Abstract
That the third sector should provide the focus for the first volume in the new series of Dialogues in Critical Management Studies is recognition of the increasing interest of critical scholars in the dizzying array of organizations located in the space between the market and the state. Some of us who have been working in the field of third sector research may feel that this recognition is long overdue. However, third sector researchers also have much to gain from exposing their concerns to a critical gaze and the real surprise is that there has been so little cross fertilization between the two until now. This new volume of essays therefore makes an extremely valuable contribution to furthering our understanding of the range of organizational responses to the injustices concomitant on an overweening state or market.
Two main threads run through this volume. One is the notion of dialogue itself. Dialogue is one of the main strategies chosen by organizational actors seeking to advocate on behalf of disadvantaged or marginalized groups. And dialogue is manifested in the structure of the book through the device of bringing multiple interpretations together—in dialogue. The introductory chapter is co-authored by the four editors, each presenting different frames through which the ten chapters could be viewed. Each of the ten chapters is followed by a commentary, and the chapters are organized into four sections (Overviews and Angles, Identity, Accountability and Hybridity), also introduced by one of the four editors. So each chapter is analysed from as many as six different perspectives.
The effect of this dialogic structure can feel slightly disorientating; the reader is drawn into the work of ‘doing critique’—these multiple interpretations resist the authority of any single author, however authoritative or well crafted each chapter might be. This dialogic structure is itself one of the main ways in which the book brings a critical perspective to bear on the subjects under consideration.
The second unifying thread that runs though all the chapters, some more explicitly than others, is the question of whether the beast (of neo-liberalism) can be tamed. Drawing on research from the UK, Canada, Japan, France, South Africa and Denmark examples of new and alternative organizational forms are widely discussed, for example the community interest company (Haugh and Peredo) and co-operatives (Myers and Cato). New or alternative practices (for example non-monetary forms of exchange such as local economy training schemes) are presented by Frère and Reinecke as ‘ideologically united in a vision to combat the capitalist hegemony through creating alternative forms of doing business’ (p. 121) which claim legitimacy by manifesting values such as trust (Laratta), solidarity (Frère and Reinecke), accountability ((Gibbon and Angier) and reciprocity (Claeyé).
Whether third sector organizations can influence the beast is discussed by Hull and by Delalieux and Kourala who, rather than focusing on third sector/state relationships, explore the possibilities of third sector influence being brought to bear on multi-national corporations. Neither of these chapters is particularly optimistic.
These two themes are brought together in the final section which represents a dialogic counterpoint to the opening chapters of the book by presenting three alternative possibilities for organizations: conformism, resistance or hybridity (Claeyé) in order to navigate between the dangers of co-optation, marginalization and subordination (Le Ber and Branzei). Le Ber and Branzei conceptualize these three dangers as linked in a ‘dark triangle’ and argue that ‘attempts to address one issue may increase vulnerability to the others’ (p. 275); a problem that can only be overcome by ‘complementary interventions that … counterbalance the dark triangle by simultaneously encouraging inclusion, emancipation and discretion in ways that help (re)store voice and choice to the previously marginalized, subordinated or co-opted’ (p. 285).
Coming as it does at the end of the last chapter, Le Ber and Branzei’s proposition is positioned to perform a kind of provisional answer to the question of whether or not the beast can be tamed. Positioning these two statements together highlights another dimension of this debate. While resisting the co-optation, marginalization and subordination of disadvantaged groups are regarded by many as the primary tasks of third sector organizations (as well as the dangers facing them as organizations) the ways in which the three sectors constitute each other through mutual interdependence is an interesting leitmotif that also runs throughout the volume. La Cour and Hojland (drawing on Luhmann) note that ‘every new initiative is motivated by the defects of the former initiative’ (p. 108).
This co-dependence between the sectors is explored in a number of ways. The first is the way in which the emergence of new organizational forms is theorized as ‘resistance to market driven solutions’ (Myers and Cato, p. 40). Frère and Reinecke suggest that ‘the solidarity economy emerges at the margins of industrialized society, or from the “black holes” of information capitalism’ (Frère and Reinecke, p. 120) and Fair Trade is positioned as a ‘response to globalization’.
But is the distinction between these three sectors in fact, more illusory? La Coeur and Højlund suggest that the distinction between the voluntary and public sector is, in fact, ‘imaginary’ (p. 103). Their chapter examines voluntary run social services, arguing that the conflicting tensions that arise between the need for distinctiveness on the one hand, and the demonstration of shared professional standards of care on the other lead to the emergence of a third order network whose purpose is to manage this paradox and maintain the illusion. And for Laratta the existence of many shared values between the public and voluntary sectors is a strength allowing for greater mutual trust. The issue of distinctiveness lies at the heart of the co-dependence of the three sectors, each needing the others to maintain its own sense of identity.
Where this book is clearly breaking new ground is in giving shape to the dialogue between the two discourses of critical management studies and third sector research. And it does this in a number of interesting ways, some less predictable than others. The most obvious contribution the critical gaze can make to the dynamics of third sector organizing is the emphasis on explicit and, more interestingly, implicit power dynamics. These are the concern of all of the chapters (with the possible exception of Laretta’s work on the provision of social services in Japan, which seems noticeably less ‘critical’ than the others). Somewhat less predictable is the way in which many of the chapters ground their theoretical approach by reference to some of the more significant thinkers of the past two centuries; Habermas and de Tocqueville (Delalieus and Kourula), Proudhon (Frère and Reinecke), Luhman (la Cour and Højlund, as well as more contemporary theorists such as Spivak and Babha (Claeyé drawing on postcolonial theory) and Calás and Smircich and Gherardi (Le Ber and Branzei) drawing on critical feminist theory. These different groundings provide a depth of analysis that is, if not unknown, certainly less common in voluntary sector research (although de Tocquville and Gramsci are frequent sources of inspiration in both discourses). Another less predictable feature of many contributions is the confluence of political with imaginal forms of theorizing; Frère and Reinecke’s reference to Fair Trade as the product of an attempt to ‘create an alternative political imaginary’ is one example; the ‘utopian political ideal’ underpinning the ’imaginary distinction between the public and voluntary sectors’ of La Cour and Højlund (p. 102) is another.
For critical scholars the third sector, quite simply, manifests critique. That it does not always (or perhaps often!) do so successfully is not to deny the importance of the efforts nor the rich source of living data that the dynamics of organizing and the organizational forms represent. These organizations are doing the work of critique on the ground, manifesting resistance, embodying passion and desire for social justice, in all their multifaceted, complex, compromised ways. This volume of edited chapters offers a fascinating window into these phenomena and as such, should be of great interest to critical management and third sector researchers alike.