Corporate Response to Stability and Change: Understanding Corporate Strategic Action in Response to Stability Threatening Events, a Case Study of Lonmin Plc. and the Marikana Massacre.

Abstract

This thesis seeks to fill the analytical gap of corporate agency and strategic action in the analysis of the ‘Marikana Massacre.’ On 16 August 2012 the striking amount of 34 striking miners were massacred by the South African Police. Attempts at analysis of the role that Lonmin Plc –the multinational mining corporation employing the miners– had played in the development of the drama, have failed to approach the conflict as a gradual process with Lonmin having agency at every moment, from setting the preconditions, throughout the strike, the escalation and the aftermath of the crisis. This thesis seeks to fill this analytical gap by using ‘Field Theory’ (McAdam and Fligstein 2012). As such, the conflict is conceptualized conflict as taking place within a ‘strategic action field’ where both powerful and less powerful actors are constantly jockeying for position; incumbents actively protecting and reinforcing their position of power and order, and challengers actively looking to improve their position at any given opportunity. This approach enables the researcher to study the interaction between actors in a meso-level social order in the balance between stability and change. With the relationship between stability and change at the core of the approach, a very different image arises of Lonmin; an incumbent actively using social skill, internal governance units and calling upon (state) allies to protect the status quo and stability of the field at any given point in time. This allows for a far more complex and detailed analysis of the corporation’s role in the conflict than has been given to date.