Explore the vast range of titles available.

In combining the micropolitics approach in international management, the industrial relations literature and business ethics, this article conceptualizes global framework agreements as an alliance between central CSR managers of transnational corporations and central actors within trade unions to monitor subsidiaries in the implementation of CSR policies. The empirical investigation, based on the qualitative analysis of ten French multinational companies, confirms the relevance of such a conceptualization. It particularly shows that central CSR managers hope mobilizing the union network to increase their capacity to supervise subsidiaries. Over there, it helps understanding concrete mechanisms adopted to implement global framework agreements since, in some of the studied cases, the managerial and union channels are coordinated precisely to strengthen this capacity. It, then, highlights the procedural nature of policies regarding global framework agreements. Overall, this paper examines the conditions necessary for mobilization of the union network and suggests avenues for future research.

To cope with the new challenges inherent to their political role, civil society organizations must convince their stakeholders about their legitimacy, and metaorganizations (MOs) appear to play a central role in such a context (Ahrne and Brunsson in Scand J Manag 21(4): 429–449, 2005; Bonfils in Scand J Disabil Res 13(1): 37–51, 2011). In this paper, we aim to better understand the legitimating processes of a specific kind of MOs—namely civil society MOs (CSMOs)—considering that CSMOs feature some characteristics that reinforce both internal and external legitimacy issues. Our research is based on an in-depth case study of a French national federation (Fédération Addiction) formed by the merger of two former federations originating in different fields, alcoholism treatment and drug addiction professionals. We confirm the importance of stakeholders’ representativeness in the governance of MOs and especially in multi-stakeholders CSMOs, and we corroborate the assertion that MOs closely relate to categorization-related issues and the categorization process itself in many ways: the legitimacy and the potential for action of MOs depend on the socially perceived appropriateness of the delimitation of the field that they claim to represent, and at the same time categorization is reinforced by the creation of MOs. We contribute to the current literature on MOs in two main ways. First, we show how a change in the relevant categorization may result from the dual and interacting actions of the MOs themselves and public authorities. Second, our case study illustrates how a restructuring of the MOs landscape may strengthen the salience of internal legitimacy issues federative actors are confronted with in order to maintain their representativeness and position in the expanded organizational field. In this dynamic context, external and internal legitimating processes appear closely intricate, and categorization and governance issues appear strongly interrelated.

How meta-organizations (MOs) can be engaged in competitive settings remains an underexplored issue, largely because scholars have traditionally emphasized MOs’ tendency toward monopoly (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2005) and focused on potential internal tensions between MOs and their members. However, it is not uncommon for an MO to find itself in competition with other organizations, including nonmember, individual-based organizations. In this paper, adopting an MO theory perspective and drawing on insights from the literatures on competition and representational legitimacy, we investigate competitive tensions within a health policy-related field. Our research question is as follows: how does representational legitimacy become a central object of competition when the representative role of an MO is contested by another organization in a public-policy-related field? Our empirical study focuses on two organizations – one an MO, the other an individual-based organization – that compete for status and authority, ultimately seeking recognition by public authorities as the central, if not official, representative of their field. We highlight the importance of representational legitimacy alongside more classical dimensions of authority based on expertise and knowledge. We also emphasize the meta-organizational form as a distinct type of representative structure, owing to its specific membership composition. Finally, we outline the central role played by policymakers as pivotal third and fourth actors in this competition, having created the conditions for its emergence and persistence.

How meta-organizations (MOs) can be engaged in competitive settings remains an underexplored issue, largely because scholars have traditionally emphasized MOs' tendency toward monopoly (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2005) and focused on potential internal tensions between MOs and their members. However, it is not uncommon for an MO to find itself in competition with other organizations, including nonmember, individual-based organizations. In this paper, adopting an MO theory perspective and drawing on insights from the literatures on competition and representational legitimacy, we investigate competitive tensions within a health policy-related field. Our research question is as follows: how does representational legitimacy become a central object of competition when the representative role of an MO is contested by another organization in a public-policy-related field? Our empirical study focuses on two organizations - one an MO, the other an individual-based organization - that compete for status and authority, ultimately seeking recognition by public authorities as the central, if not official, representative of their field. We highlight the importance of representational legitimacy alongside more classical dimensions of authority based on expertise and knowledge. We also emphasize the meta-organizational form as a distinct type of representative structure, owing to its specific membership composition. Finally, we outline the central role played by policymakers as pivotal third and fourth actors in this competition, having created the conditions for its emergence and persistence.

Literature on Inter-Organizational Restructuring (IOR) among nonprofit organizations (NPOs) is mostly focused on US mergers. Despite the diversity of its IOR practices, the French context remains underresearched. Based on an online survey sent to a wide sample of NPOs, we highlight the existence of innovative IOR practices in France. The paper explores the diverse forms and motives of IOR that French NPOs carry out in a context of increasingly strong constraining forces. Our findings show that market orientation cannot fully explain the diversity of IOR practices and corroborate the centrality of the social and political perspectives in IOR.

This article explores the social mechanisms that lead French social partners to opt for severance indemnity when bargaining collective layoffs despite institutional frameworks that promote outplacement services over severance pay. Using a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) methodology applied to 20 monographs on restructuring that took place in France during the 2000s, we explain above-mandatory indemnity by the combination of a power struggle balanced in favour of employees (availability of financial resources and presence of active unions) and moral or economic damage caused to laid-off workers (weak legitimacy of restructuring rationale and degraded employability).

Voluntary redundancies are one of the methods used by \"Job Saving Plans\", which has been increasingly resorted to in recent years. Although it is presented as a substitute for the length-of-service rule in the Anglo-Saxon context, or for selection based on criteria in the European context, it does not remove traditional issues in this area. Depending on whether those who draw up the measure emphasize protecting skills or protecting against the risk of unemployment, different control measures are used. After examining the various risks underlying the methods of selecting employees who are made redundant, this contribution proposes to isolate these control measures and reveal the tensions involved. [PUB ABSTRACT]

This article explores the social mechanisms that lead French social partners to opt for severance indemnity when bargaining collective layoffs despite institutional frameworks that promote outplacement services over severance pay. Using a Qualitative comparative Analysis (QOA) methodology applied to 20 monographs on restructuring that took place in France during the 2000s, we explain above-mandatory indemnity by the combination of a power struggle balanced in favour of employees (availability of financial resources and presence of active unions) and moral or economic damage caused to laid-off workers (weak legitimacy of restructuring rationale and degraded employability).

When it comes to negotiating over a collective dismissals plan, the French national legal framework explicitly encourages social partners to favour outplacement services over significant indemnity payments. However, significant above-mandatory redundancy payments are commonly granted to laid-off workers. Based on these factual observations, this article aims to identify the antecedent conditions, or, more precisely, the combinations of conditions, that lead to the granting of a large severance pay. We conducted a qualitative comparative analysis (Crisp set QCA) methodology applied to 20 monographs on downsizing operations that took place in France during the 2000s. The results show that above-mandatory severance payments are closely related to two major dimensions characterizing the economic and social context in which restructuring processes are carried out. The first one is about the balance of power prevailing between the company decisionmakers and the employees. This balance of power dimension is subsumed by two distinct conditions: the availability of financial resources and the presence of active unions. The second dimension relates to the moral and economic damages inflicted upon laid-off workers. This dimension is intrinsically connected to two downsizing process features, i.e. the perceived degree of legitimacy associated with the downsizing process and the degree of employability associated with the laid-off workers. Most notably, it appears that none of the identified conditions is sufficient by itself to induce the payment of a significant above-mandatory indemnity. However, some causal conditions may induce the outcome variable when they are combined with some specific other antecedent conditions. Thus, our research shows that the financial resource condition leads to the granting of an above-mandatory indemnity either in conjunction with a low degree of worker’s employability or in conjunction with both a weak perceived legitimacy of the restructuring process and the presence of active unions.

In this paper, I explore theoretically the issues of meta-organizations' diversity and agency through a cross-literature analysis, thereby establishing a bridge between two strands of literature that until now have strikingly developed in total isolation. I show that one of the most distinctive traits of global union federations relates to their meta-organizational activities that take place at the firm level and reflect a complex, multi-level meta-organizational configuration where the upper level interacts directly with second-order members but the intrinsic exteriority of global union federations to the corporate unions network positions them as \"meta-organizational network brokers\". I also elicit two main dimensions of differentiation among meta-organizations that have been only indirectly delineated in the literature and which could constitute useful analytical tools for characterizing meta-organizations from a comparative perspective: (1) the degree of consistency between the goals of meta-organization secretariats and the objectives pursued by meta-organization members; and (2) the degree and direction of asymmetrical interdependence between the meta-organization itself and its members. I argue that both dimensions strongly condition the capacity for agency of their secretariat, and ultimately the degree of actorhood and the capacity of meta-organizations to act as autonomous and influential organizational actors.