It’s Not Just About the Mafia! Conceptualizing Business–Society Relations of Organized Violence
- 1 November 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Academy of Management in Academy of Management Perspectives
- Vol. 34 (4), 546-565
- https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2019.0029
Abstract
While there is some scholarship in management and organization studies on forms of organized violence, it has rarely focused on the role of organized violence within wider business-society and governance relations. In this article, we argue that conceptualizing the role and capacity of the state is still paramount, precisely because it is normally the state that holds a monopoly on violence. Yet, this state monopoly has continuously been eroded as private firms and civil society actors are increasingly involved in paramilitaries, trafficking, mafia-like and terrorist organizing and other forms of organized violence. To help management and organization scholars appreciate and make sense of these dynamics in contemporary economic affairs, this article puts forward a conceptualization of business-society relations of organized violence. We develop six propositions that seek to understand organized violence within, what we call, the ‘governance triangle’ of state-firm-civil society relations. These propositions give rise to three ‘doomsday scenarios’: 1) Rise of military dictatorships; 2) Rise of private security monopolies and oligopolies; 3) Rise of civil wars. We conclude the article by outlining the implications of such a violence-based view for management and organization scholars.Keywords
This publication has 105 references indexed in Scilit:
- The intimacy of insurgency: beyond coercion, greed or grievance in Maoist IndiaEconomy and Society, 2013
- Stakeholder Pressure on MNEs and the Transfer of Socially Irresponsible Practices to SubsidiariesThe Academy of Management Journal, 2013
- Process Studies of Change in Organization and Management: Unveiling Temporality, Activity, and FlowThe Academy of Management Journal, 2013
- Modern Slavery As A Management Practice: Exploring the Conditions and Capabilities for Human ExploitationAcademy of Management Review, 2013
- The government of self-regulation: on the comparative dynamics of corporate social responsibilityEconomy and Society, 2011
- Becoming Global (Un)Civil Society: Counter-Hegemonic Struggle and the Indymedia NetworkGlobalizations, 2011
- That Which Doesn’t Break Us: Identity Work by Local Indigenous ‘Stakeholders’Journal of Business Ethics, 2010
- Stakeholder CapitalismJournal of Business Ethics, 2007
- State as a stakeholderCorporate Governance: The international journal of business in society, 2005
- The Mafia, the market and the state in Italy and RussiaJournal of Modern Italian Studies, 1996