Bulwarks against Market Pressures: Value Rationality in the For-Profit Pursuit of Social Missions. (August 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Child, Curtis
• Is Part Of: Journal of contemporary ethnography. Volume 44:Number 4(2015:Aug.)
• Page Start: 480
• Page End: 509
• Publication Date: 2015-08
• Subjects: fair trade -- Max Weber -- value rationality; Sociology, Urban -- Periodicals; Urban anthropology -- Periodicals; 305.8
• DOI: 10.1177/0891241614545881
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0891-2416

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.