Global Themes and Local Variations in Organization and Management

Perspectives on Glocalization

Gili S. Drori, Markus A. Höllerer, Peter Walgenbach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136493973
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Global Themes and Local Variations in Organization and Management: Perspectives on Glocalization offers a broad exposition of the relations between the global and the local with regard to organizational and managerial ideas, practices, and forms. This edited volume forges ahead to capture the complexity of modern management and organization that results from the processes of glocalization.

Universality is among the core underlying principles of the management of organizations, as well as of organization and management science itself. Yet, reality reveals enormous variation across social and cultural contexts. For instance, multinational corporations must adjust their management practices to adhere to national regulation and local standards; manufacturers and service providers routinely tailor their products to suit the local preferences of consumers; and non-profit organizations amend their advocacy agenda to appeal to local sentiments. The work assembled here goes beyond merely describing such patterns of variation and adaptation in organization and management; research and commentary engage directly with the tensions between homogeneity and heterogeneity, convergence and divergence, global and local.

With contributions from leading scholars in the field of comparative organization studies, this collection offers a substantive contribution to the investigation of organization and management, as well as providing a valuable resource for students of organization studies, international business, and sociology.

Part I

Introduction

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1

The Glocalization of Organization and Management

Issues, Dimensions, and Themes

Gili S. Drori, Markus A. Höllerer, and Peter Walgenbach

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A dramatic wave of globalization throughout the 20th century – spurred by information and communication technology, and imprinted primarily by North American hegemony – resulted in a world that seems neither “flat” nor “spiky”. Globalization has not resulted in worldwide homogeneity; likewise, it has also not fully preserved national differences, let alone led to increasing cross-national divergence. Rather, globalization has revealed itself as “glocalization”: as a complex process that fuses the global and the local, and interlaces worldwide similarity with cross-national variation.

Such realization has also struck scholars of organization and management, even if they have so far hardly referred to the very term “glocalization”. At its core, their discipline is founded upon assumptions of universality: decision-making criteria in the management of organizations are assumed to follow law-like patterns that confirm theories of the homo oeconomicus. Still, even the most rational choice-inspired studies recognize that the global spread of organization and management is accompanied by great variation across social and cultural contexts. For instance, multinational corporations need to adjust their organizational practices in order to adhere to national regulation and standards; producers routinely tailor their products to suit local consumers' tastes; and non-profit organizations amend their advocacy agenda to appeal to local sentiments. While numerous studies describe such patterns of variation and adaptation, few offer the conceptual and analytic depth that is signature of the domains of globalization scholarship and organization studies. Drawing upon the richness of research on the diffusion of organizational and managerial ideas, we therefore reframe these adjustments in terms of the glocalization of organization and management.

With this, we ask: What are the antecedents – organizational and global, strategic and cultural alike – that account for context-specific adjustment of organization and management? What are the themes that diffuse on a global scale, remain local, or become glocal? Further, what are the mechanisms that underlie these processes of globalization, localization, and glocalization? And finally, who are the actors who propel the glocalization of organization and management? The collection of academic research in this volume explores these issues in great detail.

Issues

Especially during the past two decades, the globalization of organization and management has emerged as a prominent topic of research and commentary. In this still-evolving field of scholarship, organizing and managing are described as both exemplars of globalization patterns and as principal forces behind broader globalization processes. Much like research on globalization in general, organization and management studies drew attention to the two core dimensions of globalization, namely cross-national diffusion of ideas and concepts and the consolidation of the global.

First, studies of organization and management robustly illustrate the global, cross-national diffusion of rationalized ideas of governance (e.g., Aguilera and Jackson, 2010; Drori, Jang, and Meyer, 2006; Haxhi and van Ees, 2010). Other studies illustrate the global, cross-organizational diffusion of intensively rationalized organizational and managerial concepts such as, for instance, quality management and ISO standards (e.g., Guler, Guillén, and Macpherson, 2002; Albuquerque, Bronnenberg, Corbett, 2007), or codes of (good) corporate governance (e.g., Aguilera and Cuervo-Cazurra, 2004; Vogel, 2008), and the importance of American hegemony in setting the tone for such cross-national diffusion (Djelic, 1998). Second, research addresses the consolidation of a global model of organization and management, specifying the form and logic of global governance (e.g., Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall, 2002; Djelic and Quack, 2003; Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). Both streams of research point at mechanisms of diffusion and institutionalization of global models of organization and management, and, most importantly, describe resulting patterns of isomorphism and variation. Still, the idea of glocalization – and with it the explicit acknowledgement of the simultaneous and interrelated impact of global and local forces – remains largely absent. This seems problematic insofar as it downplays the role of empowered locals, the authoritative voice of global models, and the impact of their co-existence.

Applying the notion of glocalization to the study of organization and management, we tend to the complexity of globalization as well as the synergetic nature of related processes and their outcomes. In addressing such complexity, as do the studies compiled in this volume, we intersect between several important issues.

Global and Local

By the mid-1980s, discussions of globalization had quickly transitioned, much to our relief, from the futile debate on whether globalization is good or bad, to a more nuanced realization that, whatever its outcome, globalization is one of the most profound and sweeping processes of our time. Still, such realization has not quieted the discussion of whether globalization is “flattening” the world or resulting in variations and ever-expanding gaps (see Friedman, 2005; Florida, 2005; for discussion, see also Tempel and Walgenbach, 2007). For a decade or so, debates about globalization were then stuck on this polarity between convergence and divergence.

The divide between “global” and “local” shadowed this conversation: convergence was understood to emerge from a focus on overarching global processes, whereas the focus on local conditions seemed to highlight worldwide differences and processes of divergence. In addition, a series of similar dichotomies emerged, each emphasizing a particular axis of difference. On the one hand, local was conflated with indigenous, autochthonous, authentic, and bottom-up, as well as with peripheral and marginalized; on the other, global came to mean foreign, Western or North American, capitalist, and top-down, as well as core and hegemonic. Each dichotomy, or set of opposing characterizations, was regarded as incommensurable, and scholars were judged and tagged as standing for one position or the other.

Roland Robertson saved the field of globalization studies from this mired debate by problematizing the divide between the global and the local and by coining the term “glocalization” within our broader field of scholarship. Engaging the conversation on hybridity and modernity, Robertson (1995; see also Chapter 2) conceived glocalization as creating synergies across time and space, thus resulting in an amalgamation across cultural, national, and regional divides, as well as across historical (dis-)continuities. Glocalization, as described also by Courchene (1995), Tomlinson (1993), Ritzer (2003), or Roudometof (2005), suggests that the global and local are mutually constitutive: the so-called global is a collage of local practices, behaviors, and tastes, while the so-called local is increasingly constructed within the scripts drafted by global forces. In this sense, the then emergent discussion on glocalization was an assault on binary thinking in general. Therefore, in its focus on fusion into a new form, glocalization implies more than the multiplicity, diversity, and assemblage of globally scattered elements (see Sassen, 2006), but rather asserts the co-constitutive nature of global-local relations, and is revealed as a conjuncture of identity and form.

Building on Robertson's notion of fusing global and local, Bartelson (2000) summarizes the critique of post-realist approaches to globalization by distinguishing between three approaches to globalization studies: transference, which views globalization as an exchange among entities; transformation, which centers discussions on globalization on the change that comes to such entities through the exchange process; and transcendence, which – in distinction from the previous two approaches – highlights the dissolving of the “divide between inside and outside” (Bartelson 2000: 189), or the porousness of the boundaries of such entities that results from the transference and transformation that globalization brings. In this fashion, Robertson's call for looking beyond divides in time and space is echoed in envisioning glocalization essentially as a process of transcendence of various social and cultural boundaries.

The synergetic approach implied by glocalization is reflected in a series of similarly minded terms or labels. Such terms, many of which are principal to the work compiled in this volume, highlight unique dimensions of glocal synergies. Some of them imply heterogenization and processes of translation, editing, and adaptation. Specifically, the terms “indigenization” (e.g., Appadurai, 1990), “creolization” (e.g., Hannerz, 1989, 1996; Eriksen, 2003), and “domestication” (e.g., Alasuutari, Chapter 28) each highlight the adaptation of a global theme to its (new) local host environment, in a manner reminiscent of Latour's notion of contextualization (see, 1996: 133; see also, R.E. Meyer, Chapter 6; Boxenbaum and Gond, Chapter 22). Other terms – most notably “transculturation” (e.g., Lull, 2000), “global localization” (e.g., Beck, 2000), and hybridization (e.g., Pieterse, 1994; Kipping, Üsdiken, and Puig, 2004; Christensen, Chapter 12) – highlight the fusion of global and local into a new form (as well as the inherent duality that results in such a new form). Lastly, the term “glonacal” (e.g., Marginson, 2004) reorients this terminological discussion towards the issue of levels by highlighting the multiplicity of spheres that are now interlaced, specifically combining global, national (or field-level), and more local spheres.

We take the term glocalization to stand for this range of issues, recognizing the dialectics between the global and the local (or any other intermediate level). Most importantly, we recognize that global and local are dependent on each other, and regard any essentialist approach as myopic. Glocalization is, therefore, an ontological matter. Following Robertson (1994, 1995; see also Chapter 2), the notion of glocalization, in its broadest sense, refers to the simultaneity and interdependence of particularizing and universalizing tendencies of globalization, and the co-presence of heterogenization and homogenization as imprints of global processes. “The local is a global phenomenon,” assert Robertson and Khondker (1998: 30; italics in original text), thus describing the globally constituted character of the local. Therefore, rather than global and local standing in dialectic opposition to each other, and rather than seeing globalization and localization as complementary processes, glocalization touches upon imbued meanings: global models instill agency into empowered locals, who in turn enact and thus reinforce such global scripts. The co-organization of global and local per se does not imply conflict or crisis.

Organization and Management

While the term glocalization was effectively applied to the study of a variety of social phenomena – from Argentinian riots (Auyero, 2001) to issues of environmentalism (Brand, 1999) to migrant soccer fans (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007) – it has hardly been made relevant to organization and management research. This volume acknowledges and highlights the importance and relevance of the notion of glocalization to this specific field of scholarship. We argue that the transcendence of social and cultural boundaries is particularly valuable for a research field in which numerous practices are simultaneously universalized and customized.

Universality has been one of the core underlying principles of organization and management science: social laws of organization and administration have been assumed to remain constant, similar to natural laws, across equivalent contexts. With that, ideas, practices, and skills of organizing and managing have been accepted as transferable to, and applicable for, societies and organizations worldwide (see, e.g., Drucker, 1989). It is because of this axiomatic understanding that, for instance, accounting and budgeting instruments, human resource management techniques, strategic management, performance measures and indicators, or marketing tools are similarly applied to the management of organizations that are a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Revisiting Glocalization
• Part III Ideas, Structures, and Practices
• Part IV Actors and Influences
• Part V Processes and Mechanisms
• Part VI Concluding Remarks
• Index