A Vocation for Industrial Transformation: Ideology, Organizational Isomorphism, and Upgrading in the Guatemalan Sugar Industry

Abstract

Between the late 1970s and the 2000s, the Guatemalan sugar industry transitioned from a production model with deplorable labor conditions and low productivity to a highly efficient model with improved conditions. This paper traces the origin and diffusion of this upgraded model to a small team of managers motivated by Elite Solidarism, an interpretation of the Vatican II Catholic Social Doctrine. It suggests that this ideology played the central causal role in this process of industrial transformation, as managers drew upon it to define the specific practices of the new model at one particular mill and then encouraged its diffusion.