Collection: Organisation Studies Collection
As a taster of our publishing on Organisation Studies, we put together a collection of free articles, chapters and open access titles. If you are interested in trying out more content from our Business, Management and Economics Collection, Work in the Global Economy journal or Global Social Challenges themes, ask your librarian to sign up for a free trial.
Organisation Studies Collection
This chapter provides the second half of the analysis of the Amazon warehouse case study by focusing on how such a platform provides both challenges and possibilities for these workers to express their agency. It examines their four power resources in relation to the organization of the platform: structural power, associational power, institutional power and societal power. It integrates in its analysis the larger political–economic context, the larger (trans)national context and Amazon’s union-busting, which can prove to be additional obstacles to the organization of workers, as Amazon continuously attempts to disrupt, undermine and diminish their efforts. Despite weak marketplace power workers may navigate their material obstacles and Amazon’s counterstrategies to instrumentalize their workplace and disruptive power derived from their assembly within warehouses. While labor organizations, from traditional and grassroots unions to transnational and digital movements, support associational and institutional powers to improve their working conditions and fight back against the various facets of alienation, workers are increasingly gaining momentum in organizing themselves and making their movement intrinsic to the wider public debate. In doing so, they are claiming their agency and conceiving of it more holistically in terms of a possible transnational, inter-platform and inter-sectoral movement.
This chapter begins the book’s challenge to conventional theories of the firm by arguing that the central problem of the firm lies in purpose, which is more complex and provocative than typically assumed. The chapter examines the battle over corporate purpose between advocates of shareholder value maximization and stakeholder obligation, highlighting the clash of ideologies and the significance of purpose in shaping the identity and trajectory of a firm. It then delves into firms’ ontological multiplicity, emphasizing that purpose is not singular but rather takes different forms, manifests differently in various practices, and is influenced by a range of forces beyond human actors. It argues for the importance of developing a new theory of the firm that aligns with critical projects and offers alternative perspectives on corporate purpose.
This introductory chapter advocates for a new framework that ties together the core questions of why firms exist, how they operate internally, where their boundaries lie, and how they secure profitability. It establishes the need to develop a Communicative Theory of the Firm (CTF) that responds to the shifts in capitalism’s communicative foundation.
