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Beyond the Convergence–Divergence Debate: The Role of Spatial Scales in Transforming Organizational Logic

Abstract

Studies of organizational globalization typically assume that space is progressively ‘overcome’, resulting in the convergence of organizational logics, or that organizations continue to be embedded within the space of the nation state, resulting in divergent organizational logics. I argue that organizational logics are transformed as they move across space. Transformations in organizational logic are also underpinned by changes in space. I use the concept of spatial scale to theorize changes in space. I argue that spatial scales are multiple spatial levels that are produced through three interconnected processes: capital accumulation, regulation and articulation of discourse. Organizational logics are typically positioned on a number of spatial scales at once. The transformation of organizational logic is underpinned by processes of rescaling and resistance involving the political contestation of scale. I conclude by reflecting on what contributions the concept of scales makes to studies of the transformation of organizational logics.

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André Spicer University of Warwick, UK

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André Spicer

Keywords: globalization, space, scale, national business systems, embeddedness

Organization Studies Online First: 1–17 ISSN 0170–8406 Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA & New Delhi) www.egosnet.org/os

The debate about organizational globalization is split between those who argue that organizational logics converge on a single Anglo-American model, and those who contend that organizational logics continue to diverge into national types. Instead of gathering yet more evidence for either side of the debate, this paper argues that organizational logics are transforming. A central aspect of this process is the political restructuring of the space that organizational logics are embedded in. I contend that globalization involves organizational logics being embedded in a range of spatial scales. These include global, regional, national and local scales. This challenges the assumptions that there is a neat match between a single spatial scale and a single logic. It also allows me to theorize organizational globalization as a multidimensional and politically contested process of rescaling organizational logics. To develop this argument, the paper begins by examining theories of organizational globalization. Rejecting the convergence and divergence approaches, I argue that globalization entails the transformation of organizational logics. I note that the transformation in space, which underpins the transformation of organizational logic, has been ignored. The paper sets out to address this lacuna by using the concept of spatial scales. I argue that globalization processes involve rescaling organizational logics. Therefore, globalization can be thought DOI: 10.1177/0170840606067515

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of as a process that produces diversity instead of standardization (Robertson 1992). This is because organizational logics diversify as they are embedded in multiple spatial scales. The paper theorizes the simultaneous importance of different spatial scales. Instead of assuming that the global or national space is most important, it becomes possible to analyse organizational logics by asking the more open question: which spatial scale will be important in this case?

Convergence, Divergence or Transformation?

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The debate about organizational globalization has been remarkably fragmented. It has addressed isolated aspects such as changes in power relations (Bannerjee and Linstead 2001), strategy (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1987), work systems (Saka 2004) and workplace identities (Ailon-Souday and Kunda 2003). Permuting each aspect of these globalization processes are shifts in organizational logics. Organizational logics are ‘the sensemaking frames that provide understandings of what is legitimate, reasonable and effective in a given context’ (Guillén 2001a: 14; see also: Biggart 1991: 222–224; MacDuffie 1995; Biggart and Guillén 1999). Neo-institutionalists argue that organizational logics are central to changes in other aspects of an organization because they ascribe meaning to, and provide broad limitations on, the possible actions that organizations can undertake. This means the selection of governance, strategy and work systems are all prescribed by the dominant organizational logic within a firm. Furthermore, logics are not unique to each organization, but tend to be embedded in shared spaces, such as the nation state (Granovetter 1985). Organizations that are embedded in a similar space tend to share similar organizational logics. The result is that they display what DiMaggio and Powell (1983) called ‘institutional isomorphism’. Initial approaches to globalization have argued that organizational logics are converging across the planet. According to proponents, organizational logics are ‘disembedded’ from national space and re-embedded into a global space (Giddens 1990). The result is the rapid convergence of organizational logics. Such convergence is driven by real-time technology (Castells 1996), volatile capital flows that circumvent the reach of nation regulation (Strange 1986) and the appearance of geographically homogeneous consumer demand across the globe (Levitt, 1983). There are also pressures from international standards (Brunsson and Jacobsson 2000), the nation state form, the professions and scientific reason (Meyer and Hannah 1979; Meyer et al. 1997). The outcome of these convergent pressures is that firms become increasingly disconnected from national economies (Ohmae 1990, 1995). This means nationally specific organizational logics are overtaken by transnational organizational logics. Understandings of what is reasonable, legitimate and effective in an organization become shared across national borders. The consequence is the spread of an Anglo-American organizational logic that legitimates shareholder governance, short-term antagonistic employment relationships, short-term price driven buyer–supplier relations and individual training (Hall and Soskice 1999). A second approach to globalization involves the continued divergence of organizational logics across the planet. Proponents of this approach argue that

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economic transactions are embedded in long term relationships that involve obligation, trust and reciprocity (Granovetter 1985). These relations often take the form of national-specific institutions such as structures of ownership, buyer– supplier relations, labour relations and legal infrastructure (Hall and Soskice 1999). Because this complex of institutions varies across nations, organizational logics also vary. The result is that divergent arrangements of the State, the financial system, skill development and control, and trust and authority relations, produce divergent and nationally specific organizational logics (Whitley 1999). This argument is supported by a growing body of empirical studies that document how organizational logics are notably different across the advanced capitalist economies (Wade 1990; Whitley 1992; Fligstein and Freeland 1995; Kristensen 1997; Orrú et al. 1997; Storper and Salais 1997; Fligstein 2001; Gullién 2001). If organizational logics continue to diverge nationally, then globalization may be a process that is far less significant than nationally embedded business systems (Whitley 1999: 117–136). Indeed, some have argued that globalization processes will actually lead to the exacerbation of nationally specific organizational logics (e.g. Hall and Soskice 1999). This is because firms will seek to maximize the nationally specific advantages in order to develop unique competencies in the global market (Biggart and Guillén 2001). A third stream of research that has appeared examines how organizational logics are changed, transformed and translated when they are taken up in a particular locality (Abo 1994; Raz 1999; Zeitlin and Herrigel 2000; Frenkel and Shenhav 2004; Frenkel 2005). An important insight found in this research is that globalization does not result in the convergence or the continued divergence of organizational logics. Instead, when organizational logics move across space, they undergo a process of transformation, hybridization (Abo 1994) and translation (Czarniawska-Joerges and Sevon 1996). This involves shifts in the meaning given to, and the use made of, an organizational logic. As organizational logics are translated between contexts, they ‘become entirely different objects from what they were in their original social context’ (Frenkel 2005: 279). Such transformations have been noted when Japanese total quality management moved into the USA (Abo 1994), North American scientific management and British human relations moved into Israel (Frenkel and Shenhav 2004; Frenkel 2005) and North American corporate governance moved into Germany (Buck and Shahrim 2005). In each case, researchers found a subtle interaction between globalizing logics and nationally specific logics. By examining the transformation of organizational logic, researchers have been able to account for the subtle processes of political negotiation, contestation and change that occur when an organizational logic moves across space. However, this more supple account of organizational logics is predicated on a rather rigid theory of space. That is, the transformational approach treats the space that organizational logics move across as a relatively stable entity. But does the transformation of an organizational logic also involve the transformation of space? In this paper, I ask how we can theorize the transformation of space and what effects these spatial transformations might have on organizational logics. In what follows, I will argue that the concept of ‘spatial scale’ enables the development of a transformationalist approach to space. The concept of spatial

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scale is particularly useful because it helps to theorize the multiple geographic levels in which organizational logics are embedded. It also helps us to understand how organizational logics are dis-embedded from one scale (for instance, the nation) and re-embedded on another scale (for instance, the global economy). Finally, when studying a particular organizational logic, it is possible to leave the question of which spatial scale gets evoked in which context as an open, empirical question.

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Globalization as the Transformation of Scale

The concept of spatial scales provides a useful way to think about the multiple pressures that produce transformations of organizational logic. In what follows, I draw on work in social geography to develop a theory of spatial scale. The first thing to note about spatial scales is that they are different ‘levels’ of space. Spatial scales are a ‘graduated series, usually a nested hierarchy of bundled spaces of different sizes, such as the local, regional, national and supranational … each with a distinct geographic scope, that is, territorial extent’ (Leitner 1997: 124–125). Following this basic definition, a scale is the geographic level of social activity. Some important scales include the neighbourhood, the city, the district, the nation, the region and the global. The second point is that globalization involves economic activity being positioned on a number of spatial scales at once (Brenner 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 1999 2001). For instance, economies throughout Europe have been ‘de-territorialized’ from the national scale and ‘re-territorialized’ onto the urban and regional scale (Brenner 1999). This does not mean the national scale has disappeared. Rather, a range of spatial scales have become salient. Thus, organizational logics are not necessarily embedded on a single dominant scale. Instead they are embedded on a number of scales at once. For instance, transformation in corporate governance in Germany involves firms becoming embedded in both the pressures of the German national scale for the continuation of Rheinish governance as well as the pressures of the global scale for ‘Anglo-Saxon’ corporate governance (Buck and Shahrim 2005). The third point is that spatial scales are socially produced (Lefebvre 1991). That is, spatial scales are not natural geological foundations. Rather, they are produced by actors engaging in political struggles to ‘fix’ economic processes on an advantageous spatial scale (Swyngedouw 1996, 2000). This political process is demonstrated in a study of rescaling in the Belgian coal-mining region (Swyngedouw 1996, 2000). The economic activity in the Belgian coalmining region was previously positioned on the national scale. This meant economic activities associated with the mine were funded, regulated and embedded within national institutions. Reform during the 1980s saw economic activity being de-territorialized from the nation state and re-territorialized on the urbanregional and European scales. This rescaling occurred through ongoing, contested and often incomplete processes. A range of actors were involved, including representatives of the Belgian nation state, regional politicians, management consultants, labour activists, venture capitalists and community pressure groups.

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A shift in spatial scales corresponded with a transformation of the accepted organizational logic from supporting the national economy to developing a European leisure hub. This was materialized through building programmes, changes in transport infrastructure and the decommissioning of local coal mines. The result was a range of interested actors transforming an organizational logic by rescaling this economic activity. The social production of scale occurs through three intertwining processes. The first process that produces scale is capitalist accumulation (Smith 1984). Capitalist relations are not just free-floating, but require ‘a spatial fix’ provided by a spatial scale (Harvey 2000). Capital accumulation is fixed on a spatial scale when capital is invested into spatial immobile activities and assets such as city, national or regional infrastructure. Organizations on a similar scale will have similar infrastructure and similar flows of investment available to them. In order to tap into this investment, an organization will need to display similar logics. This means organizations that share a spatial scale will also tend to share organizational logics. For instance, a study of Canadian banking revealed that banks tended to restructure their operations as patterns of capital accumulation shifted away from the national level to the pan-American and global scale (Tickell 2000). Part of the restructuring involved adopting organizational logics that were more attractive to global flows of capital. This led to Canadian banks adopting logics that were common on the global scale. Thus the scale of isomorphism shifted from the nation state to the global market. The second process that produces spatial scales is regulation (Collinge 1999). This involves social relations being given regularity through governance mechanisms including hierarchies (such as corporate organizations), networks (such as dense interfirm relations in an industrial district), associations (such as a professional representative body) and states (Hollingsworth et al. 1994). In capitalist economies these governance mechanisms typically bolster capitalist accumulation (Jessop 1997). Because regulation takes place largely at the national level, we would expect that the nation would typically be the dominant scale. Other scales such as the regional or the global, which are the focus of far less regulation, would be ‘nodal’ (Collinge 1999). Thus, organizational logics will continue to be largely embedded in the national scale because of its continued regulative influence (Whitley 1999). The final component of spatial scales is that they are produced through the articulation of politically charged discourse. Discourse is ‘the structured collection of texts embodied in practices of talking and writing … that bring organizationally related objects into being as these texts are produced, disseminated and consumed’ (Grant et al. 2004: 3). Actors mobilize discourses in an attempt to produce spatial scales (Kelly 1997). Mobilizing scale discourses is a political act that sets the boundaries whereby a ‘scale can be constructed as a means of constraint and exclusion, a means of imposing identity’ (Smith 1993:14). By articulating a discourse, social actors are able to establish boundaries of a spatial scale, and fix the qualities of that scale. This circumscribes which logics may be included in that scale and which should be excluded. For instance, the articulation of a discourse of globalization in public-sector organizations emphasizes more market-based logic such as new public management (Salskov-Iversen et al. 2000).

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Bringing these points together, a spatial scale is a geographic level of economic activity that exists alongside other geographic levels. It is socially produced by attempts to fix capitalist accumulation and regulate economic processes, and mobilize spatial discourses. Organizational logics are positioned on a spatial scale and there will tend to be isomorphism between logics on the same spatial scale. Consequently globalization is one arrangement of spatial scales produced by capital flows, regimes of regulation and interested actors mobilizing discourse that subjects organization logics to new isomorphic pressure. The concept of spatial scales shows us there is not necessarily a zero-sum trade-off between organizational logics being embedded on a global scale (and therefore converging) or a national scale (and therefore diverging). Rather, globalization involves the transformation of space through the introduction of multiple spatial scales. These transformed spatial scales underpin the complicated transformations in organizational logic. Rescaling

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So far, I have argued that organizational logics are positioned on multiple spatial scales and these scales are politically produced by patterns of capital accumulation, regulation and the mobilization of discourses. Further, the production of spatial scales underpins the transformation of organizational logics. In this section, I will introduce a dynamic to the theory by asking how scales change and what implications this has for organizational logics. I will argue that the production of a spatial scale involves changes in patterns of capital accumulation, regulation and the mobilization of discourse. The result of these changes is ‘rescaling’ (Brenner 1999). Social geographers have used the concept of rescaling to make sense of the economic restructuring associated with globalization (Jonas 1994; Kelly 1997, 1999; Crump and Merrett 1998; Castree 2000; Zeller 2000). For them, globalization does not involve all organizational logics being embedded in the global economy. Nor does it involve the destruction of the nation state as a pertinent spatial scale. Instead, it entails the production of a number of new scales and a shift in the relationship between these spatial scales:

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‘The current round of neoliberal globalization is rescaling state territoriality rather than eroding it. The denationalization of the national economy and urban hierarchy is not undermining the state’s role as a form of territorialization of capital, but “denationalizing” its scalar structure to privilege supra- and sub-national capital valorisations.’ (Brenner 1999: 440–441)

According to Brenner, globalization can be approached as a ‘scalar shift’. This involves a move away from the nation state being the predominant spatial scale in which organizational logics are embedded. Instead, organizational logics are embedded in scales that are both above and below the nation state. This does not mean the influence of the national scale on organizational logic has disappeared. Indeed, in many industries the nation state remains vital (Whitley 1999). However, the national scale is supplemented with other important scales, such as the city (Czarniawska 2002), the region (Saxienian 1994), cross-national

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agglomerations like Europe (Mayer and Whittington 1999) and the global economy (Mueller 1994). The existence of these multiple scales means that an organizational logic may be simultaneously embedded in a national scale (as divergence scholars would argue), a global scale (as convergence scholars would argue) and perhaps other scales (such as regions). For rescaling to take place, there must be a combination of three processes. First, rescaling involves changes in patterns of capital accumulation. For instance, shifts in the flow of Chinese capital in South-East Asia were central to the construction of a cross-border scale and the emergence of a shared logic of Chinese business in South-East Asia (Yueng 1998). Second, rescaling involves changes in the regulation of space. This happens through the introduction of governance mechanisms that regulate a spatial scale. For instance, the introduction of global labour standards in the athletic footware industry has meant that the global level has become a salient (if somewhat ineffectual) scale for the regulation of labour (Frankel 2001). This introduced, albeit in a very watereddown form, the logic of human rights into Chinese footware manufacture. The final aspect of rescaling involves changes in the scalar discourses. For instance, discourses of ‘globalization’ have increasingly fired the imagination of legislators, activists and business leaders alike (Fiss and Hirsch forthcoming). This meant that ‘going global’ became an accepted organizational logic. As mentioned above, any process of rescaling typically involves a combination of all three modes of spatial production. Furthermore, processes of rescaling also underpin the transformation of organizational logics. In order to consider how processes of rescaling occur in organizations, I shall briefly work through four types of rescaling processes. I will argue that each of these types of rescaling underpins the transformation of organizational logic. The first type of rescaling involves a shift in the external scale that an organizational logic is embedded in. This involves a change in the broader space that an organization is positioned within. For instance, the transformation of the dominant organizational logic in a public broadcaster from ‘serving and civilizing the nation’ to ‘competing in the global market’ and ‘promoting local identity’ was underpinned by a shift in spatial scales (Spicer and Sewell 2003). This scalar shift involved senior management attempting to de-territorialize the broadcaster from the ‘national’ scale and re-territorialize it on the ‘global’ and ‘local’ scales. They sought to do this through shifting the process of accumulation the organization was embedded in (by positioning the broadcaster in the global market), changing governance mechanisms (by introducing a greater role for the market) and mobilizing new discourses (such as globalization discourse). A second example of ‘external’ rescaling is the restructuring of a pharmaceutical company along the German–Swiss border (Zeller 2000). This involved the company shifting the scale that its operations were positioned at, from the nation scale to the European and global scales. To achieve this, the firm changed its position within capital flows (by appealing to global financial markets), introduced new regimes of internal regulation (such as restructuring of reporting relations in the corporate hierarchy) and mobilized potent new discourses (such as becoming a ‘global’ pharmaceutical firm). This led to a new organizational logic of ‘global hubbing’ replacing the existing logic of building up separate

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national industries. These cases document how shifts in the external scale that an organization is positioned within underpinned significant transformations in the dominant organizational logic. The second type of rescaling process involves transforming internal scales. This occurs when a group within an organization attempts to shift an organizational logic from one scale to another (perhaps more advantageous) scale within the organization. Research on the implementation of communities of practice in a mobile telephony company revealed two processes of internal rescaling (Land et al. 2003). The first of these involved the company’s knowledge management group attempting to implement communities of practice. Initially, they rolled out a community of practice strategy at the national scale. Although they succeeded in developing operative communities of practice on the national scale, they were not able to garner sufficient resources to support these communities. In order to counter this problem, they repositioned the communities of practice strategy at the global scale. They did this by connecting the communities of practice to global organizational funds, tying them into international regulation in the corporate hierarchy, and attaching ‘global’ discourses to the community of practice. Rescaling the communities of practice did provide additional resources for the initiative, but it was challenged when a more hard-nosed financial organizational logic took hold. In order to keep the scheme alive, the knowledge management group rescaled communities of practice initiatives from the global scale back to the national scale. They did this by changing the funds it tapped into, shifting to governance through local hierarchy and, most importantly, attaching a ‘national’ discourse to the initiative. A second instance of rescaling in the company involved a specialist group within a national division arguing for the development of a global community of practice in their particular area. By tapping into global resources and discourses, the specialist group shifted their activities from the national scale to the global scale. By tapping into the global hierarchy and networks within the firm, they were able to replicate their own activities as legitimate ‘best practice’ on a global scale. In both these instances, an interested party shifted the scale that communities of practice were positioned on in order to garner additional resources, change patterns of regulation and build legitimacy through the mobilization of favourable discourses. A third type of rescaling involves creating hybrid scales. These are the product of connections being forged between previously separate scales. Often, linkages are made where there is significant porosity between different scales. For instance, non-government organizations or guerrilla armies typically build links between the local ‘grass-roots’ scale they operate on and the transnational scale of global regulation and foreign funding (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). Here, organizational logics upon one scale may be able to directly connect with processes on another scale altogether. African non-government organizations attempted to articulate their local logics of organizing with globally legitimate organizational logics to tap into flows of funding, global governance structures and legitimating discourses available on a global scale (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). A similar process is found in the discursive strategies of a non-government organization (Hardy et al. 2000). When advantageous, the organization would position itself on a local scale to present itself as a part of the ‘grass roots’. At

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other times, the organization would position itself on a global scale in order to access international funding, international regulatory bodies and discourses of international human rights. In both cases, the organizations developed relays between previously separate scales and logics. This allowed them to claim they were both ‘grass roots’ and ‘global’ at the same time. These claims created a hybrid ‘glocalized’ (Robertson 1992) organizational logic. A final type of rescaling involves the development of shared scales between previously separate organizations. These shared scales provide an ordered zone of activity that allows organizations to interact, collaborate and engage in conflict. One instance of the development of shared scale is industrial districts found in northern Italy (Piore and Sabel 1984), Silicon Valley (Saxienian 1994) and Baden-Wuttemburg (Staber 1998). These industrial districts are sustained by shared capital flows, shared governance mechanisms, such as associations, and shared discourses of ‘the region’ that actors use to affirm collective identity. Therefore an industrial district is an important ‘shared scale’ between otherwise separable industries (Jessop 2002). Furthermore, organizations in a shared regional scale often have remarkably similar organizational logics. For instance, in the USA, high-technology firms in the Boston area tended to share a logic of secrecy and stability, while firms in Silicon Valley shared a logic of fluidity and collaboration (Saxienian 1994). A similar example of a shared scale can be found in ‘virtual communities’, such as open-source software development groups, which link activities together in physically distinct sites (Von Hippel and Von Krogh 2003). For instance, the Linux development community is a scale made up of its own distinct patterns of resourcing, patterns of associational governance and shared discourse that brings together software engineers from across the globe. The community creates a common space of action that does not neatly map onto any existing spatial scales. The existence of this scale has produced a shared logic, which prescribes what is legitimate and acceptable action. In both industrial regions and open sourcing the new, shared scale provided a basis for collaboration and shared organizational logics. A central dynamic of all four types of rescaling is the repositioning of an organizational logic onto a new spatial scale. I have argued that rescaling occurs through articulating an organizational logic with shifting patterns of accumulation or flows of funding, linking a logic into different regimes of regulation and mobilizing new spatial discourses. This may position an organizational logic on a new external scale, on a new internal scale, on a hybrid scale or it may develop a new, shared scale. Through each of these rescaling processes, organizational logics are positioned on new, perhaps multiple, spatial scales. This leads to organizational logics being linked with new (and perhaps multiple) isomorphic pressures associated with the new spatial scales. These new pressures then underpin some of the transformations in organizational logics, which are such a potent aspect of globalization.

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Scales and Resistance Thus far, I have argued that a spatial scale is produced through patterns of accumulation, regulation and discourse. Because the production of spatial scales is

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an ongoing process, a range of groups may intervene. Indeed, it is well accepted that, even under suffocating regimes of control, workers (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999), unions (Hyman 1989) and social movements (Hensmans 2003) are able to contest and resist dominant organizational logics. The major focus in studies of workplace resistance has been how groups have engaged in struggles around resources, identity and status (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999). In this section, I examine how spatial scales are an important target of resistance. I do this by detailing three forms of struggle over spatial scales. The first type of struggle over scale involves resistance on an existing scale. This occurs when resistant actors use the scale that an organizational logic is already embedded in. By using dominant scales, resistance groups attempted to reconfigure an organizational logic. Such interventions may target the accumulation and funding process at work on a given spatial scale. For instance, workers groups engage in struggles for redistribution of surplus value at existing levels such as the workplace (through wage bargaining) or the national level (through making claims for welfare provision). Resistance groups may target the regulation and planning of a scale by attempting to reconfigure the mix of governance mechanisms on a spatial scale. An example of this involves workers in Maquliadora factories, on the US–Mexican border, developing associations such as social movements, to challenge regulation by existing state legislature and corporate hierarchy (Pena 1996). Similarly, labour activists have recently attempted to intervene in global regulative structures, such as financial and labour governance, in order to resist restructuring of corporate hierarchies (Herod 2001). Finally, resistance groups might intervene in existing spatial discourses through a processes of ‘re-signification’. This involves evoking discourses that are already available on a scale. For instance, the international wing of a public broadcaster used the ‘global’ scale to question funding cuts (Spicer and Fleming 2003). Instead of accepting the dominant discourse, which equates globalization with marketization, union and consumer pressure attempted to reconfigure this ‘global scale’ as a public space. By embedding the broadcaster on a global scale, resistance groups were able to make an argument for the provision of government-funded services to a ‘global public’. In each of these cases, groups intervened in capital flows, regulation or discourses on an already existing scale to take forward their struggle. A second process of contesting scaling involved resistance groups embedding organizational logics on a higher scale. This might occur when a group attempts to shift an organizational logic from a narrow scale to a broader and more inclusive scale. For instance, various groups who are confronted with surveillance at the workplace scale attempt to craft links with the broader national scale. They do this largely through suggesting national regulation, contesting governance regimes and articulating discourses of the Orwellian security state (Ball 2005; Barker and Sewell forthcoming). By doing so, resistance groups up-scale their own struggle from the workplace to the nation scale. A similar ‘up-scaling’ of struggle was found in a study of a labour dispute in an Australian dock facility (Selsky et al. 2003). Although the labour dispute initially broke out at a single port facility, the labour union was able to up-scale the dispute to all ports in Australia and other parts of the world by using their existing regimes of

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association (the Maritime Union of Australia) as well as mobilizing the discourses of ‘solidarity’ and ‘social justice’. The Australian dock unions and critics of surveillance were able to create ‘chains of equivalences’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) with struggles on other social scales, thereby ‘scaling up’ their own struggle. A third process involves re-embedding an organizational logic on a ‘lower’ scale. This dynamic emerged in research on employee reactions following the merger of an Israeli information technology firm with a large US firm (AilonSouday and Kunda 2003). Following the merger, the Israeli employees appealed to the discourse of national identity to resist policies and practices imposed by US managers. Similarly, a study of a public broadcaster found that unions and a consumer pressure group evoked the national scale in their struggle against the imposition of globalization strategies (Spicer and Fleming 2003). They did so by revealing that resources the broadcaster depended on were located at the national level, tapping into national level legislation, which still governed the organization, and mobilizing potent discourses associated with the nation and civil service. By doing so, resistance groups were able to reaffirm values of nationalism and public service, and ultimately affirm the organizational logic of serving the nation. In sum, processes of rescaling are not only achieved by powerful groups embedding organizational logics on scales that they find advantageous. On the contrary, rescaling involves ongoing political conflict, including articulating struggles with an existing scale, linking struggles with a higher scale and connecting struggles with lower scales. Engaging in these various types of scalar contestation allows resistance groups to challenge and possibly intervene in the transformation of organizational logics. Thus, resistance in and around organization may involve the struggle for social space as well as the struggle for resources, identity and status (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999).

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Discussion and Conclusion

This paper has argued that globalization involves neither a convergence on an Anglo-American organizational logic nor continued divergence into different nationally specific organizational logics. Following a recent body of work, I have conceptualized globalization as the complex transformation of organizational logics. This occurs as the meaning given to an organizational logic, and the use it is put to, changes and is translated as it moves across national borders (Frenkel 2005). I have argued that a central part of this process is the reconstructing of the spatial scales an organizational logic is positioned within. The transformation of spatial scale involves changes in patterns of accumulation, regulation and discourses. Transformations of organizational logics are therefore part of the rescaling process. This may not only involve a discrete shift from the national to the global scale (as convergence accounts suggest) or changes within the national scale (as divergence accounts suggest), but involve multi-scalar reconfiguration. Therefore, the complex transformation of organizational logics may be underpinned by the fact that globalization involves positioning logics on a number of spatial scales at once. Moreover, a process of rescaling transforms organizational

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logics by re-embedding them in new external scales (such as the global economy), new internal scales (such as a ‘European project’), hybrid scales (such as a ‘glocal’ non-government organization) or new shared scales (such as an industrial region). These processes of rescaling and transformation are not just a matter for dominant groups, but can also involve resistance groups. This means globalization involves the transformation of organizational logics driven by the political achievement of rescaling. By advancing the concept of spatial scale, this paper makes a number of contributions to the transformationalist approach to organizational globalization. First, the concept of spatial scales questions the assumption that globalization can only lead to the spread of a single, hegemonic organizational logic. Instead, we are forced to examine how globalization gives rise to considerable diversity across the globe (Robertson 1992; Featherstone 2001). This is reflected in the existence of multiple organizational logics. We are also reminded that diversity is not limited to divergence between the nationally specific organizational logics. Instead of assuming heterogeneity of organizational logics between nations and homogeneity within nations, it is possible to consider the many organizational scales upon which organizational logics might converge and diverge. If an organizational logic is embedded in a range of spatial scales, then we would be likely to see organizational logics that conform to the mimetic pressures of multiple spatial scales. This explains why organizational globalization often involves the appearance of hybrid organizational logics that are regional, national and global in character. Second, the paper adds a conception of space to the transformationalist approach. The theory of spatial scale demonstrates how space is an integral aspect of economic activity. It also reminds researchers that spaces like the nation or the global economy are not stable entities, but are dynamic social products. The paper explains the mechanisms through which space is produced. It adds a unique dimension to accounts of the transformation of organizational logics. It also adds to the growing literature examining the construction of organizational space (Hernes 2004; Ford and Harding 2004). Further, the paper provides an account of the production of larger-scale spaces to the burgeoning literature on organizational space, which largely focuses on the workplace scale (e.g. Gullién 1997; Baldry 1999; Kornberger and Clegg 2004). Third, the paper points out that the spaces in which organizations are positioned may be made of multiple scales. This means researchers are able to avoid an analytical ‘zero-sum’ trade-off between different scales such as the nation, the region and the global economy. Instead they are able to investigate the relative importance of scales with regards to a particular organizational logic. This involves examining how the most influential scales are achieved politically through various actors attempting to manipulate capital flows, governance and imagination. An important dynamic of the transformation process is the political struggle around scale. Ultimately, spatial scales should not be treated just as an analytical choice made by those who study organizational logics, but as a political product of those intimately involved with an organizational logic. Finally, the paper examines how the transformation of space underpins the transformation of organizational logics. I have argued that organizational logics

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This paper was originally presented at the University of Leicester and the University of Bristol. I would like to thank Medhi Boussebaa, Nick Ellis, Peter Fleming, Chris Land, Glenn Morgan, Markus Perkmann, Yehouda Shenhav, Scott Taylor and three anonymous reviewers for their advice and comments.

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André Spicer is a lecturer in Organization Studies at Warwick Business School, UK and associate member of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization at the University of Warwick. He gained a PhD from the University of Melbourne in Australia. His work investigates power and resistance in various organized settings, particularly the media industry. He is currently working on two monographs entitled The Power of Resistance and Unmasking the Entrepreneur. Address: Industrial Relations and Organizational Behaviour, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. Email: [email protected]