TY - JOUR
T1 - Inter-firm convening and organisational power
T2 - How American multinationals mobilised the Venezuelan business community to adopt CSR practices, 1961–1967
AU - Kaplan, Rami
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - In the 1960s, political threats drove petroleum multinational corporations in Venezuela to deploy highly sophisticated defense strategies. The American industry leader, Creole, wanted the local business community to adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR) identities and practices as a buffer against state intervention and communist uprising. How would Creole instigate such field-level organisational transformation? By addressing this question through theoretically informed historical narration, I endeavour to extend institutional theory into the world of inter-firm mobilizations for institutional creation and change. Such mobilizations are organised through inter-firm convening: a mechanism through which organisations mobilise–based on the establishment of a special-purpose meta-organisation–to address external challenges by modifying collective identities, remodelling forms of organisation, and diffusing practices in their field. (In Venezuela, this meta-organisation was called Dividendo.) By using this centrally coordinated form of mobilisation, the project’s agenda setters can exert transformative influence on the identity and behaviour of potentially numerous other organisations. I discuss implications for the study of institutional work, organisational power, and global diffusion. The article promotes a corporate and management-centred perspective on CSR, Latin American, and Cold War historiography.
AB - In the 1960s, political threats drove petroleum multinational corporations in Venezuela to deploy highly sophisticated defense strategies. The American industry leader, Creole, wanted the local business community to adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR) identities and practices as a buffer against state intervention and communist uprising. How would Creole instigate such field-level organisational transformation? By addressing this question through theoretically informed historical narration, I endeavour to extend institutional theory into the world of inter-firm mobilizations for institutional creation and change. Such mobilizations are organised through inter-firm convening: a mechanism through which organisations mobilise–based on the establishment of a special-purpose meta-organisation–to address external challenges by modifying collective identities, remodelling forms of organisation, and diffusing practices in their field. (In Venezuela, this meta-organisation was called Dividendo.) By using this centrally coordinated form of mobilisation, the project’s agenda setters can exert transformative influence on the identity and behaviour of potentially numerous other organisations. I discuss implications for the study of institutional work, organisational power, and global diffusion. The article promotes a corporate and management-centred perspective on CSR, Latin American, and Cold War historiography.
KW - Cold War
KW - Institutional theory
KW - Latin America
KW - Venezuela
KW - business associations
KW - corporate social responsibility
KW - institutional work
KW - multinational corporations
KW - organisational power
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108197769&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00076791.2021.1936504
DO - 10.1080/00076791.2021.1936504
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AN - SCOPUS:85108197769
SN - 0007-6791
JO - Business History
JF - Business History
ER -