In successive editions of my book since the second and including the latest, fifth, one, I have included the firm P&O in a long list of examples of what were once British companies that became internationally owned (pp. 109-110 of this edition). This forms the starting point of my analysis of the new capitalism as it relates to organization studies.
P&O has been much in the news this week, following the brutal sacking by Zoom of almost 800 workers in order to replace them with cheaper foreign labour. In fact, in illustration of one of the arguments I make in the book, even to speak of “P&O” is a misnomer, because what was once a company of that name has been endlessly diced and sliced in different configurations, so that the entity that actually made the sackings was P&O Ferries. That is part of the P&O Group, the modern-day history of which is an exemplar of the ‘new capitalism’ business model.
For example, from the 1980s onwards it diversified from shipping into a wide array of other areas such as construction and property management. Then, from the start of this century, it divested itself of those activities until, in 2006, it was bought by Dubai Ports World (DP World), a company owned by the Dubai government. However, P&O Ferries was shortly afterwards transferred to Dubai World (DW), the parent company of DP World and also owned by the Dubai government, until being re-sold to DP World in 2019. Meanwhile, P&O Ferries’ actual vessels are registered under a wide variety of flags of convenience.
So, this, in very brief, is the story of one example of what globalization means for corporate ownership – and it leaves out much else, including the interactions between DW and DP World and corporate entities in the US, China and Australia. At the end of the chain, and very much subservient to it, is the workforce of P&O Ferries, including both those who have been sacked and those who are being hired at pittance wages to replace them.
P&O was once a British company, but similar developments have occurred all around the world, although successive UK governments have been especially relaxed about corporate sell-offs. Moreover, certainly compared with most EU countries (and this was the same even when it was part of the EU), UK employment law offers workers fewer protections from sackings of this sort. In any case, by its own admission P&O deliberately broke at least parts of this law – regarding consultation with trade unions – apparently because it judged the penalties for doing so to be outweighed by the benefits.
The consequence of businesses being owned and run in this way is to sever the links that can – at least in principle - otherwise exist between owners, communities, and employees. Even in the narrowest of business terms this is problematic. For why, when business owners are so manifestly uncommitted to them should workers feel or show any commitment to their businesses? Similarly, to the extent that such sackings damage ‘brand image’ amongst consumers there may be a business price to be paid.
But its implications go much deeper than that, and are bound up with the massive increases in inequality which are part and parcel of the new capitalism. Both literally and metaphorically the owners and senior managers of such firms inhabit a different world to the people who work for them.
Of course, one shouldn’t be too starry-eyed about traditional capitalism in this respect. Nineteenth century factory owners were arguably similarly detached from, and ruthless about their workforces. I recently re-watched a TV version of J.B. Priestley’s classic 1945 socialist play An Inspector Calls (for more on the play and its relationship to Priestley’s politics, see Alison Cullingford’s essay). Set in Edwardian England just before the First World War, it depicts a police inspector arriving at the home of the Birlings, a wealthy mill-owning family. He tells them that a young woman has been found dead, having killed herself in an especially horrible way, and in the course of the evening demonstrates how each of them had played a part in the events that led to her suicide.
Still at least, when prompted, members of the Birling family do recall the personal interactions they have had with the dead woman. No such connection exists between those who hold and dispose of the ‘human resources’ of companies like P&O and the real human beings on the receiving end of their spreadsheet-driven decisions. The geographical and social distance between them if not creates then at least exacerbates what philosophers from Aristotle to Levinas have identified as the problem of ‘moral distance’.
However, this does not undermine, so much as add new force to, the inspector’s prophetic closing words in Priestley’s play. With them, he enjoins the privileged family to remember that “we don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.”
