Mastanocracy: The legitimization of criminal governance and violence in Bangladesh’s garment industry

IF 5.4 2区管理学 Q1 MANAGEMENT

Human Relations Pub Date : 2025-10-17 DOI:10.1177/00187267251383441

Shoaib Ahmed, Chandana Alawattage, Kelum Jayasinghe

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The operation of criminal governance within formal-legal industrial contexts connected to global supply chains remains insufficiently theorized in management and organization studies (MOS). How such governance legitimizes violence against marginalized workers both within and beyond organizational boundaries also remains critically underexplored. By analysing the paradoxical normalization of criminality and violence within Bangladesh’s garment industry, this study exposes the systemic embeddedness of mastans , politically connected criminals, within export-oriented industrial governance. We conceptualize this entanglement as mastanocracy , a hybrid political formation of violent criminal governance that operates legitimately at the nexus of corruption, democratic erosion, elite power and social polarization, advancing the neoliberal economic and political agendas of dominant actors. This research extends MOS by broadening the boundary conditions under which criminal governance is legitimized in a formal-legal industrial environment in the Global South. It also advances the discourse on violence in contemporary organizations by revealing the broader cultural, social and political dynamics that normalize violence within and beyond organizational boundaries, compelling millions of marginalized workers to live and work under regimes of criminal governance.

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Mastanocracy：孟加拉制衣业的犯罪治理和暴力合法化

在管理和组织研究（MOS）中，与全球供应链相关的正式法律产业背景下的刑事治理运作仍然缺乏充分的理论化。这种治理如何使针对组织边界内外边缘化工人的暴力行为合法化，也仍未得到充分探讨。通过分析孟加拉国服装行业内犯罪和暴力的矛盾正常化，本研究揭示了在出口导向的工业治理中，与政治有关的犯罪分子的系统性嵌入。我们将这种纠缠概念化为mastanocracy，这是一种暴力犯罪治理的混合政治形式，在腐败、民主侵蚀、精英权力和社会两极分化的联系下合法运作，推动主导角色的新自由主义经济和政治议程。本研究通过拓宽犯罪治理在全球南方正式法律工业环境中合法化的边界条件，扩展了刑事管理制度。它还通过揭示使组织边界内外的暴力正常化的更广泛的文化、社会和政治动态，推动了当代组织中关于暴力的论述，迫使数百万边缘化工人在犯罪治理制度下生活和工作。

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来源期刊

Human Relations Multiple-

CiteScore

12.60

自引率

7.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Human Relations is an international peer reviewed journal, which publishes the highest quality original research to advance our understanding of social relationships at and around work through theoretical development and empirical investigation. Scope Human Relations seeks high quality research papers that extend our knowledge of social relationships at work and organizational forms, practices and processes that affect the nature, structure and conditions of work and work organizations. Human Relations welcomes manuscripts that seek to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to develop new perspectives and insights into social relationships and relationships between people and organizations. Human Relations encourages strong empirical contributions that develop and extend theory as well as more conceptual papers that integrate, critique and expand existing theory. Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays: - Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements. Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria. - Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the journal''s scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews, and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief. Human Relations encourages research that relates social theory to social practice and translates knowledge about human relations into prospects for social action and policy-making that aims to improve working lives.