Associate Professor Htwe Htwe Thein
Business, Human Rights, and Legitimacy in Post-Coup Myanmar
Abstract
The presentation examines the tension between country-level political legitimacy and organisational legitimacy following Myanmar's 2021 military coup. The coup created a fundamental crisis of political legitimacy, with the military junta lacking an electoral mandate yet claiming state authority, while several groups, including the National Unity Government (NUG) and National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC), claimed legitimacy following the 2021 military coup. In this contested political landscape, multinational enterprises (MNEs) face profound dilemmas regarding their organisational legitimacy. Companies faced a three-dimensional legitimacy challenge: maintaining legitimacy in their home countries (where governments and consumers expect adherence to human rights standards), addressing contested legitimacy in the host country (where continued operations might strengthen or undermine competing claims to political authority), and preserving internal legitimacy with employees and stakeholders. High-profile companies proved particularly sensitive to these legitimacy considerations, as their decisions carried greater symbolic importance in granting or denying recognition of the junta's authority. These dilemmas are deepened by the military's long-established economic embeddedness and dominance in Myanmar, its entrenched patron-client relationships with business elites, and the fact that many military-controlled entities and their affiliated individuals and businesses now face sanctions from several Western governments. The competing stakeholder perspectives on organisational responses reveal deeper contestation over what constitutes legitimate business conduct in contexts of illegitimate governance. The Myanmar case shows how economic actors become implicated in processes of legitimation and delegitimation at multiple levels.
Biography
Dr Htwe Htwe Thein is an Associate Professor in International Business at the School of Management, Curtin University, Australia, where she has been teaching for the last 16 years, specialising in subjects on management in Asia, international business, and cross-cultural interactions. She has also been involved in a range of service and leadership roles at the faculty and school levels since 2012. Her research is interdisciplinary and examines the role of responsible business in building sustainable businesses and communities, especially in developing countries. Dr Thein has country-specific expertise and close to twenty years of experience as a scholar on business and economic development in Myanmar. She is currently engaged in research projects on - responsible business, governance in Global Production Network, corporate social responsibility, foreign direct investment and conflicts, organisational legitimacy, co-evolution of state-owned enterprises, and human resource development - in the institutional context of Myanmar’s democratic political transition and increasing global economic integration. Dr Thein has recently been co-awarded an ARC (Australian Research Council) Discovery grant to examine employment relations, business practices and corporate social responsibility in the global production network of garment manufacturing in Myanmar.