Next steps in organizing alternatives to capitalism: toward a relational research agenda

Abstract

In the last ten years, the latest acute economic crisis of global capitalism has put in check most of the institutional pillars of the post-Keynesian consensus: globalization, free trade, free movement of capital and labor, and so on. Status quo response to the crisis was the enforcement of austerity economic models, cutting public budgets and curbing public services. Those economic models remain the dominant ways of thinking in the post-2008 crisis (Davis, 2009). Austerity was not only prescribed to the indebted economies of the Global South, but also to the gigantic powers of the North: Western Europe and North America. It was not by chance that various movements of anti-capitalism and neoliberal policies erupted, such as "Occupy Wall Street" in the United States and the "15-M Outraged Movement" in Spain, bringing together a group of actors who demanded a radical transformation of order, the end of economic austerity programs, and the reduction of social inequalities. Attention and interest in the movements contesting the capitalist order grew not only among the general public, but also within the academic circuit, not least in the area of business management. After a sustained and deep criticism of the inability of conventional literature to transcend traditional models of capitalist organizations responsible for deepening inequalities and maintaining the economic crisis, it seems that there is a movement to search for alternative ways of organizing capitalism in a more humane way, with greater attention to social, economic and environmental sustainability of organizations. As a consequence, literature around the topic of organizing alternatives to capitalism has gained traction among scholars in business and organizational theory. One expression of that is the recent spread of different organizational models and legal structures over the world, portraying diverse labels, such as social entrepreneurship (Dacin, Dacin &

Prefiguring alternatives through the articulation of post- and anti-capitalistic politics: An introduction to three additional papers and a reflection

“…Despite the different nature of their theoretical approaches and empirical cases, all three articles included here touch upon the relation between the organizations they study and the wider economic, social and institutional context in which they are embedded. Barin-Cruz et al (2017) correctly point to the importance of examining this relation more closely. Delineating a research agenda on alternative economies in organization studies, they identify four key stakeholders that deserve our attention: governments, civil society, investors and universities.…”

“…Especially this last ecosystem is of particular importance, as alternative organizations’ relations to existing institutional actors – e.g. the university (Esper et al, 2017), investors (Meyer and Hudon, 2017), the state, and civil society (Barin-Cruz et al, 2017), but also social movements, trade unions and political parties (De Coster and Zanoni, 2018; Husted and Plesner, 2017) – are key not only for their existence but also for their ability to challenge the capitalist economy (Miller, 2015). As critics have observed, the political antagonism of alternative economy organizations should not be assumed, but rather needs to be constructed (Böhm, 2014; Dean, 2015a, 2015b).…”

Alternative Income Sources – Entrepreneurship Development or Households’ Economic Needs after the COVID-19 Crisis?

“…There are at least three ways to conceptualize the notion of alternative organizational forms (Elinger et al, 2011). The first group of studies which we have identified points at differences in understanding of the types of alternative organizational forms and their businesses as well (Cruz et al, 2017, Jasińska-Biliczak et al, 2017. In this…”

Radicalizing diversity (research): Time to resume talking about class

“…The limitations of critical diversity research have become particularly apparent in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008. While the crisis triggered a surge in research on the role of organizations in sustaining and exacerbating societal inequality (Amis, Mair, & Munir, 2020; Bapuji, Ertug, & Shaw, 2020; Dunne, Grady, & Weir, 2018) and postcapitalist, alternative organizing for social justice (Barin‐Cruz, Aquino Alves, & Delbridge, 2017; Zanoni, Contu, Healy, & Mir, 2017), it did not substantially affect critical diversity research. We still miss a conceptual vocabulary for setting up an emancipatory social justice agenda amidst and beyond capitalism (Holck, 2018a, 2018b; Janssens & Zanoni, forthcoming).…”