Dominant Ideologies and Their Interplay in Modern Corporations: A Human Capital Perspective

Abstract

Ideology is a contradictory and competing fundamental premise in many disciplines. However, it is a critical and vital element in managing modern corporations. Nonetheless, it has been overlooked in the management domain for many decades, despite its criticality on corporates with special reference to understanding and explaining conduct and consequences of corporate human capital. The problem of establishing a consensus on the definition of ideology in general and especially reference to management was noted due to the highly ideological nature of the concept itself and its dynamic nature of application under complex corporate context. This study explored and examined dominant ideology types related to modern corporate human capital and critically reflected their interplay and repercussions in modern corporates. Further, the study reviewed how ideology emerged and developed in different perspectives related to major human capital groups within a corporate and their conflicting nature related to corporate management. The study adopted a qualitative critical analysis approach to describe and prescribe the ideological interplay and its resultant outcomes. Findings revealed there are four dominant yet interdependent ideologies in modern corporations namely; corporate ideology, leadership ideology, managerial ideology, and employee ideology and how present and future of a corporate destiny greatly depend on the resultant outcome of the interplay of the said dominant ideologies. Moreover, the study explained how modern corporations advance social class structure within corporations through the production and reproduction of dominant ideologies and their interplay. Similarly, how modern management norms such as human “resource” and human “capital” are used to camouflage corporate domination and exploitation of corporate subjects to hail the modern corporate capitalism.