ILPC 2027

This study is about resistance, social movement and marginalized stakeholder groups (MSG) in developing countries. MSGs can be understood as grassroots organizations that are situated on the fringes of society and lack the formal power and legitimacy to influence powerful actors. They are fluid and flexible, rely on their own resources to pursue social, political and economic agenda and therefore they are more independent and influence-free than mainstream NGOs, which are largely dependant on donors’ support. In developing countries, especially in rural areas, MSGs are a widespread form of social organising and they include self-help groups, farmer organisations and women organisations. While NGOs have became key actors in international development and have also been at the centre of vivid academic debates, including in the field of management and organisations studies (MOS), little is known on MSGs, with regard to their functioning, their role in the development process and their relations with other development actors.

In order to fill this gap, this study focuses on a MSG called the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Natural Resources and Ports (NCPOGNRP), which has been opposing the Phulbari coal mining project since 2006 in Bangladesh. The licence for the mining project was granted to Asia Energy, a British mining firm, which had the full support from the Bangladesh government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) (Huggler, 2006). Asia Energy wanted to mine 15 million tons of coal a year for the next 30 years in Phulbari in order to export coal to highly energy-dependent countries such as India and China (Doward & Haider, 2006).

The project has been opposed by thousands of local communities in Dinajpur district, concerned with the mine’s detrimental impact on the environment, communities and livelihoods. This ongoing movement is a fascinating case to study because there are very few MSGs in the world that have been able to resist a powerful firm for such a long period of time, particularly despite colossal support for the firm in question from powerful actors. In this particular case, both Bangladeshi and British governments, alongside the ADB and other investors such as Barclays Bank and Goldman Sachs, supported Asia Energy’s plan to dig an open-cast coal mine.

To explore this important case study, we employ social movement theory to examine how MSGs resist MNCs and avoid co-optation through the persistent use of radical ideology over time. Here co-optation means a process that diverts an organization’s objectives in a way that are not aligned with the organization’s core values and principles and misrepresent the majority of its members’ interests (see, Selznick, 1949). A radical ideology is defined as a situation in which “an organization’s beliefs and values about the focal issue are out of alignment with the dominant institutions of its societal system” (Yaziji & Doh, 2013: 759).

Although MOS has addressed how elites co-opt marginalized people and communities, it has focused less on how an MSG resists co-optation and maintains its agenda. This study, by drawing on critical perspectives on management and organisations (Adler et al., 2007), development (Dar and Cooke, 2008), social movements (McAdam, 1982) and resistance (Bohm et al., 2008), and on rich qualitative empirical material comprising 120 interviews, aims to make a unique theoretical contribution on MSGs’ resistance against co-optation.

References

Adler, P. S., et al. (2007). "Critical Management Studies." The Academy of Management Annals 1: 119-179.

Bohm, S. et al. (2008). "Infra-political dimensions of resistance to international business: A Neo-Gramscian approach " Scandinavian Journal of Management 24(3): 169-182.

Dar, S. and Cook, B. (2008). Introduction: The New Development Management. The New Development Management. Critiquing the Dual Modernization. S. Dar and B. Cook. London, Zed Books

McAdam, D. 1982. Political process and the development of black insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

Selznick, P. 1949. TVA and the grass roots: A study in the sociology of formal organization. Berkeley: University of California Press

Yaziji M., & Doh, J. P. 2013. The role of ideological radicalism and resource homogeneity in social movement organization campaigns against corporations. Organization Studies 34: 755-780.