Apostles and brigadistas : industrial transformation with social gains in two Central American agro-industries

Abstract

This dissertation offers an ideational account of the industrial transformation with social gains of two Central American agro-industries during the 1980s and 1990s, the Guatemalan sugar and Nicaraguan cheese industries. Early in this period, both relied on semi-artisanal production processes, poor labor standards and low wages, and a narrow focus on low priced products sold in protected domestic markets. Over the next two decades, processors in both adopted new production models and business strategies that modernized their technologies and work organization, raised labor standards and wages, and repositioned them as formidable competitors in international markets. Remarkably, these industrial transformations occurred in highly adverse political and economic contexts for high-road business, as deep ideological cleavages plunged the countries into bitter civil wars, economic recessions undermined business development, and national states abandoned policies of industrial support. Paradoxically, the same ideological cleavages that tore these societies apart supplied the materials for two distinct teams of top firm decision-makers, the Apostles of Development in Guatemala and the Cooperative Brigadistas in Nicaragua, to transform the sugar and cheese industries. Spurred on by two distinct ideologies, these teams crafted and disseminated new production models and business strategies. In Guatemala, the motivating ideology was Vatican II Catholic social doctrine and in Nicaragua it was Sandinismo. To reveal how the Apostles of Development in Guatemala and Cooperative Brigadistas in Nicaragua enacted the general principles of these ideologies to transform firms in their industries, the proposed explanation deploys a model that highlights the role of two intervening variables in shaping their value-rational actions: (a) their particular interpretations of these ideologies, and (b) their shared professional backgrounds. The former impelled these top firm decision-makers to pursue a narrow range of prioritized moral imperatives and aspirations within the body of their ideology. The latter, in turn, directed their actions toward the business realm and supplied the necessary skills, tools and procedures to enact their ideological principles.