‘hybrid’ society. In contrast with understandings of career success centred on market-based logics, our analysis highlights the complex, reflective relationship between career success themes and societal logics. The results indicate that among the identified career success themes, traditional logics and their market-based counterparts coexist, and are consistent with each other in some ways and conflicting in others. The results further show that the reflection of societal logics in derivative meanings, in contrast to that in core meanings, is more institutionally contextualised and, therefore, less consistent. Our study adds to the understanding of how social contexts shape the meaning of career success, and has important implications for career and human resource management research and practice.

Introduction

Abstract This special issue questions translation and its politics of (in)visibilizing certain bodies and geographies, and sheds light on queer and cuir histories that have confronted the imperial gaze, or that remain untranslatable. Part of a larger scholarly and activist project of the Feminist and Cuir/Queer Américas Working Group, the special issue situates the relationships across linguistic and cultural differences as central to a hemispheric queer/cuir dialogue. We have assembled contributions with activists, scholars, and artists working through queer and cuir studies, gender and sexuality studies, intersectional feminisms, decolonial approaches, migration studies, and hemispheric American studies. Published across three journals, GLQ in the United States, Periódicus in Brazil, and El lugar sin límites in Argentina, this special issue homes in on the production, circulation, and transformation of knowledge, and on how knowledge production relates to cultural, disciplinary, or market-based logics.

Risk Perception, Accounting, and Resilience in Public Sector Organizations: A Case Study Analysis

There are various factors that can affect an organization’s ability to overcome a crisis and the uncertainties that arise thereafter. Little is known about the process of organizational resilience and the factors that can help or prevent it. In this paper, we analyzed how public sector organizations build resilience/traits of risks awareness, and in doing that, we derived some elements that could affect the process of resilience. In particular, drawing on the conceptual framework proposed by Mallak we analyzed an in-depth case study in a public sector organization (PSO) identifying some contextual dimensions implicated in the process of building resilience. In our analysis, we identified two main elements that affect resilience: Risk perception and the use of accounting. Results shown how risk perception is perceived as a trigger, while accounting is considered as an enforcer in the process of building resilience capacity. The results also show the way accounting is implicated in the management of austerity programs and supporting the creation of a resilient public sector organization. In our case, the risk has become an opportunity for change. In the face of these budget cuts, management began refocusing the company’s mission from infrastructure maintenance to providing services with a market-based logic.

Food Activism and Citizens’ Democratic Engagements: What Can We Learn from Market-Based Political Participation?

Food democracy calls for a democratization of the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Researchers and lay citizens are showing a growing interest for initiatives associated with food democracy, yet the specific democratic ideals and involvements that make up food democracy have gained limited attention. Many forms of participation associated with food democracy are market-based, such as buying organic food or joining community-supported agricultural projects. Research shows that market-based logics influence multiple spheres of life and threaten democratic ideals. However, scholars working on political participation have not yet analyzed the influence of market-based logics across forms of participation. This article analyses the action repertoire of food democracy to assess the influence of market-based logics on different forms of food activism. It builds on four critiques of market-based politics to question the relationship between different forms of participation and the market. It addresses three research questions: Which forms of political participation do citizens use to democratize the food regime? Which conceptions of democracy relate to these different forms of food activism? Which critiques of market-based politics apply to different forms of food activism? The article highlights the widespread risk of unequal participation, crowding out, commodification, and state retreat across forms of participation used to democratize food regimes. This study provides insights into the types of democratic renewal being experimented with in the framework of food democracy as well as their limits.

Beliefs about family policy among US mothers in publicly-subsidised housing: collective responsibility or individual self-sufficiency

In the context of critiques of welfare policy in the USA, I explore how mothers living in public housing balance notions of individual and collective responsibility for families struggling with poverty. Participants recognise collective responsibility at the institutional level and prefer inclusive approaches to public assistance policy. But the hegemony of individualism in the culture and in the framing of their specific programme pulls them toward the rhetoric of personal responsibility and a punitive, market-based logic of individual choice. This, in turn, obscures the gendered and classed structures reinforced by neoliberal policy’s emphasis on privatised market forces and personal responsibility.

Framing the Common Core: An Analysis of Four Key Policy Actors

Background/Context In recent years, the American political context has become increasingly divided, as exemplified by the debate over the Common Core State Standards. Initially a bipartisan national venture, the standards became immersed in controversy soon after their introduction in 2010. In the aftermath, a growing body of research has examined the Common Core at the policy level; yet little empirical research has analyzed the public messaging of key interest groups involved in the Common Core debate. Research Design This empirical study draws on frame analysis to unpack the public discourse of four policy actors involved in the debate over the Common Core: the Gates Foundation, Heritage Foundation, National Education Association, and education historian Diane Ravitch. It examines policy documents released by each actor to first understand the central public frames present in their discourse about the standards, then unearth the implicit logics embedded in these frames. Findings/Results Four underlying logics—market, technical, democratic, and pragmatic— emerged from the explicit frames used by the four actors. These logics overlap, some existing on both sides of the debate, with opponents such as Gates and Heritage Foundations often using competing public frames about innovation or freedom, while also drawing on similar implicit market-based assumptions about the purpose of education to inform their arguments for and against Common Core respectively. Conclusions/Recommendations These findings suggest intriguing similarities in the discourse of key actors involved in education reform and add nuance to growing fears that market-based logics dominate modern education policy. Yet some of the discourse still draws on democratic logics, the expressions of which between different actors. Methodologically, frame analysis emerges as a productive means of unpacking hidden or obscured ideas within policy and the discourse about that policy, especially when paired with the concept of logics, which mediate values and action.

Struck by the Potentials of Cannabusiness

This study examines the reporting on legal cannabis in order to explore the operation of neoliberal ideology in journalistic discourse. Cannabis legalisation is here understood as a way for capitalism to create new market opportunities, besides being a turn away from the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The study understands neoliberalism as operating via market-based logics that are interrelated with other social logics, such as those pertaining to journalism (Phelan 2014). Critical discourse analysis is used for studying Swedish newspaper reporting on legal cannabis between 2013 and 2018. The study shows that a struggle between market-based logics and journalistic practices is visible, where journalism has difficulties in challenging core tenets of neoliberal ideology. The article concludes with a discussion of how the current conditions of journalism limit its ability to challenge neoliberal perspectives.

Billable Services and the "Therapeutic Fee": On the Work of Disavowal of Political Economy and its Re-emergence in Clinical Practice

This article analyzes the structural contradictions in the professional lives of social workers and counselors ("psychotherapists") that give rise to a set of rationalizing discourses that align billing practices with notions of therapeutic appropriateness. I propose that, bound by a normative professional trajectory that prescribes upward mobility on one hand and the performance of a commitment to helping the underprivileged on the other, psychotherapists attempt to manage the ambivalence that these divergent imperatives invoke by working discursively to disavow the role of political economy in shaping their clinical activities. As therapists move along a career path that begins in an agency setting and culminates in private practice, they deploy situated strategies for effacing economic considerations by shifting to a moral register. In so doing, I argue, psychotherapists inadvertently articulate and legitimate a class-differentiated "moral economy of mental healthcare" that reasserts precisely the market-based logics that it seeks to transcend.

The Neoliberal Baseline? A Community-Based Exploration of Beliefs about Poverty and Social Policy

ABSTRACTDrawing on data from community-based research in the United States, this article addresses three key elements of poverty governance identified by scholars critical of neoliberal policy approaches: market-based logic, individualism, and punitive orientation. Comparing low-income residents of an economically challenged community with local middle-class professionals who work with children and families, the analysis documents that both groups endorse more egalitarian approaches, but middle-class professionals were notably more likely to combine that endorsement with a baseline of neoliberal elements. The implications of these beliefs are considered, in relation to the need for resisting the hegemony of neoliberal approaches to poverty policy.

Dynamic Rivalry of Institutional Logics in a Cross-Sector Social Partnership

This study examines how institutional logics interplay in a cross-sector social partnership dealing with refugee-integration in a rural district of Germany. In an inductive 15-month case study that dew on interviews, observations, and triangulated quantitative user data, we examined how multiple sectors collaborated and observed the dynamic enactment of institutional logics in day-by-day practices and an increasing contradiction of altruistic and market-based institutional logics. We also show the influence of exogenous events, political exertion of influence and the power of the media on the enactment of institutional logics. In addition, our study is one of the few existing studies that focus on a partnership promoted by the public sector. By unfolding the complexity of refugee-integration – one of the present global Grand Challenges – we deepen the present understanding of specific challenges involved in cross-sector partnerships.