Imagining new feminist futures: How feminist social movements contest the neoliberalization of feminism in an increasingly corporate‐dominated world

Increasingly it is argued that feminism has been co‐opted by neoliberal agendas: becoming more individualistic and losing touch with its wider social change objectives. The neoliberalization of feminism is driven in part by increased corporate power, including the growing role of corporations in governance arenas, and corporate social responsibility agendas. However, we turn to social movement theory to elucidate strategies that social movements, including feminist social movements, are adopting in such spaces. In so doing, we find that feminist activists are engaging with new political opportunities, mobilizing structures and strategic framing processes that emerge in the context of increasingly neoliberal and privatized governance systems. We suggest that despite the significant challenges to their agendas, far from being co‐opted by neoliberalism, feminist social movements remain robust, existing alongside and developing new strategies to contest the neoliberalization of feminism in a variety of innovative ways.     

The cosmopolitan organization — an essay on corporate accountability

Abstract Transnational corporations increasingly seek to present a vision of social responsibility alongside the business vision. This reflects greater awareness of ‘the world as one single place’, of global risk scenarios, and the politics of doing business. There are also demands for greater transparency and accountability in corporate actions by state representatives, grassroots movements and organized consumers. Transnational corporations now aim to be socially responsible and to engage in ‘corporate citizenship’ by adhering to voluntary codes of conduct, social accountability standards, etc. This discourse of corporate accountability is part of a discourse of globality, or ‘globe talk’, a vital component of contemporary world culture, largely produced, diffused, and sustained by organizations with expansive ambitions of regulating global business; transnational corporations, business associations, international organizations, NGOs and INGOs. Awareness of the global nature of trade and capitalism, the associated risk scenarios, and the attempts at approaching something like a humane globalization by the setting up of ethics standards and codes of conduct, may be understood as a particular case of ‘worldism’. This ‘worldism’ is foundational, with universalizing and homogenizing claims. ‘Corporate citizenship’ and ‘accountability’ are therefore treated as a form of organizational culture that involves a particular kind of moral cosmopolitanism.     

The Political Economy of “Transnational Business Feminism”

This article traces the emergence of a politico-economic project of “transnational business feminism” (TBF) over the past decade. This project – which is being developed by a coalition of states, financial institutions, the UN, corporations, NGOs and others – stresses the “business case” for gender equality by arguing that investments made in women can (and should) be measured in terms of the cost savings to families and communities, as well as in terms of boosting corporate profitability and national competitiveness. This article uses a feminist historical materialist framework to argue that TBF is facilitating the further entrenchment of the power of corporations to create “expert” knowledges about both “gender” and “development.” Using the Nike-led “Girl Effect” campaign as an example, it is argued that TBF is promoting a naturalized and essentialized view of women and gender relations that ignores the historical and structural causes of poverty and gender-based inequality. It is also helping to reproduce the same neoliberal macroeconomic framework that has created and sustained gender-based and other forms of oppression via the global feminization of labor, the erosion of support for social reproduction and the splintering of feminist critiques of capitalism.     

The risks and incentives of disciplinary neoliberal feminism: the case of microfinance

This article develops an analysis of the concept of disciplinary neo-liberal feminism through a focus on gendered poverty alleviation strategies and illustrates the value of this through a discussion of microfinance. By locating this study within an analysis of the expansion of global capital accumulation, the article argues that the liberal frameworks of female empowerment and entrepreneurialism that are central to these programs and to feminism in this form, mask their underlying political, social and economic objectives. In contrast, a Marxist Feminist approach more adequately explains the interplay of class and gender that underpins poverty alleviation strategies. This article argues that in the context of financial crisis and reduced social provision, women living in poverty in the Global South were identified as targets for the expansion of global finance. Their integration into global financial networks via microfinance and other pro-poor strategies has facilitated the expansion of markets for credit while at the same time disciplining market participation through the twin forces of risk and incentive. Disciplinary neo-liberal feminism has underpinned this incorporation of women into global capital accumulation creating profound effects for households and families, with microfinance programs representing important sites of contestation for the politics of class and gender.     

Women leaders,self‐body‐care and corporate moderate feminism: An (im)perfect place for feminism

This article offers self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism and a manifestation of postfeminism for women leaders. It explains how postfeminism as a bodily practice surfaces through women leaders' body work and how women ‘top' leaders strategize to stabilize their credibility by identifying their own and other women' body work needs and the steps they take to meet these. Self‐body‐care extends understandings of body work as part of postfeminist governmentality and contributes to understandings of moderate feminism as that which deflects and reflects feminism and constrains and empowers subjects. As such self‐body‐care offers an (im)perfect space for disruption and for Gender and Organization Studies (GOS) scholars to pursue the implications and potential of postfeminism. We call for women elite leaders to be part of feminist futures and illustrate self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism by highlighting complexity in the postfeminist thesis and reflexively re‐examining two of our previous published empirical studies of women ‘top' leaders.     

Globalizing ‘Girl Power’: Corporate Social Responsibility and Transnational Business Initiatives for Gender Equality

The recent emergence of ‘transnational business feminism’ [Roberts, A. (2014). The political economy of ‘transnational business feminism’. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(2), 209–231] accompanied by numerous ‘transnational business initiatives for the governance of gender’ [Prügl, E., &; True, J. (2014). Equality means business? Governing gender through transnational public–private partnerships. Review of International Political Economy, 21(6), 1137–1169] constitutes a significant area of debate in the feminist political economy literature. In this paper I focus on the confluence of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda with the visibility of gender issues in development and the resultant corporate agenda for the promotion of women and girls’ empowerment. The paper draws on two gender-focused World Bank collaborations with private sector actors: the Global Private Sector Leaders Forum and the Girl Effect campaign. The paper argues that the dominant model of corporate citizenship inscribed within the discourse of transnational business initiatives is framed in terms of capitalizing on the potential power of girls and women, achieving an easy convergence between gender equality and corporate profit. I suggest that the construction of an unproblematic synergy between these goals serves to moralize corporate-led development interventions and therefore does not challenge corporate power in the development process, but instead allows corporations to subscribe to voluntary, non-binding codes and cultivate a socially conscious brand image.     

The Strategic Management of Government Affairs in China: How Multinational Corporations in China Interact With the Chinese Government

This study addresses how multinational corporations (MNCs) interact with government by examining the strategic management of government affairs in 25 MNCs in China from the perspectives of public relations and corporate political activity. Twenty-seven qualitative interviews were conducted. Results show that 16 of the 25 MNC include their government affairs managers in strategic management. Government affairs contributes to the process by aligning their business goals with the development of policies and regulations. Government affairs managers play 4 roles in the process according to the level of regulation and the frequency of external environmental changes of the MNCs: the business developer, expert prescriber, senior advisor, and internal consultant. Government affairs specialists use direct and indirect sources to gather information relevant to environmental scanning. Results also suggest a positive relationship between the participation of government affairs in strategic management and excellence in government affairs. However, in addition to excellence in government affairs, organizational mechanisms of management, organizational expectation and culture, and the nature of the MNC's industry also affect the integration of government affairs with the overall strategic management.     

The network of global corporations and elite policy groups: a structure for transnational capitalist class formation?

This study situates five top transnational policy–planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted through interlocking directorates among the world's largest companies. Each group makes a distinct contribution towards transnational capitalist hegemony both by building consensus within the global corporate elite and by educating publics and states on the virtues of one or another variant of the neo–liberal paradigm. Analysis of corporate–policy interlocks reveals that a few dozen cosmopolitans – primarily men based in Europe and North America and actively engaged in corporate management – knit the network together via participation in transnational interlocking and/or multiple policy groups. As a structure underwriting transnational business activism, the network is highly centralized, yet from its core it extends unevenly to corporations and individuals positioned on its fringes. The policy groups pull the directorates of the world's major corporations together, and collaterally integrate the lifeworld of the global corporate elite, but they do so selectively, reproducing regional differences in participation. These findings support the claim that a well–integrated global corporate elite has formed, and that global policy groups have contributed to its formation. Whether this elite confirms the arrival of a transnational capitalist class is a matter partly of semantics and partly of substance.     

CORPORATE TAX LAWS, CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING, AND SUBSIDIARIZATION OF CORPORATE FORM, 1981–1995

Between 1981 and 1995 the dominant form of Fortune 500 firms changed from the multidivisional form to the multisubsidiary form (Zey and Camp 1996). The explanation for the movement toward subsidiarization originates in changes during the late 1970s and 1980s in the political economy, the relationship between corporations and capital, and the regulation of corporations. As a result of the declining capital accumulation of the 1970s, the federal government instituted two measures of corporate welfare, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) and the Revenue Act of 1987 (RA87), that provided corporations with nontaxable ways to restructure their acquisitions and divisions as subsidiaries. Thus, by the process of subsidiarization, corporations were able to continue capital flows. We examine the increase in subsidiarization from 1981–1995 as a means of assessing the utility of four theoretical perspectives to explain change in corporate form. A one-way random effects panel analysis demonstrates how corporate financial conditions, national business laws, and organizational characteristics combine to affect the rate of subsidiarization of U.S. corporations. Separate panel models for 1981–1985 (pre- TRA86) and 1986–1995 (post- TRA86) reveal that changes in corporate tax laws affect capital accumulation and result in significant change in corporate form. This analysis supports the structural political economy contingency theory arguing that change in capital accumulation, brought about by macro changes in political legal conditions of corporations, leads to the transformation of corporate form.     

The influence of culture and infrastructure on CSR and country image: The case of Kuwait

The study examined how CSR is practiced in Kuwait, a country in an understudied region of the world, and considered the impact of the political and economic structure of a country on CSR practices. Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of communication executives found strong cooperation between the public and private sectors in Kuwait for CSR projects and for promoting country image, related to the sociocultural context of the country. Kuwaiti corporations associate themselves with the country of Kuwait when engaging in CSR activities in other countries and have a strong sense of corporate citizenship that reflects the collectivistic culture. Understanding CSR in different societal and cultural contexts and how it can affect country image is important for global public relations scholarship as well as for successful business practice.     

IRRATIONALITY AND CONTRADICTION IN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: Transformation in the Corporate Form of a U.S. Steel Corporation, 1930–1987

This article analyzes historical and interview data on one of the largest steel corporations in the U.S. to determine (1) the effects of financial controls on long-term incremental organizational changes, (2) the effects of the environment on the organization, (3) the degree to which organizations structure their environment, and (4) the conditions that transform the corporate form. Findings demonstrate that transformations emerge from crisis due to contradictions within the corporate form and between the corporate form and its environment. The sources of these contradictions include the long-term irrationality of formally rational financial controls, oligopolistic structures, and the state's tax policies. These findings question efficiency arguments in general, but more specifically do not support Alfred Chandler's conception of the "logic of managerial enterprise," which suggests that oligopolistic corporations are efficient because their size provides capital to realize economies of scale, and market share competition sharpens management's skills.     

Insider-allies: The precarious politics of men in identity-fluid feminism

Academic and activist conversations about the position of men in feminism often operate under the assumption that women are the movement's key beneficiaries and men are privileged outsiders lending their support. I use 59 interviews from a broader project on feminist and LGBTQ+ activism in the United States to illustrate how men's orientation to feminism is shaped by whether social movement organizations adopt what I call woman-centered or identity-fluid politics. While woman-centered politics treat men as allies whose intentions must be vetted by women, identity-fluid feminism imagines men as insiders with their own independent investment in the movement. I argue that the tension between these two models of identity politics gives men a liminal “insider-ally” position within feminism. Although feminist men are given a tentative authority to speak for the movement, the persistence of woman-centered understandings of feminism means men's insider status is contested, especially when they dominate feminist spaces, compromise women's sense of safety, and seek leadership.     

Muslim Women,Moral Visions: Globalization and Gender Controversies in Indonesia

Since 1998, Indonesia’s democratization has produced contentious public debates, many of which revolve around issues of gender and sexual morality. Yet such controversies not only often focus on women, but also involve women as participants. This article examines how Muslim women activists in two organizations adapt global discourses to participate in important public sphere debates about pornography and polygamy. Indonesia’s moral debates demonstrate an important way in which global discourses are negotiated in national settings. In the debates, some pious women use discourses of feminism and liberal Islam to argue for women’s equality, while others use Islam to call for greater moral regulation of society. My research demonstrates that global discourses of feminism and Islamic revivalism are mediated through national organizations which shape women’s political activism and channel it in different directions. Women’s political subjectivities are thus shaped through their involvement in national organizations that structure the ways they engage with global discourses. The Indonesian case shows not only that the national should not be conflated with the local, but also demonstrates the significance of national contexts and histories for understanding global processes.     

From Global Cities to the Lands’ End: The Relocation of Corporate Headquarters and the New Company Towns of Rural America

Since the 1970s, a number of major corporations have located their corporate headquarters in rural and non-metropolitan areas. I interrogate this phenomenon, based on a case study of Lands’ End, a global apparel firm in Wisconsin. Much research has exposed how firms insulate themselves from claims made by workers and communities through organizational and spatial distance (i.e. global sourcing, casualization of employment structures). Corporate headquarters relocation presents a paradox, bringing key decision-makers in the global economy into new, face-to-face relationships with workers and communities. Negotiated against a radical transformation of local class structure, I argue that new forms of social regulation are emerging—in particular, a hybrid version of the Fordist-era company towns.

Opposition to gender-sensitive development. Learning to answer back

Opposition to gender-sensitive development policies can arise within the very development agencies charged with implementing the policies. Agencies may maintain that policies on equality for women are unnecessary because development is concerned with improving welfare in general. This can be refuted by referring to the literature which points out that failure to address the specific needs of women means their exclusion from the development process. Agencies may argue that women's equality is a political rather than a developmental issue. This is countered by the fact that the "Forward-Looking Strategies" define women's development, equality, and empowerment as intertwined processes. Agencies may say that promoting women's equality constitutes undue interference in a country's internal affairs. This is wrong because aid programs should not be supported in countries which do not support women's rights. Agencies may claim that they must work within the existing laws and policies of a developing country. This is partly correct, but the point must be limited because policies and laws may be "given," but they are not fixed. An agency may state that they have no business seeking or promoting change in existing social and customary practices. This is wrong where such practices stand in the way of development and because any development project is by definition a social and economic intervention. Agencies may consider their policy on women an inappropriate imposition of Western ideas. This is wrong because international conventions place a concern for women's rights on a level with a concern for human rights. Finally, agencies may maintain that women in developing countries do not desire equality with men. While it may be true that women accept their subordinate position, this does not offset issues of human rights and equal development. Oppressed women may be very silent; given the opportunity, they generally have a great deal to say.     

Trading Diamonds Responsibly: Institutional Explanations for Corporate Social Responsibility

This article identifies factors that led to a comprehensive regulatory regime for the global diamond trade, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), established through negotiations among NGOs, states, and the industry. The conflict diamonds case provides important insights into the processes by which global norms redefine how corporations are expected to conduct business. First, we show that global corporate social responsibility (CSR) norms rooted in the construct of world citizenship facilitated the rapid progress of the conflict diamonds campaign. Second, we detail how these norms became institutionalized in the KPCS, stressing the importance of the legitimacy of NGOs as bearers of corporate world citizenship models and the role of moral leaders within the diamond industry itself. We consider two theoretical perspectives on CSR development: management theories, which are strong on practitioner issues but mute regarding the content and authority of CSR ideology, and institutional theories, which offer better frameworks for understanding the impact of cultural and institutional environments on company responses to the moral claims advanced by NGOs. We use the conflict diamonds case to draw conclusions about how NGOs can effectively define new social responsibilities that companies come to see as obligations they must heed as responsible world citizens.     

The Shareholder Value Principle: The Governance and Control of Corporations in the United States

In recent decades, maximization of shareholder value has been a dominant business principle in the United States. This article reviews sociological accounts about the emergence, diffusion, and reality of the shareholder value principle. Although mainstream research in law and economics on corporate governance embraces the shareholder value principle and provides theoretical justifications for it, sociologists consider the shareholder value principle to be a product of specific economic, political, and ideological environments. Based on sociological research that reveals normative and political foundations of the shareholder value principle, I argue that the shareholder value principle is far from hegemonic in the contemporary United States. Indeed, faced with shareholder primacy, corporations and top executives have adopted various strategies, such as perfunctory conformity and symbolic acquiescence. The result is a highly volatile and contested system of corporate governance today.     

Transnationalists and national networkers in the global corporate elite

Through a longitudinal network analysis of the interlocking directors of the world's 500 largest corporations (1996–2006), in this article I map continuities and changes in the social organization of the global corporate elite. I pursue two questions: (1) Can we trace the formation, within the elite, of a set of directors whose transnational interlocks form an inner circle of cosmopolitans? And (2) How does the regionalized character of global capitalism structure the global corporate elite in its national and transnational segments? Findings show that transnationalists have gained prominence within the global corporate elite and are firmly embedded in the network, through extensive ties to each other and to various national components. National networkers, despite thinning ranks and sparser interlocks, continue to form the backbone of the global corporate elite, and remain on balance nationally cohesive. Overall, despite modest accretions in participation from the semi‐periphery, and with the decline of the Japanese corporate network, the elite becomes centred even more strongly on the North Atlantic. With its growing regional cohesiveness, corporate Europe gains prominence within that heartland. This analysis helps specify the process of transnational capitalist class formation at its higher reaches.     

增强上海对跨国公司地区总部吸引力对策研究

大力吸引跨国公司来上海设立地区总部是上海进一步扩大对外开放，加速实现创新驱动、转型发展的重要举措。本文从影响跨国公司设立地区总部的市场、基础设施、人才、商业环境等主要因素出发，分析了上海吸引跨国公司地区总部面临的有利因素和主要障碍，研究提出梳理聚焦吸引跨国公司地区总部的重点目标、制定“跨国公司总部促进计划”、建立完善管理协调机制、着力改善跨国公司高管生活工作环境、努力降低跨国公司企业税负和营运成本等增强对跨国公司地区总部吸引力的具体对策建议。     

Neoliberal feminism: The neoliberal rhetoric on feminism by Australian political actors

Feminism seems to be experiencing a resurgence. This research examines an Australian case where this resurgence produces some bizarre outcomes and an uncomfortable mix of moderate and neoliberal feminisms, as conservative women distance themselves from the term feminist and conservative men embrace it. We rhetorically analyse the discourse of four conservative leaders using an ideographic analysis to reveal how political actors evoke ideologically laden terminology to support specific courses of action. For the conservative women, the ideograph feminist was too heavily laden with history. A more feminine‐liberal political discourse allowed them to explain their own success in individual terms and, by substituting support for feminism with a broader gender equality agenda, they could explain the government's policy approach of individualized rather than collective or state support to advance the needs of women. They are articulating a postfeminism sensibility themselves and neoliberal feminist other. For the conservative men, the ideograph feminist did not reflect on their own personal success or careers; they were happy to embrace it for purely political purposes to advance their standing with the voting public and saw no significance in terms of the government's policy approach of neoliberal feminism.