Bulwarks against Market Pressures: Value Rationality in the For-Profit Pursuit of Social Missions
Keywords
fair trade, Max Weber, value rationality
Abstract
How do members of fair trade businesses hold their profit-maximizing interests in check in order to make room for extra-financial ones? Answering this question is important because corporations are increasingly called upon to be responsible—even social-value producing—citizens, but scholars do not fully understand how they become so. Using data from the fair trade industry, this article demonstrates that market pressures can be buffered in part by a type of Weberian discipline that is motivated by the meanings that members of an organization attach to the social consequences of their work.
Original Publication Citation
Child, Curtis. 2015. “Bulwarks against Market Pressures: Value Rationality in the For-profit Pursuit of Social Missions.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 44(4): 480–509.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Child, Curtis, "Bulwarks against Market Pressures: Value Rationality in the For-Profit Pursuit of Social Missions" (2014). Faculty Publications. 3880.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/3880
Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
2014-08-26
Permanent URL
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/6690
Publisher
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
Language
English
College
Family, Home, and Social Sciences
Department
Sociology
Copyright Use Information
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