Critical Management Studies Conference 2013 The University of Manchester Abstracts
STREAM 1: AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP Organizers: Jo Brewis, Alessia Contu, Sadhvi Dar, Carole Elliott, Sarah Robinson, Martyna Sliwa and Kiran Trehan On behalf of VIDA, the Critical Management Studies Women’s Association NB: Because of the nature of the stream, participation is limited to women only. It is also dependent on having registered interest with Jo Brewis in advance so as to ensure everyone receives papers beforehand for consideration and subsequent discussion in the stream itself.
AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP SESSION 1 Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm G1
Introduction Introduction to VIDA and the stream.
Maria Laura Toraldo, University of Federico II, Italy Freedom, fun and immaterial labour in virtual communities: Angels 4 Travelers and the rhetoric of participation Virtual interfaces are frequently depicted as venues for users’ active participation in various forms of coproduction. An empowered user – whose structuring trait revolves around creative expression, cooperative activity, and a playful attitude – has arisen whereas online collaboration is animated by a sense of fun and the promise of new interactive experiences on virtual platforms. Since the rhetoric of the ‘old’ media has become outdated due to its focus on the passive recipient, a new active participant has ideally surfaced in opposition, in a range of managerial and business discourses, described as ‘someone who is well versed in the skills of new media’ (Olsson, 2009: 101). The ‘participative paradigm’ derived from online collaboration has been clearly described by Tapscott and Williams (2006) in their well-informed account of a ‘new world’ of ‘ever-connected people’ who are the mass creativity of many ‘web initiatives’. At the same time, the participatory role of users has become the central dynamic for value creation, where the key competence for managers is ‘the ability to integrate the talents of dispersed individuals and organizations’ (Tapscott and Williams, 2006: 18). This paper draws on the concept of immaterial labour to reflect on the role of the virtual subject in the production of online creative contents. What is at stake in the theorization of immaterial labour is that labour produces immaterial goods, in the form of knowledge, communication or cultural contents, whilst a
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constitutive part refers to the affective labour involved (Lazzarato, 1997). Taking as an empirical case a travel platform – Angels 4 Travelers - a reflection will be carried out on the unpaid digital labourer’s participation and to what extent the Internet can eventually capitalize on this free labour. Angels 4 Travelers (A4T) is a travel community of users who are willing to share travel information with other travelers in order to make their journey authentic. The A4T website is thus designed to provide an immersive engagement for its users where the recreational use of the platform is crafted to stimulate users’ creative ideas. This is the form of creativity described by Arvidsson (2007), who points out that creativity is nowadays mostly produced in relatively autonomous forms of social cooperation whose externality, represented by the creative work, is appropriated as a crucial element in the information society’s circuit value. This paper moves from a wider underlying consideration, which is tied to transformations in value understandings – i.e. what value is and according to which logic it is produced. It seems, indeed, that new means to define value are surpassing traditional political economy conceptualizations. The explanation of value based on labour time does not seem the only measure to determine value any more. Instead, new features - being able to maintain a sense of community, sharing with others and participating - are acquiring a central room when value issues are under analysis. In this light, the paper aims to raise some questions on how the users’ immersion can be transformed into economic value and for whom this translation is proving to be advantageous. Keywords: play and fun politics; virtual community; immaterial labour; participative paradigm
Astrid Huopalainen, Åbo Akademi, Finland Working towards a defining moment – producing glamour around the fashion performance This paper explores nuanced dimensions and contradictions of glamour constructed and performed within the spaces of the assumedly most thrilling performance in the spheres of fashion: the fashion show. Here, the fashion show is understood as an unstable branding tool, a dynamic staged performance embedded in culturally, economically and socially laden ideas, and furthermore as a complex time-space sequence with a continuing “life” that extends beyond the ‘defining moment’ onstage. Glamour is approached as complex, illusionary, spellbound, vital in creating a thrilling onstage moment of both idealized bodily perfection and intensely desired economic and social success. The paper analyzes the production of glamour surrounding the fashion performance, and the artificial creation of illusion around a ‘defining moment’ to remember. This paper renders visible the uncertainty of glamour beyond and despite the illusionary frames and the meticulous, demanding work it takes to reach glimpses of thrill and exhilaration in fashion’s constructed game of seduction. Glamour, eventually achieved through hard work and bodily suffering, becomes enchantment as ‘slavery’, the reproduction of stereotypical fashion norms and deceptive perfection, impossible ever to fully reach. These aspects of unfulfillment are not only of significance in the context of fashion. Instead, they matter to an ever-growing aesthetic economy, part of larger “overlapping affective fields” (Thrift, 2008, 21) that serve “to stage, costume, and intensify life” (Böhme, 2003, 82) in a broader sense. Keywords: fashion performance; glamour; aesthetics
AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP SESSION 2 Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm G1
Rebecca Selberg, University of Lund, Sweden Embodied careers in nursing: understanding embodied aspects of increased professional differentiation under NPM reforms in Sweden A central feature of New Public Management reform within Swedish public healthcare, aside from privatizations, introductions of market mechanisms, and work intensifications, has been increased professionalism (Selberg 2012, Blomgren 1999). The effects of NPM reforms on the Swedish nursing profession have been contradictory. On the one hand, nurses report work related ill-health linked to cutbacks;
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on the other hand, new managerial regimes have reinforced the positions of nurse managers and have contributed to strengthen nurses’ jurisdictions. In this paper, I will discuss different ways of maneuvering changing organizational landscapes for nurses, by exploring four career paths of nurses employed within the same Swedish public hospital and one of its surgical wards. The main contribution of this paper, however, is the focus on embodied careers – a concept developed to capture the ways in which inequality regimes (Acker 2006) intercede in the situation of bodies (Young 2005).
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Alison Stowell, Anglia Ruskin University, UK Organizing e-waste: a study of the impact of the UK WEEE Regulation on occupational practices associated with computer disposal Since the late 1980/1990s the increase and reliance on ICTs has generated a new type of waste stream called ewaste. E-waste is any waste electronic product. This is seen to be one of the fastest worldwide growing waste streams at 3-5% per annum (Industry Council Electronic Recycling, 2004; Schluep et al., 2009); moreover, ICT’s contain materials that, without proper care, are harmful to the environment. The implication of this development is that e-waste has become one of the most significant waste streams compared to other types of waste. E-waste is unique in terms of how it was used prior to becoming waste and in the complexity of its design in comparison to other waste streams. In 2003 the European Union (EU) responded to this environmental concern and mandated the Waste of Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Directive. WEEE aims to control electrical and electronic waste through the promotion of reducing, reuse, recycling and recovery. The long-term objective of this initiative is to change waste into a resource that can be reused in production processes (Waste Directive, 2006; Commission of the European Committees, 2005). Changing waste into a resource aids the protection and preservation of the natural environment and its resources (Commission of the European Communities 2000; WEEE Directive 2003; Science and Technology Committee 2008). WEEE is just one of the many policies trying to address environmental concerns and is specific legislation for e-waste. The WEEE legislation has significant implications for how organisations offering computer waste services operate. Each EU member state, committed by the 1993 Maastricht Treaty (TEU 1992), has to provide direction to individual businesses and citizens on how they wish the WEEE Directive to be implemented. One of the challenges, for the member states, is to ensure that the necessary facilities are available for the safe dismantling of the equipment for reuse or recycling; the UK Government transposed the Directive into law in 2006. The focus of this paper is upon one type of e-waste; namely, the computer. In 2007 there were over 1 billion PC’s in the world and the figure is estimated to double by the end of 2014 (Kunzig, 2011). The useful life cycle of a computer is between 3-8 years. As a consequence of the growing numbers, the complex chemical composition coupled with the life expectancy has meant that a computer has become one of the most significant e-waste streams. Each computer contains between 700 to 1000 chemicals (Pellow 2007) that raise the question of safety and highlight the importance of managing computer disposal. At the present time there has been limited research within the UK that has investigated the local enactment of computer waste practices. The aim of this paper is to explore computer waste practices in order to answer the question: “How does the adoption of the UK WEEE Regulation contribute to safe computer disassembly practices?” This paper provides a report of an investigation into how six organizations have implemented the legislation. Keywords: computer waste; WEEE legislation; Institutional Theory; Action Research
Elham Moonesirust, University of Bath, UK Employee system trust in high commitment work organizations This study examines the kind of trust that employees vest in their organization and how they express this trust. It is suggested that, when system trust concerns individuals trusting the systems that they are members of, it is developed on the basis of the knowledge that employees have about other employees and other parts of the organization. Additionally, the effect that such trust has on employee organizational behavior in high commitment work organizations have been studied through a critical theory lens in this paper. It is proposed that employee trust in their organization does not necessarily bring about organizational commitment, but trust can also provoke compliance. Employee ambivalence toward the system as another outcome related to system trust has been also focused on. Keywords: system trust; high commitment culture; control; commitment; compliance; ambivalence
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AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP SESSION 3 Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am G1
Dawn Langley, Alchemy Research and Consultancy, UK, and Jenny Sealey, Graeae Theatre Company, UK A global stage: exploring the Paralympic opening ceremony 2012 as an experience of managing diversity, bridging cultures and creating a site of resistance “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood [sisterhood].” Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights "Look up at the stars and not down at your feet ... try to make sense of what you see ... be curious" Stephen Hawking, Paralympic Opening Ceremony 2012 This paper explores the Paralympic Opening Ceremony (POC) as a multi-layered example of diversity management; bridging cultures and identities positively but also acting as a site of resistance and challenge to established norms. That is, it both questioned and exposed ableism as a normative assumption constructed through organizing processes. (Mumby, 2008: 281) The POC provides a unique opportunity to explore a genuinely global diversity project involving an international cast and witnessed by millions of people worldwide. In exploring in-depth experiences of the organisation of the POC the paper will consider how surfacing the voices of disabled participants might contribute to organisational studies and the management of diversity. The POC, along with the Paralympic games themselves, has served as a platform for public debate around disability identity in the UK unlike anything the disability movement has experienced before. The experiences of those most directly involved clearly illustrate an ambition to bridge cultures and worldviews, but that there is still an urgent need to challenge the dominance of ableism in organising and that this involves creativity, risk, discomfort and potentially a backlash for those that attempt it.
Nivedita Kothiyal, Institute of Rural Management, India When ‘they’ did not respond: reading into the many silences It was quite disheartening not to get a ‘response’. After feeling forlorn for quite a while, I decided to read into their lack of response, and hence this paper. The response that I had been waiting for was to come from the organizers of 3 rd Biennial Conference of Indian Academy of Management (IAM), to be held during 12-14th December 2013, in India. This time, the organizers had announced a separate conference track for CMS, for the first time ever. I wrote a mail asking if they had anything specific planned or were in the process of planning for the track, and if I could contribute in possibly setting an agenda. In the process, I was also reminded of my earlier encounters with such lack of responses, or those that were wholly disappointing, when I had proposed to offer a course inspired by CMS as an elective. I had been teaching for over ten years at an Institute which was renowned for its flagship postgraduate programme on Rural Management, which sought to combine principles and processes of management in solving problems of poverty and development in India. Colleagues in the area (OB-HR) were skeptical of its relevance and timing, in a curriculum logically designed to ‘produce’ rural managers who then apply management theories and concepts, tools and techniques in a rural context. In a larger faculty meeting later, there was an unease with what appeared to be an absence of a ‘unified’ framework in offering a critique, and the usefulness of ‘critique’ itself, followed by the ever daunting ‘so what?’ question. Though I was finally able to offer the course which had been approved by the wider faculty members, to my peers it continued to represent what they called a ‘suicidal’ mission that I had embarked on. This was followed with earnest suggestions to share my experience, once I had finished teaching the course.
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This paper is an attempt to read into these episodes of ‘silences’, and unravel the (im)possibilities of CMS in Indian management academia. Why are there not enough CMS scholars in India; and why are scholars working on issues related to CMS in other disciplines not recognized/labelled as such? And therefore is it the case of an absence of CMS scholarship in India, or the lack of institutionalization of it? Is the CMS track in conference organized by IAM just an “ornamental” addition? Is it a mere reflection of similar developments within the Academy of Management (AOM), a remnant of and from wider international (though that in itself is problematic) scholarship?? Can an “indigenous” CMS agenda open spaces for decolonialisation of management knowledge and practice in India? In posing such questions, I hope to work through related issues of organizations (including academic ones) being crucial sites where power relations are (re)enacted and (re)produced and narrowly construed but dominant interests are routinely supported as natural course of action(s), while others are sidelined, marginalized, and thus overlooked. As an endnote, I have now had a much delayed ‘response’ from one of the organizers of the IAM, asking me to go ahead and take up the responsibility to chair the track, and see if there is reasonable interest.
Jane Gibbon, University of Newcastle, UK Multiple voices with diverse views: revealing the confusion around social impact bonds as a solution to financing the third sector Third sector or voluntary sector organisations have a history of being dependent upon the government or philanthropic funds as their main source of finance. Recently there has been a severe reduction in available sources of funding sources which has led to alternative approaches to funding and raising finance within the sector. The paper examines one particular model of funding, the Social Impact Bond (SIB), currently being piloted within the UK prison service. The model, whilst espousing social improvement, is developed out of a rationalisation supported by a finance frame of understanding that has many unresolved problems associated with different understandings of outcomes and measurement. The paper uses dialogue and discussion to reveal some of the underlying differences in understanding of the purpose and benefit of using a SIB to finance third sector initiatives. The SIB model on one level seems to provide a credible example of how an innovative financial instrument can claim to address social issues by providing stable sources of finance. Yet the complexity of the issues and the model itself provide a compelling example of the fragility of financial innovations where the resultant outcomes, and possible failure, could be a consequence of the rationalistic frame from which it was developed. Keywords: dialogue; Social Impact Bond (SIB); financialization; third sector; social impact; bricolage
AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP SESSION 4 Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm G1
Aanka Batta, University of Essex, UK Psychoanalysis and the consumer: a post-classical psychoanalytic study of consumer emotional experience This paper is a psychoanalytic contribution to critical marketing studies. It conceptualizes, psychoanalytically, what can be called consumer emotional experience. Psychoanalytically inspired conceptualizations have had a remarkable presence in the critically inclined study of the consumer’s emotional experience which is evident in the vernacular of the field, for example, in terminology like commodity fetishism, consumer narcissism and so on. These conceptualizations, however, have been drawn upon from a select few ‘classical’ psychoanalytic models, resulting in the field’s blind eye towards other more contemporary types of psychoanalysis. Whilst classical approaches, specifically Freudian and Lacanian, have so far been inspirational in psychoanalytic analysis of consumer experience, these approaches have more recently been critiqued for their gendered and more crucially lenient approach towards psychoanalytic theory. It is argued here that the post-classical approaches can offer a gender-inclusive and inter-relational outlook on consumer culture. This paper conceptualizes what is here called Consumer Emotional Experience drawing upon post-classical psychoanalytic models as a means of bringing to attention the potential of these models in contributing conceptual rigor to marketing theory. In this manner, this paper reflects how the post-classical approaches can respond to the
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critiques of the classical ones in the study of critical marketing. The post-classical psychoanalytic approaches referred to in this paper entail, specifically, Melanie Klein’s British Object Relations, Donald Winnicott and other post British Object Relations theory and, crucially, what is popularly known as the Tavistock model of group-dynamics. It is argued that they can be seen together as the British post-classical approach because of their rootedness in Klein’s British Object Relations and their development being specific to the British psychoanalytic scene. The particular consumer emotional experiences that are defined and their inter-relatedness clarified are consumer ambivalence, consumer vulnerability, consumer agency and consumer pathology. These isolated experiences are therefore not only interpreted and redefined in consumer research but also their relationship examined to define what constitutes consumer emotional experience in relation to the market structure. Conceptualizing the same also opens vistas for the study of possible methodologies and empirical research on consumer emotional experience while the main tenets of the post-classical approach outlined here set in motion their applicability to critical marketing studies.
Ela Klecun and Tony Cornford, London School of Economics, UK, and Maryam Ficociello, Dar Al-Hekma College, Saudi Arabia ICT and control of healthcare work In the UK, as in other parts of Europe gripped by recession, healthcare services are facing an uncertain future and calls for more efficient and effective healthcare delivery models. In UK policy discourse Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are often singled out as a key factor in achieving this aim. Recently health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced that he wants the NHS to become the “most digital health service in the world” with all records and communications in the NHS to be electronic by 2018. ICT are proposed in policy documents and in academic literature as a means of making healthcare ‘better’ (e.g. safer and more patient-centred) and more efficient by facilitating and transforming the management of healthcare organisations and processes. No longer the domain of administrators and managers, ICT are increasingly seen as being at the centre of healthcare practice. Different systems that directly impact on practice include e-prescribing and automatic dispensing of drugs, electronic health records, decision support systems, electronic booking of appointments and hospital discharge systems. This paper focuses on the implications of ICT use for healthcare practice. It is based on the findings from qualitative studies in three hospitals in England. It suggests, perhaps controversially, that ICT control the way healthcare practitioners work. It identifies different ways in which this happens and conceptualises controls as pre-programmed, emergent or accidental. Some pre-programmed controls are designed into the system to enforce adherence to protocols, guidelines and to monitor targets. These usually are direct and visible. Others might arise from constraints on work flow, e.g. when clinical encounters have to follow the logic of computer systems. These are less direct and not always visible (or at least not till the system breaks down). Controls may also be a result of the unintentional, emergent mismatch of practice when computer systems do not reflect the work practices that they were supposed to support (e.g. because they are based on formal procedures). Accidental controls are imposed sometimes by arbitrary systems errors, inadequate hardware or faulty software. These controls are not simply embedded in computers (software or hardware) but they arise in practice. They are negotiated, opposed to or accommodated in different ways by healthcare professionals. However, our research has also revealed that in some circumstances computer systems enable health practitioners to have greater control over their tasks, specifically as to where and when they perform them. We conclude the paper by exploring how these different controls might be influencing the practice and the nature of healthcare.
Fanny Salignac and Tracy Wilcox, University of New South Wales, Australia “People don’t know enough”: discursive constructions of Fair Trade The idea of ‘Fair Trade’ emerged some 50 years ago from initiatives seeking trade justice and human solidarity (Gibbon and Sliwa, 2012; Wilkinson 2007). Fair Trade in essence promotes alternative distribution channels for goods from the poorest countries, with the ultimate aim of providing market-based solutions to global poverty and inequality (Steinrücken and Jaenichen 2007).
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Over the past three decades, the Fair Trade ‘movement’ has crystallised into a discrete array of actors including producer cooperatives, NGOs, Alternative Trade Organisations, for-profit and not-for-profit organisations – each of whom who pay differing degrees of attention to certification, consumer branding, commercialisation, producer relationships or global trade agreements. In Australia and other English-speaking countries, the movement’s most visible manifestation is probably the Fairtrade™ label, part of the international Fairtrade Certification Scheme (FLO), which focuses on certification and market expansion, often using mainstream distribution channels and multinational retailers. Ultimately, though, the Fair Trade ‘movement’ can be seen as fragmented, operating within conditions of institutional complexity and experiencing “a multiplexity of different pressures from a plurality of institutional logics” (Greenwood et al, 2011, p357). This is particularly evident in the competing claims of Fair Trade as an ethical and human-centred economic practice which “alters, challenges, or, in its proponents’ strongest claims, exist in opposition to, the dominant economic order” (McMurtry 2009, p28), and the coalface practices of the Fairtrade/FLO retailers and certifiers which reflect commercial and communitarian logics, to differing extents (Salignac 2011). Published academic research on Fair Trade shows a similar plurality, with varying interpretations leading to vastly differing assessments of the nature and composition of the field, and competing views on the efficacy of Fair Trade. On one hand, Fair Trade is described as inherently unfair, an undermining of free trade which is ultimately ‘wrong’, with Fair Trade ‘bureaucracy” and “fine print” destroying the efficient operation of the markets (Haight and Henderson, 2010; Sidwell, 2008). On the other hand, as we have seen, Fair Trade is represented as a vehicle providing social and environmental benefits as well as economic empowerment. In some areas of research, a fierce and vehement debate on the interpretation and assessment of Fair Trade has been taking place (see Henderson 2008; Haight and Henderson, 2010; Booth and Whetstone, 2007). This paper aims to map out and problematise the ways in which key actors in the Fair Trade organisational field discursively construct ‘fair trade’, and consider how competing logics within this emerging field are drawn upon by actors to support their interests. We will map out the various actors within the Fair Trade field, using textual material from a variety of sources to gain a sense of the multiplicity of voices within this field. We will also include a reflexive examination of our own roles as academics in constructing ‘Fair Trade’.
AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP SESSION 5 Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm G1
Harriet Shortt, University of the West of England, UK Hiding in the corners of a hair salon: when ‘liminal spaces’ become ‘dwelling places’ This article draws attention to the spaces in-between and considers the lived experiences of liminal spaces for employees at work. Here, the function and meaning of liminal space is explored using empirical data gathered from a nine-month study of hairdressers working in hair salons. This study illustrates how and why liminal spaces are used and are made meaningful by these workers; for privacy, for informal territories and for inspiration. Consequently, the article extends the concept of liminality and argues that when liminal spaces are constructed, by workers, as vital and meaningful to their everyday they cease to be liminal spaces and instead become transitory dwelling places. In order to examine this shift from ambiguous space to meaningful place, the work of Casey (1993), amongst others is used to make further sense of the space/ materiality/ work nexus in organizational life. The contribution of this article is therefore three-fold; it argues that space is not just about dominant spaces; it extends the concept of liminality; and, in connection with the latter, it demonstrates how dwelling places offer fertile ground in which we might further develop our knowledge of the lived experiences of space at work. Keywords: hairdressers; hair salons; liminal; organizational space and place; photography; visual research
Michèle Bowring, University of Guelph, Canada Who are you? Gender role expectations and leadership identity in the nursing profession In this paper I present and discuss the results from a research project that attempts to understand the ways in
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which people of different sexes, genders and sexualities enact their leadership in the nursing profession in Canada and the UK. Nursing provides an interesting context for understanding the intersection of gender and leadership identity because of the sometimes-opposing cultural values held by its members: caring is largely seen as a feminine value, leading as a masculine value. It is also a profession that is undergoing great pressure due to increasing health-care costs coupled with decreasing budgets, an aging nursing workforce and uncertainty as to how to fill the gap left by impending retirements and high rates of burnout. I use Butler’s (1990, 1993) ideas regarding gender as a way to bridge the gap between the insights offered by mainstream leadership studies and the issues and lived experiences of these leaders. I argue that the literature is limited by dualism and binary understandings of gender that are out of sync with more complex and nuanced gender identities. I begin by providing a brief theoretical overview of the research project that this paper is based on, grounded in Butler’s definition of gender and her way of theorizing gender. In particular I focus on two concepts that she uses: the heterosexual matrix and the performative understanding of gender. For Butler(1990), “Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow” (1999, p. 179) Rather, it is “an identity tenuously constituted in time instituted in an exterior space through stylized repetitive acts. (ibid)”. Further, she asserts that our gender performance is constrained within what she calls the heterosexual matrix, a heteronormative framework that defines only two acceptable combinations of sex, gender, and sexuality – one each for women and men. Following that, I provide a brief description of the research project that I undertook and offer an analysis of twelve in-depth interviews with nurses in the UK and Canada, ranging in age from their early twenties to their fifties, as a way of examining the way in which their leadership intersects with their gender and their sexuality. Finally, I discuss the implications of my findings for nursing leaders and the nursing profession, as well as the way in which this type of work can be used more broadly within leadership studies.
Aileen Lawless, Liverpool John Moores University, Vivienne Griggs, Leeds Metropolitan University, Rick Holden, Liverpool John Moores University and Jan Rae, London South Bank University, UK Collaborative research: challenges and opportunities The aim of this paper is to surface the challenges and opportunities involved in doing collaborative research and in doing so to explore (and seek feedback on) the potential for dissemination and publication. This paper is one outcome arising from research collaboration between the authors of this paper. This developmental paper draws on our reflections of the collaboration from this ‘close up’ research;; this type of research arises from the concerns and daily practice of practitioners (Pritchard and Trowler, 2003). Our research originated in a conversation and a concern which brought us together. This conversation caused us to surface our dissatisfaction with current approaches to teaching and assessing reflective practice with a focus on Masters level programmes accredited by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). We agreed to undertake a collaborative research project to explore the challenge of teaching reflective learning and the transferability and sustainability of reflective practice from Higher Education (HE) to the workplace. Preparing the abstract and the paper for this conference stream will provide a relatively safe place to enable us to practise what we preach, reflection and reflexivity. Material for the paper will be generated by all authors and will focus on our initial perceptions of the challenges and opportunities offered by collaborative working. A catalyst for the reflection will be the process involved in submitting a HE Academy bid for a Collaborative Grant Scheme and our plans to ensure this enables ‘good’ critical research. A particular focus of this developmental paper will be a critical reflection on our methodological choices. We will examine our guiding principle of reciprocity which highlights that as researchers we must at all times manage the researcher/research participant relationship as an open and honest: ‘mutually beneficial exchange involving participative or collaborative working arrangements based on mutual respect’ (Ferdinand et al., 2007:520). Whilst this is important for all forms of research it has particular resonance with our stated methodological approach of action research and is vital when researching one’s own students. In producing this paper we will compare and contrast methodological approaches which inform collaborative research (with a focus on action research) and in doing so surface the opportunities and challenges involved.
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We welcome feedback from others who have an interest in collaborative research in the hope that we can learn from the challenges involved and in doing so maximize the opportunities. In doing we address and seek feedback on the following questions: * Are we doing action research or an insider-ethnography: does it matter and if so to whom and why? * Can the opportunities from collaborative research outweigh the challenges? Collaborative research aligns with our values and the ethos of this stream and experiment in critical friendship. However, little has been written on the challenges and opportunities involved in undertaking this type of research. This paper contributes to this identified need and in doing so contributes to this stream.
AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP SESSION 6 Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am G1
Closing reflections and next steps Participants will reflect on the experience, the kind of space we have created, the type of dialogue involved, the extent to which we have succeeded in leaving conventional academic practices of peer review ‘elsewhere’, the balance between criticality and friendship we have managed to achieve and so on. Our conversation will also focus on next steps for this project; plans for follow up discussions of papers; and feedback on other potential VIDA activities.
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STREAM 2: BEYOND OTHERNESS: RECONFIGURING MULTIPLE CRITICALITIES FROM THE PERIPHERY Jasmin Mahadevan, M.N. Ravishankar. Steve McKenna
SESSION 1 Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm H6
Chloe Tarrabain Construction of a Nobody: Identity Regulation Migrant Agency Workers in the Hospitality Sector Abstract This paper uses the context of the hospitality industry to consider how managerial intent and discursive practice may stratify the workforce creating a microcosm of colonialism within the organisation. Drawing on six months of ethnographic observations and interview materials the findings of this paper uproot theories of identity regulation which suggest that crafting subjectivities can be used to intensify workers commitment and loyalty to their respective organisations (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Barker, 1999.) It is suggested that organisations actively discourage migrant agency workers from forming acceptable identities in relation to the organisation, constituting them as identity-less or as an organisational other through discursive and embodied practice. The paper considers how management within contracting organisations draws on a variety of techniques, from control of embodiment to management of space in order to construct workers as other to the organisation. Moreover it is suggested that management vehemently deny migrant agency workers the opportunity to craft acceptable identities through organisational discourse which has specific impacts on the kinds of work agency workers perform within the organisation and the self-understandings they gain from their work.
Vanessa Brulon, Daniel Lacerda, Alketa Peci The construction of identity through organizing practices of culture in slums Abstract Our study evaluates how organizing practices encompassing a variety of cultural initiatives in precarious spaces mediate the transformation of space. The fieldwork was conducted in a specific favela of Rio de Janeiro: Morro do Cantagalo/Pavão-Pavãozinho, Brazil. We performed field observations and interviews with four residents and eight active members in cultural organizing practices of the communities. The data were analysed according to the theoretical categories - Organizing Practices of Cultural Organizations and Relation between Culture and Transformation of Space - identified by their respective operational indicators. The analysed practices entwine three types of manifestation of culture: development of absolute values of human perfection, production/promotion of registered intellectual and artistic works, shared meanings and values. All practices generate transformations in space, some of them stronger than others. The most visible transformation, however, was the reinforcement of local identity, which is produced especially by organizing practices of culture registration and sharing of meanings and values. We therefore propose that for achieving a meaningful development of favelas it is necessary to promote a valorisation of culture that leverages cultural actions to a higher level of intervention.
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SESSION 2 Wednesday 4.30 – 6.30pm H6
Isabella Krysa, Trung Le Kien, Jean Helms Mills, Albert J. Mills Postcoloniality in Action:RAND during the Vietnam War Abstract Between 1964 and 1968, RAND (an abbreviation for Research and Development), conducted some 2400 interviews in Vietnam with Vietnamese political prisoners (Davison, 1970). The interviews developed by RAND provide researchers with the opportunity to investigate how discursive ideologies are produced and what their impact is on the actors involved. In particular, the interviews reveal a rare glimpse of the interactions between the colonial powers (U.S.) and colonial people (Vietnamese population). By conducting our research in accordance with the hermeneutic circle, our research has shown that the various theories, theoretical frameworks, and methodological designs developed by the RAND Corporation were concerned with objectivity, validity and reliability (Davison, 1970; Elliott, 2010). Yet they failed to fully recognize the sociopolitical nature of their own assumptions that informed their research. Furthermore, although RAND employees regarded themselves as researchers and academic scholars wanting to consider the Vietnamese interviewees as participants in the RAND projects (Elliott, 2010), their predisposed opinions about the Cold War conflict prevented them from viewing the Vietnamese “interviewees” as anything else that the “other”. Analysis of the RAND interviews indicates a sense of strong resistance from the Vietnamese; a sense of resistance that is not normally found in analysis of texts written by those from the perspective of the colonizer. Choosing not to answer the interview questions serves as a form of resilience and resistance as the only powerful tool the prisoners have to resist. From the interviews analyzed we further see that the Vietnamese did not consider the Americans as rescuers but rather understood them as a destructive force in Vietnam.
Franziska Müller, Jasmin Mahadevan Reproducing dominant categories of cultural difference through linguistic discourse: Implications for critical management education and learning Abstract Increasingly so, institutions of higher education internationalize (Deardorff, 2006). They do so based on the implicit assumption that international and intercultural interactions will increase students’ intercultural competencies (ibid.), i.e. their ability to overcome perceived difference and otherness through integrative strategies (Osland and Bird, 2000). This paper reflects upon this implicit assumption critically. Data is based on an interview project which is carried out by students of engineering and management at a German university. Their task is to interview international exchange students, to uncover their perspective on studying in Germany and to describe this experience in a non-stereotypical and culturalized manner in a written assignment. The teaching goal of this project is to train students in interpretative and reflexive intercultural competencies such as changing perspective and uncovering another person’s inside (emic) view. However, as critical analysis shows, this interview project creates interpretative dominance and might even facilitate sophisticated stereotyping. We argue that such sophisticated stereotyping is linked to (1) simplified conversational strategies and (2) linguistic dominance on structural level. In summary, those interviewing set the terms through their questions during the interaction, and they continue doing so on structural level through their ownership of the written text. This situation is often mirrored in managerial interactions which more often than not take place amongst unequals, e.g. headquarters and subsidiary, those higher in hierarchy more often than not being from the EuroWestern center (Cairns & Sliwa, 2008). In summary, this paper highlights how linguistic discourse leads to the reproduction and reification of dominant cultural themes and categories of cross-cultural difference which in return impact the ability of those interacting to overcome this difference. It contributes to the understanding of actual cross-cultural interactions and managerial education and learning by showing that linguistic dominance in intercultural interactions facilitates the reproduction and reification of dominant categories of cross-cultural difference and hinders integrative sense-making in context.
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Aanka Batta, Zareen Bharucha and Netta Weinstein Understanding the ‘Other’? : The lived experience of development in urban India Abstract Within research on ‘development-induced change’ in India, much scholarship has highlighted the loss, dispossession and violence which are visited upon the poor and politically marginalised. Rather less attention has been paid to the lived experiences of those who run the engines of economic growth – the urban, salaried, aspirational citizens who are supposedly enjoying the fruits of development. How does this group – varied though it is – experience development and change? We explore this question through a mixed-methods survey amongst urban Indians (n = 182). Within this paper, we present a selection of findings which give voice to the powerful emotional undercurrents which characterise the lived experience of development amongst this group. Data shows ‘what it feels like’ to be living within the ‘Great Indian Growth story’. Using a psychoanalytic lens, we show that for this group, development is as much about loss, change and instability as it about hope and aspiration. We show that development-induced change for this group is marked by the experience of mobility, insecurity, vulnerability, fear of separation from a much-loved and deeply-rooted context, and ambivalence. In doing so, we contribute a new lens via which to begin to unpack the monolithic discourse of ‘India Shining’.
SESSION 3 Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am H6
Chrysoula Gkizari, Marianthi Stogiannidou, Leonidas Maroudas Exploring Otherness in Europe: The case of a multicultural, cross-functional EU-funded project group Abstract Despite the increased research on diversity, Europe is still described in essentialist, deterministic terms, such as East/West and South/North (e.g. Brodbeck et al., 2000). Such a dichotomy is grounded on the positivistic assumption that people belonging to the same socio-demographic group share the same identity. This assumption enhances the conceptualization of South/East and North/West as homogeneous, monolithic categories carrying an “essence”;; people in East/South Europe are seen as essentially different from people in West/North (Ahonen and Tienari, 2009). This positivistic conceptualization has been heavily criticized for neglecting that peoples’ identity has a dynamic and multifaceted nature (Litvin, 1997). This study attempts to address how the group members of a multicultural, EU-funded project group perceive the Other during their everyday working life. Data analysis shows the multiple ways in which people shape their sense of self and their working identity while responding to the discourse of national stereotypes. The study offers an empirical illustration of the multiple, intersectional facets that the Other can have, showing the dynamic, multiple, relational everyday construction and re-construction of workgroup differentiation.
Nadia De Gama, Steve McKenna How Do The Globally Mobile Elite In The UAE Experience Othering? Broadening Our Understanding Of ‘The Other’ Abstract The professional “non-Western” self-initiated expatriate (SIE) constitutes a somewhat contradictory, albeit interesting collective of the globally mobile elite. Within the context of neo-liberal global capitalism, we argue that the “non-Western” professional SIE can be conceived as globalizing professionals within the transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2001). Specifically, given their professional role as consultants in the accounting advisory industry, they serve as ‘functionaries’ of global capitalism (Savage & Williams, 2008). By anchoring this study within a postcolonial theoretical framework, this qualitative inquiry attempts to broaden our understanding of Otherness. Our study is centered on thirty “non-Western” accounting professional SIEs situated in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and attempts to examine how these individuals may experience both Othering and Otherness in relation to their working lives. Specifically, we ask, how do these individuals respond to ‘being’ the Other? What does it mean to experience Otherness in the context of being a “nonWestern” professional SIE in the UAE? Findings from our study suggest that the “non-Western” professional SIE may be both complicit and victim to the process of Othering. Moreover, participants express a sense of ambiguity and ambivalence from these
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experiences (Bhabha, 1994). The movement between ‘being’ subjected to and partaking in the process of Othering therefore suggests that the Other is not a static or a homogenous group. This idea is reinforced by Gramsci (1971) who, “never reduces subordination to a single relation but rather conceives subalternity as an intersectionality of the variations of race, class, gender, culture, religion, nationalism, and colonialism functioning within an ensemble of socio-political and economic relations” (cited in Green, 2011, p. 400). In this manner, we suggest that the construction of the Other is never static, but fluid, always changing based on contextual and relational influences.
Chris Russell Forgotten people of a fringe place: Unpaid guest workers in the Monks’ Republic of Mount Athos Abstract The circumstances of immigrant labourers in Greece are relatively well-known. Since the mid-1990s various studies have explored the identity of immigrants, the factors influencing their immigration, their expectations, their practices and their representation. What are less well known are the circumstances of an unusual, growing, group of migrant labourers: guest workers in the monastic republic of Mount Athos. They are migrant workers, although not, for the most part, immigrant workers: they have chosen to travel to this self-governing territory from ‘mainland’ Greece. They might not even be considered labourers, for their labour is informal, unpaid and invisible: strictly speaking they are, for the most part, overstaying guests of the Holy Mountain. This paper seeks to render visible the labours of such resident laymen and then explore the nature of such unpaid labour and its impact upon the labourers themselves and the monks of Mount Athos.
SESSION 4 Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm H6
Wendy Cukier, Suzanne Gagnon, Alison Pullen From the ‘pursuit of the other’ to a ‘politics of action for the other’: Problematizing methodology in diversity research Abstract This paper asks, what difference does diversity research in organizations make? Through a review of methodological contributions to diversity research, we suggest that methodologies often work against the changes we strive for. This paper starts our challenge of making a difference to theory and practice through placing diversity itself as a site of contestation. Drawing on the experiences of a large scale Canadian project and critical diversity writings, we suggest that even in critically informed writings, many methodologies become technologies that manage diversity, denying and violating difference, commodifying the other through discourses of sameness rather than enabling difference. We question the often taken for granted assumptions surrounding ‘the other’, and its appropriation through different methodologies, and problematize the relationships between the advancement of theory and the politics of action, researcher and researched, self and other, and categorisation and difference. In this way to we ask, what productive capabilities do our methodologies embody for researching diversity to effect social change and justice in theory and action?
Joanne Jones, Kelly Thomson, Steve McKenna Plus Ca Change…: Sense-making and patterns of mimicry and resistance in the transitions of migrant accounting professionals in Canada Abstract This study explores the process through which accounting professionals coming to Canada make sense of the paradox of the overt discourse of equality and diversity versus the demands for conformity in certification bodies and employers in the profession. Drawing on critical sense-making and post-colonial theory (HelmMills et al., 2010; Said, 1978), we examine the ways in which accounting professionals from a diverse array of backgrounds interpret and describe their experiences of transitioning into the profession in Canada. A significant body of literature has demonstrated that many professionals are unable to re-establish their careers in Canada, despite the widespread rhetoric of Canada as a multi-cultural country that embraces diversity (Aydemir & Skuterud, 2004; Albiom et al., 2005; Annisette and Trivedi, 2013). Canadian accounting professionals also discursively embrace diversity; however, a cursory review of the available data reveals a
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pattern of unequal access to the profession. The pattern of outcomes suggests a racialized colonial ordering in Canada that is consistent with outcomes found elsewhere in the world (Chua and Poullaos, 2002; Poullaos & Sian, 2010a; 2010b).
Deanna Kemp and John Owen Mining and community relations: On the edge of influence Abstract Characterising economies, societies and organisations as having a ‘core’ and a ‘periphery’ provides a useful conceptual lens for understanding power dynamics, marginalisation, and the nature and experience of ‘othering’. In this article, core-periphery thinking (CPT) is applied to community relations and development (CRD) work in the mining industry. The industry claims that CRD is ‘central’ to its success and forms part of ‘core business’. A core-periphery perspective challenges this claim by demonstrating the proximal, functional and structural characteristics of contemporary CRD practice. Evidence from the field suggests that CRD practice, and indeed its workers, are too often excluded or marginalised within the organisational domain while at the same time, expected to solve the problems that stem from decisions of the centre. Those few workers who are able to influence internally do so by navigating structural ambiguity, overcoming professional subordination and strategically mobilising available resources. The authors document current case examples of change and innovation, but argue that they merely represent ‘moments’ of resistance or ‘mimicry’ of the centre, rather than a sustained form of transformation towards social responsibility. The article also explores reciprocal forms of ‘othering’ by CRD workers to highlight the complex and often paradoxical nature of organisational and professional marginalisation and the problematics of inclusion.
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STREAM 4: BEYOND THE EITHER/OR OF SOCIAL VERSUS SUBJECTIVE CAUSALITY (IN CMS) Jean-Luc Moriceau (Institut Mines Telecom/TEM/Organization studies, FR) Hugo Letiche (University of Leicester, UK ) Arne DeBoever (CalArts, Valencia CA US )
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CAPITALISM AND THE CONCEPT OF SELF
Wednesday 10 July, 2 – 4pm G5
Hugo Letiche (University of Leicester, UK) Introduction Beyond the either/or of social versus subjective causality (in CMS) Abstract David Weir (University Campus Suffolk, UK) & Aylin Kunter (Middlesex University, UK) Extending the limits of neo-liberal capitalism Abstract Management practice in the international context faces challenges about legitimacy of values based on western liberal capitalist and private enterprise models, not least because of the evident failure of the finance-rooted capitalism of the post-Thatcher/Reagan consensus. The growth of 'green' and 'sustainable' versions of economic rationality has strengthened the interest in alternative ethical foundations for management (Bryson and Crosby 1992). The focus on Leadership and increasingly, servant leadership, has thrown up concerns and issues most recently displayed around the NHS in the UK have helped to understand why 'organisational cultures' are resulting in comprimised patient care. Cornerstones of 'modernism' like the rational actor model and the Weberian rational-legal-bureaucratic organisation framework, including 'contract' modes of economic attachment and 'professional' modes of qualification, recruitment and practice and the management practices based on a Cartesian paradigm of the logical priority of the cognitive dimension of 'humanness' are increasingly being questioned in favour of affective, symbolic and aesthetic modes of affiliation (Archer, 2010). Since Levinas’ (1961) assertion of the status of ethics as 'first philosophy', the ethical dimension has returned to mainstream philosophical discourse as well as to discussions of management practice. There has been as well as a revival of interest in 'Virtue Ethics', sparked in large measure by McIntyre (1997) and more recently in Corporate Governance. There has been over the last two decades increased interest among managers and organisational theorists in learning from other cultures (Weir, 2011) and in understanding their received wisdoms and also on spirituality and a revived acceptance of methodologies based on non-positivist ontologies, especially in visual and poetic technique. In this paper we do not engage with all these debates, but we propose to reconsider some alternative discourses associated with the ideas of 'friendship' and 'covenant' in place of the discourses based on 'contract' and 'rationality'. In particular we review the contribution of John MacMurray (1961) and the 'personalist' approach
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to work-based relationships, involving the notion of “persons in relation” and the centrality of bases for relationships of the 'covenantal' form as legitimate and appropriate bases for managerial control based on trust. We suggest that there is a dichotomous relationship between the two opposing concepts of rationality and contractual obligation, and friendship and covenant, as sources of 'meaning', and that the balance which has been as far as management theory is concerned, largely focussed on the rational actor model needs to move towards the poles of friendship and the affective bases of interpersonal relations. This requires some consideration of ontological issues and the nature of the entities that are the subjects of organisational analysis. We argue that legitimacy needs to be interpreted and constructed in relation to the 'whole person'. Meaning is a negotiated concept based on understanding and respect within the management structure, and a holistic process, consisting not only of language and written communication, but also of visual representation. In considering the visual, scientific approaches to research can be contrasted with more 'reflexive' approaches, the latter enabling a better understanding of management and culture (Pink, 2001). In discussing Wellbeing and meaning at work the literature speaks of a preoccupation with fitness, goodness, beauty, mental stability, health, happiness and hygiene in relation to the work place. The corporate aligned body is sometimes portrayed through organisational concepts as ‘well’ (Kaulingfrek and Bos, 2005). There are also however, traces in the literature of depictions of a body that is ‘unwell’, the former being made possible often by the absence of the latter, sick counterpart (Jack et al, 2005). We therefore argue that it is the embodied person that is the subject of organisational culture and change, and organisational legitimacy is a subject that is negotiated through this medium. The idea therefore of rationality and contractual legitimacy in management, can be seen to be problematic given this re-orientation to management and leadership. Our paper will also draw on the concept of Servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1970), in relation to the rational/neoliberal model, and it's focus on the individual as leader and change agent. A focus on the more collaborative approach to management and work will help to illustrate these ideas about Leadership and this paper will show that Leadership through friendship and respect, as opposed to a neo-liberal approach can help us to overcome some of the weaknesses of the Neo-Liberal model of political economy in relation to the self.
David Bubna-Litic (University of Technology, Sydney) The myth of the self in organisation theory Abstract This developmental paper is a theoretical exploration which examines a growing literature that sees Neo-liberal capitalism is founded on a false notion of the self (Loy, 1996 & 2003). Building upon recent research in cognitive science, this paper also draws upon a series of 34 in-depth interviews of advanced Buddhist practitioners about their experience of the sense of self. The research adds this lived experience to support the construction of an alternative holistic view which includes an embodied ontology (Varela, Thompson, & Roach, 1991) that contrasts with the assumptions of methodological individualism. The latter provides the basis for the focus on the self-conscious, neo-liberal economic individual, including the valorisation of its selfcentred tendencies which it claims the market can tame. The paper argues against methodogical individualism suggesting that we are dealing with a complex dynamic whole which may better be understood by alternatives to the method of decomposing the whole into atomistic, individualist elements. This view includes recognising that human consciousness cannot be partitioned into neat units, but rather can be better understood as a loosely patterned regularity which necessarily must occur within a particular context and history including non-social, biological dimensions. The paper begins with a deconstruction of the attempts in biological science at making a distinction between life and non-life, concluding that such a distinction is ultimately undecidable. Thus, the taken-for-granted distinction between life and non-life relies on non-scientific and socially constructed assumptions which fit within a Judeo-Christian world-view. The paper then sets out how, by not accepting an arbitrary distinction between the living and non-living, human and non-human, conscious and not conscious, it is possible to build an alternative holist view which can be useful alternative for organization studies. This view focusses on organising as part of a greater dynamic complexity and must necessarily include the embodied nature of consciousness of the individual in how we make sense of who we are in an organization. This neoliberal assumption of the economic individual is contrasted with the individual as an evolutionary cognitively-based differentiation which developed simply a survival mechanism developed prior to civilization, but remains open
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to reflexive transformation. In this, we are able to see through this cognitively constructed arbitrary distinction and see our self as simply a particular manifestations of the Universe – known in Buddhism and elsewhere as a peak experience. Thus, the economic individual is the reification of what Thomson ( 2007) suggests is a cognitive construction of a self. Moreover, Thomson suggests a further empathetic cognitive function by which we are able to mirror the affective states of others. In this way, our subjective phenomenon become continuous with other’s phenomenon within our field of experience, and our field of experience thus becomes both emotionally and cognitively linked to the network of all other fields of experience. This presents a different view of social order suggesting the inseparable nature of individual consciousness, and vice versa. This dynamic view thus sees organisations are far from being structures composed of identities, but as highly labile and intermeshed patterns of human experience which do not stop at the factory/office gate. The paper examines how capitalism takes advantage of our confused sense of self, linking objects of the market to narratives to provide a false sense of solidity. This view is a development of the work of Varela, Thompson and Rosch’s (1991) which, in turn, draws on of the work of Merleau-Ponty. The paper will add relevant recent contributions in this line of thinking, including as those of Metzinger (2003, 2009, 2011) and Thompson (2007) to set out an alternative, appreciative understanding of the relationship between political economy and the embodied mind, and will explore how this might be actualised using the notion of “sufficiency economy” (Mongsawad, 2009;; Princen, 2005). Loy, D. (2003). The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory Boston: Wisdom Publications. Loy, D. (1996). Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press. Metzinger, T. (2003). Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Metzinger, T. (2009).The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self, Basic Books, New York. Metzinger, T. (2011). The no-self alternative. In S. Gallagher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Self. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Pp 279-296. Mongsawad, P. (2009). Sufficiency Economy: A Contribution to Economic Development. International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2). Princen T. (2005). The Logic of Sufficiency MIT Press. Thompson, E. (2007) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Harvard University Press. Varela FJ, Thompson E, Roach E.(1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge.
COLLECTIVE INDIVIDUATION Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm G5
Isabela Paes (Luna Lunera & Institut Telecom/TEM Research/org. studies) & Jean-Luc Moriceau(Institut Telecom/TEM Research/org. studies) A theatre of re-individuation Abstract In his text, A theatre of individuation, B. Stiegler (2012) contends that Simondon ignored that alongside processes on individuation there are also processes of de-individuation. Deindividuation and desingularization occur with the de-possession of human know-how and work control to machines or with digital technologies that imposes calculation on everything that constitutes the movement of life. Deindividuation is a becoming neutral, sleepy and lazy, nearly a zombie, a They incapable of seeing the sensational in experiences. Deindividuation is a collective and psychic threat to our society: the catastrophe of the sensible. On the other end, the individuation of a I without a we leads to anxiety (Simondon), and loneliness (Stiegler, 2012). And still according to Stiegler, Simondon did not realize that the individuating I is a being-towards-death. What is more, to use Deleuze (1968)’s terms, is individuation the realization of a potential, or the actualization of a virtual, the latter involving a creation of something that was not comprised in the pre-individual? Thus individuation of human beings is a complex process that requires precise descriptions in specific settings to better understand its unfolding. Stiegler (2005) sees in theatre, as opposed to television, an example of an opening to the extraordinary that restores libidinal energy, drawing on desire and no more on impulses (pulsions), a rare line of flight out of the
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standardization and desingularization imposed by present capitalist economy. Simondon refers to a theatrical metaphor to refer to the becoming of the living (‘le vivant’): “The living is agent and theatre of individuation; its becoming is a permanent individuation or rather a series of individuation surges progressing from metastability to metastability” (1964, p.12, our translation). We will wonder what we can understand of individuation if we look at theatre as a knot of individuation processes. We will draw on the example of a theatre piece: The Chronic Life, created and interpreted by Odin Teatret. The piece itself does not mean to be a work of art, rather to generate aesthetic experiences in the sense of Simondon (“the real aesthetic impression cannot be subjugated to an object”, 1958, p. 194 – see Michaud, 2012). There is no obvious plot or drama, the spectator faces the fall of his/her usual understandings, and is invited to rethink his intimacy, his past or her fears and beliefs. But the piece itself results from a long process of individuation, starting from trial improvisations to the finished (but evolving?) piece, and actualizing again all the learning and inventions of a 40 year old troupe. We can also see the training of the actor as a long work of individuation, where actors are always invited to start new experiences and techniques, far from their comfort zone. So the performance is the singular convergence of several processes of individuation, merging with and disturbing each other. We will endeavor to document the various individuation processes in order to question, in this specific case and setting, how individuation happens, unfolds in the short and long period, as a transduction but also with echoes and specters of many realms and orders of magnitude. Deleuze Gilles (1968), Différence et répétition, Paris PUF; Difference and Repetition, Continuum, 2004. Michaud Yves (2012), “The Aesthetics of Simondon: Anticipation of the Contemporary Aesthetic Experience”, in De Boever, Murray, Roffe and Woodward, Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburg, pp.121-132. Simondon Gilbert (1958) Du Mode d’existence des objets techniques, Aubier Philosophie, Paris. Simondon Gilbert (1964), L’Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Stiegler Bernard, 2012, “The Theatre of Individuation”, in De Boever, Murray, Roffe and Woodward, Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburg, pp. 185-202.
Bogdan Dragos (Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, U. of London) Individuation and Invention: Simondon, Knight and Schumpeter Abstract This paper attempts to forge a connection between Simondon’s philosophy of individuation and economic theorists such as Frank Knight and Joseph Schumpeter. It will be shown how Simondon notion of invention can extend our understanding of both Knightian uncertainty and Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. For Simondon, the history of technical inventions is intimately related to an ontogenetic understanding of individuation and the pre-individual, that is to say, the process of becoming of any individual. Recurring themes in the relevant literature are examined, and are complemented by drawing from two recently published lectures, Invention dans les techniques and Imagination et Invention. It will be shown how the concept of invention has not been adequately addressed in most scholarly works on Simondon. For Simondon, technical invention has a very special historicity, which runs asymptotically with the evolution of human culture and society. His great merit is to have thought the process of invention without reducing it to a theory of the inventor or to a theory of the invented object. The reality of invention is a dynamic evolution that ‘moves’ forward through the resolution of problematic fields, being constantly exposed to radical uncertainty. Nonetheless, for him invention is still something linked to a certain ‘psychology’ or technical mentality, that is to say to the living capacity of anticipation, simulation (risk calculations). Invention is after all what men do, but do not control. Any so called ‘subject’ of invention has take into account the current scientific and technical knowledge, and at the same time be conditioned by a real problem, not an abstract contemplation. Secondly, invention is firmly a part of what Simondon calls the psychosocial individuation, which for Schumpeter relates to the fact that entrepreneurs always come in ‘’swarms’’. Thirdly, the process of invention does not operate ex nihilo, but as Simondon says, it works with elements that are already technical and then discovers an individual being that is capable of incorporating them. This is consistent with understandings of entrepreneurship as experimenting with different combination of what already is. The technical individual is central to Simondon, because it is the theatre of technical invention by excellence, the place where disparate technical elements come together and find their synergetic multi-functionality. Finally, it will be shown that it is crucial to position Simondon’s notion of technical invention at the centre of his work and also as a way of linking Frank Knight’s notions of risk and uncertainty with Schumpeterian theories of creative destruction and entrepreneurship.
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David Weir (University Campus, Suffolk, UK) John MacMurray and the philosophical basis of individualism in organization Abstract The call for papers for this track claims that “Neo-liberal capitalism creates self-centered, isolated, presentfocused, hyper-active individuals; who are narcissistic, and lacking in cultural or historical perspective. .... .” The Call develops this theme referring in the main to protagonists of European-based and phenomenological traditions of critique. We enquire what it means to be a “person”, using the approach of MacMurray in the “personalist” framework who developed a critical perspective within a largely Anglo-Saxon tradition, but far from the post-Wittgensteinian analytic mode. Personalism emerges from the phenomenological approach of Scheler (1958) in which “What all personalists would share in common is their belief that the human person should be the ontological and epistemological starting point of philosophical reflection. They are concerned to investigate the status and dignity of the human being as person. The dignity and value of the human person should provide the foundation for all subsequent philosophical analysis...Personalism focuses on the social character of human life. ..to be a person means we are in relation with one another: personal being is necessarily relational and understanding community as not an aggregate of individuals but a unity of persons.” (McCabe,2011,p 1). MacMurray’s term “persons in relation” goes beyond Cartesian dualism to understand minds and bodies in terms of agency because “the real world is the world defined by action, in action. Ideas are the eyes of action"... (MacMurray, 1961, p 152). It is in communal relations with others, firstly as children to parents, then increasingly as equals to one another, and finally for some in the opportunity to exercise command over others that the essential characteristics of human-ness are located. MacMurray declares “human experience is, in principle, shared experience: human life, even in its most individual elements, is a common life; and human behaviour carries always, in its inherent structure, a reference to the personal Other....The unit of the personal is not the “I”, but the “You and I”. (MacMurray, 1961, p61). MacMurray like Levinas privileges the ethical dimension as “first philosophy” but makes no assumption about the superiority of the moral claims of the other or that the "Other" is prior to the self. The Other for MacMurray is concretized in the light of actual lived experience, rather than being idealized as a general force. For MacMurray “the centre of reference for the agent, when he seeks to act rightly, is always the Personal Other. To act rightly is to act for the sake of the other and not of oneself” so “the moral rightness of an action has its ground in the relation of persons. The moral problematic of all action-the possibility that any action may be morally right or wrong-arises from the conflict of wills, and morality, in any mode, is the effort to resolve this conflict.” (MacMurray 1961 p116). Like Schutz he assumes that other people are as real as oneself and can generate ends of action that can be understood as ethical, conditioning the basis for one’s own actions (Schutz, 1967). MacMurray claims that “Reality in human life is action... The real world is the world defined by action, in action. "... (MacMurray, 1935, p. 151) and thus “the centre of reference for the agent, when he seeks to act rightly, is always the Personal Other...we need one another to be ourselves. This complete and unlimited dependence of each of us upon the others is the central and crucial fact of personal existence. Individual independence is an illusion;; and the independent individual, the isolated self is a nonentity….there are few things that I desire to do… which do not depend upon the active cooperation of others… I need you in order to be myself.” (MacMurray, 1961, p 211). Humans in society are rule-followers and rule-makers, not because they are constrained so to be but in the pursuit of the wider goal of “friendship”. Mutuality is the essential foundation of social life, and must be sustained by trust-based ethics and respect,, conditions best met where freedom and equality provide the master norms of social organisation (Fielding, 2006). MacMurray contradicts Sartre’s dictum “L’enfer, c’est les autres” and provides a sociologically-coherent base for organisation analysis, not infused with hegemonic baggage. His egalitarianism is the desirable end-state of human organisation and the interests of the community, achieved through working to agreement on principles of mutual tolerance and respect are the appropriate goals of organisation. There is much relevance in MacMurray’s framework for contemporary organisational concerns. Bibliography Cherbonnier, E. La B. (2000) MacMurray’s transformation of Ethics in: New Foundations For A Post Modern World: Essays on John Macmurray’s Revolution in Philosophy, ed. by Harry A. Carson. Conford, Philip. (ed.) ( 1997). (The Personal World: John Macmurray on Self and Society. Edinburgh, Floris
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Books, Costello, J. (2002) John MacMurray: an intellectual biography: Edinburgh: Floris Books Creamer, David G. (1996) Guides for the Journey. Lanham, MD., University Press of America, Etzioni, A. (1993) ) The Spirit of Community: rights, responsibilities, and the communitarian agenda: New York: Crown Publishers, Kirkpatrick, F.G. (2005) John Macmurray: community beyond political philosophy: Rowman & Littlefield, Levinas, E. (1961) Totality and Infinity: Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press McCabe, G. ( 2011 ) The Personalism of John MacMurray ch 2 in Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series II, Africa, volume 7: Protest and Engagement: Philosophy after Apartheid at an Historically Black South African University; South African Philosophical Studies, II, edited by Patrick Giddy, Chapter 2. Accessed on November 28, 2011 at http://www.crvp.org/book/Series02/II-7/chapter_ii.htm Macmurray, J. (1961) Persons in Relation; London: Faber & Faber, Macmurray, J. (1991) The Self as Agent; London: Faber & Faber, Scheler, M. ( 1958) Philosophical Perspectives. translated by Oscar Haac. Boston: Beacon Press Schutz, A. (1967) Collected Papers: 1, The Problem of Social Reality. Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff.
Joris Peignot (CERGAM, Institut de Management Public et de Gouvernance Territoriale,Aix-Marseille Université,) Organizing the Technological System: implications Jacques Ellul’s thought on organization for (critical) management studies Abstract We will explore in this paper some of the ideas developed by Jacques Ellul in his analyses of technology and the technological system, and the way management management at the same time “fits” into the technological system but also has a role in organizing it. We will begin by a presentation of some of the basic characteristics of technology, as defined by Ellul, and see how they apply to management. In order to enhance our understanding of management and its effects on society, we then propose to apply the frame of analysis developed by Jacques Ellul in The Technological System (1977) to what we call the “managerial sub-system”, a part of the technological system that anwsers, logically, to same characteristics. We conclude with reflections on the implications of these ideas for (critical) management studies.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TECHNOLOGY AND SIMONDON Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am G5
Darryn Mitussis (University of Nottingham) & Alex Reppel (Royal Holloway, University of London) The New Technologies of Social Mediation: Tools of Neo Capitalism’s Determination of our Commercial, Political and Social Identities Abstract In the pre-industrial world, geography, material circumstances, class and clan used to define the preindividualisation of the potential self. The inclusion of technology into the social story of the self served to highlight how tools both enabled the project of the self (by improving productivity to create surplus capital) but also placed new constraints by limiting or ordering our socioeconomic lives. Actor-network theory (Law and Hassard, 1999; Latour, 2005) and similar approaches were developed to reflect the quasi autonomous nature of a myriad of non-human actors (and, like material culture theory, able to theoretical incorporate more straightforward technology). Some of this new, quasi-autonomous technology facilitates while other technology (or the same at other times) might hinder relations between individuals and individuals and organisations. When we are conscious of the many interconnections in our lives and the fixed rules of the technological actors, obstructive actors (human or machine) can potentially be bypassed (e.g., as we force open the door of the driverless metro or have our complaint ‘escalated’ to a real manger with some autonomy). In each of the quasi-autonomous systems, a partial picture of ourselves is recorded in the memory of the machine (a data snapshot of our real selves) that enables us to pick up where we left off (the car seat
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remembers our preferred settings, the online shop remembers our postal address). Where technology enables (without incorporating purposeful filtering) our interaction with others, a digital self emerges as a sketchy electronic double of the individual represented in accordance to the rules inferred by each of us for an online social setting, conscious of the mechanics of the technology and working with the social rules of the setting. The key change perhaps was that a greater number of social settings were now available, the tyranny of distance disappearing, and the opportunity for exploration of the self expanding, along with it the chance that we might fumble in grasping the rules of each on the online social settings we entered. The bridging possibilities and the potential richness / multidimensionality of the set of almost seize-able opportunities might have multiplied, but little more (we can do business with more vendors, have discussions about more eclectic topics in different forums). However, information technology has developed. Computer systems are no longer just one of many actors that we interact with as a small subset of all actors in our direct contact and, when mediators of our interactions with others, constructed with simple, knowable, consistently applied constraints. A very small number of systems are now being positioned to mediate most of our interactions with other actors (human and non-human). These systems are responsible for the collation of the information produced by the “separate moments” of actors in the multiplicity of their selves (Simondon, 2009:221). The “lords of the cloud” (Lanier, 2011:54) have managed to accumulate massive amounts of detailed personal information about people without any form of democratic legitimisation. In the neo liberal / neo capitalist world, every tentative step in our emergent individuation is recorded, processed and exploited, not (just) by the state but by a small techno-capitalist elite. But this is not about the pathological effects of surveillance. In the story so far, the digital self is technologically co-determined and the individual in the ‘real’ world is mostly unaffected by these systems and processes. In the new technological, neo-capitalist landscape the collation of data goes beyond the totality of data snapshots to become a detailed, integrated model of our multiple selves. Rather than a series of unconnected snapshots, created by collecting data we knowingly provide, our digital self is now constructed with references to all of our activities, spanning all of our multiple online identities. Metaphorically speaking, the data shadow develops into our digital double, a data doppelgänger who partners with the online systems to largely determine our online experience. The systems that collect the data for the construction of our digital selves also largely determine what we see of those who share our online social spaces. This filtering of interactions render visible and relevant other actors of the mediating technology’s choosing, presenting lists of ‘champions’ as role models (“people you might like to follow”). The bridges to the pre-individual and the set of individuation opportunities is determined by the system based on an analysis of our behaviour to present the most commercially (and politically) useful ones foremost. Actors that (dis-)connect with other actors (referred to as “actant” in actor-network theory, see Latour, 2005:5455) are shaped through their associations with them, therefore maintaining a network that demands constant performance for it to be sustained. Moreover, our technical mindset and quantity fetishism temps us to overpopulate our social networks, and these mediating systems reward us for so doing, but thereby become essential to us coping with our unmanageably large sets of connections. In this world, the doppelgänger filters our connections’ activities ostensibly on our behalf, so much so that our understanding of the world, our bridges to the pre-individual, are determined by the systems that give life to our doppelgänger. What others see about us and what we see of them is, therefore, largely out of our control. We are stimulated by the information that system puts before us, and that material because salient, and the sheer volume of it pushes out other aspects of our life, while the pace make it hypnotic and addictive. The self becomes shallow (or less dimensional) as the digital doppelgänger emerges as multidimensional. This engineered serendipity facilitates a pervasive false-consciousness about the ‘liberating’ nature of online freedom—“oh wow, I found someone else who likes X” and buys stuff I might like to buy). Like Simondon (2009:22), we see that these systems do not reveal their true nature and, while they might have “functional antecedents”, their material and political interests are less clear than those of their (human) antecedents. In contrast to their functional antecedents, the rules of mediation are dynamic and unknowable trade secrets, constantly being refined and determined by the economic and political interests of the owners of the mediating technology, and in response to our evolution as consumers. The mediation means that the (always) partial representation of the self is a consumer friendly, capitalist reinforcing one. What constitutes normal and the boundaries of acceptable deviance (Foucault, 1967)—the core and periphery of the socially sustainable individuation project—are therefore determined for us, not by the dictates of liminal material existence or the tyranny of local elites but by the rules of the invisible bridge-makers. The representational choices of the mediating technologies inflict the symbolic or discursive violence (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990) of the neo-capitalist project to represent and reconstruct all identities as consumers. Bourdieu, Pierre and Jean Claude Passeron (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, translated by Richard Nice, Sage Publications: London, UK Foucault, Michel (1967) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Tavistock
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Publications: London, UK Lanier, Jaron (2011) You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, Vintage Books: New York, NY, ISBN:9780307389978 Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK Law, John and John Hassard (1999) Actor Network Theory and After, Blackwell: Oxford, UK Simondon, Gilbert (2009) “Technical Mentality,” Parrhesia, 7, 17-2
Rémi Jardat (ISTEC, France) Simondon’s genetic approach of objects and individuals as a lens for studying the managerial milieu Abstract Simondon studied the ontogenesis of technical objects [1958] before conducting a wider genetic study of every type of individual (Barthélémy, 2008), be it non - human, human or social. In the genesis of the technical object as well as in individuation processes, the milieu plays a major role, as a perpetual source or virtualities. In previous studies, we have proposed (Jardat, 2011) to consider the existence of a managerial medium, which can be as well considered as a specific reduced milieu, which consists in the highly structured and textured medium of representations that defines the essence of managerial phenomenon. As there is no management without some human and/or non-human collectivity, every managerial medium may be considered itself as a subset of other media like the social one. As such, studying the essence of management medium with a critical lens conducts us to meet the classical apories of the social like individual vs collective, subjective vs. social, for which sociologist like Boltanski (2009) and Latour (2006, 2012) proposed radically opposed solutions. Thus it is worthy to study in what measure Simondon’s approaches cast light on those aporetic choices. At the same time, being structured and textured by managerial techniques and instruments, managerial medium carries the tracks of technical ontogenesis that are characterized by synergies and concretizations. This is a second level of use of Simondon genetic approach, which reflects in a minor mode the first one, but also may open a way to grasp the essence of managerial phenomenon. Based on the confrontation of social and managerial theories with empirical results about the use, evolution and genesis of management models and representations, that work proposes only theoretical and speculative contributions. Akrich Madeleine, Callon Michel & Latour Bruno (2006), Sociologie de la traduction – Textes fondateurs, Presses de l’Ecole des Mines de Paris : Paris, France Barthélémy Jean-Hugues (2008), Simondon ou l’encyclopédisme génétique, Presses Universitaires de France Boltanski Luc (2009), De la critique – Précis de sociologie de l’émancipation, Gallimard Crozier Michel (1964), Le phénomène bureaucratique, Editions du Seuil Desmarais Camille (2001), Les lendemains qui mentent – peut-on civiliser le management ?, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, Paris : France Foucault Michel (1969), L’archéologie du savoir, Gallimard, Paris : English Transl. The archeology of knowledge, Routledge, London & New York Foucault Michel (1970), L’ordre du discours, Gallimard, Paris Foucault Michel (1975), Surveiller et Punir, Gallimard, Paris. Godelier Maurice (1984), L’idéel et le matériel – Pensées, économies, sociétés, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris Godelier Maurice (2007), Au fondement des sociétés humaines : ce que nous apprend l’anthropologie, Albin Michel, Paris : France Jardat Rémi (2011), “Comment étudier le matériau de gestion ? Propositions méthodologiques”, Management & Avenir n°43, pp. 67-102 Latour Bruno (2006), Changer la société – refaire de la sociologie, La découverte : Paris, France Latour Bruno (2012), Enquête sur les modes d’existence – Une anthropologie des modernes, Ed. La Découverte, paris. Simondon Gilbert [1958], Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Ed. Aubier, paris
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Amee KIM (School of Management, University of Leicester) "Dunking Apple in a Bowl of Water": Exporting cultural values through technology Abstract In the summer of 2012, in California, a major court case was held on the applicability and use of patents held by the competing smart phone manufacturers Samsung and Apple. Part of the trial rested on the concept of ‘prior art’ (Fried 2012). Apple accused Samsung of copying the design and impression of the iPhone; Samsung countered that its design decisions, such as the round corners or rectangular shape of its F700, had nothing to do with Apple’s design but instead rested on functionality (Ling 2012) and were informed by Eastern-oriented philosophy. The dispute between the two companies reflects, in part, origins in different cultural philosophy. In fact, Apple’s accusations of copy-cattery against Samsung, and the case more generally, highlight the ways in which South Korean design philosophy and symbolism differ from those of the Western world (Bowman 2012). Apple has revolutionised our conceptions – at least in the West – of what handheld computing devices should look like and how they should harmonise with an environment or ecosystem. In particular, its software emphasises functionality and simplicity. On the other hand, the Samsung phone design was, apparently, inspired by ‘a bowl of water’. And although the dynamic features were chosen because they served various functional purposes, the overall design was symbolic of “a rectangular housing structure with four evenlyrounded corners just as the traditional Korean house" (CNET TV 2012). The Samsung phone design refers to how technology could be embedded in the harmonious balance between human beings and nature, particularly using the duality of Yin-Yang. For example, the battery cover finish was said to have been inspired by the sunshine (e.g. ‘Yang’ in bright or light) reflected off the rocks (e.g. ‘Yin’ in dark or heavy) in a creek, the lock screen was made to feel as comfortable or pleasant as running hands through grass in a park, sounds would be reminiscent of rain drops. The philosophy of Samsung phone design refers to the harmonious relationship between human beings, natural, and technology, which Yin-Yang is not only originally a cosmic concept that is continuously cyclical and harmonising, but also oppositional and contradictory (i.e. natural vs. technology). In short, Samsung illustrates how Korean economic growth and globalisation brings with it, wrapped up in the technology advantages, traditional Korean values. This paper shows that the complementary dual force, YinYang, could be used to systematise and explain the overall dynamics of the economic development in Korea. Obviously, the contingent system of Yin-Yang could constantly balance endless changeable situations and environments, especially Korea’s financial crisis of 2007-8.
Robert van Boeschoten (UvH, Utrecht; HvA, Amsterdam) How to create your own individuation through mnemotechnologies Abstract In the film Next of Kin by Atom Agoyan a boy decides to change family. He chooses a different background and identity because he does not like his own family and what he has to consider as part of himself. This is related to the way Agoyan looks at his own background which indicated that he did want to be part of his actual background as immigrant back to Armenian roots. But you can choose to reverse this as well and see that the boy wants a shift from is actual background to one he chooses by himself. The memories of his youth are swapped for different stories based on what he hears on videotape from another family. He looks at himself as role play and makes the shift from role to real. Just like film is a reel you role off to get the whole story and identify with this story. He becomes the individual/person he wants to be. Individuation is the theme of becoming a person described by Simondon as the process connected to the way how we deal with technology. It is also a theme in Heideggers work when he frames becoming as part of the individuation. Time regulates this process. This goes for a person just as well. By relating over time to the circumstances one is given, one feeds back memories in present situations to create a continuous identity. Stiegler brings both processes together and finds that the form of retention that Husserl outlined in his work falls one short namely the memories based in and on media. Since we nowadays produce so many media that store memories we should consider this time the ‘mnemomedia’ age. I doesn’t look that this will soon change again, so it is relevant for us to see how these media affect the image we have of ourselves. Based on these images we can relate to others and the world in general. What we do is invent ourselves as individual. We state ourselves in time and matter, both being processed through media that signify our relation to the world. The problem related to this framing by Stiegler as well as Flusser is the impact these media have on our imagination. Are we controlled by these media (the psychopower
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of being good consumers; Stiegler) and do we become mere operators of these media (Flusser), or do these media offer us a chance to reinvent ourselves as individuals.? Stiegler offers us the possibility of exploring this last option by saying that we need time to research and acknowledge the way mnemotechnologies influence our relations to the world. This research seems to resemble what McLuhan undertook in his work Understanding Media where the effects of media were discussed in relation to how they create significance in our culture. The film as medium is interesting to focus on since it bridges the gap between the old storyline of written media and the new form of imagination by digital technologies. Muriel Combes, Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual, 2012 Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, part 1 and 3, 1998, 2001 Martin Heidegger, The question concerning technology,1954 Vilem Flusser, Writings, 2002 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964
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STREAM 5: GENDER, RACE AND RELIGION ACROSS CULTURES: DEVELOPING CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES Henriett Primecz, Loong Wong, Laurence Romani
STATUS AND OTHERNESS Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm G6
Primecz, Henriett, Loong Wong, Laurence Romani Opening remarks, starting the discussion Mariana Paludi, Albert J. Mills WebSite Story: homogeneity, globalization and otherness Abstract
“The idea of a “Latin” and “Anglo” America is, more often than not, an impediment to decolonial movements (…). “After America” is a process and a continental movement that is eroding the ethnic (Latin/Anglo) and geographic (North/South) frontiers” WALTER MIGNOLO, The Idea of Latin America
A Canadian feminist scholar reflecting on postcolonialism referred to Canada as an “invisible economy of the new colonial power” (Code, 2000). This claim emerges as a critique to the asymmetric relationship among feminist scholars in the United States and Canada, and reveals the colonial difference that since World War II made the United States become a new global power. The idea of Canada as a theoretical actor marginalized from the epistemic privilege of US allows me to go beyond the fixed categories of First/Third World, Develop/Under-develop or Anglo/Latin America, and be engaged in a conversation in which two geo-historical locations like Canada and Argentina represent alternatives to United States ethnocentrism. Little research has been done to explain the effects of postcolonialism in the field of management and organizational studies (Prasad, 2003). Among the exceptions (Cooke, 2003, 2004; Hartt, Mills, Helms Mills, & Durepos, 2011; Mills & Hatfield, 1999; Nkomo, 2011; Priyadharshini, 2003), most studies rely on Said’s work Orientalism (Said, 1978). Said, together with Spivak (1988) and Bhabha (1990), is a key scholar contributor to postcolonial literature. Nonetheless, in parallel, other groups of scholars such as Anzaldúa (2007), Mignolo (1993, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2010) and Mignolo and Tlostanova (2006) were writing about subaltern or border ways of thinking, aiming to overcome the colonial differences while committed to de-colonial projects. Additionally they discuss colonial differences from a Latin American perspective in contrast with the scholars before mentioned who addressed the colonization of India, North Africa and the Arab countries. I argue that the literature of border ways of thinking is needed in the field of critical management to expand the contributions already made by postcolonial scholars such as Said, and also to go beyond the postcolonial description and engage in projects of knowledge de-colonization (see as an example Wanderley & Faria, 2012). In this paper I pursued three cases studies of US multinationals from the perspectives of their branches located in Argentina and Canada. Through the analysis of their websites drawing on postcolonial, postmodern and feminist theories, I argue that beyond the difference among these two geo-historical locations, both provided us with examples of resistance to the universalizing force carried by headquarters. In the final section of this paper I discuss implications of conducting postcolonial studies in the field of critical management and further research to be conducted.
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References Anzaldúa, G. (2007). Borderlands/lafrontera: The new mestiza (third ed.). San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Bhabha, H. K. (1990). Nation and narration. London ; New York: Routledge. Code, L. (2000). How to think Globally: streaching the limits of imagination. In U. Narayan & S. Harding (Eds.), Decentering the center : philosophy for a multicultural, postcolonial, and feminist world. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Cooke, B. (2003). Managing Organizational Culture and Imperialism. In A. Prasad (Ed.), Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis : a critical engagement (pp. 75-94). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cooke, B. (2004). The Managing of the (Third) World. Organization, 11(5), 603-629. Hartt, C. M., Mills, A. J., Helms Mills, J., & Durepos, G. (2011). Markets, Organizations, Institutions and National Identity: Pan American Airways, Postcoloniality and Latin America. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 8(1), 14-36. Mignolo, W. D. (1993). Colonial and postcolonial discourse. Latin American Research Review, 28(3), 120. Mignolo, W. D. (2000). Local histories/global designs : coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W. D. (2002). The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference. South Atlantic Quarterly South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1), 57-96. Mignolo, W. D. (2005). The idea of Latin America. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Mignolo, W. D. (2010). Cosmopolitanism and the De-colonial Option. Stud Philos Educ Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29(2), 111-127. Mignolo, W. D., & Tlostanova, M. V. (2006). Theorizing from the Borders: Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2), 205-221. Mills, A. J., & Hatfield, J. (1999). From imperialism to globalization: Internationalization and the management text. In S. Clegg, E. Ibarra Colado & L. Bueno-Rodriques (Eds.), Global management : universal theories and local realities (pp. 37-67). London ; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Nkomo, S. M. (2011). A postcolonial and anti-colonial reading of 'African' leadership and management in Organization studies: tensions, contradictions and possibilities. Organization, 18(3), 365-386. Prasad, A. (2003). The Gaze of the Other: postcolonial theory and organizational analysis. In A. Prasad (Ed.), Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis : a critical engagement (pp. 3-43). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Priyadharshini, E. (2003). Reading the rhetoric of otherness in the discourse of business and economics: towards a postdisciplinary practice. In A. Prasad (Ed.), Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis : a critical engagement (pp. 171-192). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism (1st Vintage Books ed.). New York: Vintage Books. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? Basingstoke: Macmillan. Wanderley, S., & Faria, A. (2012). The Chandler-Furtado case: A de-colonial re-framing of a North/South (dis)encounter. Manage. Organ. Hist. Management and Organizational History, 7(3), 219-236.
Jeaney Yip, Susan Ainsworth Colour Sisterhood: the discursive construction of an Imagined Community in religious humanitarian practice Abstract She smiles at the future Lives life magnificently Executing justice on the earth And places value upon humanity In the current global context dominated by market-driven neoliberal ideology, many religious organisations have embraced business discourse and marketisation in the name of survival and progress. This embrace and focus on religious organisations however, has not attracted much meaningful exploration in management research (Tracey 2012). This study explores the discursive construction of the ‘Christian sisterhood’ in a flourishing Australian mega-church. A mega-church is a Protestant church with more than 25,000 attendees that is flourishing amidst decline in traditional churches in many developed societies such as Australia. The megachurch phenomenon itself is socio-culturally constructed and embraces discourses of ‘Americanness’ (Ahdar, 2006) with the ideologies of freedom and liberal individualistic notions of a person’s choice of faith. These are in fact by-products of neoliberalism which appear to have been exported to mega-churches globally. Hillsong Church is therefore studied not only to examine these neoliberal business-oriented transformations but as an insight to understand how gender and racial differences are constructed in a religious community that drives its
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humanitarian efforts. Drawing on feminist geography (McDowell 1993) and feminist critical discourse analysis (Lazar 2007; Walsh 2001) we examined how an imagined community (cf. Anderson 1983) was constructed in materials produced by Hillsong’s women’s ministry, the Colour Sisterhood. Through text and image-based discourse, the shared, aspirational gendered identity of the Colour Sisterhood has particular spatial associations, that is to say, it constructs a particular relationship between women and the ‘imagined world’ in its altruism practices. The construction is a positive one – women are invited to be part of a feminine community that is empowered, beautiful and can act to make a difference in the world at ‘such a time as this’. Importantly the scope of this difference is conceptualized in global, rather than local, terms. Our study shows the complex power dynamics that underpin such a construction that operate to reinforce, rather than challenge, dominant gender and racial relations as well as those between developed and underdeveloped regions. Unlike in some Christian denominations (Porter 2006), women occupy significant preaching and leadership roles in the ministry of mega-churches. One such church – Hillsong - is considered Australia’s largest that attracts 25,000+ attendees to its services across multiple time slots each weekend. It is also a global brand with a successful music label that is a market leader in the contemporary Christian worship genre. It has its own women’s ministry, Hillsong Women, which founded the Colour Sisterhood in 2001. The sisterhood meets regularly as part of the church’s women’s ministry, across all of Hillsong Church’s branches which include Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, London, Kiev, Paris, Moscow, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Cape Town, New York and Konstanz Germany. It also hosts the annual Colour Conference which started in 1997 in Sydney Australia and since 2006 has expanded internationally to London and Kiev for its European counterparts. The conference attracts over 15,000 delegates internationally and plays a major role in the teaching and dissemination of Christian women ministry materials across its network of churches. The imagined community’s (Anderson 1983) identity depends on the belief among the governed that their identity is firmly linked to the idea of the sisterhood, bolstered through a set of strategies of global affiliation including maps and languages of social justice. Its identity is articulated in the following way: “The Colour Sisterhood is a company of down to earth, everyday women who desire to make a difference and make the world a better place. It is a foundation seeking to place value upon humanity—a story of unity & alliance” (http://thecoloursisterhood.com/, accessed 13 January 2012). The sisterhood has initiated sixteen projects which range from human trafficking education and prevention, building homes in Africa, child sponsorships, to eye testing, facial construction surgeries and ‘be the change’ tea parties where women are encouraged to host a local tea gathering and ‘choose a sisterhood project’ to raise funds for . These projects are international in scope from Greece, London, Ukraine, Mumbai to Uganda. Notwithstanding the social endeavours of these projects, the sisterhood is an interesting construction that draws upon the language of emancipation, social justice and is a movement that perceives itself as making a difference to the world. By mobilizing the language of sisterhood, this discourse actually foregrounds the inherent inequality between ‘sisters’. The Colour sisterhood call for women to be empowered to make a difference as there are “orphans to rescue”, “sisters to come alongside with” and “nations to believe in” with a mandate that “places value upon humanity”. Western women from privileged classes position themselves as fully formed subjects against whom less privileged ‘other’ women are constructed as abject figures. The Western women contrasts herself to the ‘other’ women represented as ‘the less unfortunate other’ against which the Western woman consolidates herself. This ‘othering’ is marked racially (Burton 2009). Despite the Colour Sisterhood name, we only see a certain type of woman – white, attractive and affluent – while images of people from other ethnic groups appear as the targets of humanitarian efforts, in distant places, as ‘spectacles of suffering’ (Chouliaraki 2006). In its brochures, images of beautiful, smiling women, marriage and kissing appear alongside pictures of babies and ‘needy’ children in lesser developed countries. Analysis reveals however, that the spatial representations of these women and the third world children are in fact an assembly of pictures resembling a collage rather than pictures of actual events. Therefore, while the Christian woman is constructed in relation to an imagined community that has a global impact and reach she is not required to physically traverse these spaces or be present in the same place as the beneficiaries of her actions. She can stay ‘wherever she is’ and still be part of this imagined community. While she is constructed as an agent with the power to act upon the world, the place she inhabits is beautiful but limited, and the ways in which she might effect change left strategically ambiguous. References
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Ahdar, R. (2006). The idea of ‘religious markets’. International Journal of Law in Context, 2 (1), 49-65. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. New York: Verso. Burton, D. (2009). Non-white readings of whiteness. Consumption, Markets & Culture. 12(4), 349-372. Chouliaraki, L. (2006). The Spectatorship of Suffering. London: Sage. Lazar, M.M. (2007). Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Articulating a Feminist Discourse Praxis. Critical Discourse Studies, 4(2), 141 – 164. McDowell, L. (1993). Space, place and gender relations: part I. Feminist empiricism and the geography of social relations. Progress in Human Geography. 17:2, 157-179. Porter, M. (2005). The New Puritans: The Rise of Fundamentalism in the Anglican Church. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Tracey, P. (2012). Religion and Organization: A critical review of current trends and future directions. The Academy of Management Annals. 6:1, 87-134. Walsh, C. (2001). Gender and Discourse: Language and Power in Politics, the Church and Organisations. London: Pearson.
Golnaz Golnaraghi Hybrid Identities of Muslim Women in Canada Abstract Since 2007, a number of controversies about the niqab (a veil worn by some Muslim women that covers all of the face except for the eyes) have sparked much debate in the Canadian media (See Appendix 1 for a listing of the most notable controversies). Courts and lawmakers have addressed issues around wearing the niqab while testifying in court, taking the citizenship oath, seeking essential public services (proposed Bill 94 in Quebec), at polling stations, and in the classroom. These policy moves have serious implications, creating potentially new boundaries to Muslim women’s ability to participate in public and organizational life. For example, the proposed Bill 94 could potentially deprive affected Muslim women of their rights to seek essential public services (such as education, healthcare, child care, etc.) or employment within government agencies in Quebec. Muslim women face many significant barriers to labour market integration and discrimination due to the complexities presented by their gender, ethnicity, religion and immigration (Syed & Murray, 2009; Syed & Poi, 2010). Policy moves such as Bill 94, not only send a dangerous message to the private sector (Golnaraghi & Mills, 2011), but also serve to put Muslim women at risk of missing social and economic opportunities (Choudhury, 2012). Further, media discourses of Muslim women and these controversies spill over into workplace discourses, shaping immigrant identities, boundaries and rules of integration between the dominant and immigrant others (Prasad, 2012). The Muslim population in Canada represents approximately 2.6 percent of the total population according to the 2006 census and has been forecasted as the fastest growing immigrant group (Adams, 2007). Interestingly, only a small percentage of Muslim women in Canada don the niqab (Patriquin & Gillis, 2010). Yet this group continues to be targetted by policy makers and the media in a discourse of “hyperveiling” to exaggerate the significance of the veil and the Muslim woman (MacMaster & Lewis, 1998). The West’s fixation with the veil has a long and complicated history and continues to leave its imprint on contemporary discourses related to veiled Muslim women (Prasad, 2012). Central to this discourse is the equation of the niqab and veil with Muslim women’s oppression. In Canada, the most dominant discourses against the niqab, privilege to a large degree a Western feminist discourse of gender equality (Golnaraghi & Dye, 2011; Golnaraghi & Mills, 2010; Bullock, 2007). Within the newspaper articles, the West’s construction of the Muslim woman entail common themes that describe them as oppressed, backward, and to be pitied (Golnaraghi & Dye, 2011). As the Muslim community continues to grow in Canada, the Muslim woman is constructed as something that needs to be saved and contained and at the same time something that cannot be assimilated. This ambivalence is particularly problematic for Muslim women in Canada, who must live in a society that views the veil as violating Western values (Bullock, 2007). Mohanty (1998) questions the third-world (or Muslim woman in this case) as a homogeneous
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category arguing, against a singular assumption that all Western and non-Western women have identical interests. According to El Guindi (2003) this kind of Western feminism with a universalizing and homogenizing of interests, becomes “an alternative form of dominance that gives its men and women a sense of superiority” (p. 599). While feminist discourses define the niqab and veil as oppressive, others argue that the veil has become the embodiment of the Muslim woman’s agency and has created an empowering space that combines notions of identity and resistance (El Guindi, 2003). According to Bullock (2007), Muslim women are a heterogeneous group who experience the veil in different ways and for different reasons. Within extant literature, very little space has been provided to allow the voices of Muslim women to be heard (Alvi, Hoodfar and McDonough, 2003). In effect, little space has been provided for Muslim women to “construct, appropriate and re-make their own identities” (Primecz, Wong and Romani, 2012, para. 4). In this study, I am concerned with teasing out the voices of Muslim women, specifically those of secular, veil-wearing and niqab-wearing Muslim women. I will access print and digital media articles from January 2010 to January 2013 in Ontario newspapers. I have selected Ontario, because this province represents the largest settlement of Muslim immigrants in Canada. I will access newspapers in communities with notable Muslim populations. The communities of focus for this study include Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Windsor, and Kitchener/Waterloo. I will access local business or general interest newspapers in each of these communities that have a web presence (for access and analysis) and published daily. Using postcolonial theorizing from Said (1978), and Bhabha’s theorizing on hybridity (1994) as well as work by current postcolonial theorists (Prasad, 2012; Prasad, 2003, etc.), I am interested in exploring how Muslim women discursively construct their own identities in the West. This study will attempt to provide insights into the complex identities of Muslim women in Canada and their everyday negotiations. It is through understanding these new discourses on gender identities that we can attempt to destabilize the universal and homogeneous notion of gender and identity within a cross cultural or global context. Further, such new understandings will support the argument for government and organizational policies and initiatives needing to recognize the diversity in Muslim women’s backgrounds and the dangers of privileging mainstream women’s perspectives (Syed, 2007). References Adams M (2007) Muslims and Multiculturalism in Canada. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from Environics Institute: http://www.environicsinstitute.org/PDFMuslimsandMulticulturalisminCanadaLiftingtheVeil.pdf Alvi S, Hoodfar H and McDonough S (Eds.) 2003. The Muslim veil in North America: Issues and debates. Toronto: Women’s Press. Bhabha HK (1994) The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge Classics. Bullock, K. (2007). Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil. International Migration & Immigration . London, UK: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Choudhury, N. (2012). Niqab vs. Quebec: Negotiating Minority Rights within Quebec Identify, The University of Western Ontario Journal of Legal Studies. Retrieved September 28, 2012, from UWOJ Leg Studies Online: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/uwojls/vol1/iss1/2/. El Guindi, F. (2003) Veiling Resistance. In R. Lewis, and S. Mills (Eds.), Feminist Postcolonial Theory. New York: Routledge. Golnaraghi, G. & Dye, K. (2012). Discourses of contradiction: A postcolonial analysis of Muslim womenand the veil. Paper presented at the Academy of Management conference in Boston, MA, August, 2012 . Golnaraghi, G. & Mills, A.J. (2011) Unveiling Bill 94 and Implications for Muslim Women.Presented and published in the proceedings of the Critical Management Studies conference in Naples, Italy, July 2011. Mohanty, C. (1998). Under Wester Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discources. Feminist Review, 30, 65-88. MacMaster, N. & Lewis, T. (1998) Orientalism from unveiling to hyperveiling. Journal of European Studies, 28:1-2. Patriquin, M., & Gillis, C. (2010, April 12). About Face. MacLean's Magazine , p. 20. Prasad, A. (2003). The Gaze of the Other: Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis. In A. Prasad (Ed.), Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis (pp. 3-43). New York: Palgrave Macmillan/St Martin's Press. Prasad, P. (2012) Unveiling Europe’s Civilized Face: Gender Relations, New Immigrants and the Discourse of the Veil in the Scandinavian Workplace. In A. Prasad (Ed), Against the Grain:Advances in Postcolonial Organization Studies (pp. 54-72). Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Primecz, H., Wong, L. & Romani, L. (2012) Gender, race and religion across cultures:Developing Critical Management Studies, CMS8 Conference, Subtheme 6. Syed, J. (2007). ‘The other woman’ and the question of equal opportunity in Australian organizations. International Journal of Human Resource Management , 18 (11), 1954-1978.
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Syed, J. & Murray, P. (2009). Combating the English language deficit: the labour market experiences of migrant women in Australia. Human Resources Management Journal , 19 (4), 413-432. Syed, J., & Pio, E. (2010). Veiled Diversity? Workplace experiences of Muslim women in Australia. Asia Pacific Journal of Management , 27, 115-137.
MEANINGS OF ISLAM IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm G6
Topcu, Katalin Primecz, Henriett Experiences of Turkish immigrants in Budapest and in London: inclusion and exclusion Abstract Since Hungary became an EU member state in 2004, the number of immigrants has been constantly increasing in the country. Between 2001 and 2010 the number of foreigners had been doubled in Hungary, with a significant increase from year 2003 to 2004. The EU-membership of Hungary has not only changed the number but also the composition of immigrants in terms of country of origin, the purpose of stay, and the kind of experiences they have. Muslim immigrants in the EU represent a significant difference in respect of tradition and culture. Compared to Hungary, the UK has a longer and different history of interaction with Muslim immigrants. In the past, the British Empire ruled – among others – countries where majority of people was Muslim (e.g. Pakistan), while Hungary was occupied by a Muslim empire (Ottoman Empire) for long time. As a result, the nature of emotional involvement between Muslim immigrants and locals are of different nature in the two countries. In our paper, based on our interviews, which we made with Turkish immigrants in Budapest and in London, we explore the different patterns of inclusion and exclusion in their chosen country. Applied method of the paper is the qualitative analysis of narrative interviews. In the narrative interviews we focus on critical incidents occurred between Turkish immigrants and local people. The sample of the study includes first generation immigrants with at least two years of residence in the given countries. We strive for approaching middle- or upper-class interview candidates in order to bring the influence of culturally and historically rooted differences into the forefront instead of differences in social status between Turkish immigrants and locals. In our findings we could clearly identify cultural non-acceptance (expressed by dirtiness, lack of cleanness, smell etc.), while the process of inclusion and exclusion significantly differ. While in Hungary, Turkish immigrants immediately collided walls of closed society, they have to work hard on getting accepted by locals, institutions made their life more difficult, but after certain period of time, if they worked hard and did not escape, they could be get included. At the same time, Turkish immigrants in UK experienced relaxed and welcoming atmosphere by locals, but it seems that finally they could not develop strong connections with born British. In our paper we would like to find the explanation for these observed patters which was told by Turkish immigrants.
Dr. Khalid Arar, Dr. Tamar Shapira The Hijab and Management: Interplay between belief systems, management and gender among Arab Muslim women managers in Israel Abstract This presentation discusses part of a larger life-stories research studying Arab women managers in public organizations in Israel. This part relates to an aspect of the managers' lives seemingly unconnected to their role, yet permeated with meaning namely: Muslim women managers' transition to traditional dress including the Hijab. We traced the evolution of their new identity through three questions: (1) How did they arrive at the decision to wear traditional dress? (2) How did their domestic, organizational and Muslim community environments react to this decision? and (3) How did Jewish colleagues react to their altered appearance? Relying on prior research and theory we assumed that people from diverse ideological and ethnic backgrounds perceive and practice leadership differently (Klenke, 2011). We investigated how leadership is influenced by the context of a traditional Middle Eastern society, attempting to identify theoretical underpinnings of Muslim Arab women managers’ perceptions of traditional dress in Israel, highlighting the interplay between belief systems, their management and gender.
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In traditional society, religious institutions, the education system and even the family, control people’s behavior through collectivist moral-value dictates that stipulate correct behavior (Shah, 2010). Muslim Arab society is still largely a patriarchal society, in which gender regulation controls women’s role definition and determines the space within which women can function (Blackmore, 1999; Shah, 2010). Empowerment must be conceptualized differently for Middle Eastern women. In the ‘West’ 'empowerment' is mostly supported by government agencies, and associated with concepts such as 'autonomy', 'free choice' and 'self-realization', since individuation and independent personal development are considered normative, while in the Middle East empowerment is a private, even covert process (Popper-Givon & Al Krenawi, 2010). Yet, management theory remains predominantly ethnocentric, embedded in ‘Western’ philosophy and values (Dimmock, 2000; Shah, 2010). An essential characteristic of management is its visibility, while head-covering and gender segregation prevalent in Muslim society aim to create invisibility. The obvious tension between the two concepts challenges female managers in Muslim societies. Western societies often view head-coverings as a concrete symbol of ethnic and religious otherness. Yet few people attempt to understand what the Hijab symbolizes for those women who choose to wear it (Bhimji, 2009).Feminist literature relating to Middle Eastern society describes women’s attempts to cope with the modern world while continuing to respect their traditions (Sadeghi, 2008). This particular context has its own specific life-styles, family relations, perceptions of power and justice and career paths distinguishing it from Western society and necessitating appropriate coping strategies. We interviewed twelve Muslim women managers in education and welfare systems who had decided to wear traditional dress. In-depth interviews exposed a rich multi-dimensional world. Data-analysis followed the 'Listener's Guide' (Gilligan et al., 2004), re-reading interviews several times to hear the interviewees’ different voices, tracing their identity evolvement within the spheres of their families, schools and communities. The following data categories were identified: a. the women’s decision to alter their clothing;; b. reactions of their families and community pressure; c. reactions of the school and community; and d. reactions of Jewish colleagues. Each woman found a slightly different solution to religious precepts concerning appearance. Some began to wear traditional dress before their appointment to the post, some after their appointment. Despite different motives for their adoption of traditional dress, all the women believed this choice influenced their status in Arab-Muslim society. Muslim women who attain managerial positions, and conduct a professional career defy their close environment’s norms. Appearing in traditional dress softens society’s perception of them as norm-breakers, a symbolism appreciated within their communities. Traditional dress provides protection and a sense of affiliation, enabling them to enlist the support of their staff, community and families. Traditional dress is not merely an external symbol, but reflects inner concerns and acts as a facilitating feminist strategy enabling them to engender a quiet, gradual revolution through their pedagogic and social work. The women constitute positive models for imitation by young women in their communities and promote more egalitarian consideration of women and girls, since they enjoy broad consensus and admiration in the community. Two interviewees continued to wear secular dress and did not feel that they had to change their lifestyle, yet all the women thought this matter was significant. Within professional forums the women managers act in a multicultural Jewish-Arab sphere. Sensitive to reactions in their surroundings, each described how their dress was perceived in different public spheres. The research findings clarify the social and personal identity of Arab Muslim women leaders from a developing society, influenced by the adjacent ‘Western’ culture. It appears that Western management theory would benefit from consideration of additional cultural contexts. References Bhimji, F. (2009). Identities and agency in religious spheres: a study of British Muslim women's experience. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 16 (4), 365 – 380. Blackmore, G. (1999). Troubling women: Feminism, Leadership and educational change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Dimmock, C. (2000). Designing the learning-centered school: A cross-cultural perspective. London: Falmer Press. Gilligan, C. Spencer, R. Weinberg, M. K., & Bertsch, T. (2004). On the listening guide: A voice-centered relational method. In P. M. Camic, J.E. Rhodes & L. Yardley (Eds.). Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspective in methodology and design (pp. 157-171). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Klenke, K. (2011). Women in leadership: Context, dynamics and boundaries. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. 284 pp. Pessate-Schubert, A. (2005). Retelling her story: To be a female Bedouin teacher differently. Comparative Education, 41:3: 247-266.
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Popper-Givon, A., & Al Krenawi, A. (2010). "Perhaps it will be easier" Encounter between traditional Arab healers in Israel and their clients. In S.Abu-Rabia-Queder & R.Weiner-Levi (Eds.) Palestinian women in Israel: Identity, power relations and coping (pp. 49-80) Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute Sadeghi, S. (2008). Gender, culture and learning: Iranian immigrant women in Canadian Higher education. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 27 (2), 217-234. Shah, S.J. (2010). Re-thinking educational leadership: exploring the impact of cultural and belief system. Int. J. Leadership in Education, 13(1), 27-44.
Loong Wong Diversity, religion and Islam in the workplace Abstract The role of culture in management and international businesses has been seen to be an important aspect of the toolkit of good and successful managers. In the literature, there is a cognisance of the global mindset and the need to be able to manage across cultures. Within the ‘black box’ of culture however resides a multitude of factors – ideas, values, ethics amongst others – of which perhaps one of the most important organising discursive mechanism is religion. This, however, has received scant attention in the literature and conveniently neglects the growing significance of religious and demographic patterns in both the affluent ‘west’ and other countries. Once deemed religiously homogenous, the ‘west’ is now populated by significant populations who do not share the same faith and this is going to be a significant challenge in the future. In this paper, I seek to examine and investigate the idea of an Islamic work ethic and its impact on the nature and place of work. In particular, I seek to tease out some of the ‘management’ issues as they ‘collide’ with Islam. This is particularly important as today, Islam is one of the largest and fastest growing religion in the world and its impact on the workplace is considerable. At the same time, Muslims globally have to grasp with the patina and stigma of being different, alien and a threatening other, and which has rendered it more susceptible to discrimination since September 11. Whilst there are potentially areas of conflict and friction between Islam and contemporary management practices, it does not follow that they are inherently incompatible and that a more open and careful understanding of Islam in the workplace is necessary. In this paper, I will explore specific practices associated with Islam that can be a source of workplace conflict for managers and/or their employees, and I draw on discussions with managers and workers in Australia and Malaysia to open up this discursive space. I also seek to show that Islamic workers are not homogenous but differ in terms of their skills, place of origin and gender characteristics. Whilst the putative west speaks of a protestant work ethic, I argue there is within Islam, an internal Islamic unity and diversity and indeed, within Islam, one can find some elements of what can be construed n Islamic work ethic.
MERITOCRACY – DIVERSITY? Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am G6
Marcela Mandiola, Alejandro Varas, Nicolás Ríos, Pablo Salinas Dismantling diversity organizations: management v/s difference Abstract In 2012 a Chilean branch of an international corporation invited us to develop a training program on diversity for its employees. This program was part of an initiative started by the corporate international headquarters to develop and implement diversity training throughout its worldwide office locations. Within our context, such initiative should implied an unprecedent management diversity experience in Chile due to the neglection about this topics among our organizations endeavours. Moreover, at last minute the company changed its mind and cancelled the project. The explicit reasons were certain lack of funds, differently, for us were the complexities of that kind of managerial decisions what was put in place. Those complexities raised the questions that we are trying to address in the present work. This experience reveals several interesting questions about the installation of diversity in modern organizations Thus, this paper seeks to illuminate three key issues about that topic and its implications on the political subject of diversity. Our analysis begins with an exploratory study of the historical context of diversity concept, and how this construction affects the arenas in which diversity is presented. This stage is particularly informed by the
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approximations of diversity which conceive it as discoursive formations. Those approaches also allowed for the dismantling of the subject in the discussion of diversity, as well as the uses and meanings that diversity has come to assume (Jones, Pringle & Sheperd 200; Kelly & Dobbin, 1998; Thomas & Ely, 1996). The second step deals with the implications of diversity training as it is currently implemented in organizations. A wide array of diversity conceptualizations point to that the difference in the very notion of diversity is no more than variances and extensions of the liberal connotation of representation (Sabsay, 2011). These studies specifically suggest that this rhetoric of diversity can be used as a mechanism of social regulation and control. (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Even though, such uses of diversity could be seen as manifestations of corporate identities as political fictions in a global context (Benhabib, 2002). Thirdly, we are going to analyze the notion of diversity within organizational structures and how its hegemonic articulations shape itself as a managerial resource (Lorbiecki & Jack, 2000). Further, it allows us to examine socio political models of diversity and its exclusionary imaginaries, and the configuration of hegemonic notions of diversity within the context of organizations. Finally, this paper seeks to ask if the concept of diversity, within the study of organizations, actually has epistemic relevance. On the other hand, we are concerned with its theoretical implications for critical management studies, more specifically, for diversity management.
Nagy, Beáta.- Primecz, Henriett Hard Choices: Hungarian Female Managers Abroad Abstract Despite the forty years long socialist period of power in Central and Eastern Europe, which proclaimed the importance of gender equality, female and male careers have never been equal in Hungary. All Soviet bloc countries underwent a similar development after the Second World War. Researchers call it the state socialist women’s emancipation project (Fodor, 2004). By the end of the socialist period women gained a much better position both in the labour market and management than women living in West European countries (Fodor, 2004; Nagy, 2001). They were not badly underrepresented in managerial roles, however many people rejected the idea of socialism in general and women’s socialist emancipation in particular, and labelled it as the “unholy alliance”. (Gal and Kligman, 2000 give a detailed explanation for this phenomenon.) Compared to the socialist period no fundamental and positive changes occurred in the role of women in management in the years following the political changes in the early 1990s in Hungary, as women’s entry into managerial positions slowed down. Moreover, as we can see, there has been stagnation in women’s managerial participation, and a new, traditional gender order has become widespread in almost all post-socialist countries. The differences between average male and female positions can be explained by individual characteristics (type of education, career aspirations), organizational practices (policies and career ladder), and by the social expectations and norms. (Pongrácz, 2005) International careers (Adler-Gundersen, 2008, Dowling et al. 2008) are even more controversial, because they require relocation, and this way it has direct effect on the international manager’s family (either the manager is single, or move alone, or the family move with her without spouse/partner’s employment, or with employment or the family is a double career couple.) In our research we interviewed fourteen Hungarian female top managers, who spend (or spent) certain period in their carrier abroad. The interviewees were diverse in their age (between 29 and 60 years old), marital status and children (single, married, divorced with or without children), profession (HR manager, IT manager, logistic manager, supply chain manager, bank manager, CEO, economist, controlling manager, tax consultant), countries where they worked (Russia, Serbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, UK, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, Saud-Arabia, USA). The planned length of their stay was minimum one year, one part of the interviewees are still abroad and the others returned to Hungary. We examined what were their advantages and disadvantages, who and how supported them, what were the constraints and difficulties and how the female manager solved them. References: Adler, N. – Gundersen, A. (2008): International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, 5th ed., Thomson Higher Education, Mason Acker (1990): Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organization, Gender and Society, Vol. 2., No. 2 Dowling, Peter E. and Marion Festing and Allen Engle (2008), International Human Resource Management: Managing People in a Multinational Context, 5th edition, London: Thomson Learning. Fodor, Éva (2004), ‘The State Socialist Emancipation Project: Gender Inequality in Workplace Authority in Hungary and Austria’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29 (3), 783-813. Gal, Susan and Kligman, Gail (2000), The Politics of Gender after Socialism, Princeton: Princeton University
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Press. Nagy, Beáta (2005), ‘Gendered Management in Hungary – Perceptions and Explanations’, Women in Management Review, 20 (5), 345-360. Nagy, Beáta (2013), ‘Gender on corporate boards and in top management in Hungary’, paper prepared for and presented at the European Parliament 20 March 2013. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201303/20130315ATT63299/20130315ATT63299EN. pdf p. 39-52. Pongrácz T. (2005): Nemi szerepek társadalmi megítélése, in: Nagy I. – Pográcz, T. Tóth I. Gy. (szerk.): Szerepváltozások: Jelentés a nők és férfiak helyzetéről, TÁRKI, ICsSzEM, pp. 73-86, Budapest Tong, R. (1994): Feminist Thoughts. A Comprehensive Introduction, Rutledge, London
Emília Fernandes, Teresa Mora “Elas por Elas”: Body, Power and Women-Others in the Work Identity of Portuguese Businesswomen Abstract This paper aims to critically reflect on the contradictory and symbolic movements to construct the figure of female body as a place of resistance or accommodation to the masculine organizational rationality, and as a place of conflict and solidarity between different professional women. For that purpose, it explores the discourses produced in focus groups that have been conducted with Portuguese businesswomen from Northern Portugal. By means of this methodology, the participants were invited to speak about their daily life organizational experiences with their female workers. Based on the conversation analysis of the interactions produced among the businesswomen, we try to identify the discursive movements they use to circumscribe the corporeal experience of themselves in relation to the perceived experience of the other women. Additionally, we analyze how these interactions were perceived as affected by the differential power organizational (dis)locations which allow the businesswomen to signify and constrain the organizational subjectivities of the other female professionals. We believe that this assists in understanding how the meanings of the body emerging from these discursive movements are affected by the need of the businesswomen to negotiate through conflicting discursive and symbolic and gender locations – the ‘woman/feminine’ gender and the ‘masculine’ entrepreneurship (Bruni et al., 2004). This paradox can give rise to a complex process of (dis)location through which these women constitute the female body as differently gendered: a body in which gender is made invisible and silenced to be adapted to the organizational times and rules; a body in which gender is made visible and loud, disturbing and defying the organizational times and rules. Through this process of gendered bodily contradiction, female participants perform a process of discursive metamorphosis of their own bodies that plays between the negative and private significations associated with the female body – pregnancy, sexuality, inability of (self)control – and the significations of a public and masculine ideal body – competence, self-control, de-sexuality and infertility. This paper then attempts to reflect about these different and gendered symbolic movements that those businesswomen take into account to survive as proper and legitimate subjects in the geography of entrepreneurial and organizational contexts, and consider how, in order to do that, they actively participate in the allegiance or emancipation of their own bodies and those of other female workers in workplaces where the female body is still signified as disturbing and not proper. In other words, through a reflection centered in the construction of the female body, we aim to identify different and contradictory ways of how businesswomen constitute their relation of power and authority with their female workers, as well as to understand how their entrepreneur identities can be simultaneously accomplice and subversive in relation to the dynamics of reproduction of the female subordination in organizational contexts. Ultimately, we hope to contribute to launch suspicion and destabilize the naturalized conventions of the duality of gender and the polarities dominatordominated and subject-other, thus contributing to rethinking the gender discrimination polices in the work contexts. References Bruni, A., Gherardi, S., & Poggio, B. 2004. Doing gender, doing entrepeneurship: an ethnographic account of intertwined practices. Gender, work and organization, 11(4). Gherardi, S. 1995. Gender, Simbolism and organizational culture. London: Sage.
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Dunavölgyi Mária Approaches to the understanding of women and leadership within the framework of neo liberal capitalism in a critical manner Abstract Some of the core concepts and main drivers of neoliberal capitalism are competition, profit-orientation and shareholders’ values. These drivers should force companies to operate in an efficient manner. ‘Efficient manner’ may be translated in different ways depending on the paradigms applied. For the sake of analysis, we may accept the abstract axiom of rationality and say that competing companies have to maximize the use of their resource pool potential in order to achieve the ‘efficient manner’ (Walras, Jevons, Menger). However, we may opt for taking into account the bounded rationality theory (Simon, 1957) and conclude that companies are pushed to use their human resource pool in a way to achieve their aspired level of profit. Do they really manage? We do not know for sure. One of the most shocking research findings is that the proportion of women within top managers has been very low (Powell, 1999), (Aice H. Eagly - Linda L. Carli, 2007), (Women matter, 2012). We claim that the analysis of such input-side analysis has relevance in itself ((Matts Alvesson & Yvonne Due Billing, 1997) page 171). Behavioural economics (Cyert, March, 1963), decision theory (Mintzberg, 1976 JulyAugust) (Kahneman, 1979) and management science (Kotter, 2001), (Goleman, 1995) provide plenty of reasons why gender diversity is more efficient than unanimity in top management teams. On the output-side, we can see that companies’ performance, in general, varies across countries and over time. Performance of listed companies, however, can be compared consistently and transparently. Research studies were conducted on the performance of listed companies with different gender composition in the top management that showed added value provided by mixed-gender teams (Nancy M. Carter, 2011 March), (McKinsey, 2011). Therefore we may include a meritocratic approach in our study (Matts Alvesson & Yvonne Due Billing, 1997) (page 171.) as well. In my discussion of the low rate of women in top management, I rely on several assumptions (Primecz), (Powell, 1999) including some provoking ones as well: 1. Women may not be able to cover top positions due to a. lack of talent – EQs and IQs are similar, school results are better for women (research materials are being reviewed) b. lack of competencies – lot of similarities, however, there may be differences as well due to: i. lack of opportunities (Nancy M. Carter, 2011 March) ii. vertical segregation (Nagy, A társadalmi nem szerepe a vezetésben Magyarországon, 2007) (B. Nagy (2007). Gender Diversity in the Corporate Management in Hungary. In B. Nagy, Organization, management and Gender (p. 115). Aula, Budapest) iii. networking and mentoring may be different iv. lack of ambition – due to tradition, socialization, family responsibilities 2. Some women have both the sufficient talent and competencies but are not chosen due to a. the insufficient filtering system (Aice H. Eagly - Linda L. Carli, 2007) – to be studied by qualitative research b. non-transparent additional requirements (Aice H. Eagly - Linda L. Carli, 2007), (Nagy, 2001) – to be studied by qualitative research While the research to be presented at the conference covers both options 1 and 2, it puts more focus on issues presented under 2., reporting about the findings of a qualitative research. As for the research paradigm, Thomas Kuhn’s definition (Kuhn, 1962) is applied, which considers paradigm as a set of underlying assumptions and intellectual structure, upon which research and development in a field of inquiry is based. The paradigm applied is derived from the Burrel-Morgan matrix (Burrell, 1979), which covers the following four main approaches: functionalist, interpretative, radical humanist and radical structuralist paradigms. At the current phase of analysis the interpretative paradigm is applied. The goal is to discover the way how ‘women in top management’ related issues and thoughts are constituted by the actions of relevant actors. Following the methods recommended by Kvale (Kvale, 1996) and Denzin-Lincoln (Lincoln, 2005) qualitative research based on interviews has been conducted interviewing male top managers. So far nine interviews have been conducted and twenty more are planned. The interviewed persons were asked, among others, about their attitudes towards women in their family and in their office. Their memories have been elicited from their young age about strong women playing a leader role. Other topics covered included leadership, manager selection methods, ideas and experience. A paper summarizing the research results is planned to be presented at the conference.
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References: Aice H. Eagly - Linda L. Carli. (2007. September). Women and the Labyrith of Leadership. Harvard Business Review , 63-71. Burrell, G. &. (1979). Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis. Heinemann , 1-37. Cyert, March. (1963). Beharioral Theory of the Firm. Oxford: Blackwell. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books. Kahneman, D. a. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica , 263-291. Kotter, J. P. (2001). What Leaders Really Do . Harvard Business Review . Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kvale, S. (1996). InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research . Sage. Lincoln, N. K. (2005). The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (third edition). Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: SAGE. Matts Alvesson & Yvonne Due Billing. (1997). Understanding Gender and Organization. SAGE. Mintzberg. (1976 July-August). Planning on the Left Side and Managing on the Right. Harvard Business Review , 49-58. Nagy, B. (2007). A társadalmi nem szerepe a vezetésben Magyarországon. In B. Nagy, Szervezet, menedzsment és nemek (old.: 115). Budapest: Aula Kiadó. (B. Nagy (2007). Gender Diversity in the Corporate Management in Hungary. In B. Nagy, Organization, management and Gender (p. 115). Aula, Budapest) Nagy, B. (2001). Női menedzserek. Budapest: Aula. (B. Nagy (2001) Female managers. Aula, Budapest) Nagy, Beáta and Primecz, Henriett (2010), ‘Nők és férfiak a szervezetben. Kísérlet a mítoszok eloszlatására’, [Women and Men in Organization. An Attempt to Resolve the Myths] Vezetéstudomány, 61 (1) 2-17. Nancy M. Carter, P. H. (2011 March). The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards (2004–2008). Catalyst. Powell, G. N. (1999). Reflections on the glass Ceiling: Recent Trends and Future Prospects. In G. N. Powell, Handbook of Gender and Work (pp. 325-345). Sage. Simon, H. (1957). 'A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice' ( Models of Man, Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting. kötet). New York: Wiley. Women at the Top of Corporations: Making it happen. (dátum nélk.). Women Matter . (2012). Women matter . McKinsey.
TIME TO CHANGE Friday 12th July, 1.30 – 3.30pm G6
Ginger Grant, Golnaz Golnaraghi Deconstructing Cinderella and Shahrazad: Mythology through a Feminist Phronetic Lens Abstract The function of a story (myth) is the art of using words to produce pictures in the minds of the listeners. Those pictures combine with the situation at hand to create a powerful lasting message capable of producing change. Although players and circumstances vary with time and place, there remains something unalterable and true at the core of myths. Myths are not just told; they are felt, they resonate throughout the body as well as the mind. Throughout the ages, the power of story has nourished the human soul (Grant, 2005). We believe that a conscious use of mythology as a pathway to the imagination is a powerful key to the challenge of gender identity and relations in the workplace. Working from a mythic stance allows for emotional engagement and begins the revitalization of gender relations within organizational life. It is common for stories to change as they move from place to place and transmitted from generation to generation, altered to fit local social and psychological needs (Yolen, 1982). Cinderella and Shahrazad (Arabic spelling) are two such popular stories that have endured for thousands of years, both having gone through change and re-crafted by different writers with different worldviews than the earlier tellers of each tale. The mass-market American version of Cinderella tells the story of a helpless, nice girl who waits patiently to be rescued by her prince. The Orientalist versions of Shahrazad tell the story of an oppressed and sexually exotic character, imprisoned and at the mercy of her master (Gauch, 2007). How the protagonists are portrayed in these myths is reflected in contemporary gender inequalities and gender relations in organizations. What stereotypes do these interpretations of each myth perpetuate about women within our increasingly diverse organizations? What are these interpretations saying? What are they not saying? And most importantly, what should they say? Our intent is to deconstruct each myth for the underlying message being delivered to women initially in their homes and then the workplace. The
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original intent of each myth has been distorted serving to disenfranchise and disempower women. We seek to challenge the dominant stereotypes that these stories perpetuate. A return to the original intent is required to reclaim, resurrect and restore women’s voices and their role in organizations. Within the next five years, Canadian organizations will face a talent shortage as senior executives prepare for retirement (Silliker, 2012). According to a survey conducted by Odgers Berndtson, “nearly one-half (44 percent) of employers anticipate losing 20 percent or more of their executive staff by 2017” (Silliker, 2012, para. 2). The same study reports that 90 percent of respondents “believe the next generation of managers is not ready to take over at the executive level” (Silliker, 2012, para. 5). According to the Benchmarking Study of Women Leadership in Canada, in 2011, women held 29% of senior management positions, while constituted 47% of labour force (Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership, 2012). The same study reports that women experience underrepresentation even in sectors where they hold a significant percentage of middle manager positions and dominate in terms of educational credentials. The Corporate Gender Gap Report 2010 by The World Economic Forum indicates that the barriers to women in senior management have nothing to do with supply of women (Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership, 2012). In fact, two main barriers include the country’s norms and cultural practices as well as masculine and patriarchal corporate cultures (Centre for Women expectations of senior leaders as male and stereotypes about women’s roles. We will deconstruct and reconstruct (Martin, 1990) the stories using a feminist phronetic perspective (Flyvbjerg et al, 2012). “Deconstruction is able to reveal ideological assumptions in a way that is particularly sensitive to the suppressed interests of members of disempowered, marginalized groups” making visible the devalued “other” (Martin, 1990, p. 340). The stories we seek to deconstruct have been translated and interpreted by men, as is the case with most organizations which are lead and controlled predominantly by men. Women’s interests and voices are thus often suppressed and silenced (Martin, 1990). As such, we are interested in deconstructing the texts using feminist phronetics, which considers contextuality and placing power at the center of analysis. Contextuality is of importance as we deconstruct Shahrazad from her context and American Cinderella from hers. Martin (1990) defines deconstruction as “an analytic strategy that exposes multiple ways a text can be interpreted” (p. 340). Such multiplicity engages a deeper understanding of both theory and praxis – what Aristotle terms phronesis, generally interpreted as “reason capable of action” or “practical wisdom” (Flyvbjerg et al, 2012). Aristotle (1932) believed that phronesis was “concerned with acts that are just and admirable and good for man” (p. 162). Flyvbjerg expands that definition and posits the principle objective for social research with a phronetic approach is to perform analysis and interpretation of values and interests aimed at social change. By surfacing these hidden values, beliefs and interests in our deconstruction we seek to challenge the prevailing issues of power, gender inequality and the absence of women in the executive suite within organizations. Deconstructing the stories using a feminist phronetic lens has much to offer and to our knowledge the two have not previously been combined. References Aristotle & Rackham, H. (1934). The Nicomachean ethics. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Brennae, M. (2008, Jan 23). Glass ceiling becoming slightly thicker in Canada; survey finds fewer female CEOs. only 31 women were in leadership roles in 100 top companies in 2007, down from '06. The Gazette. Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership (2012). Progress in Inches: Miles to Go. A Benchmark Study of Women’s Leadership in Canada. Joint Publication Carleton University and Deloitte Canada. Eliade, M. (1963). Myth and Reality. New York: Harper & Row Publishers. Flyvbjerg, B. (2011). Making Social Science Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flyvbjerg, B, Landman, T. and Schram, S. (Editors) (2012). Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gauch, S. (2007). Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Islam. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. Grant, G. (2005). ReVisioning the Way We Work. Bloomington: Trafford Publishing. Martin, J. 1990. Deconstructing Organizational Taboos: The Suppression of Gender Conflict in Organizations. Organizational Science. 1(4), p. 339-359. Silliker, A. (2012, Dec 17). One-half of firms to lose at least one-fifth of executives by 2017. Canadian HR Reporter. Yolen, J. (1982) America’s Cinderella cited in Dundes, A. (Ed.). Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
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Shubhda Arora & Mrinmoy Majumder Labour Pain and Childbirth: The invisibilized labour and toiling bodies Abstract
Childbirth, a woman’s prerogative, is not without extreme pain and labour. While the ‘body’ is central and inseparable from the reality constructed around labour discourse, swollen pregnant bodies have never been considered as ‘labour’. The body is operated by the state based on social, political and economic rationality and becomes an exclusive construct of prewritten norms and duties. ‘Labour’ is understood within the disjuncture of the body and is institutionalized by the state which determines and sanctions the characteristics of the so called ‘perfect’ labour. The state’s idea of a ‘perfect labour’ does not include a pregnant body and therefore there is callousness towards and non-recognition of the ‘labouring stage of pregnancy’. The ‘performitive’ lens and the Marxian ‘productivist’ theorizing are believed to have ignored the ‘symbolic’ and ‘affective’ aspects of labour (Hardt and Negri, 2005). Therefore, the traditional labour discourse terms ‘motherhood’ and the toiling labouring body as non-economic. The present neo-liberal society gives economic overtones to pregnancy with the concept of ‘renting a womb’. A discussion on women, childbirth and labour cannot be complete without understanding the role of technology and the new discourses which have emerged with the introduction and acceptance of caesarean deliveries, surrogacy and test-tube babies. These technological interventions have in many ways altered or transferred the physical pain and labour. This interface of technology and body creates an interstitial space for a new narrative of ‘labour’ to emerge and initiates a critical feminist dialogue.
Nagy,Beáta Natural segregation? Professors’ opinions on the issue of women and engineering/IT Abstract At European level we can witness a considerable interest toward the issue, how to encourage women’s entry into professions traditionally dominated by men. In this paper we try to explore, whether we can find a similar tendency in Hungary through the example of engineers and IT-specialists. The last 15 years there has been a considerable structural change and expansion in the Hungarian higher education. Although it has contributed to the increased enrolment rate of young population, particularly women’s participation, it has not changed the gendered status quo, i.e. women and men choose jobs traditionally held ‘suitable’ for them. This year, however a sudden step was taken in the higher education enrolment policy, which might change girls’ opportunity and situation. The step was driven by financial reasons. As of September 2012 the state support was considerable cut for disciplines, which have been particularly attractive for women. The financial cut was the highest in humanities, social sciences, business administration, law, whereas the state support was decided to be considerably increased for technical and natural sciences. In the short run we can expect the disadvantage of women, and their exclusion from universities in the next academic year. In the long run we might expect women to rearrange, change their priorities, and move towards technical and natural sciences. In this paper we want to focus on professors’ attitudes regarding the issue of women and technology. In January 2012 a qualitative investigation was carried out in the technical and IT faculties of the second largest Hungarian technical university (Óbudai Egyetem), and 15 professors were interviewed on the causes of gender segregation, women’s technical abilities and academic performance. The paper will analyse the characteristics of this corporate gender culture, the signs of female isolation, and the opinions on the token position of women at technical universities. We can explore both the traditional gender order, and the signs of stereotypical thinking.
Laurence Romani, Henriett Primecz, Loong Wong Closing remarks and discussion
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STREAM 6: RESISTING THE MARKET PLACE: BRANDED COMMUNITIES IN TIMES OF UNREST Mihaela Kelemen (
[email protected]) , Elizabeth Parsons and Christina Goulding, Keele Management School, Keele University and Harris Beider, Coventry University
RESISTING THE MARKET PLACE: BRANDED COMMUNITIES IN TIMES OF UNREST Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm D2
Teresa Oultram and Mihaela Kelemen (Keele University) The apprenticeship brand: the production and consumption of the ideal apprentice Abstract The British Government is increasingly committing support and funding to apprenticeships in England, making the scheme central to its post-16 education and training policies. In 2009, a new government body, the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) was established to provide ‘end to end responsibility for Apprenticeships’ (NAS, 2009: p6). A core feature of the NAS’s remit is to raise awareness of apprenticeships and to develop the apprenticeship brand. The Government, through the NAS and political rhetoric, tries to send a coherent powerful message to their external audience portraying a consistent image of the apprenticeship brand. ‘Quality’ is placed as the overarching principle of this apprenticeship brand as articulated by Baroness Wall (2010) ‘Maintaining the apprenticeship brand by ensuring the quality is the single most important thing we can do to safeguard the programme for the future. Doing so will ensure that we can get the right people on to an increasing number of these schemes. Only then can we be confident that great apprentices will continue to contribute to the wealth of the country, that companies will have the right people to grow their business in the future and that young people and older people will be able to contribute to the community and to the businesses that they work with.’ Inherent within this ‘quality’ discourse is an idealised picture of apprentices as young enterprising workers who are ambitious and ‘aspire to get ahead in life’ (Cameron 2013). They are ‘eager, motivated, flexible’ employees, who deliver ‘increased productivity’ and new ideas to the organisation, filling current and future skills gaps (NAS website 2013). The new mantra within NAS branding is ‘the sky’s the limit’ (NAS merchandise 2013) which for David Cameron symbolises the apprenticeship as a vehicle for prosperity, offering the apprentice the potential of moving from trainee right through an organisation ‘to the boardrooms of the finest and most respected companies in the land’ (Cameron 2012). In this paper we argue that, whilst the NAS tries to portray a coherent overarching message regarding apprenticeships, the actual experience of being an apprentice, training an apprentice or employing one is more multi-faceted and at times fraught with contradictions. We will focus on training providers as they are crucial for the transmission of the brand as they act as intermediaries to the other stakeholders. Training providers are
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training companies who co-ordinate apprenticeships on behalf of employers and provide off-the-job training for the apprentices. Typically their fees are paid for by Government funding. Thus the consumers’ (employer and apprentice) experience of the brand is ultimately tied up with the experience they receive from these training providers (LSC 2005). This study takes a qualitative approach comprising of interviews and observations at 4 training provider/further education colleges. References Baroness Wall of New Barnet (2010) Apprenticeship debate House of Lords, 14th October 2010 Cameron, D. 2013, 11/03/13-last update, Prime Minister: Apprenticeships are central to rebuilding the economy [Homepage of Number 10], [Online]. Available: http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/davidcameron-apprenticeships-central-to-rebuilding-the-economy/ [2013, . Cameron, D. 2012, Friday, April 20 2012-last update, The Conservative Party | News | Speeches | David Cameron: Apprenticeships speech . Available: http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2012/04/David_Cameron_Apprenticeships.aspx [2013, 2/27/2013]. LSC 2005, “Brand aid – the importance of consistent branding”, Apprentice Magazine Issue 11, London: LSC NAS 2009, National Apprenticeship Service Prospectus, Parliament publications: National Apprenticeship Service. NAS
2013, National Apprenticeship Apprenticeship-Service.aspx
Website,
http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk/About-Us/National-
Adam Arvidsson and Stefania Barina (University of Milano) The Myth of CSR 2.0 A Big data Approach Abstract Corporate Social Responsibility discourse presupposes that consumers and other stakeholders constitute a public that engages with companies , demand change, and respond actively to corporate activity. The impact of social media has been understood to further empower this active role of stakeholder publics, leading up to a condition of ‘CSR 2.0’ where companies are forced to abide with stakeholders able to massively impact their reputations and financial valuations. However most of the evidence for such stakeholder empowerment is anecdotal and builds on a handful of cases that are cited in most academic studies and management books (United Airlines on YouTube, The companies sponsoring Tiger Woods experiencing massive losses as a results of tweets about his extramarital affair, etc.). In this study we present a systematic study of twitter traffic during one month. Based on a network and semantic analysis of 148.000 tweets gathered around a cluster of keywords related to CSR we show two things. First that the discourse on CSR on twitter intersects only marginally with the discourse on brands. That is, tweets about CSR tend to be abstract and ‘ideological’ rather than engaging directly with corporate actions. Second, CSR discourse on twitter is dominated by communication firms and professionals. There is very little of bottom- up opinion generated, and what is generated that way does not circulate. We present findings and methodology and reflect on theoretical implications for a critical evaluation of the relation between CSR and social media.
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Cecilia Cassinger (Lund University) Brand violence in the culture of the new capitalism Abstract This paper is concerned with the relationship between branding and violence in marketing. Although branding is theorised as a fairly innocent strategy in the marketing literature, practices of branding commonly produce discursive and physical forms of violence (Cage 2012). The violent history of the practice of branding is, for instance, unveiled in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American language, which defines brand as “a mark burned on the skin with a hot iron, formerly used to punish and identify criminals, now used on cattle to show ownership…the iron thus used…a mark of disgrace;; stigma…an identifying mark or label on the products of a particular commodity;; trademark” (cited in Childs 2003, 192). The mark of ownership inscribed by branding on the human body was formerly associated with stigma and degradation of the individual as belonging to a human form of cattle (e.g. slaves). Contemporary branding practices in the so-called ‘culture of the new capitalism’ (Sennett 2006) are more concerned with marking human qualities than human bodies, however, they are no less violent than those in the past. The self-help literature on personal branding (e.g. Peters 1999;; Spillane 2000;; Schawbel 2009) and consumers’ participation in the creation of brand value (e.g. Arvidsson 2006; Zwick et al. 2008; Hatch and Schultz 2010) suggest that being branded (or marked) is regarded imperative to acquire high profile jobs and to express and promote the self through the consumption of brands. The present study discusses brand violence in the marketing contexts of personal branding and brand coproduction. It argues that the main aim of branding, in these contexts, is to smooth over power asymmetries to give an impression of an equal relationship between employer and employee, and producer and consumer. In order to elucidate forms of brand violence, Hannah Arendt’s (1969) conceptualization of violence as distinct from power, and Michel Wieviorka’s (2009) approach to violence as based on the subjectivity of the actor serve as points of departure. The study proposes that brand violence occurs in the transition from being non-branded to becoming branded. Because branding practices must homogenise life stories and identities in order to make them marketable, the lived experience of those subjected to branding is suppressed. Making the self conform to the branding principles of awareness, recall and coherency means that the individual is reduced to abstract categorisation, which violently prevents her or him from becoming a subject. Theorising violence in relation to branding help us to further understand what impact the suppression of lived experience in promotional strategy has on the heterogeneity of human life. References Arendt, H. 1969. On violence. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books. Arvidsson, A. 2006. Brand: Meaning and Value in Media Culture. London: Routledge Cage, M. 2012. Marketing is violence: A user guide. London: Not So Noble Books. Childs, D. 2003. “Angola, convict leasing, and the annulment of freedom”. In A. J. Aldama (ed.) Violence and the body: Race, gender and the state. Indiana University Press. Hatch, M. J. and Schultz, M. 2010. Toward a theory of brand co-creation with implications for brand governance. Brand Management 17(8): 590-604. Peters, T. 1999. The brand you 50. NY: Random House/Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Schawbel, D. 2009. Me 2.0: A powerful way to achieve brand success. NY: Kaplan Publishers. Sennett, R. 2006. The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Spillane, M. 2000. Branding yourself: How to look, sound and behave your way to success. London: Pan Books. Wieviorka, M. 2007. Violence: A new approach. London: Sage. Zwick, D., Bonsu, S. K. & Darmody, A. 2008. Putting consumers to work: Co-creation and new marketing governmentality. Journal of Consumer Culture 8: 163-196
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Paolo Ricardo Zilio Abdala (PPGA Brazil) Ecovillages as unbranded communities: Resisting the market place and beyond Abstract Ecovillages Unbranded Communities: Resisting the market place and beyond Paulo Ricardo Zilio Abdala – PHD Student - PPGA/EA/UFRGS - Brazil Ecovillages are intentional communities based on the harmless integration of human activities into the environment, inspired in the Permaculture concept, a contraction for "permanent culture” (MOLLISON & HOLMGREN, 1978). It means living life in an ethical perspective close to Hinkelammertz’s ethics for life, a philosophical standpoint that defends life as the main value of society, in opposition to the competitiveness of the market system (HINKELAMMERTZ, 2007). According to the Global Ecovillage Network (2012) there are 463 known Ecovillages around the world. In this research, two Brazilian Ecovillages are studied, Arca Verde and Karaguatá, visited during three weekends in which I experienced all the communitarian activities. Results indicate that people living in the Ecovillages have created a form of resistance and rejection to the market place logic, which has stretched beyond the market frontiers. Ecovillagers have built a dynamic space where a collective mode of life is breed, making this phenomenon interesting to be studied in terms of consumption-production-organization relations. That links the Ecovillages to Muniz and O’Guinn (2001, p. 412) concept of Branded Communities: “communities that exhibit three traditional markers of community: shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility”. This definition encourages me to think of the Ecovillages as Unbranded Communities, as they share the same three principles mentioned, changing the foundational base from the market place logic to the ethics for life. They affirm that by rejecting brands, status, marketing and advertisement, and valuing human relations instead. Hence, it is curious that one of the Arca Verde Ecovillage founders is a former owner of an advertisement agency, an emblematic sign of contradictions and struggles faced by Ecovillagers. Regarding study design, it is important to explain that the field research took place in 2010, having as a result an article presented in a couple of congresses in Brazil (ABDALA & PEREYRON, 2010) and a videography presented in the 2010 European Conference of the Association for Consumer Research (ABDALA, PEREYRON & ROSSI, 2010). Although, by that time, the research project had already revealed its potential, a personal academic change of areas, from marketing to critical organizational studies, left it on standby. Since now my main object of research is still consumption, analyzed from a sharper critical perspective, the idea of reworking on the data previously collected (THOMPSON, 2000) grew stronger as I got in contact with Marxian writings on consumption, circulation and needs. As the reanalyzes results indicate, the Ecovillagers philosophy departs from the premise that individuals are responsible for the future of the planet. For them, human consumerist society is reaching the limits of the planet’s capacity, urging a process of rethinking life in a broad sustainable perspective. For that, a main objective of the Ecovillagers is to maintain market transactions at the minimum necessary level, expressly rejecting trade value. When production is not possible, trading goods with local producers is a first option. This exchange can be direct, for example, trading beans for tomatoes, or using the social currency “verdinhas”, accepted on a network of associated professionals and small companies. Purchasing is a final resource, generally accepted in extreme situations like buying medicine to cure serious diseases that could not be healed by traditional healing systems. The Ecovillages process of organization-production-consumption includes: producing all goods possible for local consumption; evaluating goods based exclusively on their use value; preferring local products; sharing decisions on an horizontal organization; and reassessing what is necessary by changing consumption practices and life priorities. As practical examples: children are born in a natural old-fashioned childbirth with the help of a midwife; soap and food are locally produced; eco houses are built by themselves with natural elements present in their local ecosystem; and work is weekly assigned on a task rotation basis. Therefore, I reinforce the argument that the Ecovillages are unbranded communities engaged in the creation of a dynamic collective mode of organization-production-consumption beyond the market place logic, actively rejecting capitalism cornerstones, like the commodity fetishism, as further explained. All human beings are, ontologically, social beings, finding satisfaction in social relations, and reproducing through social activities of labor and leisure. However, with the advance of the capitalist system, commodities acquired such a prominent role in society that they became alive, even speaking their own language, to use Marx image. This process of splitting production and labor from consumption and circulation, originated the commodity fetishism, the perception that commodities are a result of things relations, not social human relations. That is a vital dynamic process of capitalism that the Ecovillagers try to overcome. The first evidence supporting this argument is their expressive rejection of exchange value in favor of use value, as Marx’s chapter one of Capital helps elucidating (MARX, 1980). The second evidence is the reassessment of needs based on human values, problematizing their role in the construction of the market system. Theoretically, this is discussed in the light of a radical critique of needs (HELLER, 1998) and a moral perspective of needs present in the ethics for life (HINKELAMMERTZ, 2007). The last evidence is a reencounter of production and
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consumption, as two inseparable yet contradictory moments, as Marx registered in the Grundrisse (MARX, 1973). Finally, returning to the parallel with Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) concept of brand communities, the Unbranded Communities clearly have shared consciousness, rituals and tradition and a sense of moral responsibility. The difference is that instead of uniting around a brand or a fashion, these communities are engaged in the utopian creation of a better future for mankind. The article is organized in the following sections: (1) the concept of the unbranded community; (2) a general theoretical description of ecovillages and permaculture; (3) resistance to the market place in the ecovillages, the unbranded communities; and (4) stretching beyond the market place – new perspectives emerging from the Ecovillages. ABDALA, P.; PEREYRON, G.; ROSSI, CAV. (2010). Ecovillages and Permaculture: A reference model for sustainable consumption? Videography presented in a film session. In: European Advances in Consumer Research, Londres. European ACR Conference 2010. ABDALA, P.; PEREYRON, G. (2010). Ecovillages and Permaculture: A reference model for sustainable consumption? In: Encontro Nacional da ANPAD 2010, ENANPAD 2010. HELLER, A. (1998). Teoría de las Necesidades en Marx. Huropa: Barcelona. HINKELAMMERTZ, F. (2007). La transformación del Estado de Derecho bajo el impacto de la estrategia de globalización. In Print: Filosofía y teorías políticas entre la crítica y la utopía. Org: HOYOS, G. CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, Buenos Aires. Retrivied from: http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/grupos/hoyos/13Hinkelammert.pdf GLOBAL ECOVILLAGE NETWORK. (2012). Global Ecovillage Network Directory. Retrieved from: gen.ecovillage.org/iservices/index.html MARX, K. (1973). Grundrisse: outlines of the crtitique of political economy. Retrivied from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/. MARX, K. (1980). O Capital: crítica da economia política. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, Livro I, v.1. MOLLISON, B.; HOLMGREN, D. (1978). Permaculture One. Australia: Transworld Publishers. MUNIZ, A.;; O’GUINN, T. Brand Community. Journal of Consumer Research, v. 27, 2001. THOMPSON, P. (2000). Re-using Qualitative Research Data: A Personal Account. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, v.1, n.3. Retrieved from: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1044/2258
RESISTING THE MARKET PLACE: BRANDED COMMUNITIES IN TIMES OF UNREST Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm D2
Michael Saren (Leicester University) and Christina Goulding (Keele University) Extending the limits of the brand: Controlling consumers through tribal marketing Abstract “Marketing is now the instrument of social control and produces the arrogant breed who are our masters. Control is short term and rapidly shifting, but at the same time continuous and unbounded…..” (Deleuze, 1995:181). This paper contributes to two of the topics cited;; the ‘resisting the marketplace’ sub- theme of the CMS call for papers - i.e. brand communities, communities of consumption and identity making, and the role of marketplace institutions in perpetuating the status quo of the underclass. It argues that while the brand community or consumer ‘tribe’ has become a powerful symbolic social phenomenon for consumers and a ‘badge of identity’, it by no means results in marketplace resistance. Nor is it a phenomenon confined to the underclass since it occurs across all brand categories. On the contrary, we argue that in many respects the advocacy and creation of consumer communities and tribes reinforces and extends the brand and market institutions. We distinguish between consumer subcultures, brand communities and consumer tribes, concentrating our analysis on the latter. Consumer tribes which are internally formed by members have genuine common
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interests and connections, shared passions and history, self-developed hierarchies. They exist independent of the brand. Thus tribes are often conceived of as unmanageable, relatively autonomous consumer zones that elude and even resist organizational or managerial intervention and control (Cova et al, 2007). We argue in this paper that there is however also evidence of externally formed tribes that are manufactured by marketers, with artificially created interests and passions and manipulated needs and desires. The tribe exists because of the brand, providing significant opportunities and advantages for marketer (Goulding, Shankar and Canniford 2013). By encouraging, if not creating this type of externally constructed ‘empowered’ consumer community and its associated networks, marketing managers can, amongst other things, communicate directly with lead customers, foster brand loyalty and erect powerful barriers to exit (Cova and Pace 2006). And, as Zwick and Cayla (2011) point out, the visibility of marketing activities to the consumer in the marketplace contrasts with the relative obscurity of the inner workings of the marketing profession. Both the marketing concept and market segmentation theory explicitly suggest that all customers should not be treated equally and moreover, that all customers are not equally desirable. For example UK retailers such as the House of Fraser, Tesco and Marks & Spencer have recently (and controversially) been experimenting with RFID tags. In what is probably the best-known case, Phillips announced that it was providing clothing retailer Benetton with washable RFID tags, which would be woven into the labels of 15 million items. Benetton sales staff, it was argued, could easily identify repeat visitors on arrival and give priority service to these more loyal and valuable customers. (RFID Journal, 2003). Market segmentation thereby segregates consumers into groups according to their differences and categorises and labels them according, which reinforces and delineates consumers group identities. This practice is very similar to the way in which totalitarian regimes rigidly categorize people according to political, sectarian, ethnic, racial, ideological, social and lifestyle categories, some of whom are segregated and labelled for differential treatment. Marketing also tends to depersonalise its consumer subjects - groups, individuals, communities are only important insofar as they contribute to the whole. Marketing establishes group identities, brand communities from an early age in children. Adherents to the brand think it’s their own choice, but as Schwartz (2004) demonstrates, the delineation of option and choice parameters is normally set by the marketing apparatus, not the customer. Individual culture and identity is subsumed within that of the brand or the consumer group, the self is subordinated to the collective. Globalisation presumes a world market, where nothing is beyond marketing’s reach. Like Imperial empires of old, it sees itself as a force for progress, spreading wealth, education and development. Civilisation itself is defined by the presence of markets, global brands and consumer choice. Those without it are regarded as primitive, underdeveloped societies. Using examples of both types of consumer tribes – those internally created and regulated (Goulding et al 2013), and those deliberately created by the market (Pankraz 2009), this paper critically examines the characteristics and effects of marketers’ attempts to create and control consumer tribe and establish group identities. Far from the fashionable marketing rhetoric of being ‘self-initiated’ far less ‘ co-created’ (Vargo and Lusch 2004), such groups are in many cases constructed and manipulated by the marketing apparatus in order to achieve corporate, not consumer or social gaols. Furthermore the tribe far from liberating or empowering consumers, individuals, their identities and communities are only important insofar as they contribute to the whole. Cova, B. & Cova, V. (2002), “Tribal marketing: The tribalisation of society and its impact on the conduct of marketing”, European Journal of Marketing, 36 (5/6), 595-620. Cova, B. & Pace, S. (2006), “Brand Community of Convenience Products: New Forms of Customer Empowerment – The Case of “my Nutella The Community”, European Journal of Marketing, 40 (9/10), 10871105. Cova, B., Kozinets, R. V. & Shankar, A. (2007), Consumer Tribes, Oxford: Elsevier. Deleuze, Gilles (1995) ‘Postscript on Control Societies.’ in Negotiations 1972-1990, Martin Joughin (trans.), New York: Columbia University Press.
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Goulding, C., Shankar, A., and Canniford, R (forthcoming 2013) Learning to be Tribal: Facilitating the Formation of Consumer Tribes, European Journal of Marketing, 47 (5/6). Pankraz, D (2009) Youth Are Tribal–Tips on How to Create a Movement Around Your Brand, http://danpankraz.wordpress.com/2009/06/07youth-are -tribal-tips-on-how-to-create-a-movement-around-yourbrand (last accessed 27/05/2011) RFID Journal (2012) ‘Benetton to tag 15 http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/344/1/1/
Million
Items’:
Accessed
March
12.
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Schwartz B. (2004), “The Tyranny of Choice”, Chronicle of Higher Education, 23rd January. Schwarzkopf, S. (2007) Advertising’s Other: Media User – Consumer – Observer, 5th International Critical Management Studies Conference, University of Manchester, July, 2007. Vargo, S. L., and R. F Lusch (2004). “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing”, Journal of Marketing, 68 (January), 1-17. Zwick, D and Cayla J (2011), Inside Marketing: Practices, Ideologies, Devices Oxford University Press, Oxford
Eduardo Ayrosa and Denise Franca Barros (UNIGRANRIO, Brazil) Trying to do the right thing: Consumer Resistance as craft Abstract Since consumer and marketing researchers have been investigating consumption and production processes as entwined (“co-production”, Vargo & Lusch 2004, Echeverri & Skålén 2011), it is timely to examine consumption processes as “work”. In doing so, we depart from the romantic view of a company “genuinely” interested in consumers’ insights, moving to the examination of a consumer who tries to make the best choices possible in the marketplace despite asymmetries of information and agendas between them and the producers. A consumer who does the best choice for its own sake, in a way similar to what Sennett (2006, 2009) calls “craftmanship”. It is the objective of this work to examine consumption as craft. Slater (1997) argues that the consumer is usually depicted in the literature as either a hero (the good chooser) or a dupe (easily manipulated by advertising). Escaping from such dichotomized descriptions, Miller (1997) views consumption as a process of “dealienation”, where consumer changes the product’s social meanings not only by using it, but mainly by infusing it with a meaning of its own. Campbell (2005) also builds on the conception of consumption as work through what he calls the “craft consumer”: a person who “transforms ‘commodities’ into personalized (or, one might say, ‘humanized’) objects.” (p.28). A similar form of consumption has been previously described by Holt (2002) in a paper where consumer resistance has a central role. Holt classifies such form of consumption as “creative resistance”, where consumers try to escape markets’ determination over their lives by working out their identities through consumption practices and not the opposite. The main focus of the concepts of creative or craft consumption is on the way consumers use goods, get along with products in their own lives and fill them with unpredicted meanings. The choice process, explicitly excluded from Campbell’s (2005) focus, is what determines what Holt (2002) calls “reflexive resistance”: “Consumers can fend off the marketer-imposed code if they are able to disentangle the marketer’s artifice from the use value of the product” (p.72). What separates Holt’s and Campbell’s analyses is the presence of the work concept, so useful to Campbell when he recovers the term “craft”. After all, such conceptualization is timely when the distinction between consumption and production is becoming blurred (Vargo & Lusch 2004, Echeverri & Skålén 2011). The aim of the present work is to dwelve on what Campbell left behind: the choice process as work using the craft conception. In order to do so, we conducted an interpretative inquiry on conscious consumption. In Sennett’s (2006) opinion, people can only feel well anchored in life trying to do something well done for its own sake. This is what he calls craftsmanship. Sennett’s conception of craftsmanship goes beyond skilled
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manual labor, as it also encompasses soft skills, mental and social abilities. Its rewards go beyond the economic objectives underlying instrumental reasoning, they reach a sense of accomplishment, a self-fulfilling sensation of knowing that one has made his best. Sennett also reasons that it establishes a connection between practices and thinking, hand and head, and such connection is consubstantiated into habits (Sennett, 2009). Despite being related to low involvement choice (Mittal & Lee, 1989), we understand that even some habits are affected by a rationality derived from a compromise to “do the right thing”. That is, we contend that consumer choice can be described as craftsmanship as long as the consumer shows interest in doing a good choice. This is the case of what, in Brazil, has been termed “conscious consumption”. Hypothesizing that such rationality embedded in the consumer choice process constitutes a form of consumer resistance (Peñaloza & Price, 1993; Hollander & Einwohner 2004), we attempted to identify and analyze consumer narratives concerning their attempts to consume “consciously”, and the joys or disappointments concerning such endeavor. We interviewed 22 consumers who self-describe themselves as “conscious consumers”. Interviews lasted between one and three hours, and were conducted based on the long interview protocol suggested by McCracken (1988). Interviews transcriptions provided us about 1200 pages of text, which were analysed with the use of the discourse analysis protocol suggested by Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999). Results of our analysis show that this productive consumer is aware that the conscious consumption discourse is a socially constructed reality (“there is a sort of a threshold that we establish as ‘conscious’, and we operate there, inside that system”), and admit difficulties in keeping faithful to conscious consumption ideals (“I am vegan because of the animals, but I use leather shoes”). Such crafty consumer is described as male-gendered, as some female informants feel themselves “like men” on the market (“I buy like a man: I go to the shop and buy only what I need”). Being proud of their attempts to rationally face purchasing tasks, and despite all the suspicion about organizations, the crafty conscious consumer considers the producers as their main source of information (“I think that the companies teach, the companies have to inform about what they are doing, it’s their duty”;; “I am a believer. If the guy writes on the package that it’s not transgenic, I believe”). Informants frequently show feelings of disappointment about their own behavior as consumers (“I am a conscious consumer that does everything wrong”). They complaint, for instance, about not having the necessary time and resources to dedicate themselves to better choice and consumption (“I don’t have a maid 24 hours a day”), or not being able to use what they consider the correct choice, as is the case of the father that feels forced to use disposable diapers instead of what he deems as being better for the environment, cloth diapers. As a conclusion, we see that this “crafty consumer” understands and believes in organizations, and are not opposed to the way companies work. They try to resist the market, but cannot help themselves about relying on market-generated information to make informed choices. Craft consumption looks like a tragic form of resistance, consistent with a capitalist ethic of work as described by Sennett. Campbell, C. (2005). The Craft Consumer: Culture, craft and consumption in a postmodern society. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(1), 23-42. Chouliaraki, L. & Fairclough, N. (1999) Discourse in Late Modernity: Re-Thinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Chunyan, X., Bagozzi, R. P., & Troye, S. V. (2008). Trying to prosume: toward a theory of consumers as cocreators of value. [Article]. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36(1), 109-122. Echeverri, P., & Skålén, P. (2011). Co-creation and co-destruction: A practice-theory based study of interactive value formation. Marketing Theory, 11(3), 351-373. Hollander, J. A., & Einwohner, R. L. (2004). Conceptualizing Resistance. Sociological Forum, 19(4), 533-554.
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Holt, D. B. (2002). Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Branding. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(June). Kopytoff, I. (1988). The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a process. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (pp. 89 - 122). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCracken, G. (1988). The Long Interview (Vol. 13). London: Sage. Miller, D. (1997). Material Culture and Mass Consumerism: Wiley. Mittal, B., & Lee, M. S. (1989). A Causal Model of Consumer Involvement. Journal of Economic Psychology, 10, 363-389. Penaloza, L., & Price, L. L. (1993). Consumer Resistance: A Conceptual Overview. Advances in Consumer Research, 20(1), 123-128. Sennett, R. (2006). A cultura do novo capitalismo: São Paulo, Record. Sennett, R. (2009). The Craftsman: Penguin Adult. Slater, D. (1997). Consumer culture and modernity: Polity Press. Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing. [Article]. Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 1-17.
Lindsay Hamilton, (Keele University) Branding and Animals: An Analysis of Animals as Avatars of Identity Abstract Studies of branding, taste and consumption are often assumed to provide a means to understand the orchestration of identity work for human beings. Despite recent theoretical developments, however, such analyses have traditionally downplayed the role played by non-human animals in the process of identity creation. Instead, like the broader social sciences, the focus has been anthropocentric and has related predominantly to human concerns. Yet the ways in which people draw upon non-human animals as symbolic ‘avatars of identity’ can tell us much about the operation of identity and social meaning-making in a broader sense and thus deserves significantly more attention than has been accorded to date. This paper is designed to make an exploratory contribution to that agenda by discussing some of the ways in which animals function as a means for humans to perform identity work. Considering some of the stereotypes of ‘human-animal branding’ such as the now well-worn image of the ‘chav with Staffordshire bull terrier’, the paper suggests that while animals cannot be considered to be ‘branded’ in ways that other consumer items like mobile phones or clothes are, they take on highly particularized properties that convey subtle identity metaphors and messages to selected onlookers. The paper considers how and why this occurs. The paper goes on to argue that the inherent power imbalance between the human consumer and the animal ‘avatar’ means that there are potentially serious consequences for all parties involved. Indeed, whether animals are aware of these distinctively human forms of social and cultural meaning-making or not, it is vital that such processes and symbolic attachments are scrutinized, understood and challenged. The paper concludes by framing some philosophical possibilities for doing this.
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STREAM 7: EXTREME WORK / NORMAL WORK Dr Edward Granter and Dr Leo McCann, University of Manchester
Session One: PROFESSIONAL INTENSITY Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am D2
Charlotte Gascoigne, Emma Parry and David Buchanan, Cranfield University Extreme jobs: a review of literature on the drivers and consequences of long working hours, work intensification, workaholism and organizational/professional identification Abstract Extreme jobs are widely referred to, but not widely studied, in the academic literature: they have sometimes been defined as synonymous with long working hours (Burke and Fiksenbaum, 2009b; Burke and Fiksenbaum, 2009a). Hewlett and Luce (2006) identified two further dimensions of extreme jobs: intense, fast-paced work, and high worker involvement with work. Participants in Hewlett and Luce’s study characterized extreme jobs as an essentially benign phenomenon, a matter of personal choice, or person-environment fit. However, there are structural, cultural and gender constraints on working hours and working practices (McRae, 2003; McDonald et al., 2006). The stickiness of the belief that long working hours are a personal choice may itself be a product of a liberal, deregulated working time regime (van Woonroy and Wilson, 2006). The present study identifies the drivers and consequences of extreme jobs, and assesses research gaps, by reviewing the literature on a) long working hours, b) work intensification, c) workaholism and d) professional/ organizational identification, using a multi-level analysis – institutional, sectoral, organizational, individual. The first three search terms were input into two academic databases, limited to the past 15 years, while the extensive literature on organizational and professional identification was limited to sub-sets with each of the other three terms, returning nearly 500 papers, of which 150 were reviewed. Suggested institutional drivers of extreme jobs include income inequality and positional competition, consumer culture, and a liberal, deregulated economy which prioritizes the growth of GDP as a social good (Schor, 1991; Schor, 2011; Brett and Stroh, 2003; Bowles and Park, 2005; James, 2008; Golden, 2009; Pfeffer, 2010). Extreme jobs reflect a worldview in which paid work, and an economic contribution to society, take precedence over the family and community work, education and leisure, which have been shown to be essential for human sustainability, wellbeing and active citizenship (Pfeffer, 2010; Dembe, 2009). An alternative discourse presents shorter working hours as a socially responsible, economically efficient and environmentally sustainable option (Schor, 2011; Dembe, 2009; Jackson, 2009; Skidelsky and Skidelsky, 2012; Golden and Figart, 2000). Intense jobs with long hours have different impacts on women and men (Cha, 2010; Stone, 2007) and Acker’s highly gendered ‘ideal worker’ (1990) shares many characteristics with the extreme worker. Managerial and professional jobs are traditionally ‘boundless’, defined not by a specific number of hours, but by doing whatever it takes to get the job done (Kalleberg and Epstein, 2001). Such practices form part of a professional identity (Watts, 2009; Alvesson and Robertson, 2006) and, in choosing a particular occupation, professionals may be understood to have ‘chosen’ long hours and the prioritization of work over personal needs (Kuhn, 2006). The widespread belief that the ‘nature of the work’ – and the ‘nature’ of individuals choosing that work (Bechky, 2006; Sinha and Van de Ven, 2005) – determines long and intense working hours is confirmed in studies of various professions including civil engineering (Watts, 2009), management consulting
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(Perlow and Porter, 2009; Merilainen et al., 2004; Donnelly, 2006), accounting (Smithson et al., 2004), law (Epstein et al., 1999) and IT (Meiksins and Whalley, 2002). However, studies of work processes have shown how, even in fast, high-pressure environments, more contained jobs with shorter working hours could be designed by adopting different forms of work coordination and handovers, avoiding client-to-worker specificity and ‘crisis’ management, and implementing ‘predictable time off’ for all (Watts, 2009; Perlow and Porter, 2009; Perlow, 1998; Perlow, 1999; Perlow, 2001; Briscoe, 2007). The competitive pressures on organizations have driven work intensification (Green, 2004; McCann et al., 2008; Burke et al., 2010), while identification with organizational goals has been used as a means to encourage worker effort (Kunda, 1992; Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). Such ‘post-Fordist’ working practices in theory offer greater autonomy and choice, but in practice have the paradoxical effect of increasing working hours (van Echtelt et al., 2006). Organizations need to balance short-term profit against the longer-term wellbeing and productivity of the workforce, but work-life balance initiatives are often ‘bolted on’ to deep, taken-for-granted structures encouraging long hours and work intensification (Ford and Collinson, 2011; Kossek et al., 2010). Contradictory evidence of the impact of long hours, work intensification and workaholism on the wellbeing and productivity of the workforce (Vallerand and Houlfort, 2003; Ng and Feldman, 2008; Schaufeli et al., 2008; Green, 2008; Burke and Fiksenbaum, 2009c) (Vallerand and Houlfort, 2003; Ng and Feldman, 2008; Schaufeli et al., 2008; Burke and Fiksenbaum, 2009c) may be resolved by distinguishing between an authentic, beneficial (autonomously-motivated) work passion; a potentially harmful (controlled-motivation) work addiction, and a situational motivation, driven by context or external rewards (Vallerand and Houlfort, 2003; Snir and Zohar, 2008; Snir and Harpaz, 2009). These distinctions also inform the debate about ‘choice’ in extreme jobs: addiction (-aholic) means losing control over the addictive substance (work) and therefore the loss of choice. Managers and professionals do not find it easy to separate their work self from their other selves (Kunda, 1992), and long hours limit ‘the potential identity set, the raw materials that [organizational] members draw on to make sense of their work’ (Pratt et al., 2006, p.257). Future study of the drivers of extreme jobs should focus on the interaction of personal preferences with the societal, sectoral and organizational constraints identified above. In particular, how does the interaction between the (intense, demanding) ‘nature’ of some work, and the ‘nature’ (or identity) of the people attracted to that work affect the development of work processes which support extreme jobs? Study of the consequences of extreme jobs might consider the contribution extreme job-holders make to human wellbeing, social sustainability and gender equality. Is there a difference in the societal contribution made by passionate workers and workaholics? What is the organizational contribution made by these two types of extreme jobholder – and how can organizations design both work processes and work-life balance programmes to suit?
Peter Turnbull and Vicki Wass, Cardiff University Long hours of work in the UK police service: causes, consequences and alternatives Abstract
In the face of the Comprehensive Spending Review (2009) which imposed a 20 per cent real cut in police resources over five years, Government, Police Chiefs and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) continue to insist that frontline policing will be maintained. In order to close the gap between falling police strength and constant service demand, police officers are increasingly working harder and longer. Job cuts have been greatest amongst the salaried ranks (Inspector and above) where hours are unreported, and therefore effectively unregulated, and where unscheduled overtime is always expected and is unpaid. Using a multi-method approach including a census survey of Police Inspectors in England, Scotland and Wales (results published in Turnbull and Wass 2012), a series of group interviews and a Freedom of Information Request served on every Police Force in relation to the hours of work recorded for Inspectors, this paper evidences a long hours culture and details some of the adverse social and health effects which these long hours generate. The focus, however, is an exploration of structural, cultural and agential reasons which explain why Inspectors agree to work ever-longer hours when it is well-established in the literature, and is recognised by the Inspectors themselves, that long working hours can lead to detrimental outcomes in the form of ill-health, sleep deprivation, broken families and stress at work. The nature of policing (i.e. a high profile, high status, 24 hour first response emergency service) and its organisation along military principles, with a clear hierarchical command structure, creates a long hours’ culture that is widely perceived to be a natural and unavoidable “part of the job”. Moreover, social and cultural
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factors discourage critical reflection or non-compliance. The Police Service displays the archetypal “macho conservative culture” in which professional pride is part of the inspector’s identity as well as their job. Inspectors describe a ‘can do’ culture with a self-identity founded upon strength, stamina and competence, all underwritten by a command and control management style. The long hours culture is embedded from the top down, from Chiefs to Superintendents to Inspectors. Generally, the higher the rank, the longer the hours. As noted by a DI of 16 years service: “Senior Management promotes a long hours culture by working to that model themselves and placing the expectation on Inspectors that they will follow their example”. Brown (2007) describes a relatively new manifestation of an unforgiving workplace, the smart macho managers who are seen to be leading from the front and where pressure on costs gives a new edge to military style management. A view consistent with a DCI of 25 years service who returned the following description in his questionnaire: “Force leadership are obsessed with driving performance, being visible and leading from the front ... everything is about pace and urgency”. We adapt a framework of “time famine” from Perlow (1999) to understand the dependent and reinforcing relationship between the individual’s “heroic” response to the increasing demands of the organisation, long hours, wider responsibilities, more intensive work (no meal breaks, working weekends etc), and the fragmented and dysfunctional systems and processes that characterise the organisation. Deficits in personal and organisational resilience reinforce each other on a downward spiral. When tired individuals are left to cope – to “tough it out” and “get the job done”, at times regardless of the impact on their own well-being – this exacerbates the fragmented and dysfunctional character of the organisation. In this way long hours become a structural feature of the organisation: the police service now depends on the long and intensive hours of its inspectors. Because the inspectors supply what is needed to keep the organisation together, “we keep the broken machine working” (Inspector, male, 25 years service), albeit in a fragmented way, the organisation is able to continue without needing to address the source of the problem. Within the organisation responsibility for working time is individualised so that Inspectors are made to feel at fault if they need to work additional hours and thus personally responsible for any ill-effects that may arise from overwork. There is a widespread fear of ridicule, in particular of being seen as weak, if Inspectors can’t manage to put in long hours or cope with the work intensity. Support for managing ever greater workloads, or the stress that this produces, where it is available, is offered within this individualised framework, to assist the individual adapt and accept the structural, social and economic constraints rather than to question or address the constraints themselves. It is within this sensitive, complex, and seemingly intractable, escalation of hours of work that we are working with the Police Federation to address the potential of more effectively managing the working time of police inspectors. Through a series of regional seminars under the ESRC Knowledge Exchange Programme, working primarily with Inspectors, but also with their managers (Chiefs, Superintendents, Home Office, the regulator HMIC and the Stevens Enquiry team), using the Working Time Regulation and principles from behavioural economics, we explore the potential to ‘nudge’ the organisation into monitoring and reducing the working time of its Inspectors. The study of Police Inspectors provides a window into long hours of work more widely in the public sector and amongst middle managers. Police Inspectors are particularly alert to the issue of hours of work. In their previous roles as Constables and Sergeants their hours were accurately recorded and overtime hours were separately remunerated. In contrast to most professionals, there is a tradition of measuring hours of work on both the employer and staff side, although recording is neither accurate nor universal on either side. Acute structural pressures combined with strong cultural and agential motivations provide a valuable opportunity to uncover, under a set of extreme conditions, the complex incentives which drive professional workers to work long unpaid hours.
Paresh Wankhade, Liverpool Hope University An ethnography of ambulance personnel: adrenaline junkies or health professionals? Abstract There has been acknowledged gap in the management literature pertaining to emergency services in general and ambulance service in particular. Published evidence in management literature about Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) performance (Andrews and Brewer, 2010); ambulance management (Bevan and Hamblin, 2009; Wankhade, 2011), and culture (Wankhade, 2012) is an emerging phenomena notwithstanding some excellent
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ethnographic studies on ambulance and police (Metz, 1981; Palmer, 1983; Manning and Van Maanen, 1978). The discourse on ‘extreme-normal’ work provides an interesting facet to understand organisational workings in a wide range of settings (Hewitt and Luce, 2006; Klein et al. 2006; McCann et al. 2008). This is of particular interest to the emergency services, which traditionally involve, working long (extreme) hours in challenging circumstances dealing with various exigencies often including threat to life. Given that a normal duty pattern of a police bobby on the beat or an ambulance paramedic in the UK is about twelve hours, the gruelling and emotionally challenging ‘extreme’ nature of the shift duty has become ‘normal’. One is considered lucky if they get a ‘normal’ shift once a while which is rather ‘extreme’. This exploration of normalising of the intense work within the ambulance setting is the core question this paper will address. Despite the efforts made by ambulance trusts to culturally transform themselves into a clinically driven workforce, they are still perceived as a uniformed service since the training and service provision have been organised around managing trauma (eg. road traffic collision), severe breathing problems or cardiac arrest (Lendrum et al., 2000). This is usually mirrored in our image of a paramedic toiling tirelessly on the roads. Literature suggests a lack of clinical educational and training of the ambulance workforce as a big cultural challenge for the organisation (Siriwardena, 2010; Snooks et al. 2009) having implications for the extreme/normal work within the service. Recent reports (Department of Health (DH), 2005; Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), 2011) argue that while the organisation is moving ahead with the clinical training of the workforce, it doesn’t necessarily register across the organisation and the canteen culture still plays its part (Wankhade, 2012). Vestiges of the old command and control culture, accompanied by tendency to blame (Commission for Heath Improvement, 2003) hierarchical and top-down management style, and resistance to change and being risk-averse (NHS Modernisation Agency, 2004) are some of the factors cited historically within ambulance service as barriers to transform into a professional workforce. Attempts on the part of the ambulance service to fully integrate within the wider NHS have also been hindered by the confusion which still prevails within its members about the core value and mission of the service (NHS Confederation, 2011). Being part of the NHS ambulance service has made a huge progress towards their transformation from a patient transport organisation to a clinically trained workforce in the last ten years (National Audit Office, 2010; DH, 2005). The historical perception of judging them as a health arm of the emergency services as opposed to the emergency arm of the health service has changed considerably but the need to create organisations that ‘look, feel, behave and deliver differently’ is still being debated by the ambulance chiefs (AACE, 2011, p. 77). Issues surrounding the cultural transformation of the service into a professional clinical workforce form an on-going agenda for current debates (Cooke, 2011; Wankhade, 2011a). To make this happen, the role of the paramedics is vital and merits further academic exploration. Based upon an ethnographic study in a large ambulance trust in the North of England, the paper will provide meaningful insights about the nature of the work by the ambulance personnel with special focus on the role of paramedics. It would seem that for historical and cultural reasons, many in the organisation, especially some of the paramedics, still see themselves as adrenaline junkies though the direction of travel is more clinical and knowledge based as health professionals. Drawing upon empirical data from interviews, non-participant observation and ambulance ride-ons, the paper will document and critically evaluate the core theme of normal/extreme work within the ambulance setting. Need for such an ethnographic exploration finds support in the literature (Watson, 2011; Van Maanen, 2011; Mannon, 1992; Tangherlini, 2000).
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Session Two: EXTREMITY / PRECARITY Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm D2
Allesandro Lema da Costa, Ana Heloisa da Costa Lemos, and Leila Sharon Nasajon Gottleib, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro Extreme Jobs! How do Brazillian Workers View Them? Abstract In recent years, the lengthening and intensification of the working day, and the consequences of these changes, have been the focus of study of a number of researchers and, as Burke argues (2009, p.167), “work hours has become a ‘hot topic’”. Although certain results have been noted that might be considered as positive for organizations and individuals alike, such as an increase in productivity (Green, 2001; 2004), the negative impacts and aspects of this process appear to predominate in literature on the subject (Hewitt and Luce, 2006; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). The consequences of burnout (Barnett, Gareis and Brennan, 1999), psychological problems (Kirkcaldy, Levine and Shepard, 2000), family conflicts, exhaustion, irritability and an increase in workplace accidents (Dembe et al., 2005) are just some of the problems highlighted by studies discussing the effects of increased working hours. At the same time, the greater the intensity, the greater are the demands placed upon the worker, physically, intellectually and psychologically (Porter, 2001, 2004; Green; 2004; Burke and Fiskenbaun, 2009). Nevertheless, from the worker’s point of view, this dynamic of the modern-day workplace appears paradoxical, which leads us to once again look at the question put by Burke (2009, p.169): “Why do people choose to work long hours?”. According to this author, some people, necessarily, need to take on two jobs just to survive. However, others can choose (Burke, 2009). In terms of this second group, and despite the negative aspects associated with an increase in the intensity of the workload reported in literature (see: McCann, Morris and Hassard, 2008), some researchers point to the existence of professionals who, even working many hours per day and at a frenetic pace, insist that they are happy in their work (see: Green, 2004; Macky and Boxxal, 2008; Burke and Fiskenbaun, 2009). In order to better understand this paradox (the dynamic of a more intense and longer working day versus professionals who opt for these kinds of conditions, which they consider perfectly satisfactory) this qualitative study interviewed, at some depth, thirteen Brazilian professionals who work for organizations considered to demand standards of high performance. Assuming that long working hours, regular assessments and variable income are factors that are present in the form of modern-day management adopted by some companies and contribute to intensifying the work load, the choice of interviewees was carried out using the following criteria: (a) that they work, on average, twelve hours a day (from choice rather than from formal imposition); (b) that a large part of their remuneration is based on variable bonuses, calculated according to individual performance and that of the organizations for which they work; and (c) that the management model of the organization for which they work is known for demanding high performance levels from its employees. The analysis of the results revealed that, despite the fact that the interviewees experienced many of the situations described in literature on the subject as being typical to more intense working conditions and longer hours, such as an increase in the work rhythm, need for polyvalence and pressure for results, they preferred to stress the benefits associated with this kind of work dynamic (declared as voluntary), which included: speedier promotion, steep learning curve, variable remuneration, meritocracy, autonomy and greater responsibility. It was also noted that an aspect that seems fundamental in ensuring that these individuals identify with their respective organizations is these organization’s capacity to involve the subjectivity of these professionals through the dissemination of values that contribute to building a desired heroic ideal that their work symbolizes. The intense emotional involvement of the interviewees in their professional spheres reinforces the role of work as central to the building of their individual identities. Thus, one could say that the type of culture associated with intensified working conditions is capable of creating unusual levels of motivation, loyalty and even fanaticism, thereby allowing workers to interpret intensive work as something positive and, thus, fulfill the aspirations of the organizations to which they belong. The values disseminated by these organizations are capable of providing a structure of ideological control that is internalized by the workers themselves and this
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makes it unnecessary to control them in an intrinsic or bureaucratic way. In other words, one creates a new work culture.
Monika Musial and Antti Kauppinen, Oulu Business School Fostering organizational exits as motivating management of creativity in creative industries Abstract In today’s post-industrial work-related interventions almost everyone is asked to be creative and innovative (Jeanes 2006). Creation of novelty, new ideas, and innovations is highlighted, which reflects that the meaning of work has been changed. In the industrial age, there was a manager of firm who was leading the production line and therefore organizing the happenings in a factory. Nowadays the demand for organizing work-related tasks is moved from the manager to the employee. That is why it is said that everyone is one’s own boss and therefore the organizer of his or her time also (Hewlett & Luce 2006). This creates both positive and negative issues. As a positive matter, a person is not dependent on the manager’s ideas of work and time-schedules. That might make it possible to combine work and leisure better. Simultaneously, there is, however, a danger of working so hard that the creative freedom is lost actually and a person ends up working too many hours, loses the concentration from other things than work, and finally ends up to the burnout (Hewlett & Luce 2006). The reason is that there is no person who could tell what is enough (e.g. an industrial manager), as extreme workers are motivated by the tasks they do (compare with Klein, Ziegert, Knight & Xiao 2006). It also heats up a problem with managing a firm, especially from the perspective of creativity. The reason is that the creative work can happen all the time, but not only in certain circumstances like the industrial-work in a factory. Hewlett and Luce (2006: 51) describe how one of their interviewees told about his work citing to him as follows; “If I can get this to work for the studio, I’ll be the first guy to figure it out. Everyone else who has tried has failed. It’s my Everest”. This kind of attitude seems to characterize creative companies and their employees. That is why the management of such a firm should happen in a way that it both fosters the vision of the company, but also the vision of a creative individual who is not that much managed anymore nowadays. Perhaps one of the ways of managing such a company is leadership in extreme action teams that Klein et al. (2006) write about. However, this kind of leadership is difficult in a creative company, because the major driver of people working in these kinds of companies is the inner drive, which creative people have in them. This paper touches upon this issue from the perspective of motivation and it considers how the creative work could be led in a company, which is working within the field of creative industries. This will be done by doing a review of the literature that is focused on motivational aspects of creativity. Current literature regarding to management of creativity discusses how the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation influences on the behavior of employees and managers in a firm (see Berg, Taatila & Volkmann 2012). Over time, the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation have been studied as reasons of why creative people engage in certain activities emotionally stronger than others and that is why reach the outcomes that others might not achieve (Cardon, Wincent, Singh & Drnovsek 2009). On that basis, a creative individual has been seen as a person who has strong affects (i.e. feelings and emotions) on a work task and who is a part of the creative process (Amabile 1997; Collins & Amabile 1999). In this, “novel, useful ideas or problem solutions” are related “to both the process of idea generation or problem solving and the actual idea or solution” (Amabile, Barsade, Mueller & Staw 2005: 368). Quite often, a creative individual is so enthusiastic about his or her work that nothing else seems to matter to him or her and that is he or she might work too long hours (Hewlett & Luce 2006). In other words, the task motivation is high because of intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivation. In Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) words, a person has the flow-experience. It means that a person is involved with a task, which is challenging and difficult enough so that a person does not become bored, but reach to the flow-channel where the optimal experience is possible. Sometimes these kinds of situations are actualized as long work hours (Hewlett & Luce 2006). The purpose of this study is to scrutinize the issue of long work hours by going through the current streams of creativity research and providing a conceptual framework that makes it possible to study
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management of creative firms from the perspective of motivation. This paper starts with the assumption of Prabhu, Sutton and Sauser (2008) that the personality abilities or traits do not always explain the creative behavior, but it can also happen in another way around. We go through the streams of creativity research and agree with Jeanes (2006) that management of creativity in a creative firm can be about fostering exits of non-motivating work. In this way, we problematize the notion of individual-oriented research on creativity, which assumes that a creative individual creates novelty out from his ideas. We use social constructivist approach in order to explicate the nature of creativity as an exit from nonmotivating work (see Jeanes 2006 see also Slutskaya 2006; Styhre 2006). It problematizes the meaning of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation as a basis of the research of management of creativity and creative individuals, because the changing business environment fosters people to change the work positions in a faster way and to work long hours (Hewlett & Luce 2006). Thus, rather than being about a trigger of more efficient firm, managing a creative company could be about managing the resistance of nonsatisfying and non-motivating work. In the full paper, we will provide a conceptual framework that explains an organizational exit as a creative act of creating new products or services. It can both help a creative person to manage with the constantly changing business environment and hold the time schedules in a way that the real creativity can take place without the challenge of working too much, which, we assume, kills creativity in a creative company.
Pia Houni, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health Artist’s work – vocation, dedication, a way of life or just a normal job? Abstract
Painting is an art: and art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the development and refinement of the human soul, to raising the triangle of the spirit. The artist must have something to communicate, since mastery over form is not the end but, instead, the adapting of form to internal significance. Wassily Kandinsky
In Ethics of Authenticity Charles Taylor wrote about the admiration towards artists, especially the image of artists’ lifestyle and freedom. According to Taylor, independence, autonomy and dedication to work are characteristics of artists’ work that are admired. Work as a way of life with no time limits or social demands (as the relationship of family and work) appear as something to strive for. This image reflects upon working life at least in two ways: in other industries (such as the IT-boom or knowledge-intensive work in generation Y) hurling into one’s work is a similar feature as in artists’ working style. On the other hand, we can read stories about, for example, a banker in London, who quits his eminent job and starts writing a novel. This phenomenon is called downshifting. These phenomena are familiar to us and many have experiences of them in our own environment. In closer consideration, the socially and expressively emphasized extreme work opens up possibilities but also problems. At first, the context of the discussion has to be observed. What kind of work and social class are we discussing? Is the dream of freedom and autonomy possible only for a worker whose socioeconomic status is high enough? The economic position of an artist is traditionally not very high. Rags-to-riches stories are rare. Taylor’s work from 1991 is still central. It can be read in new light in parallel to the discussion of future work (for example Senneth, Gratton). Taylor’s way of understanding the modern man [sic] and modern culture as a possible form of life is easily reflected upon the current conception of a worker. Self-knowledge, which Taylor emphasizes as a source for ethics, nourishes the specialty of the subject. As hierarchical structures loosen, the authenticity of an individual is a foundation, because her/his status is not based on a structural position or a great narrative of work. Artist’s position in society has through history set up the same way, as a result of negotiations or struggles sometimes in the marginal, sometimes in the service of aristocracy, sometimes as a demiurge. When we are looking artists in contemporary culture, from earlier year up to late part of work path, we can find out one similar phenomenon: they all are working very hard, work and life is meaning same part of life for them. This effects in their everyday life;; time is irrelevant aspects in working hour’s context, rather it is outside element toward exhibition or premier. The question of time is irrelevant in retirement also, because many artists plan to do work as long as they can. One big issue is also connection between work and family, typically and
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still for women. Many of them telling stories how difficult are to solve every day’s situations with children and work. This issue is not only practical point, is deep and painful thing, because to opportunity to make art work is not only work for the money, it is same as person is. When we are looking at contemporary culture, art marketing and artists position in society, we are close to difficult questions. Our media packed, technologically controlled, capitalist 21st century is even more extreme than that from a mere 30 odd years ago. Is it still possible that art can insert images into the stream of public speech and thus change political and social discourse? Many say that mass media has taken away the political speech of art. Robert Hughes goes as far as saying that “Even though we still have political art, we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates “value” and becomes, ipso facto, harmless.” He further adds that “the difference between us and the artists of the 1920’s is that they thought such a work of art could be made. Perhaps it was a certain naivety that made them think so. But it is certainly our loss that we cannot.” In my paper I will consider artists’ extreme work based on empirical data: survey for Finnish professional artists – writers, visual artists, and theatre artists including actors, directors, designers – (n=476) and interviews (22 interviewees). The themes of the empirical data are artists’ work, everyday life and wellbeing. Is working as an artist a search of extremes, seeking one’s limits and boundaries in many respects, or is it just another normal work? How is artists’ career path constructed, when no stable structures exist (hierarchy of the art field, cf. Bourdieu) or if they do, many of them are currently in transition because of increasing diversity in the art field, new technological possibilities, or globalization. In my paper, I discuss the tension between extreme work and normal work considering themes of space, place, recovery from work, and social networking (family and professional networks). I also pay attention to how artists recognize and describe the risks for wellbeing that their work includes. To conclude, I sketch artists’ own points of view on how to improve their wellbeing.
Damian O’Doherty, University of Manchester Beyond the Outside? Organization in Flight at the Airport Or, He Plays the Card of Conference Organizer and Presents Another Paper Entirely … probably ‘Manners, Etiquette, and Taste in Management Practice’ (which he has already written and is more confident about presenting) Abstract Fire is streaming out of the starboard engine of a ThomsonFly Boeing 757-200 carrying 233 passengers to Lanzarote. “MayDay! MayDay! Mayday! Thomson 253 Hotel. Engine Failure. We are continuing with NorthWesterly … and then inbound towards Wallasey”. Grammatically this might remind us of a body in ‘delirium tremens’ but we know it as the voice of a pilot distress message – or signal. In response to this near fatal recent bird strike involving two local Heron, staff working in the airport safety and maintenance unit are on heightened alert. These workers are known and self-identify as ‘dirty animals’. They are in their own words, ‘dirty’ and ‘contaminated’. “Bird man” is flapping his wings and running down the centre line of runway 2 at Westwich International Airport shrieking what sounds like a kazoo; meanwhile the airport cat is patrolling the marble steps of the corporate headquarters outside terminal 1 forcing the chief executive officer to navigate a wide arc in his efforts to gain entrance to Olympic House. It is still 6.30am and queues are building up outside the terminal, customer service staff are just about to ‘lose it’ - tempers are wearing thin and stories are circulating about a Cherokee jeep exploding outside the entrance of Glasgow airport. In another part of the airport, the head of projects is circulating a photograph of his latest adventures as spider man. Elsewhere, the head of security is sat at his desk; on his divider wall is a photograph of him in camouflage combat fatigues sporting an L85A1 standard army issue assault rifle… The airport seems a dangerous place to be for human life. On the borders of the nation state, in the margins of cities, and the boundaries of local territories, airports are quite literally ‘ex-treme’. For Augé (1995) they are ‘non-places’, beyond meaning and reason, a Bermuda triangle of academic concepts (Koolhaas, 2002), and a site of angelic visitation according to the polymath philosopher of science Michel Serres (1995). This is clearly going to pose some considerable problems for existing critical management studies and contemporary organization theory! Yet, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the word ‘extreme’ is a superlative that takes us beyond the Latin ‘exterus’ - meaning outside of territory – but insufficiently radical to apply to certain
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events deemed somehow beyond this outside. We are compelled to ask what provides the ground for this ground upon which a calibrated scale is established so that we can know the extreme? Beyond the ground, we find flight, or ‘lines of flight’ in the now popular idiom of Deleuze. The airport is perhaps that ‘event’ – a concept of considerable interest to contemporary continental philosophy, from Delueze to Badiou, as taken up in the social sciences and most recently, and in a variety of ways, in organization studies (for example, cf. Tsoukas & Chia, 2002; Weick et al., 2005; Schatzki, 2006; Deroy and Clegg, 2011). This paper seeks to explore the airport in this strange place somewhere beyond the ‘outside of territory’. Here we meet a whole series of ‘border crossings’ and transgressions, men becoming animals - and vice-versa, security and terror, but also bureaucracy, routine and boredom. In formal mathematics extreme is defined as either the first or last term of a series, a maximum or minimum value of a function, and in formal logic, the major or minor term of a syllogism. We will follow the work of terminal management as they try to work out how long a queue is, where it starts and where it ends. Our ethnography will explore the ways in which staff are unable to work out whether the end of a queue is also the start. It will follow the work of security guards and border agency as they try to find out how extreme their work is in the terminal hall. Here at the airport, this is an empirical question that takes us into that French meaning of ‘profond’ as worked in Deleuze (1968), namely a depth without foundation, a groundlessness of ground. Hence, what I call airport ethnography invites us to see organization as extended relationality (O’Doherty, 2012) where the ‘extreme’ recovers another sense of its meaning: beyond the delirium ‘tremens’ of a dying corpse, the body of the ‘nervous system’ in Taussig (1992), and the beginning of a post-human organization studies.
Session Three: CREATIVE INTENSITY Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm D2
Johanna Weststar, Amanda Peticca-Harris, and Steve McKenna, Western University and York University De-normalized Intensity: Extreme Work and the Video Game Industry Abstract The global video game industry is booming. Successful games are highly lucrative, with examples such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 grossing more than $775 million in its first week on the market (Rose, 2011). Highprofile successes along with a culture of fun, innovation and creativity generate an industry stereotype that suggests that video game developers get paid to play games (de Peuter & Dyer-Witheford, 2005; Deuze, Martin & Allen, 2007; Ross, 2003). This stereotype overshadows a different reality: the gaming industry is battling with extreme working conditions. High profile successes and the product ‘cool-factor’ conceal a highly secretive, competitive and largely risk averse industry; top tier console games can cost over $30 million to produce, yet less than 10% of video games shipped break even (IGDA, 2004: 42). Under the project management regime used in this industry, where the iron triangle of constraints (budget, schedule and scope) are paramount drivers in the lives of project team members (Chasserio & Legault, 2009; Legault & Bellemare, 2008), video game developers face issues of sustained working hours (‘crunch’), unlimited and unpaid overtime, poor work-life balance, musculoskeletal disorders, burnout, unacknowledged intellectual property rights, limited crediting standards, non-compete and non-disclosure agreements, and limited or unsupported training opportunities (Deuze, Martin & Allen, 2007; Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2006; IGDA, 2004; Legault & Weststar, 2010, 2012; Schumacher, 2006). This paper considers the ‘normalized intensity’ (McCann et al, 2008) of work within the game industry and how these working conditions have led to on-line resistance and resentment as observed in social media blogs and tweets of game developers and their families. Our data consists of three online narratives about the video game industry that were posted by their authors. The first narrative, “The Human Story” (posted under the tagline of ‘ea_spouse’) discusses the working environment at the Electronic Arts: Los Angeles studio during the making of the Lord of the Rings video games. The second narrative, “Wives of Rockstar San Diego employees have collected themselves” (posted under the tagline ‘Rockstar Spouse’), discusses the working environment at Rockstar: San Diego during the making of Red Dead Redemption. The third narrative, a set of
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over 56 consecutive tweets posted on Twitter under the tagline ‘veracious_shit,’ discusses the development process of the game L.A. Noire by Team Bondi Studio. We analyze the game industry through these three online narratives using a polyphonic frame inspired by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1984). The concept of polyphony as applied to organizational analysis highlights the ‘multi-voicedness’ of organizations where each individual offers a distinct voice and point of view that confronts the dominant perspective of the organization. Our analysis explores each narrative in terms of two polyphonic dimensions. The monologue is a narrator’s view of their world and captures the micro-level experiences of the blogger. The dialogue is created through the other voices that can be perceived within the story of the blogger and captures the structural, cultural, and socio-political environment of game studios and the game industry. In demonstrating the interconnectedness between the monologue and dialogue we highlight that the “normalized intensity” remains far from normal or accepted within this industry despite structural reinforcements and assumed cultural norms. We reveal how these extreme working conditions are being resisted and rejected by peripheral characters within the industry as they attempt to voice an ‘alternative truth’ to the dominant extreme work paradigm. Through Bakhtin’s (1984, 1993) idea of heteroglossia, this work explores the ‘dark side’ of an industry that is otherwise hidden beneath the rhetoric of ‘interactive entertainment’ and the ‘knowledge economy’. In doing so we consider the relationship between communication at an individual/micro level and what it might mean at an industry (meso) and societal (macro) level. Rather than reveal how the extreme conditions in this industry have become normalized, we expose the tensions, emotions, and experiences of workers and their families who are struggling to reconcile and meet the demands of work.
Alessandro Gandini, University of Milan Freelance Creatives: Good Job or Bad Job? Abstract The literature on good jobs versus bad jobs (Kalleberg, 2011) presents quite definite characteristics of what a good or a bad job is, or should be. Some of these features are “violated” by freelance creatives who, despite working with high levels of pressure and stress, often low paid or even for free, generally present a high level of job satisfaction and an enthusiastic mood about their worklife, whereas the negative features seem quite underestimated or even ignored below this narrative. This article aims to discuss these contradictions and to provide a deep understanding of such a controversial picture, dwelling into the nature of freelance creative work as a case study for an argument along the terms of the dichotomy extreme/normal work proposed by this substream, to then open up a more general reflection on neoliberalism and the "creative narrative" as an example of unconscious interiorization of neoliberal values where precarious lifestyles are confused with independence and liberating freedom. The present contribution is based on a doctoral research conducted between Milan and London, made of 75 interviews to freelance creatives in these two “creative cities”. Qualitative evidence will be provided about the peculiar contradictory nature of freelance creative work – and, to a certain extent, to creative work in general as well as on its peculiar relationship with neoliberalism as mentioned above. We can argue that a decade after Richard Florida's creative class manifesto, we are now confronted to creative labour markets where professionals are increasingly required to be independent and networked. The rise of social media platforms has enhanced the project-based and freelance nature of creative work as well as the necessity of networking as common practice to construct a solid reputation in the field. Reputation appears to be the decisive element to build a successful creative career to the extent that a “reputation economy” (Masum and Tovey 2012; Arvidsson and Peitersen 2013) seems to be in place among freelance creatives, whereby one's reputation in the network of professional contacts can be considered the determinant factor for professional success and, as data collected show, income sustain. In order to progress with their career, creatives (especially if self-employed) need to construct a network and build up a good reputation among their contacts. They have to be visible and recognized as active and trustworthy professionals towards their "peers", who can act both as hirers or as "recommenders". The element of social recognition among peers, combined with the numerous "benefits" in terms of personal success and "coolness" provided by participating to creative "scenes" (McRobbie, 2001) offers an original point of observation of the "extreme vs normal job" line of thought applied to creatives,
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whose professional life is often made of anxiety and stress for deadlines, uncertainty in payments and extended hours of unpaid work, essentially for the sake of "getting known". This picture is "balanced" by professional independence, "entrepreneurial freedom", reappropriation of time, and also the mentioned participation to the scene which is satisfying in symbolic terms by being part of a creative environment. The evidence provided will then open up an argument for which this picture seems to configure a "definitive win" of neoliberal values over alternative narratives, thanks to the acknowledgment and interiorization of the precarious nature of creative work and its contradictory realm as a "natural" professional pattern, for the sake of reputation construction.
Robin Samuel and Shireen Kanji, Stanford University and University of Basel Creativity and Work Incentives: How do they relate to male managers’ overwork? Abstract In this paper we examine how a subjective valuation of extreme work, that is the feeling of overwork, relates to a male manager’s personal valuation of the importance of creativity in his work. Values are likely to play an increasingly important role in individuals’ decision making around work (Arthur, Khapova and Wilderom, 2005) if, as Inglehart (1977) argues, societies experience declines in the relative importance of material versus post-materialist values as they get richer. Surprisingly little attention has focused on how these post-materialist values might relate to work-life balance (Promislo et al., 2011), work lifestyles and work preferences. One potential link between work preferences and values is that workers may shift their work focus from financial fulfillment to being able to realise more autonomy or creativity (Delhey, 2009). This may relate to a particular group of workers, such as managers, more than other groups. Concurrently, shifts in work preferences and values may not only be caused by post-materialist values but may be closely related to what Boltanski and Chiappelo term "The New Spirit of Capitalism" (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). They describe how hierarchies have become flatter, organisational structures fuzzier, and new forms of project-orientated jobs more common. Values such as mobility, innovation, autonomy, and creativity are increasingly rewarded in what have been characterised as new boundaryless (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996) and self-managed careers. Individualism (Bauman, 2001; Beck, 1992) and creativity are more important than ever (Florida, 2002). However, these values may come at a price, namely having to work hours that are longer than one’s preferences. Recent research shows that people in jobs with high levels of job autonomy and schedule control are more likely to report this kind of overwork (Echtelt et al., 2006; Schieman, Milkie and Glavin 2009). Job autonomy and schedule control may, in turn, be associated with jobs where workers either value creativity or where it is a required attribute. In this paper, we examine how creativity and work incentives are associated with overwork, focusing on managers. In previous work (Kanji and Samuel, 2012), we showed that male managers in Europe experienced overwork in an accentuated way relative to others. This finding is an illustration of the contrast between those in high-skilled jobs who want to work fewer hours and those in low-skilled jobs who want to work more hours, the so-called “time divide” (Drago, 2000; Jacobs and Gerson, 2004). Our paper examines how peoples’ valuation of the importance of creativity is associated with overwork. If valuing creativity is influential, as we find that it is, further questions relate to whether the route is through its being associated with working longer hours, or the creative value being associated with incentives to work longer hours. Probing further, we ask what exactly is this relationship between valuing creativity, financial incentives and overwork? Is responding to wage incentives a facet of a materialist society that is unlikely to coexist with valuing creativity, a value of post-materialism? Alternatively, do work incentives and valuing creativity go together to make up the ambitious contemporary worker who is less affected by overwork than others? We use data from the 2010 European Social Survey (ESS 5) on 22 countries. The ESS 5 contains information about job characteristics, hours’ mismatches and values, such as creativity, through the inclusion of a rotating module on Work, Family, and Well-Being. The survey was conducted in 2010, and the data were released in 2012. We restricted the analysis sample to working men in the age range of 25-60. We apply multilevel logistic regression in which the dependent variable is overwork. The model includes countries at level two and individual characteristics at level one. We use this model to explore how an individual’s self-evaluation of the importance of creativity and the characteristics of post-Fordist work are associated with overwork. We include variables to measure both post-Fordist work type, other work
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characteristics and people’s individual assessment of their creativity. An important aspect of this model is that we include an interaction between creativity and a measure of the incentive to work long hours, which is provided by the variable wage depends on effort. We find that managers with above average creativity have a reduced likelihood of being in the overworked category, while being below average increases the likelihood of being overworked further. So the valuation of creativity is related to the feeling of overwork. There is further evidence that managers with above average levels of work incentives and creativity are less likely to be overworked. In contrast for the group of workers, not only managers, we find a different effect: that higher creativity increases the likelihood of overwork. The effect of creativity on the overwork of a person who has an average level of wage incentive is positive. Similarly, the level of wage incentives increases the likelihood of overwork for a person who has an average level of creativity. We conclude that while valuing creativity and working in a high incentive environment for the whole group of workers increases the risk of overwork, managers with above average levels of both seem to be less likely to work more then they prefer. These results are all the more interesting because men who are in management positions or who are responsible for supervising other people, which to some extent go together, are in both cases more likely to be in the overwork category.
Session Four: THE EXTREME SELF Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am D2
Odul Bozkurt, University of Sussex Temporary Conversions of Mundane into Extreme Work: Christmas at the Supermarket Deli Counter Abstract Retail employment, especially that generated in large numbers by shift-based work in corporate supermarket chains, is a common reference for the disadvantaged end of what labour markets have to offer in advanced service economies (Bozkurt and Grugulis, 2011). Supermarket shopfloor jobs have low skills demands, offer low wages, and entail limited prospects for career development. As a result of the intersection of different flexibility imperatives of both employers and employees, working for supermarkets is typically temporally fragmented and transitory, basically involving a part-time workforce and a lot of churn. While they last, importantly, supermarket jobs are also characterized by their mundanity: they are famously boring. These are the opposite of the “high-caliber jobs” (Hewitt and Luce 2006) that are associated with “extreme work” in both material terms; ie involving exceptional effort for extravagant rewards, and in subjective terms; ie entailing a range of intrinsic rewards such as excitement, sense of empowerment, tasks variation and complexity that allow for high levels of subjective identification with the job, and status. This paper will consider a particular context in which the very mundane work of working in a supermarket becomes “extreme work”: Christmas. This temporary transformation will be discussed drawing on a subsegment of a wider study of employment in the British retail sector involving two of the major supermarket chains. In particular, the paper will utilize data collected through participant observation carried out between mid-November and mid-February for over 60 hours on the deli (including pizza, rotisserie and fish) counter of a town-centre large store format supermarket. A disproportionate amount of the observation shifts were, aligned with the shift rotas of the shopfloor staff in general, clustered in the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day. The deli department, along with the Bakery department, involves the greatest task variety for workers in most contemporary supermarkets in the UK and it also constitutes a focal point for the seasonally-adjusted retail theatre; as such, it provides a particularly appropriate site within the store site to investigate the transformation of work for and during the holiday season. The several weeks leading up to Christmas are widely known to be the busiest for most segments of the retailing business, in some instances up to half of annual turnover being generated in this time period. While technological changes in retailing is rapidly moving a growing number of transactions to online platforms, for supermarkets this period still requires significant labour adjustments, with numerical flexibility achieved through the hiring of seasonal workers and strict regulation of shifts to be covered by the permanent workforce.
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These are necessary to manage the spike in trading volumes as well as the diversification of products on offer. Retail work becomes “extreme” in this context firstly in terms of the material contract of employment, ie the hours demanded on the individual rotas, the number (and volume) of (new) retail merchandise to be handled and the numbers of customers to be served. The material aspects of work is also altered through the intensification of the “retail theatre” (Baron et al 2001, Harris et al 2001), involving the presentation of seasonal products and special promotions. But beyond a mere increase in the time and intensity of mundane work, Christmas can entail some of the compensatory elements of extreme work for “ordinary” workers, too, through a shift in the subjective experience of work on the supermarket shopfloor. The material intensification of work is calculated in the central planning of store operations, which translate into increased “labour spend” at the store level, cascaded down to departmental teams and individual workers in the form of longer hours as well as cancelled or postponed “off days” in anticipation of increased demands to handle wider range of goods and larger volumes of customers. However, the work on the deli counter becomes more authentically “extreme” also in the way in which the subjective experience of work is altered through the greater use of “soft HRM” (Truss et al 2003) methods by store management- ie appeals to the commitment, “team spirit” and “service ethic” of the workers in a way that is rather abruptly different from the pre and certainly the post-Christmas store. With the introduction of non-routine elements (eg the arrival of a seasonal range of cold cuts, highly perishable new forms of more expensive products etc) and the extension of time spent at work and with colleagues, there is a heightened presence of the job for the individual worker, a heightened immersion in it. At the same time, Christmas also brings about the blurring of the boundaries between the workplace and the “outside of work” to supermarket jobs, typically much more of a feature of high-skilled, professional jobs that rely on subjective commitment as a form of worker control (e,g,Kunda 1993). This is helped both by the social events organized at the store and department level, formally and informally, and also by the encounters with friends, relatives, acquaintances as “customers”, who are likelier during Christmas to opt for purchases from the deli counter (rather than self-service shelves) and engage in face-to-face service encounter. The “extreme work” crescendos with the much anticipated final few days before Christmas, including the eventual total clearance of perishable products that cannot be circulated at the deli counter in their usual way given the rare full day closure of the store for one day. It is then followed by the “lull” of January, when in fact, in line with the wage cost management requirements of central operations, workers are constantly encouraged – in fact more than gently nudged by their department supervisors- to take their days off. This temporary yet annually repeated transformation of mundane work into extreme work is possibly just as integral to the experience of supermarket jobs as the tedium that they are otherwise known to entail. Extreme work becomes a “perk” of the job, despite the fact that it entails a material intensification of the work itself. For the workers, there is far greater element of “play” introduced into this most “hard stretch” of the work year, alongside an intensification of soft HRM cues. Notoriously meaningless work becomes more meaningful, as it entangles workers with their colleagues, supervisors, store level managers, and customers in an altered form. A closer inspection of “extreme work” as a temporary upgrading of mundane work promises to help us better understand both a core dynamic of retail employment but also underscores the significance of temporality in the categorizing and analysis of extreme work in general.
Carolina Bandinelli: Goldsmiths College, University of London The production of the self in social entrepreneurship: Extreme frontiers of immaterial and cognitive labour Abstract The present contribution will focus on the genealogy of subjectivity in the so-called ‘social entrepreneur’: an individual that may be defined as an entrepreneur of the self who aims at positively impact on society by means of business. Drawing on one and a half year of immersive and self-reflexive ethnography, I will argue that labour in the field of social entrepreneurship may be conceived as “extreme” in so far as it involves the crafting of an appropriate self. Thus, a rather profound activity that requires the subject to effectuate transformations on the very modes s/he thinks, speaks, and behaves. As an ethnographer wishing to achieve a ‘deep hanging out’ (Geertz, 2000 ) with research participants, I myself have had to develop the subjectivity of a social entrepreneur. In other words, I have had to engage myself in a self-branding process, which everyone willing to become a social entrepreneur apparently has to undertake. In this respect, the ‘branding’ somehow precedes the ‘being’. As I have previously argued (Bandinelli and
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Arvidsson, 2012), when the branding applies to the self, rather than to a commodity, what is a stake is a deep maieutic activity, a Foucauldian hermeneutic of the subject, which involves the crafting and the deployment of specific ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault, 1988). Hence, recounting the ethnographic experience, I will describe which technologies of the self are required to plug into the network of social entrepreneurs. Theoretically, this endeavour may be conceived as the attempt to trace an empirical genealogy of this particular subjectivity. Incidentally, to ask questions about the genealogy of entrepreneurial subjectivity means to address the matter of the subjective engagement in, and the perception of, the production of subjectivity in neoliberal societies. Indeed, several and distinct intellectual traditions, from critical theories to cultural studies, from interpretative sociology to management studies, have theorised the pivotal role of an individualised and entrepreneurialised subjectivity in post-fordist societies. Maurizio Lazzarato, in his studies on immaterial labour (Lazzarato, 1997, 2004, 2009) poses the production of subjectivity at the core of post-fordist economy. According to Lazzarato, at stake there is the entrepreneurial subjectivity envisaged by Foucault: i.e., a subjectivity akin to the maintenance, at a social level, of the ‘formal game of inequalities’ (Foucault, 2008: 121) which regulates neoliberal free market. Angela McRobbie (2002), drawing on the sociological tradition represented by Beck, Giddens, and Sennett, claims that individuals are increasingly required to become their own micro-structures, and hence to find personal solutions for systemic problems. Entrepreneurial subjects, then, remind strongly of the typical inhabitants of what both Foucault in 1978-79 and Drucker in 1985 – although from very different perspectives – conceived as ‘the entrepreneurial society’. It is very relevant, therefore, to investigate the crafting of the entrepreneurial subjectivity at an empirical level – which means: at the level of the self . Although these matters have been approached from various perspectives, very few studies have focused so far on the many questions arising from the genealogy of the entrepreneurial subject. Post-Operaist thinkers have mainly conceptualised this issue as instrumental for the political economic mechanism, overlooking the question of how it is being produced by the very individuals at work. In a sense, they have tackled the question from the point of view of the macro cycle of production, without analysing the engagement of the subject with the actual, subjective experience of labour. Cultural scholars have gone a step further in conducting analyses at the level of the self, accounting for the subjective meaning of labour for creative workers. They have highlighted the dynamics of self-exploitation as well as the strong emotional and intellectual attachment that relate individuals to their work (see, for instance: McRobbie 1998, 2002; and Ross, 2004, 2008). Yet, the genealogy of this subject, the question of how can one become an entrepreneur of the self, is still an underrepresented issue. This article is an attempt to move in this direction, exploring the specific case study of social entrepreneurship. I would argue that social entrepreneurs represent a highly ambiguous and emblematic cases of entrepreneurship of the self . Indeed, while seemingly embodying the profile of the Foucauldian homo oeconomicus, and contributing to shape a society that will make ‘its own services an enterprise’ (Foucault, 2008) they also claim to be socially committed and to act for the public good. In this respect, they try to reconnect – at least at a discursive level – the domains of ethics and economy, which have been dramatically separated precisely by neoliberal governmentality. Therefore, to study the genealogy of this subjectivity at the level of the self means to try to understand how a neoliberal subject can manage to assemble and harmonise entrepreneurial mentality and social commitment. At a more theoretical level, then, this assumption might prove instrumental to an up-todate understanding of politics after the real subsumption of capital.
Dr Debbie Hill, Sheffield Hallam University Patient Safety: A Case of Crisis and Climate and the 'Three Faces of Self'? Abstract Organisational crises precipitated by human error are escalating and the impact on organisations is significant, particularly in terms of the financial, human and reputational effects, and potentially fatal. Events like these are alarming and disruptive occurrences and never is this more so than in healthcare where crises, in the form of adverse events, are so personally catastrophic for the individuals involved and organisationally destructive. There has been, and still is, quite rightly, a compulsion, on the part of researchers, policy makers and practioners, to understand why adverse events happen and to identify ways in which their progression can be
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halted. In the normative discourse specific attention is beginning to focus on the conditions that precipitate the evolution of such phenomena in the organisation’s systems and processes during the emergent, smouldering stages as a means of further curbing their development through better management of ‘latent conditions’. Focusing on the critical emergent stage, this work approaches the issue from a novel and distinctive angle, the workplace stories related by grassroots individuals who are closer to the incubation points of adverse events. Through narrative analysis of a sample spanning acute and primary care, the researcher deduced that healthcare professionals had a profound responsibility and duty towards their patients which resulted in working lives that were underpinned by a strong patient orientation. This position was enhanced by their professional identification and integrity. Healthcare professionals were confident in their skills and expertise and were resolute in their desire to deliver safe and effective patient care. The environment of belonging and willingness fostered by effective peer relationships created a positive work atmosphere which further contributed to better patient care. However, whilst patient orientation underpinned a healthcare professional’s duty, professionalism and collegiateship, there were also factors in the organisational climate which conspired to erode each of these aspects. The stories of participants’ working life were encapsulated in this work as the ‘Faces of Self’, a unique expression of grassroots’ workplace behaviours that inhibit and incubate error potential. This paper seeks to share this learning and stimulate a discussion concerning the role that professionals in healthcare can play in the amelioration of patient safety adverse events. The key proposition is that the systemic and process elements of ‘latent conditions’ are only a partial causative view of adverse events and must be complemented by an understanding of the contributory role of behavioural elements of ‘latent conditions’. These behavioural elements must be oriented towards a greater appreciation of the organisation’s climate and thus consider the orientation of individuals to those they serve and work with and the means by which the service is delivered since ruptures in each of these areas underlie adverse patient safety incidents. Specifically, more effective alignment of the organisational and individual goals and better consideration of how the organisation facilitates employee fulfilment of these goal aspirations will ensure that the interplay between the organisation’s systems and processes and individuals within the organisation is synchronised and focused on the same end. The benefits this creates in terms of employee cognitive and affective behaviours diminish the conditions in which errors incubate and are a source of strength in terms of a more effective individual, management and organisational performance. Thus, affective amelioration of the organisation’s climate, embracing both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ ‘latent conditions’, by policy makers, leaders within organisations and management generally will create a more effective, motivated and satisfied healthcare professional and negate the conditions in which the adverse patient safety incidents promulgate. In so doing, the smouldering crisis conditions, of which adverse patient safety incidents are typical, will be curbed and the patient safety programme in the UK will move forward on a more holistic platform.
Brian Bloomfield and Karen Dale, Lancaster University Fit for Work? Redefining Normal and Extreme Through Human Enhancement Technologies Abstract “Widespread use of enhancements might influence an individual’s ability to learn or perform tasks and perhaps even to enter a profession; influence motivation; enable people to work in more extreme conditions or into old age, reduce work-related illness; or facilitate earlier return to work after illness.” (Academy of Medical Science, 2012: 5) A historically persistent theme within the organisation of production (work/labour) has been the issue of ‘fitting’ workers to work in order to try and maximise output/efficiency (Hollway 1991). If Taylor’s pursuit of scientific management sought the one best way of doing a job, the rise of personnel selection aimed to match the individual worker to the demands of the work to be carried out. Some jobs require skill and dexterity, perhaps a degree of abstract knowledge; yet others demand sheer brawn and endurance in the face of hostile working environments; and so on. And whatever the job, each also requires an aptitude appropriate for the tasks to be carried out. What lies within one person’s capabilities might stretch another beyond their (emotional/psychological) limits. Not everyone could survive the demands of the coal mine or blast furnace; conversely, the physically robust might baulk at the requirements of the slaughterhouse or the monotony of the assembly line. Accordingly, what counts as ‘extreme’ or ‘normal’ in the context of work is not necessarily fixed or given as such, but rather, might be construed as something relational. Against this backdrop current and projected developments in human enhancement technologies (HET) augur both a dramatic revision of the
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problematic of fitting workers to work and a re-shaping of the boundaries of ‘normal’ and ‘extreme’ work. Not only might they expand the pool of labour pertaining to a given job by extending the capabilities of those (including people with disabilities) otherwise deemed below the requirements, but they also suggest the possibility of working more extremely – including physical or mental endurance, concentration span, and other forms of performance. Where once the measurement of the worker’s abilities and characteristics around a norm enabled management to match individuals to a set of tasks required for the efficient functioning of the organisation, the possibilities of human enhancement technologies open the vista for management to actively shape the body and mind of the worker to achieve not only a ‘perfect’ match but to go well beyond the norm. Thus, as well as providing a technological solution to ‘extreme work’, HETs also facilitate increasing opportunities for ‘working extremely’, a distinction we think it is important to make. Of course the search to extend the human resourcefulness and potential of the employee has become a key part of the managerialist mindset and in this regard HET’s may appear as yet another attractive fix for some of the problems of organising. Another aspect of the renegotiation of the normal/extreme boundary which warrants attention is the form of the contemporary “ideology of work” (Anthony 1977) which emphasises individuality, choice and freedom. As Hewlett and Luce (2006) argue, there is a strong impetus for professionals to see their extreme working as a heroic choice, a badge of honour, rather than due to the conditions of employment. On an individual level, various technologies, particularly drugs, are already used informally to ‘enhance’ extension of working hours, concentration or enthusiasm. With the growth of a culture of “normalised intensity” (McCann et al 2008), the boundaries between what are seen as ‘normal’ enhancement activities e.g. drinking coffee, and ‘pathological’ or ‘asocial’ activities such as drug-taking, are re-negotiated. For example, drug-taking is predominantly seen as a ‘problem’ for the organisation and management, with testing regimes and technologies and disciplinary policies devised in order to control and eliminate what is seen as deviant behaviour (Warren and Wray-Bliss 2009). The prospect of HETs changes these discourses considerably, allowing a new norm of how it is socially acceptable or expected to enhance oneself in order to be seen as promotable or a good employee. In this paper we explore how HETs provide a means to reshape the boundaries of ‘normal’ and ‘extreme’ in the context of work. Various forms of HETs are already used within occupations which are demarcated and defined as ‘extreme’, and in some cases have been over a long period of time. For example, the military has a history of using drugs to overcome what might be seen as the ‘normal’ limitations of the human, with amphetamines having been used at least since the Second World War as a solution to physical exhaustion, and to provide a numbing effect against reactions to the violence of war. Moreover, the military can often be seen as a testing ground for technologies which can be transferred to civilian life, and this is likely to be the case with enhancement technologies. Thus, enhancing the body will also enable the worker to undertake more extreme tasks or operate in more extreme task environments. In this way, usages and relations which initially start off being seen as pertaining to ‘extreme’ jobs or situations become ‘normalised’. For example, there is seen to be considerable potential in using stimulants to keep surgeons “alert and steady handed” (Kelland, 2012). Such technology might assist during long medical procedures, with the benefits of the work becoming doable/less risky (to the patient) through the enhancement of the subject/worker. Alternatively viewed, this might be seen as a technological fix for stressed and overworked medical staff, and used as a substitute for adequate levels of resourcing. A key focus for our paper comes from a recent report concerning the implications of human enhancement technologies and the future of work (Academy of Medical Science, 2012). Stemming from a joint workshop held between the Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences, British Academy and the Royal Academy of Engineering, the report includes discussion of the use of cognitive enhancing drugs to improve memory and concentration, hearing aids and retinal implants to improve sensory perception, bionic limbs to restore mobility, but also encompasses cognitive training and brain stimulation, gene therapy and tissue engineering, nutritional/lifestyle changes and cosmetic enhancement. Analysis of the report (as well as subsequent coverage in the media) reveals some interesting assumptions about the relationships between work and individuals, both now and into the future, and poses questions about how the categories of ‘normal’ and ‘extreme’ in the context of work might be construed and renegotiated through the possibilities of technological human enhancement.
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STREAM 8: CRITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES Dr. Caroline Essers Dr. Pascal Dey Dr. Karen Verduyn Dr. Deirdre Tedmanson
CRITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES SESSION ONE Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm H1
Peter Watt ‘Dropping out’, self-reliance and entrepreneurship: An inquiry into the myth, rhetoric and motive of an entrepreneurial ideal Abstract Throughout the history of ‘entrepreneurship studies’ there has been a consistent focus on the individuals who enact the entrepreneurial process. Besides the recurring focus in ‘leadership studies’ on leaders, there is no other domain of managerial/organizational inquiry that places such an emphasis on the individual characters (and what is characteristic in them) that perform this object of study. To this extent, the figure of ‘the entrepreneur’ has been sought out in the name of its study by way of demystification, lexical hypothesizing, unmasking, and a variety of other means. In each instance, the attempt is made to locate what it is that makes the entrepreneur entrepreneurial. What these various studies amount to is the conclusion that entrepreneurship is perhaps best understood as a characteristic orientation; a spirit of and for future opportunism; a talent allotted to a chosen few, whose ‘genius’ is defined by an individual project of permanent innovation1. And yet, because entrepreneurship is held in the social imaginary as the driving force behind the capitalistic process at large (indeed, governments in all Western countries of all political colours have promoted it as an answer to our current economic crisis), we are incessantly reminded that each and every one of us has the potential to be entrepreneurial. To this extent, entrepreneurship has become a cultural-imperative of late capitalism, which amounts to the perpetual demand for individuals to be entrepreneurial in all aspects of their everyday lives. Despite the ubiquity of ‘the entrepreneur’s’ position, only a few individuals are held up as the representatives of what we might call the ‘entrepreneurial ideal’. This suggests that although we may all have the potential to be entrepreneurial, only a small number realize what is envisioned as the ideal. It can be said with some confidence that over the past twenty-five years or so the three central figures of New Economic entrepreneurship have been Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Each of these individuals are in turn help up as a globally recognized examples of what can be achieved in the name of the globally oriented American(ized) Dream of liberal-democratic capitalism more generally. It is with the narrative events of these three figures’ in mind that the focus of this paper begins. A shared trait in the narratives of these three figures is the fact that they are all “college-dropouts”. Indeed, through the course of this paper I will develop the argument that it is upon this principal that a larger inference can be drawn on which the wider claims of the entrepreneurship discourses depend. The recurring trope of ‘dropping out’ is one that lies coiled in many areas of entrepreneurial life. As metaphor, comedic relief, and narrative-paradigm, dropping-out’s origins in the counter-cultural movements of the late 60s2 has become a dominant idiom of the most celebrated constituent of the capitalistic process. From the claim of hip-hop entrepreneurship by Kanye West through his ‘graduation trilogy’ (in which he develops an entrepreneurial alter-ego in the trilogy’s mascot, ‘dropout bear’) through to the U.K. government’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) promoting ‘dropout’-success narratives as part of their ‘start-up campaign’, the narrative trope of ‘the dropout’ is inherently bound up in the entrepreneur. It is with accounts such as these in mind that this paper seeks to make its contribution. What is there in the gesture of ‘dropping out’ that speaks to the essence of entrepreneurial success? In order to answer this question, the paper traces the way that ‘dropping out’ has been understood previously. Indeed the countercultural mantra of Timothy Leary - ‘turn on, tune in, dropout’4 – was later accounted for with it meaning ‘selfreliance’;; which I will argue is the principium that links ‘dropping out’ the entrepreneurial success. Indeed,
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‘dropping out’ speaks to the Americanized notion of success through self-reliance, hard work and the pursuit of individual happiness. Running parallel to this is the ‘dropout-entrepreneur’s’ basic narrative paradigm, which tells the story of an individual who drops out of university to pursue – by either choice or, as was the case in one high-profile incident, ‘accident’ – a dream, or, at the very least, a successful economic venture. The danger for a study of this nature is that it will inevitably culminate in a reductive inquiry into the ‘key traits’ that this narrative-paradigm purports to offer. However this is certainly not the aim. In addressing the character of the ‘dropout entrepreneur’ through the myth their narrative paradigm supports, the contribution is also one of method;; potentially offering an ‘alternative analysis of entrepreneurship’ itself. By addressing the wider entrepreneurial discourse through a focus on such a particular facet of the discourse, what this paper seeks to offer in its shared concern for demystifying, deconstructing and ‘unmasking’ the entrepreneur, is a consideration of the way in which the interpellation of individuals as ‘entrepreneurial subjects’ might be considered a dialectical and metaphysical concern for ‘motivation’. Indeed, the issue at stake in this paper becomes a philosophic one, and certainly cannot be ‘solved’ in terms of empirical-social-scientific means, or reductive psychosocial observations. To this extent, the methodological means of analysis will be borrowed from literary theorist Kenneth Burke’s The Grammar of Motives (1945); the central concerns of which are the means by which the aesthetic and rhetoric of drama (and therefore myth) can be understood sociologically. As Charles Taylor notes, the modern novel has, since its inception in the 18th Century ‘exalted entrepreneurial virtues,’ and it is to this extent that the twin dramatism of ‘real’ entrepreneurial biopics (like those of Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg) can be fruitfully contrasted with fictional literary expressions as a means of elucidating the central mythos the wider entrepreneurship discourses perpetuate. In doing so work on the dramatic underpinnings will hopefully be a further contribution to the focus of this stream.
Liliana Lopez Class consciousness among professionals forced into self-employment: What are the odds? Abstract In times when self-employment is usually not distinguished from entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship is touted as a key component of the economic well-being of nations, it is worth pausing to explore whether being self-employed always equals being entrepreneurial, the latter understood in the mainstream sense of individuals who autonomously identify and pursue a business opportunity (e.g., Lumpkin and Dess 1996). This paper starts from the recognition that while some individuals might turn to self-employment by opportunity and choice, others might become self-employed due to lack of employment alternatives, a phenomenon I refer to as forced self-employment. From that standing point, in the paper I seek to theoretically explore some of the origins and potential implications of forced self-employment among professional occupations under informational capitalism. In particular, I am interested in connecting some of the dots laid out by previous literature to examine whether professionals forced into self-employment are likely to develop an understanding of themselves as an oppressed class. The reason why I am interested in the possibility of class consciousness formation among this group grants some elaboration. On the one hand, professional occupations are on the rise, not only because more occupations have sought to professionalize, in ways that depart from previously known patterns of professionalization (Muzio et al. 2011), but also because access to higher education has “massified” globally (Altbach et al. 2009), and because higher education itself has made a conspicuous turn towards vocational and professional education, a turn some thinkers have associated with a larger trend of commodification of the university (Chomsky 2011; Giroux 1999). On the other hand, the professions have traditionally been understood as occupations where knowledge and ethical frameworks develop separately from the organizations with which professionals interact, and do not necessarily agree with the economic or political interests of these organizations (Abbott 1983). This independence would open a window of opportunity in which professionals could grasp the larger social, political and economic processes that have been causally implicated in their self-employment, and could then lead efforts to change social structures perceived as constraining. My theoretical exploration bridges two areas of research. First, I review existing literature describing how forced self-employment can be understood as a mode of oppression under capitalism, and how this mode of oppression can more easily reach professionalized occupations under informational capitalism specifically. In
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particular, I draw on the notion of flexible accumulation of capital as it applies to the flexibilization of the labour markets (Harvey 1989), the idea of commodification of information and information-intensive occupations (Schiller 2007), as well as formal empirical evidence of skilled labour being displaced from employment to market relationships under neo-liberalism (Portes and Hoffman 2003). Second, to the extent that class consciousness presupposes a particular kind of ethics and an understanding of the self as embedded in a historical process (Lukacs 1971), I consider some extant critical work which provides insights into how individuals, professionals in particular, construct an understanding of themselves and their historical situation, and how they form ethical frameworks to guide their actions in our times. I use three key building blocks. First, I rely on Fraser’s (2003) argument that in post-Fordist societies a Foucauldian notion of discipline still holds, but must accommodate a project of self-regulation of individual behaviour which relies on “dispersed and marketized modes of governmentality”. Second, I employ Fournier’s (1999) work on professionalism as a discursive mechanism to discipline behaviour. Finally, I draw on Sennett’s (1998) thesis that contemporary workers, by adjusting their work behaviours to adapt to corporate demands, might be eventually confronted with the problem of having corrupted their personal values. Altogether, these three arguments help me note that professionals forced into self-employment are or have been regularly exposed to pressures to self-regulate coming from their professions, their previous workplaces, as well as society at large. Such pressures often embed market discourses, and as such might result in individuals who define themselves and make work-related choices on the basis of what seems appropriate and desirable under a market logic. This conclusion seems at odds with the possibility of them developing class consciousness anytime soon.
Benjamin Scheerbart Where Art and Commerce Hold Hands in the Sunset: A Pilot Study of KaterHolzig @ Papaya Playa—A Design Hotels™ Project Abstract The paper seeks to explore new entrepreneurial subjectivities and organizational forms that emerge in relation to the world’s first “pop-up hotel” and reports results obtained following a pilot study of the ‘KaterHolzig @ Papaya Playa - A Design Hotels Project’ located in Tulum, Mexico. The research hypothesis posits that the socio-economic structures underlying this project provide a futile testing ground for investigating and illustrating the mechanisms of contemporary, networked, and creative capitalism as well as for illuminating significant developments taking hold therein. Structurally, the paper begins with an attempt to establish a working definition of capital before deploying it to test empirically the popular notion that capital is becoming ‘spirit’. Here, we find support for Boltanski and Chiapello’s notion of co-optation. Specifically, we find that the creative individuals/artists involved in the running of the hotel playfully (and efficiently) innovate through their strive for self-determination (Selbstbestimmung). While the traditional corporate model presupposes a self that is yet to be actualized (Thomä, 2002), in other words, whose most natural state of being is perpetually out of reach, self-determination depends less on striving toward a transcendental good in its explicit drive for individual autonomy. It is the freedom to make one’s own choices, including the creation of work and membership in professional and artistic networks that drives the subjects behind the Papaya Playa Project. However, embodied in the figure of the entrepreneur, this form of capitalist spirit ostensibly eschews the pitfalls of corporate overdetermination. Today, more so than ever before, neo-liberalism thrives on immaterial production, which, in turn, requires constant innovation or, to use its new label, ‘creativity’ (fittingly the hotel is built on the ruins of luxury hotels that where abandoned in the wake of the 2008 crisis of financial capitalism). Within this conception, the creative individual-as-enterprise is a crucial figure of study. In fact, many members of the Papaya Playa Project could even be thought of as individuals-as-multiple-enterprises. It is argued that the immateriality of the innovation produced by these creative individuals enables a new form of capitalism, in which exchange exists at the level of individual identity. Broadly speaking, the hotel can be considered a living on-going artistic production in which the boundaries between commerce and art, and more generally, capitalism and anti-capitalism become difficult to identify. Further, a blurring of traditionally sharp distinctions between labor and leisure time, as well as producer and
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consumer roles (a ‘prosumer’), give rise to fluid, transitory, and rhizomatic networks of connections, in and through which the prosumer operates. The improvisational, flexible, and responsive character of these networks arguably surpasses traditional managerial networks in efficiency. As part of this production, physical and emotional artifacts have been temporally and spatially dislocated from Berlin to Tulum. In effect, this dislocation demonstrates not only a commercialization of an aestheticized experience but also a commodification of emotions. The concluding reflections on both creativity (as normal business) and freedom caution against the unquestioned celebration of self-determined entrepreneurialism as a response to the artistic demands placed upon contemporary capitalism.
Lena Högberg (previously Andersson), Linköping University Producing difference;; Entrepreneurs’ discursive positioning in relation to ethnicity, gender and home care to elderly Abstract In this paper the discursive positioning and identity construction of two entrepreneurs in the care sector is narrated and analysed. The Swedish public sector is by tradition marked by a large number of women employees and of lately a large proportion of employees are also foreign born. In legitimating neo-liberal reforms in the elderly care sector, politicians argued that opening up traditional public sector domains would benefit those employed in the sector, who would now have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs. These new entrepreneurs were to offer “diversity” (c.f. Sundin & Tillmar 2010) to the “increasingly heterogeneous” population of elderly people in Sweden. The idea of “diversity” in this context is seldom qualified but is used to denote both small firms and anyone that offers something “different” from the traditional ways of carrying out care. Entrepreneurship is simultaneously produced as a general solution to all kinds of problems (c.f. Perren & Jennings 2005) and at the same time as “that which contributes to diversity”. Interviews with the two entrepreneurs were conducted as part of a large study of the restructuring of the provision of home care to elderly in a mid-sized Swedish municipality in which issues of ethnicity and gender is of particular interest. Research into entrepreneurship typically fails to produce images of entrepreneurs as anything different than the established norm: the white middle-aged male (c.f. Ogbor 2000). In more than one way the two entrepreneurs portrayed in this paper are in minority. The female is in a minority position when it comes to enacting the malecoded role of entrepreneurship whereas the male entrepreneur is in minority in the nurse profession and of being a care-provider for elderly people. Both entrepreneurs are foreign born but have lived half their lives in Sweden. Both speak several languages besides Swedish. They are also small firm owner managers in a sector where large organizations dominate both as care providers (large multinational firms have taken most market shares since the deregulation) and as customer (the municipality, acting as the financier of elderly care, is the only customer). In the interviews, both entrepreneurs produced narratives of how they came into entrepreneurship in the home care to elderly sector, telling me about their experiences and therein simultaneously producing images of identity. Entrepreneurs’ identity construction has hitherto been largely neglected in research into entrepreneurship (Essers 2009, p. 13) but with the introduction of a discursive orientation in entrepreneurship studies social constructionist accounts of identity formation have been presented (c.f.Fletcher 2003; Essers 2009). This paper engages in this development and embraces the idea that identity creation is a process which is socially constructed through language in interaction between people. The purpose of this paper is to analyse entrepreneurs’ narratives of how they came into business in the elderly care sector as discursive production of identities (c.f. Davies & Harré 1990) in an effort at producing alternative images of “entrepreneurship” than are regularly pictured in the dominating entrepreneurship discourse (c.f. Ogbor 2000; Ahl 2004; Essers 2009). The research questions guiding the analysis are: How do entrepreneurs engaged in a recently constructed market of home care for elderly construct their identities in making sense of themselves as entrepreneurs and in relation to ethnicity and gender? What discursive resources do entrepreneurs draw on and what categories do they relate to when positioning themselves and their businesses? The method used to produce material for the paper is inspired by life-story method, where I strived to leave up to the persons interviewed to decide what issues to bring up (c.f. Essers 2009, p. 149) and what categories and discursive positions to relate to. The analysis is based on a combination of narrative methods (Czarniawska
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2004) and discourse analysis (c.f. Jørgensen & Phillips 2002). In the context of the deregulated sector of home care to elderly, we find the two entrepreneurs at the intersection of the “feminine stamped” care discourse and the “masculine stamped” entrepreneurship discourse (c.f. Ahl 2004). In making sense of their entrepreneurship experiences, “difference” is constructed through both identification and disidentification (c.f. Humphreys & Brown 2002) with the immigrant category. Both entrepreneurs position their business as offering something unique to the market based on their personal experiences of “being different”. Simultaneously, the entrepreneurs point to that by being “entrepreneurs”, and thereby contributing to society, they are different from the discursively produced image of “the immigrant” as someone who is unemployed and a burden to society.
CRITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES SESSION TWO Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm H1
Alan Wagg Emergence and Entrepreneurial Becoming: Placing the emphasis on Remaining Entrepreneurial Abstract This paper challenges the often accepted literature that prescribes a form of entrepreneurship to economic success and a number of current studies that are investigating the impact of entrepreneurship on social change. We intend to examine emergence and entrepreneurial becoming through a study of entrepreneurs and their organizations culture at close quarters in order to give us a richer understanding of entrepreneurial being. We argue that entrepreneurship studies should not be limited to prescriptions that dominate the literature suggesting who entrepreneurs are, what they should do and the forms of success that they should strive for but should be concerned with the creation, recognition and exploitation of opportunities as well as with the actual lived lives, behaviours , cultures and narratives of entrepreneurs themselves. In a time of austerity, with wealth creation at the forefront of many agendas the importance of entrepreneurship should be understood in its complexity rather than in its prescriptive simplicity. In placing entrepreneurs in context with their emerging ventures we can establish “what persons in organisations do” and “why they do what they do”. We argue that research should adopt a behaviour perspective on entrepreneurship (Gartner, Bird & Starr, 1992) which investigates organisational emergence and every–dayness. Organisational behaviour integrates diverse topics as personality, attitudes, motivation, group dynamics, roles, communication, decision making, structure, technology, culture power and leadership. (Gartner, Bird & Starr, 1992) A focus is needed in particular on behaviour and motivation. Weick (1997) suggests “organisational behaviour is inherently ambiguous” and motivations change during the process of evolution they reasons entrepreneurs start a venture may differ from why they continue with their business. We argue that organisations are simultaneous individual and social phenomena (Weick, 1979) and that entrepreneurship is a matter of everyday activities rather than the actions of elitist groups of entrepreneurs (Steyaert & Katz, 2004). The research should be balanced between prestart and beyond. Organisations and entrepreneurs are in a continuous flux and transformation (Weiskopf & Steyaert, 2009). Entrepreneurship should therefore be researched as an ongoing process [entrepreneurial becoming] rather than entrepreneurial being (Weiskopf &Steyaert, 2009). Moving away from the idea that the entrepreneur is someone who is surveying the world from above (Weiskopf & Steyaert, 2009) instead we should accept there is a managerial entrepreneurial overlap (Ireland Hitt & Sirmon, 2003). This perspective argues that an individual’s cognitive experiences, frame beliefs, but that organisational emergence and the way they make sense of things shape attitudes and behaviours which all impact on decision making. Aldrich (1990) in his review of entrepreneurship methodologies called for more diverse data collection methods, particularly quantitative and ethnographic methods which he suggested would add value and unique insights and Linstead (1993) also made a plea for deconstructive ethnography. The research has therefore been undertaken through an ethnographic study of two organizations, one of which is a manufacturing organization
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and the other service based company. Ethnography allowed us to slice through the hills of enlightenment about entrepreneurs, to create connections where perhaps none had before existed, as well as shed light onto the chasms of obscurity that exist between the categories of entrepreneurial traits. The organizations and entrepreneurs were chosen to reflect the differences between different individuals. The researcher had a unique position which combined his role as active member of the organization with that of an observer of entrepreneurial behaviour and its effects on people over a three year period. At the point where common themes emerged out of the data, interviews were structured to test some of the concepts in differing contexts to find any disconfirming evidence or variations on a theme. The research highlights various topics that arise throughout the cases and interviews which appear important in determining the evolution of different businesses for example the motivations behind the entrepreneur’s decision to start a venture and the behaviours that occur as a result of every-dayness. The research scrutinizes the day the day involvement of entrepreneurs and the extent to which they spend time analyzing and making sense of daily occurrences. The research examines the levels of trust different individuals are comfortable with and their ability to release control to others. It depicts the interaction between entrepreneurs and their followers and examines the way in which these individuals want to be viewed by their staff. Throughout the study there are illustrations on the way in which organizational occurrences impact on things such as decision making, highlighting the gaps left as a result of viewing entrepreneurs in a vacuum. The research also questions the influence that self-efficacy has on an entrepreneurs fear of failure and propensity to risk both of which influence decision making. Finally the research examines the contention that entrepreneurs crave freedom to make decisions but in reality often procrastinate and avoid decision until it’s too late. The study is structured in such a way that its shows how existing literature fails to explain the effect of past experiences and beliefs on entrepreneurial being and uncover everyday issues that influence an individual’s ability to make decisions and embrace risk. It portrays a story whereby the motivation to set up a business, the way in which people view the world, the emotional turmoil that challenges these people everyday single day that are at work has a significant bearing on what they do next.
Sally Jones The CULTure of Entrepreneurship Education Abstract Objective This conceptual paper reflects on the positioning of Higher Education entrepreneurship educators and the role of entrepreneurship education in perpetuating an uncontested episteme of entrepreneurship. It highlights the unease felt by a group of educators from across Europe about entrepreneurship education’s entanglement with political calls for an entrepreneurial culture. As European entrepreneurship educators we experience this entanglement first hand, raising concerns about our practices, since we disseminate beliefs and values through our teaching that are largely taken for granted within the field. The aim of the paper is to answer the recurring questions in any given field of knowledge: ‘What do we teach students, how do we teach them and why do we teach what we teach?’ In coming from the starting point of our own struggles, this paper addresses the criticism that ‘critical writings tend to remain virtually unpeopled abstractions’ (Danforth, 1997:3). It also responds to calls for research on HE entrepreneurship that focuses on the relationships between the process and the sociospatial environment through paying attention to the people involved in academic entrepreneurship education (Pilegaard, Moroz, & Neergaard, 2010; Jones, 2012).
Prior work Entrepreneurship and enterprising behaviour is promoted all over Europe as a solution to important contemporary challenges, not only for individuals and organizations but for society in general (Wennekers & Thurik, 1999). Analyses of this promotion of an enterprise culture suggest that entrepreneurship increasingly is conceptualised in cultural terms concerned with attitudes, values, and forms of self-understandings (Gay & Salaman, 1992) and the development of an ‘entrepreneurial self’ (Peters, 2001). Thus the term has become endowed with meaning far beyond the activities of small business owners. Until now such critical assessments have primarily come from outside the field of entrepreneurship research. This paper delivers a critical analysis from within the field, based in the discipline of entrepreneurship education.
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Approach Metaphor analysis is a research method which attempts to reconstruct models of thought, language and action and may be used intentionally by researchers and theorists to explore particular ideas or thought systems. In entrepreneurship research, metaphor analysis has been recognised as a viable method to retrieve insights on models of thought, language and action (Anderson, 2005; Dodd, 2002). The analysis of metaphors enables researchers to explore the manner in which the world is experienced, helping us to view societal investments from a different perspective and furthering the understanding of phenomenon, especially in difficult circumstances (Cornelissen, Oswick, Christensen, & Phillips, 2008). Previous use of metaphor analysis in entrepreneurship research has, for instance, focused on the metaphors used by entrepreneurs in everyday talk (Dodd, 2002) and the metaphors used in the media to describe entrepreneurs (Nicholson & Anderson, 2005). Through the metaphor of 'the cult' we explore and delineate aspects of entrepreneurship that we, as entrepreneurship educators, find difficult. The ‘cult’ metaphor is used because we cannot fully describe our difficulties and concerns as a broader sociological and philosophical phenomenon within current representational modes of entrepreneurship. The metaphor analysis conducted is centred on; the rituals, the deities, and the salvation components of the cult construct. We examine how entrepreneurship education is promoted in the public domain and how the language used has the potential to position entrepreneurship and the rationales of entrepreneurship education as a form of new religious movement. Additionally, we provide an analysis of the axiological dimension of the metaphor, which is concerned with the ethical and socio-political implications of the educational transmission of potentially cult-like (and therefore uncontested) world-views.
Results and Implications Metaphor analysis offers opportunities for enabling the irreducible paradigm of entrepreneurship to be seen as an object of study in its own right and encourages reflection on this particular socio-cultural phenomenon whilst providing insights into how we experience the social reality of entrepreneurship education in higher education. In using the metaphor of the cult to examine entrepreneurship education, we uncovered elements of a hidden curriculum which perpetuates an uncontested paradigm manifested through rituals deities and salvation rites. Through these characteristics we provide a description of the current dominant conceptualisation of entrepreneurship as a socio-cultural phenomenon – the cult of entrepreneurship. In unconsciously allying oneself with a particular approach to entrepreneurship, educators become complicit in a form of 'invisible pedagogy' (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990:18) and by this neglecting to a critical engagement with the potential instability of debates in this scientific field, The result of such neglect would leave the entrepreneurship field in a particular, unspoken way, which emphasises certain aspects of entrepreneurial theory whilst 'closing down' other areas of debate or dissent.
Value This paper uncovers what we consider to be a hidden curriculum and argues for the necessity of reflection upon this episteme. Over the past 25 years an exponential growth in entrepreneurship education programs has occurred in tertiary education. This makes it important to reflect on where we are and how we have arrived here. We argue that, before heading into a future built on uncontested socio-cultural norms and values tacitly linked to current dominant conceptualisations of entrepreneurship, we need to reflect on the paradigm of entrepreneurship. New approaches may come from the use of critical pedagogy, which springs 'from a dissatisfaction with the role of education in the (re)production of alienating and oppressive social structures and conditions' (Masschelein, 1998: 521). Critical pedagogies claim that education is not a natural, ahistorical phenomenon but that it should be understood in its sociohistorical and political context. Moreover, critical pedagogies are committed to the imperative of transforming the larger social order in the interest of justice, equality, democracy, and human freedom (Biesta, 1998: 499). Allied to this we also suggest a future research agenda which includes calls for a multi-level analysis of the relationship between societal interventions, political systems, research and education.
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Pam Seanor, David Haigh, Tim Curtis Collective narratives to question assumptions of trust in social entrepreneurship Abstract Within the social entrepreneurship literature, trust is assumed as what holds together relations and based upon shared values [GHK 2005; Murdock 2005, 2012; Pharoah 2007]. The nature of the trusting relations is viewed as within and between organizations and between organizations and their clients/beneficiaries. The narrative rarely voices discontent in relations. Dey [2010] poses a problematic divide. What if practitioners do not share values or base their everyday actions upon moral views or ideologies? He finds researchers might bias towards their idealized views of social enterprise. Thus calling into question, might what is said in the social enterprise narrative distort the reality of everyday relations? Our title borrows from Steyaert [2007] and seeks to ‘compexify’ the simple story of trust told in the social entrepreneurship narrative. Another story is also commonly told in the literature. It has long been posed that contractual legal frameworks lessen trusting relations [Fenton et al 1999]. Other literatures reflect this view of trust as in co-collaborative, non-contract based transactions [Welter 2012]. However, contractual agreements are the focus of many relations between social enterprise and the public sector. Pestoff and Brandsen [2009] say the changing nature of relationships is based upon long-term relations based upon trust and is replaced by short-term contract-based relations. Numerous theorists link this to power being held by public sector agencies [Reid and Griffith 2006; Murdock 2007; Somers 2007]. Nonetheless, there appears little research in the field as to how trust is enacted in everyday practices. This raises the issue of duality between trust and control. But is it simply the contractual agreements, which damage trust? The recurring narratives within government rhetoric promote competition and the need for social enterprises to become more business-like, which are viewed as potentially damaging to trust. This argument holds potentially important implications for better understanding what is meant by trust from the actual stories of those involved. In this paper we examine the negotiations between trust and control. We examine stories told by practitioners to better understand these relations, how trust is enacted in these relations and to critique the academic literature. We take a critical narrative approach based upon three independent studies. These were undertaken between 2004-2010 with social enterprise practitioners in England working in social organizations and support agencies. Each utilized semi-structured interviews with those responsible for developing and delivering social enterprise activities. We argue that such research offers insights into how practitioners discuss trust in their everyday practices. Welter [2012:204] finds “Trust can be socially constructed” and links to “collective sensemaking and interpretation”. We concur with those academics advocating the need to consider multiple interpretations, which has become increasingly recognized in entrepreneurship literature [Cope 2005; Down 2006; Steyaert and Hjorth 2006]. Dey and Steyaerts’ [2012] theorizing of transgressive aspects of how practitioners make sense of everyday interactions is noteworthy for not only breaking boundaries and going off route from the literature. Underlying these notions are deeper moral and ethical claims relating to assumed codes of conduct in social enterprise relations, particularly the stereotype of trust. From examining collective narratives, we pose that trust is not the whole story. These collective narratives linked to issues of control, negotiation, and power. Participants spoke of a desire for equality in what are described as chaotic environments where negotiations are dependent upon the ‘quality of dialogue’.
We argue that more complexity of enacted trust and a questioning of assumed trust are required. The findings indicate that trusting relations were based upon establishing credibility, competence and friendliness and described the need for establishing ‘good and trusting relations’ in collaborative working. Good relations were perceived as important at all points in projects, as without trust, the relationship ended as a ‘one–off experience’. The role of trust is not so much reducing transactional costs. Instead it appeared more to be associated with different phases of social enterprise from start-ups to established organizations. Whilst the phases were concerned with the benefits of trust in gaining public sector contractual agreements, there were also stories of distrust. Some participants said that under a grants situation there was a relationship of trust but this changed with the introduction of contracts. Others more commonly identified competition and ‘competitive bidding rounds for the ever decreasing amounts of money’, both grants and contracts, as linked to distrust between organizations and support agencies. As such we present the nature of trust as changing and fragile. The contribution of this paper is to offer a more critical perspective of trust in social entrepreneurship in the third sector to show the fragile nature of this construct between those in social organizations and the public sector. This is important as it helps to conceptualize dialectics of trust and power. The conceptual contribution comprises pointing at the dialectics of trust, for instance by suggesting and also demonstrating that trust is never too far removed from control and power. Collective narratives offer a more nuanced perspective of trust from that often heard in the social enterprise academic narrative. Data was compared for contradictions, nuances, where in conflict and what omitted [Brown et al 2005]. We present everyday stories as “… local
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critiques have been made possible by the “return of knowledges;;” the return of local knowledges that have not been systematized and that have resisted being incorporated into a system. Foucault describes these knowledges as “subjugated” and coming “from below.” That is, they are “a whole series of knowledges that have been disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: naïve knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity.” However, we do not present these stories as more true than others. As such, we seek to encourage space for debate within the literature.
CRITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES SESSION THREE Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am H1
Dorota Marsh and Pete Thomas From demonization of homo sovieticus to heroicization of homo entreprenaurus: Poland and the neoliberal project Abstract The purpose of this paper is to discuss the process of transformation in Poland from a communist regime to a neoliberal economy. We postulate an approach which is underpinned by understanding of a social change as dialectical relationship between discoursal and non-discoursal “moments” of social life. Our analysis focusses on establishing how the discourse of neoliberalism gained its momentum from a simple “imaginary” to a fully operationalized social formation, with a particular focus on the entrepreneurial identity and its representation. The paper outline proceeds as follows. First, we give an initial illustration of a set of changes which characterised Poland from the beginning of the process of transformation in 1989 until the present time. Second, we give an overview of our approach which draws on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough,1995; Chouliariki and Fairclough, 1999) and the dialectical thinking of Harvey (1996). We distance ourselves from the theoretical approaches of transitological studies as they tend to neglect the role of active producers, and the hegemonic function of the ruling class in shaping the new economic and political model in Central and Eastern Europe. Instead our approach is underpinned by the conviction that the mechanisms used in establishing patterns of domination should be analysed in specific contexts as the path of creating and reconstructing the power of economic elites (Harvey, 2005). We acknowledge the distinction between the actual process of transformation (set of changes) and the discourse of transformation (or more precisely the discursive character of strategies for transformation) and more importantly the relationship between both (Fairclough, 2005). Discourses not only contribute and shape the processes but the boundaries between discourses and other elements of social life are fluid. This dialectical relationship is particularly important in our analysis as we are aiming at uncovering how the ways of representing are being transformed into material realities in the Polish context. In proposing this approach we explore how certain discoursal and non-discoursal “moments” of social life affected the emergence, selection, implementation and retention of the Polish neoliberal discourse via the key polarised, nodal discourses of the “demons” of the communist past and the “new” entrepreneurial future. We demonstrate how the postcolonial mentality of Polish intelligentsia, shaped by the complexes of inferiority towards the West resulted in uncritical enthusiasm for the neoliberalism of its Western surrogate hegemon (Thompson, 2005). Thirdly, by exploring this dialectical relation between various elements of social process with a key focus on the discoursal moment, we give an account of the shift of these nodal discourses from simple representations to having transformative effects on social reality. We demonstrate how the edited and re-edited discourse of homo sovieticus (Sztompka, 1993; Morawska, 1999; Sieradzki, 2012) was used not only as a tool of stigmatizing (certain behaviours), but more importantly how its constitutive effects modified the institutional materiality. We then discuss how the ideological discourse of entrepreneurship (Nodoushani, and Nodoushani, 1999; Ogbor, 2000; Jones and Spicer, 2009; Perren and Jennings, 2005), was recontextualised, disseminated and appropriated in the Polish context in order to create and legitimise preconditions for a new economic system based on the dominant role of the self-regulating market. We explore how the discourse of entrepreneurship, supported by the dominant discourse of transformation, was operationalized into a range of economic mechanisms (including flexibility strategies) aimed at “unmaking of working class” (Kideckel, 2002). We also demonstrate how the nodal discourses of homo sovieticus and homo entreprenaurus, despite
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being ideologically opposite became mutually reinforcing, forming a “discursive chain” (Fairclough, 2003) contributing to the hegemonic status of the Polish neoliberal discourse. Finally, we then discuss contemporary manifestations of the politicisation of the discourse of the entrepreneurship and its operationalization, serving to sustain prevailing structures of power and domination.
Maria Daskalaki, Irene Sotiropoulou Towards Transformational Entrepreneurship: Collaborative Self-Organised Initiatives in Greece Abstract Contextual approaches to entrepreneurship have already received significant attention (Johannisson and Nilsson, 1989; Johannisson et al., 1994). Social relations have been discussed as vehicles of entrepreneurship and the role of ‘entrepreneurial community’ in promoting an entrepreneurial process has been highlighted (Hargrave and Van de Ven, 2006; Steyaert, 2007; Hindle, 2010). This paper, building upon these studies, explores the processes through which conditions of rapid and severe socio-economic transformation are framing a context of/for entrepreneurship in Greece. Specifically, the paper explores social entrepreneurial initiatives and focuses on the processes of their emergence, evolution as well as their gradual embeddedness in an entrepreneurial community currently characterizing the Greek social environment. The environment of the so called ‘financial crisis’ in Greece, we will propose, is a context in which new initiatives are currently coproducing an ‘entrepreneurial milieu’ (Julien, 2007) which not only relies upon relationships of sociality (Hjorth. 2013), collaboration and solidarity for its establishment but gradually creates a platform for social participation, collaborative engagement and creativity across social and economic activities. Economic reforms against debt, pushed down through state monetary policies (austerity) are institutionalized forces that aim to transform the living conditions of the majority populations, their standard of living and their social relations and meanings. The resultant unemployment, poverty, deprivation and social inequality are already having a direct effect on the psychological aspects of individuals, definitions of selfhood, and relationships with the self and others as well as the collective definitions of culture and society. We want to explore and try to interpret how the affected individuals and communities experience these transformations through collaborative self-organized activities. We thus focus on creative action initiatives, evidence of social entrepreneurship that has started shaping up as a constituent element of Greek social reality. In particular, we explore the stories and the efforts of collectives involved in four types of activity: a) a factory in the Greater Thessaloniki area which, after a large grassroots campaign all over Greece, re-opened as workers cooperative in February 2013. This is the first example of such a large production unit being undertaken by its own employees in the country and the way it turns out will largely affect similar initiatives already announced in other areas of Greece where industrial units close down; b) an Exchange Network in Chania, Crete which is a parallel currency scheme where members perform transactions among each other by using a virtual accounting unit system. Since autumn 2012 it is under re-organisation stage, which means that important features of the scheme are negotiated again, while the entire initiative continues working through open markets in Chania; c) a free goods network covering the entire country through an online platform where members can give away for free what they do not need anymore and receive, also for free, what other members have to offer. It also has special sections for barter, in case any member wants a reward for her/his offering and special sections for exchanging ideas and instructions for crafting and for showing crafts made out of materials acquired through the network and d) an Art bank based in Athens, which is a long-term project by an art collective, attempting to explore the possibilities of art existing in social intervention itself. Artbank is one of their projects based on the idea that money can be backed by a real thing, like artistic work, instead of precious metals or impersonal economic institutions. Through these cases, we will explore critical entrepreneurship not only as a process of emancipation (Calas et al. 2009; Rindova et al., 2009; Tedmanson, et al., 2010; Dey and Steyaert, 2011 Steyaert, 2011; 2012) but also as catalyst for new possibilities and associations that subvert and de-institutionalize social relations, establish constitutive connections with social movements and institute new social arrangements and possibilities for change. We will stress the transformational aspects of entrepreneurial collaborative practices – what we call transformational entrepreneurship - and suggest that, though subversion and affect are the binding forces behind their formation, their survival and evolution are based on their capacity to create new forms of sociality and interventionary citizenship.
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Stephanie Chasserio, Typhaine Lebègue, Corinne Poroli, Philippe Pailot, IAE Lille “The role of the spouse in the business venture: how women’s entrepreneurship challenges traditional family relationship” Abstract The traditional point of view in entrepreneurship theories largely neglects the social change dimension of entrepreneurship and its gendered content (Calas, Smircich and Bourne, 2009). The ideal rational and heroic entrepreneur without any social constraints and obligations do not exist is an easy way to oversimplify reality. In a critical perspective, it seems essential to reconsider all social dimensions of entrepreneurs in a new comprehensive framework (Bowen and Hisrich, 1986; Brush et al., 2009; Calas et al., 2009; Jennings and McDougald, 2007) This critical approach is particularly relevant concerning women. Indeed women entrepreneurs challenge the traditional vision of entrepreneurs;; they don’t “fit” perfectly with the rational understanding. Indeed, due to the social context, women entrepreneurs deal with different and, sometimes, antagonistic dimensions in their life. Moreover, several authors stress that all these dimensions of women’s lives are deeply intertwined (Bruni et al., 2005; Edwards and Rothbard, 2000; Greenhaus and Powell, 2006; Powell and Greenhaus, 2010). For instance they play their role of entrepreneur, but in the same time they also play their roles of wife, mother or friend. By becoming entrepreneurs, they challenge the traditional social organization of our society. Hence they contribute to social change that modifies the classic representation of entrepreneur but also modifies the classic representation of women (Calas et al., 2009). From a micro perspective these women entrepreneurs also question the traditional scheme of the couple and the traditional relations of power inside the private cell. In this paper we adopt a qualitative approach in order to observe how these women entrepreneurs consider their spouse’s support to the entrepreneurial venture and how the traditional relations of power evolve among spouses. Concerning the business venture, although some studies have examined copreneurship (Marshack, 1993; Smith, 2000; Fitzgerald and Muske, 2002; Cole and Johnson, 2007; Millman and Martin, 2007; Barnett and Barnett, 2008; Sharifian et al., 2012), one counts few academic works on the support of the spouse towards women entrepreneurs. As a result, we have a limited understanding of the impact of the spouse on women’s entrepreneurship. Studies suggest that the partner’s support is a key success factor for entrepreneurs (Sexton and Kent, 1981; Hisrich and O'Brien, 1982; Hisrich and Brush, 1983 ; Nelson, 1989) and plays a role in women’s entrepreneurship (Brush, 1992 ; Jennings and Mc Dougald, 2007). Baines and Wheelock (1998) notice that it is more common for women to set up their companies with their family partner than it is for men. However, results and studies are rare. Our aim is to investigate more particularly the spouse’s support/or non support on women’s entrepreneurship, its role in the entrepreneurial process success/or failure, and the question of social expectations related to potential conflicting roles as spouse and entrepreneur. In brief, our paper aims to address a significant question about women entrepreneurs;; how does the spouse interfere on women’s entrepreneurship? At the opposite, we also want to observe how entrepreneurship interferes in the organization of the family and couple cell. We could assume that entrepreneurship redesign the traditional relations and discourses of power and domination between men and women. Hence, if entrepreneurship presents some emancipatory possibilities for these women, it could also deeply affect personal and family life, particularly relationships with their spouse. We base our paper on two qualitative studies undertaken in France which allow understanding deeper this phenomenon. In the first one, we did a longitudinal study with ten women business owners for four years that led to 36 interviews. The second one draws on 41 in-depth interviews with women entrepreneurs in very diverse economic sectors (retail trade, services to customers, services to business such as communication, advertising, human resources, and training, and manufacturing industry such as textile, thermal compression and moulding.) In both studies, we study the women point of view and their perceptions. Considering the lack of knowledge on this topic, the aim of this paper is to move towards a first understanding. Its purpose is threefold: To understand the influence of spouse’s support on the way women set up their companies To explore if spouse’s support has an effect on the identity construction of woman entrepreneur To identify if and how entrepreneurship questions traditional gender roles models in couples and power relations among men and women. This paper has several contributions. From a theoretical point of view, the first contribution is to show how entrepreneurship interrogates gender role models and how entrepreneurship is doing gender (Calas et al., 2009).
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Women entrepreneurs interviewed are far away from men and women’s roles stereotypes. Moreover the call in recent years has been for understanding the interconnections between business and family to understand deeper women’s entrepreneurship. In that way, our paper contributes to a better understanding of the influence of spouse’s support on women entrepreneurs’ multi-dimensional identity construction. From a managerial point of view, our research emphasizes how a spouse’s support is a key component in women’s entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship success. Our results strongly suggest taking into account the spouse’s support in the business venture.
Dr Haya Al-Dajani Professor Susan Marlow “It’s a civic and moral responsibility”: Analysing displaced women’s entrepreneurship as an articulation of political activism. Abstract Paper Context and Contribution Contrary to analyses traditionally associated with neo-liberal individualism and focused upon the notion of opportunity recognition enacted through new venture creation, it is now critically argued that entrepreneurship is also a complex social and political activity (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). In addition, critics such as Steyaert (2007) and Watson (2013) argue that to capture the nuanced and diverse facets of entrepreneurial acts, processes and outcomes, contemporary theorising must move beyond the notion of entrepreneurship as a static phenomenon. Rather, entrepreneurship must be ontologically repositioned as an active ‘doing’ within specific contexts which enable or constrain entrepreneurial activities. Accordingly, this opens the field to critical evaluations of intentions and outcomes and in addition, how these are articulated across and through a range of social, economic, political and institutional landscapes which can, in turn, enable or constrain, entrepreneurial activity. An important facet of this contemporary critique has been the increasing focus upon the influence of gender upon women’s experiences of business ownership;; analyses of how women have been excluded from the dominant entrepreneurial discourse or, are positioned in deficit and lack as entrepreneurial subject beings have expanded over recent years (Ahl, 2006; Ahl and Marlow, 2012). Indeed, feminist theory has emerged as a convincing theoretical critique to expose the limiting gendered bias within the current entrepreneurial project (Calas et al, 2009) yet, this stance in and of itself is now recognised as constrained by presumptions of gender as generic and also, in being premised upon a US/European centric stance (Al Dajani and Marlow, 2010). Consequently, to advance feminist critiques of entrepreneurship it is now imperative to develop analyses which recognise how institutional influences arising from differing cultures, contexts and locations (Welter, 2011) influence women’s entrepreneurial activities. In addition, exploring the experiences of women business owners in developing and transitional economies is imperative to acknowledge and develop contemporary theorising regarding the nature and scope of entrepreneurial activity. To contribute to contemporary critiques of the influence of gender upon women business owners whilst recognising the need for more sophisticated theorising and diverse empirical sites to acknowledge the socioeconomic and political complexity of entrepreneurship, our analysis informing this paper focuses upon displaced women business owners in Jordan. In so doing, we describe a novel site for entrepreneurial activity enacted through a very specific cultural milieu of, social exclusion and patriarchy. In particular, we explore how entrepreneurial activities contribute to political campaigning and consciousness raising in terms of women business owners’ contribution to community resources and their broader political causes. Consequently, the focus of this paper responds to this call; we reject a narrow neo-liberal theorisation of entrepreneurship but rather, consider it as a contextually embedded socio-economic politicised activity which is bounded by institutional norms and prejudices. To illustrate this stance, we draw upon the contemporary gender critique of the prevailing entrepreneurial discourse as a platform to expose the ontological bias and limitations of current theory and practice. However, we develop this critique and reflect the ethos of this call with a specific analysis of the entrepreneurial activities of women who have been largely denied a voice and visibility in this arena and who utilise entrepreneurship to address a range of political, social and economic challenges within their daily lives.
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Research Proposition This paper focuses upon women’s entrepreneuring as a catalyst for social and political change, and thus, as an articulation of political activism in Jordan – a developing, patriarchal environment that largely conceals and disregards such activity. As such, this paper explores a new research site to explore the influence of gender upon entrepreneurship as an articulation of political activism, and challenges existing institutionalised perspectives upon who and what is an entrepreneur. Thus, our critical and underpinning research proposition focuses upon: A critical analysis of the social, economic and political consequences of entrepreneurial activities undertaken by displaced women business owners in Jordan.
Methods We describe the latest round of case study evidence drawn from a qualitative study based in Jordan focusing upon how displaced women business owners, defined by their subordinated status, use entrepreneurial activities to protect and defend their heritage and in addition, articulate and communicate a political consciousness and activism. Data collection consisted of ten case analyses of displaced Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian and Armenian women business owners in West Amman. Interview conversations were framed around the entrepreneurs’ experiences as we sought to explore the ‘everydayness of entrepreneurship’ (Steyaert and Katz, 2004) to gain an understanding of how these women negotiated, interpreted and addressed the reality which confronted them in terms of social exclusion, patriarchal subjugation, political consciousness and activism.
Results Our qualitative data analysis revealed widespread evidence of political activism amongst the women entrepreneurs. The participants used entrepreneuring as an articulation and expression of political activism which enabled economic contributions to be channelled to poor deprived and marginalised ethnic communities. When discussing their political activism, an interesting facet of prevailing gender relations was revealed. Authoritative institutional controls upon political protest within the region focused very much upon silencing men and their socio-political organising while women’s covert political activism through their entrepreneuring went unnoticed. As such, the women actually exploited proscribed norms through the channels of their entrepreneurial activities which enabled them to challenge their assumed subject position and contribute to a wider political cause.
CRITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES SESSION FOUR Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm H1
Hannah Dean Re-visiting Schumpeter in the Context of Female Entrepreneurs – A Critical Postmodernist Feminist perspective Abstract Prior Work The female entrepreneur has mainly been identified in terms of her function in the economy whose contribution is limited to economic growth (Ahl 2006). The author (2006) whose research was based on a discourse analysis of female entrepreneurship studies found that the articles justified their research in relation to the importance of women’s entrepreneurship as an engine for economic growth. Moreover, the literature has been dominated by the underlying assumption that female entrepreneurs underperform relative to men (Du Rietz and Henrekson 2000). This assumption remains largely unchallenged in the literature because it is founded on economic official statistics which portray female entrepreneurs as underperforming relative to their male counterparts (for example see the BERR 2008 report). The focus on economic growth has, therefore, reinforced the perception that the female entrepreneur is different from her male counterpart. The overwhelming similarities between both sexes have been overshadowed by the image of a “different problematic woman”.
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The identification of female entrepreneur in terms of her function in the economy has therefore reinforced the focus on the individual (Ahl 2006; Burni, Gherardi and Poggio 2004; Ogbor 2000). The problematic performance has been attributed to the presence of “feminine attributes” which diverge from those of the successful male entrepreneur (Ahl 2006; Ogbor 2000; Mirchandani 1999). The economic growth is, therefore, a gendered construct that has established in the literature a dichotomy of successful (male) entrepreneur, versus unsuccessful (female) entrepreneur. The identification of the entrepreneur in terms of his function in the economy as an economic rational capitalist has been blamed for representing the entrepreneur as a he (Ogbor 2000) and for silencing the complexity of the entrepreneurial experience (Calás, Smircich, and Bourne 2009). Despite the above, the influence of economic growth as a gendered construct upon the subordination of female entrepreneurs has not been fully explored (Ahl 2006). A number of authors pointed, however, to the influence of classic economic theorists, notably Schumpeter, for promoting this narrow definition of the entrepreneur and for gendering the theory of entrepreneurship (Ahl 2006; De Bruni et al 2004; Ogbor 2000).
Objective Based on the above, this study aims to liberate female entrepreneurs from the oppression of the metanarrative of economic growth. The study focuses in particular on destabilising economic growth as a true representation of female entrepreneur’s experience. This objective is achieved by addressing the following research question: What is the relationship between economic growth theory, Schumpeter’s theories and the identification of the entrepreneur in terms of his/her function in the economy?
Approach Given the objective of the study, this research is a critical inquiry which differs from an interpretivist research. A critical inquiry challenges the status quo with view to bring changes while an interpretivisit research accepts things as they are and seek only to understand the phenomenon under study (Crotty 1998;2009). In this study, I draw upon three theoretical analytical frameworks; postmodern perspective, feminist theories and critical theory. The three perspectives will enable me to achieve the research objective as they all hold a critical stance (Crotty 1998;; 2009;; Cresswell 2007) and focus on “societal issues and issues influencing marginalized groups” (Creswell 2007, P24). Informed by these theoretical lenses, I revisited the main work of Schumpeter as well as the economic literature that looked into the relationship between economic growth and entrepreneurship.
Findings The analysis reveals that economic growth theory which dominates female entrepreneurship studies, as well as macroeconomics and informs policy makers, is the neo classical growth theory. This theory has, surprisingly, been criticised for silencing the role of the entrepreneur in wealth creation (Kirschhoff 1991; Baumol 1968). The theoretical foundation of the neo classical growth theory in terms of; rational behaviour, economies of scale and market equilibrium, do not include the entrepreneur in their models (Bygrave1989). The theory’s axioms of rational behaviour and profit maximisation have replaced the entrepreneur with an economic rational manager whose main function is calculation, optimisation and maximisation (Wennekers and Thurik 1999; Baumol 1993). On the other side, the revisiting of Schumpeter’s work, and the broad review of his work, revealed that his work inspired the critique of the neo classical growth theory and its relationship with entrepreneurship. Schumpeter distinguishes clearly between the economic rational manager and the innovator entrepreneur. The main function of the latter is to introduce new combinations. He rejects the theoretical foundation of the neo classical growth theory which is based on a rational mechanistic ideology as an “ideology fantasy” (1947 p.47). For him (1947), growth is not universal, incremental or predictable. Schumpeter (1947) critiques the claim that the neo classical growth theory is a universal theory;; “there is no allpurpose concept of economic growth” (p.6). Schumpeter warns against this claim as the reinforcement of this false assumption turns this theory into a “common sense theory” (p.6) and renders certain factors as taken for granted assumptions while in reality they are irrelevant or unimportant. Although Schumpeter was clearly not a postmodernist, his comments are, however, in line with postmodernist critique of metanarratives. They are in
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line with this study’s critique of the influence of economic growth upon the conceptualisation of female entrepreneurs. Schumpeter (1934) developed his theory of economic development as an alternative to the neo classical growth theory where he emphasised the complexity and dynamism of the entrepreneurial experience.
Value and implications: This study offers a theoretical contribution to the female entrepreneurship studies. By drawing on economic literature and on Schumpeter’s work in particular, the study argues that Schumpeter’s theories of entrepreneurship and economic development can emancipate female entrepreneurs from the gendered construct of (neo classical) economic growth. It paves the way for female entrepreneurship studies to shift its focus away from the individual entrepreneur to explore the context and the turmoil of the entrepreneurial experience. Moreover, it has implications for policy makers as it generates new knowledge that aims to incorporate the current social and economic changes in the context of female entrepreneurs that can no longer be sustained by the economic growth model especially in the current economic climate.
Drewes Hielema A Profile of the Future Manager A critical vision on entrepreneurship Abstract In this essay I will outline ways and means how to arrive at a more clear insight in the meaning of critical entrepreneurship and what kind a manager this requires. It will deal with the ethical aspects, and touch upon the responsibility and metaphysics emanating from process philosophy. My reasoning is based on three theses: Thesis I To make career in nowadays organization, the authentic ‘self’ has to be replaced by the organizational ‘self’. Thesis II Ethics, as defined by Levinas, doing justice to the other, calls for a continuous accountability to the other and the self. Thesis III In non-ethical organizations, fear is the most common thought of the employees With these theses as basis, I challenge the reader to accompany me in investigating the scientific and organisational sources which in this case are derived from the scientific findings by the so-called CMS group whose initials stand for Critical Management Studies. It is my understanding – which is shared by many others – that our EARTH system has reached a deeply critical phase, partly due to the attitude of the contemporary managers. They, in turn, must follow the directions of the greed of their owners or their directors. This greed factor is inherent in our monetary system. I will first analyse where this stance originates and consequently how we can change this mentality. I will construct this from current sources and findings found in research. I will substantiate my findings from such volumes as The Gamesman by Michael Maccoby in which he lists the results of interviews, lasting from as little as 6 hours and as long as 60 hours, involving 250 middle and top managers from the 12 most well-known international companies in the USA. One of the most alarming conclusions of Maccoby was that all managers had a well-developed reasoning capacity – were good in using their head – but lacked a moral dimension – their heart feelings were not involved. I also demonstrate that Maccoby’s conclusions as well as research in other sources dealing with matters of the heart indicate that it is especially the aspects connected with the heart that must give managers the humanity they now lack. Here we deal with the internal human discrepancy between “Head and Heart”. This discrepancy consists of ethical acts which have not been internalized, have failed to become part of a person’s make-up and often express themselves as unrealized disparities, or perhaps more clearly as an unwillingness by the managers today or in their organized structures to acknowledge this discrepancy. I also refer to such authors as Gareth Morgan, Manfred Kets de Vries, Morel Mazes, as well as of “Corporate Managers” and other findings from CMS
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studies and sources. It is my hope that out of this will emerge a new understanding of life on earth as described by Capra who advocates a paradigm shift, from a mechanical vision to an ecological approach as a global solution. I intend to back this up referring to my 30 year experience as entrepreneurial engineer with expertise as project manager and managing director internationally, in different organizational structures and in diverse cultures, while also relating the difficulties encountered when one challenges existing organizational structures. I have been involved in the design and implementation of complex petro-chemical installations, mostly based on thermal conversion technologies. I will elaborate on the consequences of attempting to maintain one’s integrity as a mature, entrepreneurial and responsible manager in today’s business environment. I will also venture to describe how a future manager can mature in these circumstances. This applies to those managers who have the sincere desire to grow spiritually. The development between HEAD – rationality – and HEART – emotion – must interact continuously so that it leads to a complete functioning personality. This growth process has been described by such people as Whitehead in his Process Philosophy, Carl Rogers and others. I intend to describe the points of view from such theologians as Edward Schillebeekx, Emmanuel Levinas, and others, people who see managers as belonging to a divine system, participating in the ever evolving creation of the world. Managers are either co-responsible for the continuation of the world, or complicit in its destruction. That is the stark choice. However the question remains: Has a mature manager/leader, a spiritual healthy human being a future in the present business environment?
Huriye Aygören Re-searching 'The Diverse' Within Entrepreneurship: Immigrant Women in Developing Entrepreneurial Capitals Abstract Entrepreneurship has become a favored instrument, wherever there is poverty, unemployment, and other socioeconomic issues (Calás, Smircich, & Bourne, 2007). However, it is very recent that entrepreneurship scholars have started to discuss whether entrepreneurship may be a means towards emancipation(Rindova, Barry, & David J Ketchen, 2009) and social change (Calás, Smircich, & Bourne, 2009) or entrepreneurship rather may bracket inequalities(Hjerm, 2004)and lead to societal exclusion (Blackburn & Ram, 2006) especially for those disadvantaged groups(Essers, 2009; Essers & Benschop, 2007, 2009; Essers, Benschop, & Doorewaard, 2010). Yet little focus is attended to ongoing processes(De Clercq & Honig, 2011) which bring about different societal outcomes (Blackburn & Ram, 2006). My research on that respect may be seen as a modest contribution to critical entrepreneurship studies in their joined efforts of bringing processual formation of unrepresented others into scene (Essers, 2009; Hjorth, Johannisson, & Steyaert, 2003; Hughes, Jennings, Brush, Carter, & Welter, 2012; Steyaert & Katz, 2004) who may be differentiated not only based on their gender but also on other axis of differences-race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, age and so on(Ahl & Marlow, 2012). That is to say, going beyond the abstract individual and standardized entrepreneurial practice into studying how this individual/subject is formed under particular(Carland, Carland, & Hoy, 2002) and often mundane contexts (Steyaert & Katz, 2004). That may be important in several ways. First, that perspective might articulate how entrepreneurial practices bring about and in turn be influenced by intersecting differences which may result with unique inequalities of which we are not used to hear about. Second, stripping of the concept of entrepreneurship from its excessive economic and positive connotation and embrace it as a practice which can provide rich materials to understanding the ways in which quite diverse and heterogeneous groups of people shape today’s world under shared contemporary conditions of globalization and transnationalism(Calás, Smircich, Tienari, & Ellehave, 2010; Ozkazanc-Pan, 2009). Indeed, shifting the focus into processes from outcome oriented research may help with making visible the workings of ideological, historical, structural, and cultural processes , in so doing encouraging our understanding of the social basis of inequalities(Brah, 1991). I hold the view that these questions might be powerfully tackled by combining the insights of feminist organizational studies and Bourdieusian cultural sociology on social inequalities. Drawing on Bourdieusian cultural sociology and feminist intersectionality studies, in this paper, I intend to study dynamics and processes of capital conversion and accumulation in the context of entrepreneurship by attending to particular groups of entrepreneurs’ lives who are viewed as agents operating within structures of gender, ethnicity, and class.
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In particular, the framework developed by Bourdieu on capital accumulation and conversion processes might offer a way out of some of the standoffs that currently puzzle those concerned with similar issues of how to deal with diverse societal categories of differences and inequalities(Bourdieu, 1977, 2008; Tatli & Özbilgin, 2011). Following, combining this framework with feminist intersectionality studies on the other hand might enable analysis in the way that despite of having different historical trajectories and ontological basis(Anthias, 2002; Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983), societal categories and associated individual identities are nonetheless often constructed in relation to each other and experienced in intersecting ways (Crenshaw, 1991; Holvino, 2008; Lykke, 2010). This blended approach, in turn hopefully might bring in diverse categories of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurial practice into focus by demonstrating their constructed nature . Both approaches have been immensely taken up by organizational scholars however, underutilized by the entrepreneurship scholars. For instance, in recent years, researchers have identified the crucial role of different kinds of capitals in different stages of entrepreneurship process. Conceptualized under the umbrella concept of entrepreneurial capital; economic, social, cultural, human and several other types of capitals have been extensively inquired and researchers have reached a consensus on the importance of the capital endowments of the entrepreneurs themselves(Erikson, 2002)and in particular on identifying what certain types of capital is more influential on the entry and performance of entrepreneurship(Kim, Aldrich, & Keister, 2006). However, less effort has been devoted into probing into relational and dynamic nature of capital development process and less emphasis is put into how diverse body of entrepreneurs deal with unequal conditions at different and relatively less advantageous contexts(Anderson & Miller, 2003; Fletschner & Carter, 2008). With this research, I hope to contribute to entrepreneurship studies in two specific ways. First is to demonstrate the need to differentiate between the categories of the entrepreneur operating at different societal contexts while also identifying certain mechanisms of capital accumulation and conversion which are important in entrepreneurship practice and thus might be applicable across contexts. To that end, I will be having in-depth and extended interviews and listening to life stories of 25 migrant women entrepreneurs living and enterprising in Sweden with Turkey background. My focus on life stories expresses my interest in opening and complicating the category of entrepreneur subject(Bamberg, 1997) and subject formation in intersectional context(Staunæs, 2003). Selecting immigrant community with Turkey background is not without purpose though. Because, this community is highly diverse, as immigration to Sweden has attracted not only uneducated and working class labor workers but also highly educated, elite civic movement leaders and also diverse ethnic groups seeking refuge. More interestingly, the issue of women in Turkey is highly peculiar. Since the establishment of new republican state after 1920s’, women are constructed to become a modern face of new Turkey (White, 2003) and thereby given support to get higher education and take part in the public/occupational sphere together with men (Durakbasa & Ilyasoglu, 2001). Thus, my research recognizes those heterogeneity and strives to give a voice to immigrant women entrepreneurs, thereby enabling them to speak for themselves.
Helen Oakes, Richard Thorpe Moral accountability in smaller firms Abstract The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent and nature of moral accountability in owners’ discourse about firm development, and to develop understanding of the nature of owners’ moral development. Critical discourse analysis is the main method adopted, and content analysis is used for triangulation. Habermasian theory is used to extend the concept of moral accountability and to theorise the concept of moral development. The findings indicate that postconventional moral accountability was very limited and owners were mainly at the preconventional and conventional stage of Habermas’ moral development in terms of their articulated discourse. The few postconventional moral discourses that were articulated were partial and fragmented, supporting postmodern portrayals of ethics. The findings suggest that articulating postconventional moral accountability in conventional discourse in a relatively natural setting may be problematic in smaller firms. We argue that it is possible and desirable to enhance the articulation of postconventional moral accountability in smaller firms. Smaller firms should attempt to enhance their articulation of postconventional moral accountability using Habermasian democratic procedures and by adopting Roberts’ (2009) ‘intelligent’ accountability, supported by society. Habermasian moral accountability has rarely been explored empirically in a relatively natural setting in smaller firms.
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CRITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES SESSION FIVE Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm H1
Peter Jennings Explaining Support for Entrepreneurship and Innovation through Critical Realist Ontology Abstract Despite developments in the philosophical base of Organisational Studies noted by Fleetwood (2005), empirical explorations of support for entrepreneurship and innovation are dominated by the hegemony of realist ontology and positivist epistemology (see for example Murdock K A, 2012; Lundström A and Stevenson L, 2005 and Lundström A and Stevenson L, 2001). The primary focus remains the creation of an evidence base that justifies the current strong emphasis upon interventions designed to foster and facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation as a key policy mechanism for economic growth. However, research outcomes are restricted as a consequence of narrow ontological and epistemological foundations, usually offering little more than a very simplistic ‘black box’ systems model of intervention giving rise to tangible outcome. The central contention within this research is that critical realist ontology enhances understanding and explanation by deepening appreciation of the significance and effects of causal influences and social construction, thereby creating conditions in which it is possible for action to be taken to improve either, or both, the effectiveness and efficiency of intervention. The purpose of the research reported in this paper is to show that deeper understanding of hidden generative mechanisms, powerful particulars, tensions between structure and agency, and operating conditions, which can be achieved only through abduction and retroduction creates the potential for support intervention to be enhanced. The core aspects of critical realism are firstly, Bhaskar’s (2008, p.56) principle of ontological depth, which asserts that reality is divided into different but inter-related domains and strata. Secondly, causal mechanisms that cannot be directly observed are the root explanation of visible outcomes. Thirdly, abduction and retroduction are the most effective means of postulating plausible hidden causal mechanisms. Fourthly, the veracity of each statement of plausible causal influence (Steele, 2005, p.151-153) is crucially dependent upon empirical evidence. The research reported in this paper is based upon an empirical evaluation of a support intervention that provided grants to qualifying enterprises seeking to assess commercial potential and launch new products, services or process. The intervention took place in the West Midlands region of the UK between 2008 and 2010. A mixed method approach was adopted making use of four principal sources of data – a database recording details and progression of all enterprises who initiated an enquiry concerning the grant; self-reported data, gathered from sixty two grant applicants by postal questionnaires (approximately twenty seven per cent response rate); semi-structured interviews with twelve representatives of institutions providing and managing the grant; and semi-structured interviews with thirty six enterprises who were awarded a grant. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using NVivo 9 and 10. The interviews are ascribed the status of a record of the visible outcomes of the experiences and perceptions of interviewees concerning the grant and provide the raw material for applying the principles of abduction and retroduction. The application of abduction and retroduction is informed by Blaike, 2007 (p.88-104 and p.82-88) and focuses upon social construction and the juxtaposition of generative mechanisms and structures to develop plausible conceptual models and theories that deepen explanation of observed outcomes. The research demonstrates that whilst outcomes are clearly contextually specific the powerful influence of structure, agency and social construction in influencing outcomes arising from this support intervention is common. Structure issues and elements of conformity to perceived expectations are strong and conventional research within a realist/positivist paradigm ought to identify the mechanisms at work in producing these outcomes. For example, the availability of the grant as a boost to cash flow, an influence on perceived risk, and a facilitator that significantly reduces time scales. However, it is not until agency, and particularly, the striking
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influence of social construction is explored that it becomes possible to explain why typical outcomes do conform to expected norms, but more significantly, why unexpected outcomes arise. For example, the award of a grant provides a significant boost to personal confidence and belief in self-efficacy especially amongst entrepreneurs with smaller enterprises or start-up intentions. Also, fear of failure is driven by a strong desire to avoid personal harm since failure is perceived as detrimental to future prospects, reputation, competence and belief in self. Deeper understanding and explanation of generative and countervailing mechanisms offer the potential to enable those managing support interventions to develop more effective and efficient forms of support provision.
Amélie Jacquemin, Frank Janssen Deconstructing Research on Regulation and Entrepreneurship: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis Abstract Background The link between regulation and entrepreneurship has been a “hot” topic for several years now, giving the worlds of politics, media, academia and the professional sphere plenty to talk about. The majority of studies investigating this topic have been published since the end of the 1990’s (e.g. Grilo and Irigoyen, 2006;; Vickers and Cordey-Hayes, 1999). We call these studies the “regulation impact studies”. These aim at investigating the impact of regulation on the creation and/or the development of entrepreneurial activities. Kitching (2006) and Parker (2007) have reviewed this literature stream and highlight its contradictory findings, stressing that this prevents us from making a clear judgment on the question of the impact of regulation on entrepreneurship. Although this literature seems to reach relatively clear results on two questions, i.e. the level of satisfaction of entrepreneurs with regulation, which is quite low (e.g. Carter et al., 2009) and the level of awareness of regulation, which is also low (e.g. Vickers et al., 2005), its findings are ambiguous, on two main issues. First, many studies highlight the negative impact of regulation on entrepreneurship, but, at the same time, do not agree on the type of regulation that has the most negative impact. Second, it seems that the impact of regulation on entrepreneurship can be positive or neutral, but not only negative, like the regulation impact studies seem to show, and that regulation has no uniform effect on all entrepreneurs (Arrowsmith et al., 2003; Baldock et al., 2006; Hart et al., 2008; Ram et al., 2001, 2003).
Research objective and question The purpose of this paper is to better understand the origin of these contradictory results. Our research question is therefore the following one: Why does this research stream reach conflicting results preventing us from making a clear judgment on the impact of regulation on entrepreneurship?
Methodological and epistemological approaches We draw on a constructionist epistemology, according to which “research not only describes and explains reality, but is also a part of the reality-constructing process” (Ahl, 2007), to take a closer look at how researchers construct the relationships between regulations and entrepreneurship. We use a discourse analysis method to deconstruct the regulation impact studies. A critical deconstruction of this literature may allow us to move beyond the taken-for-granted and generate new knowledge by understanding the social construction of the main assumptions and established stereotypes within that research field (Achtenhagen and Welter, 2007; Ainsworth, 2001; Burr, 1995). It may also reveal its discursive sources of power and dominance (van Dijk, 1998).
Material
We identified all regulation impact studies carried out since the 1990’s. We searched for empirical articles in Science Direct and JSTOR (limiting the search to business, economics and law journals). We also used Google Scholar. The search terms were “small businesses”, “entrepreneur”, “entrepreneurial activities”, “entrepreneurial performance” combined with the key words “better regulation”, “regulation” or “laws”. We used these search terms to look at both full texts and titles and abstracts. As we only focus on the concept of
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regulation in its formal definition, articles investigating self-regulation, i.e. rules developed by individuals in organizations to shape behavioral standards, or investigating public policies (i.e. not binding rules) were removed from the sample. We ended up with a sample of 40 regulation impact studies. To analyze this material, we used a framework for discourse analysis developed by Ahl (2004, 2007) built on Foucault’s work on discourses (Foucault, 1970). This framework allows to deconstruct discourses on the basis of 10 items (e.g. the founding fathers and foundational texts, the reasons for studying the topic we want to deconstruct, the taken-for-granted ideas or assumptions, the exclusions and dissenting voices indicating points of tension, the writing and publishing practices, the rules and rituals pertaining to who is allowed to speak). We developed a reading guide based on these items and entered collected data into Excel, using one line for each study and on column per item.
Results Our deconstruction highlights the predominance of an economic approach of the impact of regulation on entrepreneurship in which compliance costs issues are used as a discursive argument for why regulation should be removed or better constructed. We relate this approach to the liberal doctrine in favor of deregulation and privatization of the regulation-making process. This view tends to be challenged or, at least, completed by a sociological view looking at the way entrepreneurs adapt their behaviors to new regulations. This second approach opens new research avenues as it asks questions about the “enabling” dimension of regulation. Further research is required to better understand this enabling ability of regulation, i.e. when and how regulation can support entrepreneurship. The main originality of this article is its use of a Foucauldian deconstruction method applied to the scientific discourse on the relationships between regulation and entrepreneurship. We empirically operationalized a Foucauldian discourse analysis framework developed by Ahl (2004, 2007). Moreover, we addressed the question of the relevance of this deconstructionist method, by opposition to a more classical meta-analysis of the literature. In this regard, we argued that a deconstruction allowed us to go beyond a quantitative literature review on the impact of regulation on entrepreneurship, investigating the multiple facets of this impact, as well as the relative importance of each of its determinants. More specifically, our deconstruction allowed us to show that different readings of this same social phenomenon are possible, but that only one of these readings – the economic one – is preferred since it serves certain political interests, while another reading grid – the sociological one – is equally valid and could be a good complement to reach a more comprehensive picture of this phenomenon.
Antti Kauppinen Small Triggers Causing Outstanding Outcomes – The Cultural-Historical Activity System as A Unit of Analysis to Study Stories of Business Opportunities or ‘Just’ Everyday Interactions Abstract Entrepreneurship has traditionally been seen as the process of creating new businesses (Shane & Venkataraman 2000; Shane 2003; Baron 2006; Alvarez & Barney 2007; Alvarez & Barney 2010). From that perspective, an idea of an entrepreneur is a profit-maximizing agent, who is opening up new businesses so that he or she could make more money (see Kirzner 1997). For instance, Schumpeter (1934) describes this kind of process as creative destruction meaning that the actions of an entrepreneur disrupt the reigning order at the marketplace. Therefore, the difference between those who are creating new venture or venture ideas and those who are not doing so gets crucial in the research of entrepreneurship (Busenitz & Barney 1997; Kirzner 1997). From that perspective, entrepreneurship is a business-related phenomenon. Therefore, the core issue of interest is a new venture or an entrepreneur as an individual. However, the current research problematizes this arguing that entrepreneurship is an organizational issue and therefore it belongs to the whole society, but not simply to the economy (see Hjorth, Jones & Gartner 2008). Most interestingly, the issues of interest of such a research could be things, which are not relevant from the perspective of the grand narrative of entrepreneurship. For instance, Görling and Rehn (2008) and Dew (2009) write about accidental ventures and serendipities in entrepreneurship. In this, it is a minoritarian story of creative people – embedded in a certain context – we call entrepreneurs (see Jones & Spicer 2005, 2009; Imas, Wilson, & Weston 2012). That means that some kind of small and/or unexpected trigger can create an outstanding outcome, which can also be a new venture.
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When considering entrepreneurship as an organizational phenomenon, it gets complicated to separate the business-related entrepreneurial actions from those interactions that are parts of everyday life anyway (see Steyaert & Katz 2004). As Hjorth, Johannisson, and Steyaert (2003) as well as Hjorth and Steyaert (2004) write, the everydayness of entrepreneurship is an issue that needs to be studied so that we can better understand the very nature of entrepreneurial creation. Hjorth (2007) calls this opportunity-creative time meaning that there is a certain moment, in which the creation of novelty can take place. In order to create novelty, it is crucial to get into that moment and grasp opportunities in it (Hjorth 2005). As an example, Jones and Spicer (2005, 2009) and Imas et al. (2012) write about entrepreneurs as creative people who are grasping new possibilities of organizing their lives in a productive way. That approach is based on sociological ideas of what entrepreneurship is. The research tradition of the European School of Entrepreneurship fosters this methodologically (Hjorth & Steyaert 2004; Hjorth et al. 2008). Even though the sociologically-rooted of research entrepreneurship replies to the need to see the creation of novelty in a novel light, it does not always elaborate what kinds of triggers are related to the process of grasping a new opportunity or possibility of living even though the current research (e.g. Görling & Rehn 2008; Dew 2009; Rindova, Barry & Ketchen, Jr. 2009) illustrates that the unexpected things can create outstanding outcomes. Methodologically, the European School of Entrepreneurship opens up a fresh way to consider entrepreneurship through storytelling. Hjorth and Steyaert (2004) argue that the storytelling could help a researcher to consider how the history of talks about entrepreneurship can explain how the novelty could be created from the everyday interactions of all the kinds of people (see Jones & Spicer 2005; 2009). This works coherently with Czarniawska’s (1997;; 2008) ideas of stories and storytelling. In fact, she writes that the stories of organizational research are pretty similar with all the kinds of stories, such as folktales – in other words, as a general structure and/or grand narrative of life and cultures (Czarniawska-Joerges 1995). The current storytelling kind of research of entrepreneurship helps to analyze organizational life as a structure of what is happening in an organization (Downing 2005; Dawson & Hjorth 2011). In addition, it also helps a researcher to understand the organizational life and new possibilities, but it is not completely clear what the most productive empirical unit of analysis could be – for the purpose of generating knowledge about the heterogeneous and multiply phenomenon of entrepreneurship (Gartner, Bird & Starr 1993; Sarasvathy, Dew, Velamuri & Venkataraman 2003; Gartner 2010, 2011). This paper tries to fill that gap by providing an overview of the current research as a form of literature review. On that basis, we scrutinize the research methods used in the prior work and argue that the empirical units of analyses are the ones that the researcher of entrepreneurial stories should take into better consideration than the current research does. The paper argues that it is possible to analyze everydayness of entrepreneurship through stories of entrepreneurs, but in that case the empirical unit of analysis could be a small part of the general story of such a person, but not necessarily the general process or narrative (compare with Downing 2005). In the full paper, we consider the empirical units of analyses of entrepreneurship studies and problematize how the current research is done. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to discuss how the small parts of entrepreneurial stories (i.e. empirical triggers) could be distinguished out from general structures (or even grand narratives) so that we could investigate the multiplicity and heterogeneity of entrepreneurship. The paper agrees with Görling and Rehn (2008) and Dew (2009) that the small things as parts of human life can be actualized as outstanding outcomes. Such small parts of entrepreneurial stories can be certain moments of an entrepreneur’s life. Such a moment can be a project as a part of one’s work as a business opportunity (see Kauppinen & Juho 2012) or it can happen ‘just’ as everyday interactions in order to act entrepreneurially and to even stay alive (see Imas et al. 2012). This happens in a cultural-historical system of activity, in which a person we call an entrepreneur is embedded in and what we as researchers could study better through storytelling.
J. Miguel Imas, Kingston University; Paul Donnelly, Dublin Institute of Technology; Lucia Sell, Seville University; Maria Daskalaki, Kingston University; Lucia Garcia, London School of Economics Les Misérables, Deuxième Partie, Insurrection and Resistance at the Heart of Entrepreneurship Abstract “TO CREATE IS TO RESIST;; TO RESIST IS TO CREATE” (Stephane Hessel, 2010)
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“I don't know whether it will be read by everyone, but it is meant for everyone. It addresses England as well as Spain, Italy as well as France, Germany as well as Ireland, the republics that harbour slaves as well as empires that have serfs. Social problems go beyond frontiers. Humankind's wounds, those huge sores that litter the world, do not stop at the blue and red lines drawn on maps. Wherever men go in ignorance or despair, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children lack a book to learn from or a warm hearth, Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: "open up, I am here for you” (Victor Hugo) . Imagine the scene, Jean Valjean going through the street of Digne, knocking doors and asking for a place to eat and sleep. His voice turning sewer, his face looking stressed, his bones beginning to feel the autumn chill while no one along the different establishments he goes to is prepared to help him (because of his crime; because of his miserable appearance; because of his demeanour; because of his poverty), condemning him to be an outcast. Indeed, Victor Hugo’s character reflects on the ignominious experience of thousands of Valjeans at a time when Europe was experiencing turmoil, degradation and war. A fictional tale of a distance world only to be revisited in historical and fictional tales that emphatically contrast the ‘progress’ made by Europe (single market and union) where their citizens, communities and organisations can enjoy opportunities and privilege that those Valjeans figures could only dream of. However, unimaginable as it seems, 21st century Europe begins to reflect again Hugo’s Valjeanesque experiences of outcast individuals, communities and organisations. Product of an economic crisis that have impoverished communities in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, these new Valjeans have emerged to share their spirit of resistance against mainstream neoliberal economics, as well as local and European (political) institutions. The current crisis has created a new spirit of resisting the main business models that affect the way in which people work and generate new businesses. In particular, the neoliberal narrative of entrepreneurial wealth and innovation has been superseded (and challenged) by narratives that emphasise the resilience and resistance of communities across part of Europe. Like in the case of Argentina’s financial crisis, these communities appear to alter the way in which we understand entrepreneurship embracing critical discourses that act and enact forms of resisting the cannons of how to generate, produce and work. Here, we found new forms of entrepreneurial activities that reflect practices forgotten in Europe and which are usually associated to barefoot entrepreneurs and indigenous entrepreneurs. Thus, these new Valjeans epitomise a new spirit of entrepreneurship embedded in insurrection and revolt; speaking in new tongues that transcend their dilapidated and marginal places. “Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances;; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon….Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach” (Victor Hugo, 1862/1982:889) Inspired by Victor Hugo and moved by the suffering of communities in Ireland, Spain and Greece, where we have started to conduct ethnographies, in this paper we want to share the stories of these communities that challenge traditional representations of entrepreneurship, informing and advancing further a critical reading of entrepreneurship that take in consideration forms of organising that are outside the mainstream discourse. Building on ethnographic intervention, i.e., collaborative and participative engagement with host small communities in Spain, Ireland and Greece, we discuss how these communities are re-writing and co-creating new representations of entrepreneurial activities which are focused not on material wealth but on a narrative that accentuate forms of resisting as experienced in social movements, strengthening a more critical interpretation of the concept and the practice. In this way, we think the paper adds value and contribute further to the debate on critical entrepreneurship, bringing forward unheard stories of barefoot entrepreneurs who inhabit the margins of Europe, hitherto, the margins of economic, social and organisation innovation, production and success. These new Valjeans present a new discourse of entrepreneurship that, as its main tenant, reflects a creation of resistance; a resistance build on the vulnerability and creativity of thousands where poverty, hunger and social asphyxia has come back to exist, triggering a new struggle in the backyard of Europe. “While through the working of laws and customs there continues to exist a condition of social condemnation which artificially creates a human hell within civilization, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; while the three great problems of this century, the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjugation of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child through darkness, continue unresolved; while in some regions social asphyxia remains possible; in other words, and in still wider terms, while ignorance and poverty persist on earth, books such as this cannot fail to be value” (Victor Hugo, Hauteville House, 1 January 1862)
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Pascal Dey, Universität St. Gallen; Karen Verduyn, VU University Amsterdam; Deirdre Tedmanson, University of South Australia; Caroline Essers, Radboud University Nijmegen A Critical Agenda of Entrepreneurship Studies: From Dystopian Oppression to Heterotopian Emancipation Abstract Our paper examines entrepreneurship in its relationship to critique. Though conceding that ‘critical’ is a slippery term without a singular meaning, we contend that an explicitly critical agenda of entrepreneurship is needed to decenter the commonsense which notoriously prevents us from understanding entrepreneurship outside of the ‘hegemony of the positive’ (Bill, Olaison & Sorensen, forthcoming). Critical is hence used here as a sensitizing concept to emphasize entrepreneurship’s assumed role in overcoming extant relations of exploitation, domination and oppression. So far, critical approaches have been instrumental for creating insights into how entrepreneurship is connected with, for instance, the favoring of sectional interests, the ideological support of capitalist hegemony or the selective appropriation of profits. However, whilst this ‘dark side’ approach has gained some currency in entrepreneurship studies (Spicer, 2012), it is our conviction that critical analyses must also comprise a commitment to how entrepreneurship can bring about new openings for liberating forms of individual and collective existence. Consequently, following the example of Rindova, Barry and Ketchen’s (2009) special issue on ‘Entrepreneuring as Emancipation’, we sketch out a critical agenda of entrepreneurship research based on different conceptualizations of emancipation. Concretely, drawing on Laclau’s (1996) dualism of emancipation – oppression, we chart four forms of emancipation, and in line with these, four forms of critical entrepreneurship research. Based on illustrations from the extant literature, we demonstrate how each perspective champions a radically different conclusion with regard to what the emancipatory or oppressive potential of entrepreneurship may consist of.
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STREAM 9: EXTENDING CRITIQUES OF ‘INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT’: THE LIMITS OF POST-COLONIAL AND NEOLIBERAL PARADIGMS Fabian Frenzel, University of Leicester Peter Case, James Cook University Mitchell W Sedgwick, Oxford Brookes University
Introduction: The ‘International Development’ Problematic Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm F6
Fabian Frenzel, Peter Case & Mitchell Sedgwick Position paper introducing Stream 9 aims and scope Abstract Given the centrality of the international development agenda to geopolitics in the post-war period, it is remarkable and perhaps even suspicious that ‘development’ has attracted conspicuously little attention from scholars working in the fields of management and organisation studies. Clegg has accused management and organization studies (MOS) of failing to pay sufficient regard to the ‘big issues’, and in the case of the politics and organization of ‘development’ we find a particularly cogent example of such an oversight. Moreover, there is an extraordinary paucity of critical assessment of the principles and practices pursued in the name of ‘development’. While anthropologists and development scholars have pursued a range of critical approaches to development and often touched upon MOS related issues, MOS has had next to nothing to say by way of critique of international development theories, ideologies/discourses and practices. It is also silent about the impact interventions have on those subjected to ‘development’ and the perspectives of these ‘subjects’. This sub-theme aims to promote engagement on the part of MOS scholars and researchers with international development. This includes a call for engagement in cross-disciplinarily scholarship to benefit from and develop further critical approaches to development pursued in anthropology and development studies, inter alia. The critical repertoires and methodologies employed in MOS have the potential to contribute to the advancement of critiques of international development.
François Goxe, Nathalie Belhoste & Elen Riot ‘When the subaltern speak: Post-colonial perspectives on management’ Abstract Calas and Smircich (1999) identified postcolonial analysis as one of the “four contemporary theoretical tendencies” that were likely to offer a way forward for management and organization studies (MOS). Westwood (2006) interrogated more specifically the international business and management studies (IBMS) discourse via postcolonial theory. His analyses revealed that IBMS deployed similar types of universalistic, essentialising and exoticising representations to colonial and neo-colonial discourse. This paper takes up Westwood’s interrogation and shows that such exploration has, however, barely begun. It initiates a critical analysis of IBMS theories and discourses as formulated by the “Subaltern”. We notice that some international “development” and IBMS scholars, no matter their field of research and origin, follow a “post-development” paradigm (Escobar, 1996) according to which “development” is the “implementation of neocolonial policies aimed a exploiting peripheral countries” (CMS Call for paper, 2013). Yet, we argue that Western scholars and practitioners disregard the possibility that some of these once “peripheral” countries may have now moved to center stage and use such discourse to their advantage.
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We thus pose the question of the potentially ideological and strategic character of some ‘Subaltern’ discourse and practices as reflected by studies in IBMS and MOS, but also nation-states policies and/or corporate initiatives from those countries and populations (e.g. China and India). We argue that, while Western scholars and practitioners still reason as if the Subaltern had remained unchanged for the last decade(s), the latter (or some of them), have been crafting some alternative discourse on “development” and turned western apologetic discourse to their advantage. Specifically, based on Calas and Smircich’s (1999) and Westwood’s (2006) framework applied to existing IBMS literature and empirical findings, we argue that: 1) Subaltern discourse deploys universalistic, essentialising and exoticising representations and tends to turn over traditional/colonial “hierarchies” (North vs. South, West vs. East) 2) Subaltern discourse tends to silence dissonant voices, from their own lines or from others (is genuine knowledge the aim or rather the generation of representations enabling the East/South to construct an orientation that serves its interests?). 3) Subaltern, Eastern/Southern discourse is increasingly present in the international press and science which strengthens the dissemination of its representations. 4) Western / Non-Subaltern frequently show reflexivity and challenge their own ideological stance and practices but we wonder whether non-Western scholars and practitioners actually do. Some seem to use research debate to push forward political or business purposes. 5) Companies from ‘developing countries’ may take advantage of Subaltern discourse and ethnicity for strategic purposes against non-Subaltern/ Western competitors. At nation-states level, this discourse may be manipulated to defend alternative modes of “development” and capitalism, replacing some form of imperialism (West=>East or North=>South) with another (eg. South=>South). We believe this to be of particular interest to this stream as we question the “positionality” of researchers and practitioners, the limits of the “post-development” paradigm and offer a provocative yet constructive critique of Subaltern and “development” studies. We raise some issues and extend an existing theoretical framework for analysis along with some empirical exploration that can be used for future research.
Charlotte Kearsley ‘Analysing development and the impact of development interventions using Luhmann’s systems theory’ Abstract To understand organizations, development, and the organization of development, we increasingly need to be able to conceptualize societal problems marked by complexity and inter-systemic interdependency, that engage the knowledges of different actors operating at different societal levels. One such problem may well be handling the demands on the food system which will result from the need to feed 9 billion people by 2050 (MacDonald 2010). Certainly, the food price crisis of 2008 and the civil unrest which followed, demonstrated the traditional development imperative of economic growth through Western-style industrialization needs to be balanced by enquiry into the prospects for rural populations in developing countries, with the aspiration of maintaining the resilience of their livelihoods. These issues highlight the importance of investigating the impact of rural development projects upon local farmers and food consumption and production. Taking account of an increasingly reflexive and theoretically aware development field, which is prepared to interrogate the justification for and outcomes of intervention, and prior to conducting an ethnographic study into the impact of an NGO irrigation project upon local food security, I present a review of the literature on rural development. In particular my aim is to discuss the contributions that Luhmann’s social theory can make towards understanding the organization of food production in sub-Saharan Africa. Reflexivity over development can be turned perhaps towards our understanding of how conceptualizing the management of development (like the management of organizations generally), can benefit from being underpinned by a social theory which offers a framework within which it is possible to ‘build bridges’ between disciplines and levels of analysis. Scoones (2009), writing in the field of rural development has suggested that unhelpful divides exist between micro and macro levels and between sectoral specialisms in rural development which need to be addressed if we are to understand how farmers make a living both within, and outside organizations. The subject of local food production is also one which engages with intra-family dynamics, household integration into local markets, the engagement of different forms of labour, as well as the effect of environmental degradation (Maxwell 1996, Maxwell and Frankenburger 1992). By conceiving of rural communities, as well as a development NGO, as organizational subjects of research, a response can hopefully be
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provided to the call of CMS scholars such as Imas and Weston (2012) to respectfully engage with the knowledge of the marginalized. The recent, intellectually productive engagement between organization theory and Niklas Luhmann’s radical constructivist theory of social systems (e.g. Seidl and Becker 2006) will be seen as the conceptual framework for this exploration. Luhmann’s theory offers two strengths in particular, claims to comprehensiveness and internal consistency with the social phenomena of all scales and types seen as systems of communication, and extensive analyses of the economy, politics, science and education (among others) as examples of such systems (Borch 2011). Bakken and Hernes in particular (2003) have argued that Luhmann’s ideas offer us the opportunity to move beyond the structure/agency dialectic which has long been a key point of reference. After briefly restating some key points of Luhmann’s organization theory, two arguments will be made: 1. 2.
Through using Luhmann’s theory of social systems it is possible to critically understand the perspectives of both the subjects and architects of development, using different ‘orders’ of observation of the process of development and different associated ‘blind spots’ (Luhmann 2006). It possible to understand the conflict experienced by organizations in handling the logics of different functional systems engaged by the ‘polyphonic’ organizing which needs to respond to political, economic and legal demands (Andersen 2003).
It is hoped that this literature review will challenge stream boundaries by highlighting an area in which CMS can contribute to a better understanding of development, through a systems theoretical problematization of concepts of organizing. It is argued that this is particularly important in a developmental context where the interests and actions of organizations reach beyond sectors, through micro and macro interests. Systems theory can offer us both a complex and nuanced account of organizations and organizing, and help us to look beyond Western prototypes.
Tiina Kontinen ‘Gramscian reading of institutional logics in an international development organization’ Abstract Civil society and civil society organizations have played an increasingly important role in international development during the past two decades. Notwithstanding the original consideration of civil society as representative of alternative development agenda, in practice, civil society has often been reduced to nongovernmental organizations (NGOSs) domesticated to mainstream development agendas. Moreover, it has been suggested (Tvedt 1998; 2006) that increasing professionalization, introduction of modern organizational forms, circulating buzzwords and project management practices constitute an international organizational field which is characterized by growing institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). However, in the everyday practices of development NGOs, isomorphic processes seem to be contested by a variety of pressures and sources of organizational rationality. The donor-state funding for NGOs has introduced bureaucratic rationality. At the same time, the language of strategic management competitiveness echoes the logic of private sectors. Moreover, organizations are value communities with their own aspirations connected with, for example, solidarity, altruism and religious values. In different context, the modern organizational ideas collide with a diversity of cultural forms and logic of organizing. To make sense of the manifestation of such different rationalities in the everyday life of a development organization, I make use of the notion of institutional logics (Thorton, Ocasio & Lounsbur y 2012) analyzed at an organizational level. This is done on the basis of interviews conducted with staff of an international development organization in Finland, Kenya and India. Moreover, as the field of international development is characterized by power relations, the contestation between the different logics is discussed through the Gramscian notion of consent. This is an effort to identify which rationalities gain hegemonic positions by consent produced in the organizational meaning making. Critical scrutiny on the hegemonic struggles over hegemony of institutional logics in one organization provides insights to the overall organizational dynamics in development NGOs and civil society in development at large.
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CRITIQUES OF MEASUREMENT AND EVALUATION Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am F6
Fabian Frenzel ‘Measures and values in poverty alleviation: The semantics of the Millennium Development Goals and their implementation’ Abstract Poverty and poverty alleviation have moved to the forefront of national and international development work. One key example are the ‘millennium development goals’ (MDG). Formulated and enshrined by the UN in 2000 they form a global framework for policy widely adopted (at least rhetorically) in countries across the world. Notwithstanding the frequent and multiple critique of the MDGs, recently the UN members at the 2012 Rio 20+ conference decided to move the focus of their development policy frameworks from the MDGs to the so called sustainable development goals (SDGs) which are yet to be defined. These are to define aims and targets for global policy from 2015. The processes are subject to public debate and a good share of critical reasoning, however some of their underlying logics are rarely reflected. Key to each of the mentioned frameworks are concepts of measure and value that allow to define goals as well as monitor and evaluate the efforts undertaken the reach the goals. The MDGs are comprised of goals as well as targets and indicators. The concepts and the processes of evaluation form a semantic structure which is in want of critical reflection. What role do quantitative and qualitative data, measures and indicators play? How do we best conceptualize the semantic structure of goal setting and progress evaluation? What impact do the semantics of the policy frameworks have on their real-life effects. This paper will present a short historical overview of the development of measures of poverty and poverty alleviation in the context of the MDGs. Employing the critical repertoire of governmentality studies and system theory, this paper aims to better understand what logics govern process of global governance and what happens (and what doesn’t), when poverty is targeted as a problem of policy on a global level.
Arun Kumar ‘Evaluating development evaluation: The science and politics of measurement in international development’ Abstract In the recent years, development evaluation has begun to grow: as a profession, a science, and a key organisational practice through and on the basis of which the success and failure of development work, and development organisations are ascertained. There has been considerable ‘reflexive’ work within development evaluation: reflexive in the limited sense that it critiques isolation and obsession with specific methods or approaches, and seeks to work across methods, practices, and contexts in improving the overall effectiveness of the development evaluation and help achieve its core, though largely utilitarian, purposes. In this, there has been an increasing emphasis on articulating the ‘scientistic’ (or science-like) claims of development evaluation, including variously the growing popularity of laboratory studies, the resurgence of econometric methods, the rise of evidence-based policy making, and so forth. Despite the brief breaking-away within development studies and practice from the over-bearing centrality of science and technology, and the expert - brought on by the increasing popularity of participatory approaches, and the feminist criticism of development, which together brought the ‘local’ into focus;; the turn towards science has become ever more prominent, and therefore merits critical interrogation. While within the critical management studies there have been attempts at problematising development evaluation and its relationship, as an organisational practice, with the modernisation project in the developing countries; there has been no criticism of this turn towards science within development evaluation. Similarly, within development studies, a limited but somewhat dated criticism has come from those that champion participatory approaches, which argues in favour of the local community and not the expert. Therefore the criticism of science and development evaluation as a key organisational practice within international development needs to be developed further. Contributing to these criticisms, this paper argues that the growing popularity of development evaluation, and its
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increasing claims to being/becoming a science, is an effort at re-introducing the projects of modernisation and neoliberalisation in the developing world. In doing so, I discuss two cases: the first relates to the establishment of development evaluation as a ‘science’ including the curious case of laboratory studies. This case is drawn from a range of secondary material, but includes most prominently the inappropriately named Poverty Action Laboratory. The second case draws from extensive ethnographic work over four years with a leading donor organisation, IndieAid (a pseudonym) in India, whose practices of programme appraisal, review and end-term evaluation are discussed critically. These, the paper argues, have resulted in pushing, with occasional ‘bullying’, of development organisations into adopting neoliberalism and modernity as defining development. The cases are used to identify the underlying modernist assumptions of development evaluation, and also discuss how it is operationalised as an organisational practice in further re-constituting development into its limited, but dominant, modernist and significantly, neoliberalist conceptions. Overall, the paper contributes to a number of debates: including the cultural authority, and the inevitability, of science within international development; the re-colonisation of development through the use of scientific development evaluation; and lastly its evident implications in pushing the meaning of development into a dangerous corner.
Juliana Siwale ‘A critical evaluation of international development and poverty: the case of microfinance’ Abstract Microfinance has risen to become one of the ‘most important policy and programme interventions in the international development community’ (Bateman, 2010: 1). As is the case in many parts of the developing world, microfinance has been one of the ‘hyped’ global developmental policies (Geleta, 2013), regarded as a best development strategy not only to help reduce poverty but also to empower women (Amha, 2008). It is aimed at helping the ‘active poor’ bring about own economic and social development-i.e ‘bottom-up’ and locally owned. In particular, microfinance is assumed to help empower women through helping them create and run small enterprises that ultimately help generate income. It is a market based approach of giving the poor a hand up and not a hand-out. It is also thought to make a significant contribution in enabling women become economically active through their participation in managing borrower groups and through exchange of information with each other. The paper seeks to challenge the dominant economic discourse regarding helping the poor help themselves and the narratives behind ‘making markets work for the poor’ as articulated by the World Bank and other international institutions like DFID. It uses microfinance, viewed as an effective bottom-up development strategy to argue that much of international development has failed the poor, especially in Africa due to the top-down, input output approach inherent in economic models that eschewed local knowledge of recipients. The central argument that the paper makes is that, the donors’ top-down approach to microfinance was synonymous with ‘subsidizing failure’ and flawed by design. The paper is based on the author’s qualitative research on microfinance development and practice in Zambia, based on the field work conducted between 2003 and 2010. This is supported by author’s indigenous knowledge of the local economic and cultural context, together with a review of key World Bank publications on policy strategies to poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper will also draw on data from one of the donors (SIDA) that financially supported one of the failed Zambian microfinance in order to demonstrate how top-down policies can be self-defeating in practice while appearing to be for the good of the subjects of the developmentthe poor. The paper makes a contribution by challenging the practices and discourses on poverty reduction driven by the neo-liberal agenda that to a large extent have succeeded in ‘disabling’ local initiative to problem solving and localizing development.
Peter Case ‘Taking culture: When state socialism meets market capitalism in southeast Asia’ Abstract In this paper I draw on recent field work to discuss some of the complex dynamics arising from the attempt on the part of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) to introduce market capitalism into its agricultural sector. The Lao Government’s 7th National Economic and Social Development Plan promotes modernization with an emphasis on achievement of UN Millennium Development Goals for poverty reduction. Accordingly,
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the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) have released a new Agricultural Development Strategy (ADS) for 2011-20. This ADS envisages a transformation of MAF from an implementing agency into more of a facilitative body. The research project that I am running in Laos is intended to assist the extension arm of MAF, with this transition. Funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the research team is working with a partner Lao government organization – the Department of Agriculture, Extension and Cooperatives - to develop and implement a new ‘extension management system’. The project has been running for approximately one year and, although in its relatively early stages, I have been gathering ethnographic notes during my three field trips to Laos and keeping a research diary of reflections on the experience of leading and managing a complex ODA initiative. The project team has also undertaken a comparative literature review (Jones et al., forthcoming) of agricultural extension activity in southeast Asia and collected a variety of archival material - ‘grey literature’ (policy documentation, development reports, etc.) relating to project. Drawing on these various data sources and reporting on some ‘representative anecdotes’, I attempt to highlight some of the conflicts and contestations that result from the pursuit of enhanced ‘market engagement’ and more systematic management of state supported agricultural extension. I argue, for example, that western-style project management techniques at times are compromised by what Rehbein (2007, 2011) calls taking culture;; a cultural legacy rooted in ‘subsistence ethics’ (Scott, 1976) which pervades all levels of Lao society. Although Laos is highly diverse in ethnic and ethno-linguistic terms, in general village culture revolves around systems of reciprocity and mutual support aimed at collective security and survival rather than individual gain and affluence. Such reciprocity reinforces traditional kinship ties and social relations, one consequence of which is a strong sense of belonging to the collective. Equally strong, therefore, are the social psychological boundaries that exist between those who belong to the group and those (non-kin or, otherwise, not integrated into the village community) who do not. ‘Outsiders’ would include members of other villages, government civil servants and foreign aid workers. However, taking culture is not exclusively restricted to farming communities and I offer examples of how this concept can be used to interpret certain forms of conduct on the part of state civil servants;; in particular, their relationship to ‘foreign experts’ and donor organizations. I also point to misunderstandings that can arise as a result of western workers failing to appreciate this important dimension of Lao culture. Another set of misunderstandings that have arisen during the early stages of the agricultural extension project relate to the team’s encounter with Lao cultural conceptions and practices of economic exchange. Following the Lao PDR Government’s express interest in promoting marketization of the economy, our extension management project aims directly to help extension field workers assist farmers with ‘market engagement’. It would be fair to say that some subsistence farmers have proven somewhat recalcitrant to this overall program. Historically farmers may well have sold farm produce opportunistically to passing traders but efforts to encourage the production and sale of surpluses in an organized way have been slow to take hold. A major raison d’être of our project interventions, therefore, revolve around the implementation of Government policy with respect to the promotion of ‘farmer organizations’ that can facilitate systematic and reliable production of agricultural surpluses. Surplus produce can then be sold to traders at prices that yield genuine socio-economic benefits to households. In other words, economic gains at the household level, in turn, can generate potential social benefits in terms of enabling farming families to send their children to school, being able to afford better health care, and so forth. The social engineering implicit in the modernizing move toward marketization has at least two dimensions in the Lao cultural context; one which would tend to mitigate against the trajectory being pursued and another which, arguably, assists the Government’s (and our project’s) cause. On the one hand, there are aspects of subsistence ethics which are resistant to the very concept of personal profit while, on the other, recent shifts in cultural identity brought about by a national repositioning of Lao peasantry and the increasingly ubiquitous presence of cellular phone technology and satellite television would tend to promote the importance of economic acquisition, if not capital accumulation per se. I offer ethnographic examples to illustrate aspects of these two competing dynamics.
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CULTURES OF ‘MODERNIZATION’ Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm F6
Jonathan Gosling & Wenjin Dai ‘Culture, development and sustainability: Philosophical resistance to discourses of development in a multinational company’ Abstract In this paper we present an empirically-based critique of post-colonial and neo-liberal paradigms of international development, exploring in particular the persistence, mobilisation and contested meanings around (controversially) pre-modern ideas in the context of unashamedly neo-liberal, market oriented multi-nationalism. The context is the ‘corporate culture’ department in the Chinese headquarters of a Japanese multi-national company. It has claimed to be one of the most responsible multinational corporations, operating strictly within sustainability benchmarks such as ISO14001. This company owns and co-owns several subsidiaries in China, supplying components to pharmaceutical and electronic brands. Apple Inc is one of their customers; although this particular company has not been embroiled in scandals about suicide in supplier factories, they are very sensitive to potential criticisms about the ‘moral component’ of their operations. The Corporate Culture department is responsible for articulating this moral component, and the paper will discuss claims that multi-national enterprise is a mode for ‘development’, via a detailed analysis of the discourses and activities of this department. Data was collected during a three-month internship for one of the authors in a participating observer research role, in the spring of 2012. Data includes extensive field notes, drawings by 11 members of staff (a subset of which will be analysed for this paper), formal interviews with actors across the organisation, and a content analysis of Chinese popular media discussing ‘corporate social responsibility’ and ‘sustainability’. The issues will emerge from further analysis for the CMS Conference. As an example, preliminary analysis reveals underlying constructs of symmetry, stability, harmony and balance in the idealised representations of the good that the company could be doing. These constructs are represented in at least two ways: a)
A circular arrangement of change agents around a central point of dynamic stability, reminiscent of hexagrams in an i-ching diagram of ‘changes’;; b) An inter-dependent duality of forces, e.g. for profits and sustainability, drawn as interlocking opposites, reminiscent of a yin/yang or wu/wei diagram. Typical of drawing type (a) is one by the CEO, in which he places himself in the middle, not as a hub, but as mutually dependent on the characters in the complexes arranged around him. Type (b) is in several drawings as land/sea; green spaces/business spaces; and now/future. In all of these, each side of the drawing contains elements of, maybe the seeds of, its opposite. The paper will examine ways in which these and other motifs translate and shape notions of development and sustainability in this company (including, for example, traces of classical Confucian texts found in the Japanese statements of company philosophy). The paper considers whether the mobilisation of classical Daoist and Buddhist images of change suggests a noncolonial and non-liberal recognition of ‘dependent origination’, which may have significance for theory in this domain.
Sueli Goulart & Rodrigo Prado da Costa ‘International cooperation in Haiti: Organization for what?’ Abstract This paper aims to reflect about the contradictions of international cooperation for development. The setting is Haiti. The actors are governments of many countries, multilateral organizations, non-governmental organizations. The following plot can be summarized in two perspectives: the north-south cooperation (NSC) and South-South cooperation (SSC). On stage, the dynamics of relationships can mix them (N-SSC). Some actors enact with the audience, wishing it assumes the role. Others switch roles. They have bought numbered chairs, organized the
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show to your liking and watch the staging of the precariousness of daily life in Haiti. They specialize in "assistance". We identified governmental and nongovernmental particularly in health, linked to the OECD, the ALBA-TCP and UNASUR as empirical sources for reflection. The casting of the OECD, as a rule, privileges the plot of NSC: commitment of developed nations (!?) with undeveloped (?!).They have financed projects under the official development assistance (ODA). They operate mainly through NGOs. Lengyel and Bernabé (2009) tell about 750 NGOs which distribute approximately 70% of all funds of international cooperation for development in Haiti. In health, the U.S. subsidizes 97 NGOs registered in the official board of Haiti. The casting of the ALBA-TCP and UNASUR have followed the plot of SSC: commitment and solidarity among nations alike. They emphasize the horizontal partnership based on solidarity, respect for national sovereignty and peculiarities of each country. They also operate through NGOs but are distinguished by stayed directly in the lives of the population. In general, establish partnership with the Haitian government, with the purpose of contributing to the strengthening of public institutions of that country. As stated by Dar (2008, p. 93-94), “health remains a critical aspect of development work, yet there has been little attention paid to how development organizations uncritically assimilate development-management ideas leading to an unreflexive and, at times, inappropriate health development sector”. We suppose that the resumption of the categories “imperialism” and “internationalism” as a dialectic totality (and its consequences, as neo-colonialism, sovereignty and selfdetermination of peoples, for example) (Lowy, 1998; Harvey, 2010) may contribute to the understanding and analysis the contradictions in the international development agenda, illustrated by how these different actor in Haiti organize their actions. While the first one (imperialism) indicates bonding mechanisms geopolitical hierarchy, the latter (internationalism) suggests possibilities for overcoming these mechanisms. The precariousness of life in Haiti does not seem to be lack of development assistance, but it lacks in genuine cooperation, which is organized to produce the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples. Therefore, this is an urgent issue in the Management and Organizational Studies (MOS). It is essential to appreciate the organization of the local population and strengthen the capacity of the Haitian state government. How can we help to write an appropriated plot? For what? To connect the organization of the international aid to the Haitians with those categories can be a fruitful challenge.
Gianluca Miscione ‘Engineering the Others: the Iron Cage of Autopoiesis Abstract Since decades, information technologies hold the promise to ‘diffuse’ knowledge to improve developing countries conditions. As health sciences and technologies extensively travel beyond the industrialized world, health provision practices affect and are affected by a variety of institutional settings. This aspect is evident from the perspective of a long lasting and widely spread action-research project, which aims at designing and implementing health information systems in “developing countries”, and eventually to link them in a health information infrastructure. As the action-research network considered here is situated across public health care systems, research centers, non-governmental organizations at the same time, the regime of multiple accountabilities is neither global, nor local. The usual mismatch between formal bureaucracies’ functioning, common top-down software development schemes, local health organizations’ needs, and actual trajectories of development initiatives (mostly run by international agencies) provides the empirical field which does not lend itself to be classified according to multi-level analyses. Indeed, organizing processes across scales are more prominent. For instance, it is not unusual in developing contexts to meet well-educated and experienced health personnel, but see poor health conditions. This simple observation brings to doubt that what is needed onsite to improve the situation is medical knowledge, in its abstract sense. Where medicines’ supply is not working properly, or if it is not flexible enough to respond to ever changing needs, you can note -or even be told explicitly- that physicians tend to prescribe the medicine they have available, after having (retrospectively) provided a diagnosis accordingly. In this way the socio-technical system (examinations, treatments, medicines’ supply, technologies…) can keep stable, self-regulated, working. Not least, everything is formally accountable: health personnel is not wasting the medicines the donors have provided, resources allocation’s procedure is not questioned, health system accepts and follow patients into its organizational routines, and -as far as possible- they are treated, when they do not -for many reasons- rely on alternative treatments. On the base of this example, asking ‘where is knowledge?’ can lead us to unexpected ‘glocal’ contexts. Where should we relocate our viewpoint? A meso-level between global trends and local specificities is identified as crucial for looking at health care and technologies. Empirically this level is between the two usual poles in information systems studies: decision-makers (public administrators and software developers, both oriented by a
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top-down approach to systems design) and “ground” of implementation (usually sensitive to the variety of contexts). At this meso-level we can identify the inter-organizational travel and transformation of health care and technologies. Keeping in mind that information infrastructures are micro and macro, whereas research methods tend to be micro or macro, the case of an eventual establishment of a health information infrastructure can: a) provide an original view on contemporary post-colonial science and technologies (Anderson: 2002) in terms of how the context is network dependent (Hayes and Westrup: 2011), and b) show strengths and limitations of participatory design.
CRITIQUES OF DEVELOPMENT IN BRAZIL Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm F6
Rogério Faé, Paulo Ricardo Zilio Abdala, Sueli Maria Goulart Silva & Adriano Saraiva Amaral ‘Brazilian national development: A critical analysis from the perspective of Celso Furtado’s theory’ Abstract This paper aims to discuss the model of national development adopted by Brazil. Our argument is that the national development project adopted by the Brazilian government seeks to assign the State functions of strategic planner and regulator of the market in order to facilitate transactions. However, that strategy is based on an international division of labor that overlaps the local political, social and cultural conditions, a typical process in the peripheral countries, submitting the internal market to the logic of the global capitalism development project. Data collected from official national agencies such as the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, IBGE and the speeches of President Dilma Rousseff, shows that the expansion of extractive industry and the promotion of families’ consumption are adopted simultaneously as paths to economic growth, following global patterns. These patterns intensify the dependency of Brazil towards central countries and devaluate practices and cultures that are locally based. This last claim of our argument can be evidenced with the observation of the double orientation of the government in relation to international trading. Externally, the projects are directed to extractive industries of minerals and fuels, and the production of agricultural commodities with the objective of enhancing competitiveness through technological evolution and economic growth. Analyzing the trade balance of Brazil becomes clear that the participation of extractive and agricultural products in 2012 was the highest in the last 34 years, reaching 47.8% of all Brazilian exports (BRAZIL, 2012). This data is only one piece of information that highlights the government's aim to be a global player through regulation and planning of agricultural production directed towards external markets. Furthermore, internally, regarding the domestic market, the Brazilian government maintains policies designed to promote growth in consumption, mainly through tax relief, reduction of interest rates on the purchase of non-durable goods and appliances, and credit expansion, by which the national government hopes to improve its industrial park (MERCADANTE, 2010). This bi-fold orientation of the Brazilian government stresses an international division of labor where peripheral countries produce agricultural and extractivist commodities, goods with lower added value, easier to produce in comparison to goods produced in central countries, that require specific technologies, thus have higher added value. In order to better understand this role of Brazil in the international trading field and its repercussion in the internal market, we base our analysis on the work of a recognized Brazilian intellectual and economist: Celso Furtado (1954). The reason for this choice is based on the importance of Furtado’s thought as a declared source of inspiration for the development policy of the current federal government, in the words of the President herself (2011a). Nevertheless, this official reference to Furtado’s theory is contradictory, since for this author the growth of the internal market must be articulated with the increase of families’ income, respecting the socio-political characteristics of each country, especially with the incorporation of decision centers, which would allow autonomy in relation to central countries. On the contrary, as data evidence, the Brazilian government development strategies tend to only reproduce dependency on renewed bases. In this sense, the main contribution of this work is to perform a critical analysis of the Brazilian national development project.
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Guilherme Dornelas Camara ‘Poverty Eradication in Brazil: An analysis from the perspective of the Philosophy of Liberation’ Abstract Since 2004, the Brazilian discourse about development has associated economic growth and social inclusion. According to Frenzel, Case and Sedgwick's (2012) the classical development discourse has shifted from development to poverty eradication. In the Brazilian case, the main instrument is the Programa Bolsa Família (PBF) - a federal conditioned cash transfer program designed to alleviate poverty. In this paper the usual quantitative analysis of the PBF’s results are set aside. The aim is to show how the poverty eradication discourse in Brazil dissimulates the reproduction of neoliberal development agenda. The argument is illustrated with interviews with beneficiaries of a small southern town in the borders of Brazil and Uruguay. The data is analyzed from the perspective of the Philosophy of Liberation, a Latin American critical philosophy which emerged around 1970 (DUSSEL, 2008). Adopting this perspective, the concepts of poverty and poor sustaining the Program are criticized for not considering the causes of systemic poverty: unemployment and over-exploitation of workers. The government, instead, broadcasts the fact that Brazil became the sixth largest economy in the world, but also that 75% of those who were poor in 1991 are not anymore. It made Brazil exceeds the first of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). According to the MDGs’ government annual report, if PBF keeps its pace, it will eradicate extreme poverty in 2014 (BRAZIL, 2010). In 2012 over 8 billion dollars were transferred to 13 million families. Besides eradicating poverty, the amount provided by the Program also provides dynamism to the economy of small towns and keeps children in school. At a first reading the numbers seem quite expressive, but there are aspects which make PBF quite controversial. In this paper some of these aspects will be addressed. The starting point is the discussion of the complex mix of liberal ideas which inform the Program such as those of Milton Friedman, Amartya Sen, John Rawls, UNPD and the World Bank – and their repercussion to concrete organization of PBF. After that, the concept of poverty adopted by the Program is discussed, highlighting its definition is quite narrow terms: official documents and reports define poverty line as a monthly income below 65 dollars per capita; the extreme poverty line as a monthly income of less than 32 dollars per capita monthly – not surprisingly the same 1 dollar purchasing power parity defined by the World Bank Group as the extreme poverty line. The argument is that this definition of poverty is not enough to compensate the perverse effects of a long history of exclusion and oppression which includes decades of dictatorships, neo-liberal governments, structural adjustment policies and the reproduction of export orientation and dependency. Instead, the association of a neo-liberal approach with such limited poverty and extreme poverty lines contributes to the reproduction of living condition marked by insecurity and vulnerability.
Anne-Marie Duval, Yves Gendron & Christophe Roux-Dufort ‘Exhibiting nongovernmental organizations: Demystifying funders’ framing power’ Abstract The aim of this article is to better understand how funders may exert power on NGOs through the collection and arrangement of information whose provision is required in applications for funding. The concepts of “poetics and politics of exhibiting” are used to qualitatively analyze a collection of documents pertaining to the Canadian International Development Agencies’ (CIDA) grant application process. First, an analysis of display techniques and different types of accompanying texts used in these documents allows for an understanding of how the prescriptive arrangement of information constrains personalization possibilities and shifts the power of framing NGO representations into the funders’ hands. Out of this process emerges what we call NGOs as financiallyinclined machines, which aim to deliver performance and results as defined by funders. Then, recasting this representation in its underlying performance discourse unveils its normative power which divides “meritorious” NGOs from “non-meritorious” NGOs. CIDA is found to diffuse normative views on what NGOs ought to be and do, thereby constructing a sense of reality that privileges performance (quite often economic performance) over social imperatives. Paradoxically enough, by submitting themselves to the grant application process, NGOs participate in the diffusion of a political discourse that conceives of their role as machines that deliver aid in a technical and narrow way – certainly not in an organic and adaptive way.
Fabian Frenzel, Peter Case & Mitchell Sedgwick Concluding discussion
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STREAM 10: WE’RE FUCKED! CONCEPTUALISING CATASTROPHE Sheena Vachhani, Swansea University Christian De Cock, University of Essex Daniel Nyberg, University of Nottingham Christopher Wright, University of Sydney
SESSION 1 CATASTROPHE AND CAPITALISM Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm F1
Vachhani, S, De Cock, C, Nyberg, D and Wright, C We're fucked, indeed Abstract Introduction to the stream
Kaulingfreks, R and ten Bos, R It’s not working! Prefatory remarks on Kaputt and capitalism Abstract In our consumption society, we are surrounded by artifacts – light bulbs, stereo equipment, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, washing machines, computers, coffee makers, cell phones, cars … you name it. All these artifacts promise to help us in a variety of ways and nearly always we genuinely believe they can fulfill this promise. We trust our little machines. We need them, we want them, we rely on them, even to such an extent that we sometimes, in one of those spare moments of enlightenment, begin to ask troubling questions about whether our needs are genuine at all. In such situations, we become dimly aware that our needs might have been surreptitiously molded around all those artifacts. Rather than addressing genuine, substantial needs, we begin to suspect that many of these artifacts are just gadgets that we desire and want to use or consume, but that we nevertheless do not really need. One of the most plausible etymological explanations for ‘gadget’ is ‘gaget’, an old French word for ‘tool’, but what are the ‘tools’ that surround us good for? Aren’t we in a similar situation as the lady pictured on Dürer’s famous etch called Melancholia who has, also in a moment of enlightenment, come to an understanding that the functionality of the tools that lie scattered around her is nowhere to be found? In her case it were scientific tools – rulers, compasses, field glasses, a globe, and so on – and she ponders the uselessness of the knowledge that these tools are supposed to yield. Similar questions sometimes pop up when we are talking about the tools that surround us. Here, however, we are not so much interested in squeamish attitudes towards gadgets and artifacts. It is rather the fact that they break down that interests us, a phenomenon that, at least to our knowledge, has hardly received any attention among cultural scholars, sociologists, or philosophers. At face value, the frequent breakdown of artifacts is simply an annoyance, nothing more and nothing less, something that occasionally haunts us in everyday life. What interest us the inevitability of the break down: one day they will not work as expected. At the same time we are never prepared for the break down. It always comes as a surprise and disappointment. Take the computer on which we are keying in these words. Each new day, we expect the engine to work, but sometimes it does not work and a certain anger or stupefaction might get hold of us. Although artifacts work most of the time properly, sooner or later they won’t work the way they should or they don’t work at all. There is inevitability about this. We have all an appointment with the breaking down of things and yet we are apparently capable of ignoring the fact that dis-appointment is what inevitably lies ahead. Part of the experience with artifacts that
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break down is surprise. Although we know it is going to happen we close our eyes for the inevitable, hence surprise. It is as if the breaking down of things catches us red-handed. Are we facing a boundless optimism viz a viz our surrounding apparels? Is not the idea of capitalism that everything works to perfection while it continually breaks down? What applies to thing does it not also applies to social constructs or even people? Does capitalism encourages a sense of perfection and longevity of everything and closes the eyes for the malfunctioning of it? The Germanic languages have a perfect word for whatever breaks down: KAPUTT. In all its harshness and toughness, this word seems to nicely capture the stupefaction we sense when our light bulbs, computers, cars, and bikes crash. If we were, in our paper, to write a history of breakdowns, then it will be eine Geschichte des Kaputten, a history of a particular experience, eine Geschichte einer Erfahrung. Our paper can best be seen as a kind of prolegomenon to such a history. We believe capitalism thrives on the maintenance and denial of Kaputt. While the built-in obsolescence of things is something that has attracted attention among critical scholars, hardly nobody has Kaputt is an experience that can never be built-in.
Beverungen, A and Schwartz, G Managing Capitalist Catastrophe: Communist Business Ethics Abstract The entrenchment of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher, 2008) ensures that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Yet, in the wake of the financial crisis in late 2008, and for at least one year following the initial bankruptcies and tumult that sent major banks, insurance companies and stock exchanges to the bonfire before being resuscitated with public money, capitalism — the name, the ‘system’, the idea—was fiercely challenged. Criticized from different corners of the mainstream, it was seen to be responsible not only for the immediate problem of speculative bubbles and for indebting and submitting to incertitude potentially several future generations, but for the corruption of liberal values and institutions, for paralyzing legal judgment, for its continuing thirst for natural resources and virgin lands, and for the impending catastrophe of the wholesale destruction of the earth. How does capital, or rather its practitioner-proponents and its myriad ideologues, establish a way to dissociate capitalism from crises and catastrophes? For example, its ideological apparatuses strive to project ‘social relations with nature’ (gesellschaftlicher Naturverhältnisse) as naturally lopsided, with capitalism having no necessary connection to the nexus of this relation. Thus it can ask its subjects to recycle while continuing as an essentially wasteful system (Jones, 2010). Yet, while as humans we cannot avoid exploiting and transforming nature, the capitalist mode of this exploitation lies not so much in a will to domination, as in capital’s basic compulsion to accumulate for accumulation’s sake — that which distinguishes it as chrematistics (χρηματιστική) rather than economics (οἰ κονομία) — which pays no heed to natural or social limits. Of course, managing catastrophe does not mean avoiding catastrophe — for capital, whose basic modus operandi is accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2007) it means creating and profiting from catastrophes. New forms of dispossession, appropriation of new commons (De Angelis, 2007), subordination of social reproduction to the reproduction of capital (Dalla Costa, 1972; Federici, 2012), the appropriation of energy (Caffentzis, 1992) and the denial of ‘useful-creative doing’ by the perpetuation of labour (Holloway et al, 2009) lie at the basis of both ‘respectable’ profit-making and of wars, natural disasters, and global warming (Böhm et al., 2012). In such circumstances, the mantra of ‘responsibility’, which had, by the end of the first decade of the 21 st century was losing its luster, today assumes a new, more vital character, and its proponents, the leading capitalists, at Davos and elsewhere, more than ever must appear as ‘liberal communists’ (Žižek, 2009). In this paper, we argue that capitalism increasingly relies on figures of communism for corporate social responsibility (Hanlon, 2008; Hanlon & Fleming, 2009) and for managing catastrophes in particular. Through a spectral reading (Derrida, 1994) of business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature, and drawing on a number of illustrative examples, we demonstrate how capitalism both relies on images of communism to ideologically manage catastrophe and on communist practices to practically alleviate the worst effects of catastrophe. We maintain that catastrophe must be de-linked from its all-engulfing rendition as a phenomenon of humanity, to an understanding that emphasizes the identity between capital and catastrophe—as a product of capital, as affecting the reproduction of capital, as capital’s profit from the desiccation of the commons. It is in light of this that the communism in business ethics and CSR acts as potent ingredient of sublimation. Finally, we explore the conundrum that the worst possible catastrophe for capitalism is communism itself, and wonder how capitalism manages the looming communism that it already let enter its fold. References Böhm, S., A.-M. Murtola & S. Spoelstra (2012) ‘The atmosphere business’, ephemera: theory & politics in
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organization, 12(1/2): 1-11. Caffentzis, G. (1992) Midnight Oil: Work, Energy,War, 1973–1992. New York: Autonomedia. Dalla Costa, M. and S. James (1972) The Power of Women in the Subversion of the Community Bristol: Falling Wall Press. Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. London: Routledge. Douzinas, C., & Zizek, S. (Eds.). (2010). The idea of communism. London: Verso. Federici, S. (2012) Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle New York: PM Press. Fisher, M. (2008). Capitalist realism: is there no alternative? London: Zed Books. Guattari, F., & Negri, A. (2010). New lines of alliance, new spaces of liberty. London: Minor Compositions / Autonomedia / MayFlyBooks. Hanlon, G. (2008). Rethinking corporate social responsibility and the role of the firm - on the denial of politics. In A. Crane, A. MacWilliams, D. Matten, J. Moon, & Donald S. Siegel (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility (pp. 156-172). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hanlon, G., & Fleming, P. (2009). Updating the critical perspective on corporate social responsibility. Sociology Compass, 3(6), 937-948. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D., 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holloway, J., 2009. Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism. London: Pluto Press. Jones, C. (2010) ‘The subject supposed to recycle’, Philosophy Today, 54(1): 30-39. Žižek, S. (2009) First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London: Verso.
Burnett, A The Annihilation of Space through Time: Virtual organization as a Messianic Call in Catastrophic Times Abstract Catastrophism and calls to salvation figure prominently in contemporary discourse. Signifying a revolutionary innovation in management and organization, virtual organization has been ascribed powers that would extend and revitalise neo-liberal capitalism through the spatial expansion of the accumulation system. As such, virtual organization represents the denouement in which the great positivist ambition of mastery through the annihilation of space through time is realised, and where, as Harvey has observed, ‘the conquest of space and time, along with the ceaseless quest to dominate nature have long taken centre stage in the collective psyche of capitalist societies’ (2010: 157). In this context, virtual organization would embody a form of technological deliverance. However, the alleged friction-free movement through cyberspace enabled by virtual organization occurs within a deep-rooted malaise where the real abstractions of virtual capitalism actively contribute to a state of socioeconomic and political emergency (Zizek, 2010, 2011: Elliot, 2012). Virtual organization recalls a dystopian imagination at work within its very logic, for the promise of unprecedented gains in productivity and profitability also progressively decouple and destablise by facilitating unfettered capital, and the ‘formation of a permanent underclass in neo-feudal society’ (Mowshowitz, 2002: 107). As a form of unrestrained capital, virtual organization amplifies dislocation across time and space and the emergence of virtual feudalism offers a sense of technological singularity where value and progress would be measured in terms of the increasingly automatic functioning of power in a new global apartheid. The paper addresses innovations in management and organization couched in such apocalyptic terms by providing an examination of the ways in which the weak conceptualisation of space in management and organization studies would constrain knowledge about virtual organization. A critical deconstructive reading of discourse on virtual organization displaces its exorbitant dystopian teleological tenor with an open future, a ‘messianism without a determinate messianism’ (Glendinning, 2011: 390). The paper offers a deconstructive reading of virtual organization discourse where a perhaps implied point raised by Jones and Ten Bos (2007) might not be so far-fetched; that critical management studies would benefit from imagining an inheritance not from partial readings of Weber as is customary in management and organization studies, but rather from the alienating vicissitudes in Kafka. From this broadening in scope, catastrophe might be considered anew as a necessary animation of conceptualisations of organisational innovation and change. The paper argues for the acknowledgement of space from flawed conceptual fault lines in management and organization studies and suggests the need for a new critical imagination that would recapture the future from the clasp of dominant narratives that reproduce the dead weight of neo-liberal fantasy. In the emerging phantasmagoria of capitalist
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modernity of Paris in the nineteenth century, the conception and sensation of time was experienced, every moment, as dull weight (Baudelaire cited in Osborne, 1992; Benjamin, 2002). A deconstructive analysis of the spatial in virtual organization discourse alerts us to a weight of anxiety in our time that both underpins conception of the spatial in management and organization theorisation and contains the spatial imagination. References: Benjamin, W. (2002) The Arcades Project 1927-1940. Trans. Eiland, H. and McLaughlin, K. Harvard University Press. Mass. Derrida, J. (1967) Writing and Difference. Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. Derrida, J. (1967) Of Grammatology. John Hopkins University Press. Baltimore. Elliot, L. (2012) George Osborne’s recovery via austerity plan is undone amid crisis of capitalism, The Observer, 10th June. Elliot, L. (2012) Global economic woes prompt soul-searching on Capitalism, The Guardian, 25th November. Foucault, M. (1967) Des Espace Autres (Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias). Architecture/Mouvement/Continuite. October 1984. Gates, B. (1995) The Road Ahead. Penguin. London. Glendinning, S. (2011) Derrida: A Very Short Introduction. OUP. Oxford. Harvey, D. (2010) The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Profile Books. London. Jones, C. and Ten Bos, R. (2007) ‘Introduction’ in Philosophy and Organization. Routledge. Abingdon. Klein, N. (2007) The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Penguin. London. Lilley, S., McNally, S., Yuen, E., and Davis, J. (2012) Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth. PM Press Oakland. Massey, D. (2005) For Space. Sage Publications. London. Mowshowitz, A. (2002) Virtual Organization: Towards a Theory of Societal Transformation Stimulated by Information Technology. Quorom. Westport CT. Norris, C. (1987) Derrida. Fontana Press. London. O’Doherty, D. (2007) recovering philosophy in Philosophy and Organization. Routledge. Abingdon. O’Doherty, D. (2007) The Question of Theoretical Excess: Folly and Fall in theorizing Organization, Organization, 14:6 Osborne, P (1992) Modernity is a Qualitative, not a Chronological, Category. New Left Review. 192. Zizek, S. (2010) A Permanent Economic Emergency. New Left Review. 64. Zizek, S. (2011) Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso. London.
SESSION 2 MANAGEMENT AND/AS PROPAGANDA Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm F1
Sage, D and Rees, C Dramatizing capitalist catastrophes Abstract Catastrophe is commonly understood as a large-scale, sudden and painful downturn in events. This definition abounds in popular use where catastrophes include natural disasters, but also human disasters related to terrorism, warfare, industrial production and the operation of economic systems. And yet, early uses of catastrophe in the English language suggest a dual use. Equivocality stems from the dramatic origins of the term: the catastrophe simply describes the final act in a piece of drama, the dénouement, the “turning point” in the fortunes of the characters, whether for good or bad, epitomised by events such as marriage or death. Thus, the mood of the catastrophe marked out classical dramatic form, as either comedic or tragic, as theatrical writings as diverse as those of the Aelius Donatus or Gustav Freytag suggest. This understanding of catastrophe has again shifted in more recent years: playwrights such as Beckett and Pinter have deliberately blurred these classical distinctions, offering audiences plays with inconclusive endings, tragi-comic events and bleak but often beautiful poetry. Contemporary dramatists therefore engage with ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’ in a more subtle manner, where sudden events possess more ambiguous meanings. In this paper we examine how contemporary playwrights work through the dramatic catastrophe to engage with
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the vagaries of neoliberal capitalism. We undertake a close-reading of David Hare’s documentary exploration of the financial crises in the The Power of Yes (2008) and Lucy Prebble’s more playful and grotesque staging of the collapse of the ill-famed US energy giant in Enron (2009). These close-readings are contextualized alongside academic commentary of both events. We argue that both of these plays problematize a simplistic reading of these ‘catastrophes’ as simply tragedies, where the dénouement reveals flawed heroes, aggrieved victims and guilty villains. Yet neither do the playwrights adopt a simply comic form, where a sudden reversal of fortune at the end of the plays, suggests that the protagonists, or indeed capitalism, is resurrected, without suffering or pain. Instead both playwrights grapple with the demands of working towards the capitalist catastrophe, in a more ambiguous and ambivalent manner. Classical notions of heroes, victims and villains appear insufficient to account for the motives and actions of the characters involved; there is little comic reprieve to be found in the rehabilitation of capitalist enterprise at the expense of the poorest in society; and ultimately the dramatic catastrophe itself, the “turning point” appears as indifferent to an ethical teleology as capitalism. Although ‘tragedy’ may be useful shorthand for the events afflicting the organisations and people depicted in these plays, the playwrights appear to hark back to much earlier usage of the term ‘catastrophe’. Both playwrights imply that neoliberal capitalism is neither slain villain nor glorified hero in the final act, but rather a more elusive and freefloating entity, resilient, yet entirely indifferent to the cost or benefits of its resilience.
Dickson, A Environmental sustainability disclosure: performing crisis avoidance or avoidance of change? Abstract Industrial production is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the climate change crisis. Proponents of ecological modernisation theories hold that capitalism is capable of changing sufficiently to address this crisis and corporations have a role to play through adopting new practices that enable the continuation of industrial production while minimising emissions (Mol & Jänicke, 2010). This paper explores the logic of environmental sustainability disclosure, one of the mechanisms proposed for influencing this move towards ecological modernisation, and demonstrates how companies seemingly engage in crisis avoidance yet avoid any change that might avoid the coming climate crisis. Increasingly corporations and investors are engaging with the discourse of environmental sustainability and participating in sustainability disclosure schemes such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and the financial market indices Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and FTSE4Good. These schemes provide a form of standardisation and ranking of companies' sustainability disclosures, and have an implicit logic of ecological modernisation performativity. This logic is based on the notion that high quality sustainability reporting enhances financial and environmental outcomes through the mediation of investor decision making (Kolk, Levy & Pinske, 2008). While evidence for the claim of improved financial outcome for firms considered leaders in environmental management is at best marginal, there is very little empirical work on the environmental benefit claim of sustainability disclosure schemes. In addressing this lacuna, the paper undertakes a statistical analysis of the relative carbon emissions intensity of companies regarded by the schemes as sustainability leaders and non leaders. Using data from Australian industries with a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, the analysis finds marginal improvement in emissions intensity across the industries over the years 2009-2011 and little difference in the greenhouse gas emissions performance of sustainability disclosure leaders compared with disclosure non-leaders. This lack of empirical support for the ecological modernisation performativity claim of the disclosure schemes is of concern. At best the schemes may be viewed as an exercise in wasted effort. At worst, they may be unintentionally performative and embed practices in corporations that simply provide a sense of crisis mitigation while having little crisis impact. The paper contributes to conceptualising catastrophe in two ways. First the paper highlights how a significant group of companies, as protagonists in the current climate change crisis, engage with the discourse of environmental sustainability sufficient to maintain reputation and legitimacy while remaining inactive in changing the practices that contribute to the crisis. Second, the paper proposes that while sustainability disclosure schemes claim to assist in the mitigation of carbon emissions as a viable response to climate change, the lack of evidence for this claim coupled with the schemes' legitimacy actually contributes to a worsening catastrophe. References Mol, A. P. J., & Jänicke, M. (2010). The origins and theoretical foundations of ecological modernisation theory. In A. P. J. Mol, D. A. Sonnenfeld & G. Spaargaren (Eds.), The Ecological Modernisation Reader. Oxon: Routledge. Kolk, A., Levy, D., & Pinkse, J. (2008). Corporate Responses in an Emerging Climate Regime: The
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Institutionalization and Commensuration of Carbon Disclosure. European Accounting Review, 17(4), 719-745.
Murray, J and Nyberg, D Catastrophe takes organization: constructing threats and saviours in corporate communications Abstract *The following abstract provides indicative sections of the theories we engage with and the empirical material collected and analysed. A full reference list is available upon request. “all important questions are so complicated, and the results any course of action are so difficult to foresee, that certainty, or even probability, is seldom, if ever, attainable. It follows at once that the only justifiable attitude of mind is suspense of judgement; and this attitude, besides being particularly congenial to the academic temperament, has the advantage of being relatively easy to attain. There remains the duty of persuading others to be equally judicious, and to refrain from plunging into reckless courses which might lead them Heaven knows whither. At this point the arguments for doing nothing come in;; for it is a mere theorist’s paradox that doing nothing has just as many consequences as doing something. It is obvious that inaction can have no consequences at all.” Cornford (1908, p. 26-27). Arguments designed to cast doubt, forestall and ultimately prevent regulatory change are symptomatic of the way corporations have participated in public policy debates (Oreskes and Conway, 2010). In this paper we investigate the communications of corporate entities during public policy debates relating to three areas of economic and social reform in Australia, namely 1) the response of the tobacco industry to the proposed plain packaging of cigarettes, 2) the response of the licensed club industry to the proposed restrictions on electronic gaming machines, and 3) the response of all industry to the proposed price on carbon. All documents that refer to the policy and originate from companies and industry peak bodies between the announcement and the abandonment or introduction of proposed policy were collected for analysis, including; company announcements posted to the Australian Securities Exchange, letters to shareholders, publications and consultant reports produced, press releases, published opinion pieces or letters to editors, and any advertising material. We develop a framework around Hirschman’s analysis of conservative politics in the Rhetoric of Reaction (Hirschman, 1991) in order to investigate the deployment of arguments made by corporate actors against the proposed reforms. We explore how the jeopardy thesis (that the proposed policy threatens are more fundamental value), the futility thesis (that the proposed policy will have no effect), and the perversity thesis (that the proposed policy will have the opposite effect of that intended) are used to construct the state and regulation itself as posing a catastrophic threat to society, and to position corporations themselves as saviours. In particular we explore how the corporation-as-saviour narrative is legitimised by drawing on notions of corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship. In sum, rather than delineating the frontiers of the debate and constructing alliances with other interest groups, our analysis shows how the three different corporate communication campaigns worked to position themselves as saviours rather than perpetrators and to depict social reform as catastrophic.
Lewis, B What is a project? Towards a new ontology for projects and project management Abstract Despite the ‘projectification’ of work (Maylor, Brady et al. 2006), the talk is of high-profile project failures and of a crisis in the project management profession. My paper suggests that the crisis stems from the taken-forgranted nature of projects and proposes the exploration of a new ontology for projects and project management. Conventionally, projects are described as entities that are expected to respond in predictable ways to universal, standardised project management approaches. If projects are not effective in controlling work, are we are ‘out of control’? More critical analyses identify that projects are not value-free, objective entities. Instead, one theme in the literature explores projects as social constructs (Green 2006, Marshall 2006, Smith 2006), where one logical conclusion is that these activities are so particular and situated as to be beyond the use of formalised project management tools (Nocker 2006). Others identify projects as vehicles of oppression that discipline and control the worker, as well as the work (Thomas 1998, Hodgson 2002). Focusing on one form of project control, the management of risk, indicates a normative paradox: although this is a core project management technique, it is not always carried out (Pich, Loch et al. 2002, Raz, Shenhar et al. 2002, Atkinson, Crawford et al. 2006). Following Ulrich Beck, the projectification of work may itself be the source of risk and failure; a by-product of
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modernity (Beck and Ritter 1992, Beck 2009). At the same time Beck suggests that risk does not equal ‘catastrophe’, instead it has two faces: ‘chance and danger’ (Beck 2009: 4). I identify that the different ways of understanding the nature of “a project”, different ontological perspectives, suggest paradoxical positions. Following the organisational literature (Poole and Van den Ven 1989, Lewis 2000, Seo and Creed 2002, Seo, Putnam et al. 2004, Barge, Lee et al. 2008, Smith and Lewis 2011), rather than privileging one world view or the other, we should seek to understand both polarities of the paradox. In projects, as well as narratives of failure, we can identify those of success (and vice versa); alongside control, we must recognise ambiguity and uncertainty. Rather than replacing the naïve realist ontology with a constructivist/structuralist ontology, I suggest that there is potential in adopting a critical realist perspective (Bhaskar 1975, Danermark 2002, Mingers 2004, Fleetwood 2005, Sayer 2010) to explore a stratified ontology of “a project”. Critical realism suggests a framework that rejects the naïve realism of the conventional (positivist) view of projects and requires instead that projects be understood in different modes of reality: explicitly as socially constructed entities, influenced by specific historical, political, economic, social and institutional contexts, and subject to causal powers that have their own stratified existence. Rather than simplistic descriptions of project failure and the crisis of project management, a better understanding of projects may help us to understand how to live with the simultaneous existence of catastrophe and success. References Atkinson, R., L. Crawford and S. Ward (2006). "Fundamental uncertainties in projects and the scope of project management." International Journal of Project Management 24(8): 687-698. Barge, J. K., M. Lee, K. Maddux, R. Nabring and B. Townsend (2008). "Managing dualities in planned change initiatives." Journal of Applied Communication Research 36(4): 364-390. Beck, U. (2009). World at risk. Cambridge, Polity. Beck, U. and M. Ritter (1992). Risk society : towards a new modernity. London, Sage. Bhaskar, R. (1975). A realist theory of science. Leeds, Leeds Books. Danermark, B. (2002). Explaining society : critical realism in the social sciences. London, Routledge. Fleetwood, S. (2005). "Ontology in Organization and Management Studies: A Critical Realist Perspective." Organization 12(2): 197-222. Green, S. (2006). The management of projects in the construction industry: context, discourse and self-identity. Making Projects Critical. D. E. Hodgson and S. Cicmil. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 232-251. Hodgson, D. (2002). "Disciplining the Professional: The Case of Project Management." Journal of Management Studies 39(6): 803-821. Lewis, M. W. (2000). "Exploring Paradox: Toward a More Comprehensive Guide." The Academy of Management Review 25(4): 760-776. Marshall, N. (2006). Understanding power in project settings. Making Projects Critical. D. E. Hodgson and S. Cicmil. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 207-231. Mingers, J. (2004). "Real-izing information systems: critical realism as an underpinning philosophy for information systems." Information and Organization 14(2): 87-103. Nocker, M. (2006). The contested object: on projects as emergent space. Making Projects Critical. D. E. Hodgson and S. Cicmil. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 132-154. Pich, M. T., C. H. Loch and A. De Meyer (2002). "On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management." Management Science 48(8): 1008-1023. Poole, M. S. and A. H. Van den Ven (1989). "Using Paradox to Build Management and Organization Theories." The Academy of Management Review 14(4): 562-578. Raz, T., A. J. Shenhar and D. Dvir (2002). "Risk management, project success, and technological uncertainty." R&D Management 32(2): 101-109. Sayer, R. A. (2010). Method in social science : a realistic approach. London, Routledge. Seo, M., L. L. Putnam and J. M. Bartunek (2004). Dualities and tensions of planned organizational change. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Seo, M.-G. and W. E. D. Creed (2002). "Institutional Contradictions, Praxis, and Institutional Change: A Dialectical Perspective." The Academy of Management Review 27(2): 222-247. Smith, C. (2006). A tale of an evolving project: failed science or serial reinterpretation. Making Projects Critical. D. E. Hodgson and S. Cicmil. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 190-204. Smith, W. K. and M. W. Lewis (2011). "Toward a Theory of Paradox: A Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Organizing." Academy of Management Review 36(2): 381-403. Thomas, J. (1998). Problematising Project Management. Making Projects Critical. D. E. Hodgson and S. Cicmil. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 90-110.
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SESSION 3 CATASTROPHIC CASES Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am F1
Andriani, P and Weir, D Catastrophe as creation and transition: beyond moral panic and into exaptative response Abstract Most studies of catastrophic collapse focus on mature societies (Tainter, 1988; Diamond, 2005), or socioeconomic clusters while Schumpeter sees catastrophic collapse as an element of creative destruction (Schumpeter. 1942), focussing on endogenous and exogenous causes of catastrophic collapse and the interplay between these forces and system reactions, to identify strategies to deal with systems in decline (Leahy, T., Bowden, V., & Threadgold, S., 2010). This paper analyses the catastrophic collapse of the UK airship industry, the moral panic that accompanied it and the exaptative response that followed it (HMSO, 1999). It is of a particular interest because of the following unique features: This is one of only a few cases of a complete and virtually instantaneous catastrophic collapse that wiped out an entire sub-sector of the economy. The airship industry represented about 50% of the aviation industry by volume of investment, representing a major dimension of government expenditure. The catastrophe affected a technological sector still undergoing significant architectural innovation (Baldwin and Clark, 2000). The passionate and symbolically-orchestrated moral panic (Young, 1971) that ensued was rapidly amplified because it was the first occasion in British society in which a significant new communication technology, that of newsreel cinema, enabled the evidence of the catastrophe to be disseminated almost instantly and the political shock wave overwhelmed the mechanisms of rational, planned response in government. Catastrophe can unlock and modify assets and resources previously frozen, leading to a general reorganization based on new architectures of resources, assets and technological trajectories. The case illustrates that innovation is not smooth and linear but emerges from catastrophic implosion of a whole industrial sector. We propose an approach derived from complexity theory and the framework of exaptative response in which system elements recombine in unplanned and unexpected new patterns after an apparently terminal event (Ganzaroli and Pilotti, 2011, Hall and Andriani, 2003). References Baldwin, C. Y., and Clark, K. B. (2000) Design Rules: the Power of Modularity. Cambridge: MA: MIT Press. Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: London: Penguin Ganzaroli, A and Pilotti, L. (2011) Exaptation as source of Creativity and innovation: Working Paper n. 2011-04 Feb 2011 Department of Economics and Statistics: Universita degli studie di Milano Hall, R. and Andriani, PP. (2003) Managing knowledge associated with innovation: Journal of Business Research: Volume 56: 2, February 2003, Pages 145–152 HMSO (1999) R101: The Airship Disaster: HMSO: 1999 Leahy, T., Bowden, V., & Threadgold, S. (2010) Stumbling towards collapse: coming to terms with the climate crisis. Environmental Politics, 19(6): 851-868. Schumpeter, J. (1942) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy: New York: Harper, Tainter, J. A. (1988) The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Tushman and Anderson, Discontinuities and Organizational Environments. Administrative Science Quarterly, (31) 3 p. 439-65 Young, J. (1971) The Drugtakers: the Social Meaning of Drug Use, London: Judson, McGibbon and Kee.
Andersson, A Emergency collaboration exercises – what do they bring in terms of preparedness for the next catastrophe? Abstract Should we simply accept the uncertainty and chaos in catastrophes and accidents or can we reduce our vulnerability? Our research is aimed at understand and problematize how collaboration is practiced emergency
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exercises involving police, ambulance and rescue services. The need for (better and joint) emergency exercises is often quickly addressed after a catastrophe to strengthen resilience and capability to collaborate. Lessons to be learned are also pointed out in a retrospective way of handling future events. However, even though exercises are promoted as an important tool for crisis management, the actual possibilities to conduct exercise and learn from training sessions are paid less attention. Despite that the nature-made, industrial and terrorist disasters that have occurred since the 2000s could be perceived as natural consequences of systems complexity (Perrow, 1999), these events have still shocked us globally and locally. A given question when it comes to exercises is to what extent we can prevent or prepare for the unexpected, and further what parts of emergency management that actually can be trained. Collaboration has been a repeated answer to the question on how specialised and defragmented organisations should solve ”wicked issues” (that crosses organisational borders), in our case at the accident scene. Others argue that collaboration may evoke problems in organising, especially during pressing situations such as crisis or accidents. It has been proposed that strict regulations and specific instructions on how to collaborate could work counterproductive, which is why hands-on exercises are promoted. However, findings from our field observations of full-scale exercises in two regions in Sweden during 2011 and 2012 and interviews with participants shows that the exercises: 1) focus on intra-organisational routines and standard procedures 2) repeat certain paradoxes that relates to e.g. scenario planning and content, size of exercises and their relation to real-life events These results indicates that the exercises could be counterproductive as a phenomenon in existing forms, by promoting each organisation to focus on specific responsibilities and a narrow perspective on the scenario rather than how to organise a joint operation regardless type of event. The findings could be explained by a loosely coupled system in the emergency management. The exercises tend to fail to take the opportunity to rehearse the organisations’ flexibility and collaborative approach to problem-solving. However, repeatedly exercising sequential and parallel forms of collaboration can have practical implications on real-life accidents in terms of delayed action and lack of elasticity to tackle changes during an operation. Our study further consists of a field intervention where we, in an explorative way, develop an exercise model to promote inter-organisational collaboration.
SESSION 4 ACTIVISM Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm F1
Beuret, N Militant Pragmatism and the Catastrophic Imaginary Abstract George Monbiot famously lamented the lack of rioting for ecological austerity in Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning. He took the theme up again in a talk at the 2008 Camp for Climate Action just outside the Kingsnorth coal fired power station. In his talk he made a plea for a militant pragmatism that puts to one side demands for a radically different society because of the urgency and totality of the ecological catastrophe that faces us. In this paper I argue that militant pragmatism, conceived of as the need to place radical actions such as direct action at the service of pragmatic political ends, dominates and organises current climate change activism. Evidence of militant pragmatism can be located in social movements such as the Camp for Climate Action and NGO’s such as Friends of the Earth. Drawing on the insights into narration and factuality developed by Isabelle Stengers, this paper maps the catastrophic imaginary that frames militant pragmatism and argues that catastrophe is less a foregone conclusion to industrial capitalism and rampant consumerism and more a narrative form that imports a particular vision of the future into the present. In After the Future Franco Berardi declares “the future no longer appears as a choice or collective conscious action, but as a kind of unavoidable catastrophe” (pg126). This statement is central to Berardi’s thesis that the future, as a real material thing bound to the practice of modernity, is exhausted and no longer exists. Trapped within a system that continually invokes significant and inhuman crisis, militant pragmatism seeks to defer what is seen to be the inevitable reckoning by any means necessary. It is this impasse, a temporality that marks the space between the end of one narrative ‘genre’ that tells the story of the future and the lack of an alternative, brought about by the mismatching of catastrophic ends and pragmatic means, that this paper seeks to explore.
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This paper makes use of an analytical autoethnographic methodology that deploys the researcher’s experience as both a campaigner for Friends of the Earth and a participant in the Camp for Climate Action. I outline and critique the form of political action enabled by the vision of an inevitable climatic catastrophe, one enveloped by a pervasive sense that radical social transformation is impossible.
Hudson, M Manchester Climate Change Monthly: title TBC Abstract The personal is, infamously, political. This paper looks at the the overlaps (and imbrications?) between the cohort effects around growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, in the aftermath of the 60s eruption, and the sense of political possibility while living in a civilisation headed for “interesting times” because of the exhaustion of an ecological model and the collapse of elite legitimacy around the world. Drawing on personal history of growing up during the second Cold War, with nuclear oblivion potentially minutes away (War Games, Threads, The Day After) and reaching adulthood with the coming of Global Climate Change (James Hansen's testimony to US Congress in 1988, the first Earth Summit 1992 etc), this paper and presentation looks at the ways individual and societal fear can shape (and constrain) perceptions of what is “realistic”, possible, and indeed imaginable. Using (mis-using?!) Gramsci's notion of hegemony and Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the “habitus”, the paper will look at how the sequencing of experiences can create psychological and political “path dependencies”, where certain options become “unrealistic” and “irresponsible.” It will then use specific historical examples around the rise of the New Right in the United States, Australia and the UK in the 1970s – a network of well-funded and highly class conscious individuls and think tanks who turned the Trilateral Commission's concerns about “The Crisis of [too much] Democracy” into a highly effective propaganda campaign. It was during the late 70s and early 80s, after all that authoritarian/”conservative” forces mobilised most effectively to discredit progressive action by linking it to – for example – the Pol Pot regime of Cambodia. The paper then turn to the last two decades of Western history, of neo-liberalism and the increasing fragmented resistance to it. Referencing the work of the late Peter Gowan, and the current work of David Harvey and the academics writing in "Monthly Review", it will also draw on the work of Ingolfur Bluhdorn (“post-ecological thinking”) and Daniel Hausknost (“agentic deadlock and the impossibility of change in advanced capitalist democracies”). The personal experience of the author, who has been involved in radical environmental movements like Earth First and Climate Camp and more latterly a local group of activists and academics working under the banner of “Steady State Manchester,” will also be used. The paper will conclude with a series of provocations and theses on the nature and usefulness of “hope”, the logistics of counter-hegemonic projects, and whether we will need something else altogether for the challenges that lie ahead.
Vachhani, S, De Cock, C, Nyberg, D and Wright, C Closing Comments Abstract Discussion and closing comments.
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STREAM 11: MISERABLE MANAGERS, POWERLESS PATIENTS? – CRITICAL VIEWS ON HEALTH CARE MANAGEMENT Sanna Laulainen & Anneli Hujala University of Eastern Finland
SESSION I Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm H5
Sanna Laulainen & Anneli Hujala University of Eastern Finland Intro Abstract Introduction to stream
Graham Martin, University of Leicester Mark Learmonth, University of Durham A critical account of the rise and spread of ‘leadership’: the case of UK health care Abstract We argue that within the UK NHS in the last 10-15 years, leadership has become the taken-for-granted discourse through which many organizational roles are represented, at least at policy level, and potentially by role-holders themselves. Today, it is not just administrators/managers who are to think of themselves as leaders, ‘leader’ is be enacted by all health-care professionals. Even patients and the public, recent policy claims, can be(come) leaders. In drawing attention to these changes, we seek to use ideas drawn from critical leadership studies to disrupt assumptions about the nature of leadership. The health-related social-science literature has devoted little attention, critical or otherwise, to the prominence of leadership in health-care policy, practice and discourse. We argue that drawing on what critical leadership studies have to say on the matter can enrich our understanding of the contemporary landscape of health-care provision (cf. Davies, 2003). In particular, we have argued that the naturalization of leadership discourse does things that have the potential to permeate the subjectivities of those involved, to the extent that it might even make those ‘leaders’ construct themselves as driving such change. In other words, while “I am a leader” may be an attractive self-narrative, it also represents a powerful way in which policy imperatives might ‘govern the soul’ (Rose, 1990). Thus, the recent popularization of leadership represents a particularly important change for clinicians. In marked contrast to their tradition of strong resistance to administrative or managerial responsibilities (Kitchener, 2000), ‘leadership’ may make it more attractive for doctors to take on particular roles in organizations, and make them more sympathetic to policy changes of the kind traditionally opposed by the medical profession. But what of the future? Our reading of the history of changes in organizational discourses within the NHS suggests that the positive cultural valences currently ascribed to leadership may not be enduring. Ford et al. (2008) argue that earlier changes in organizational language—from administration to management—were symptomatic of the need of policymakers to rebrand what were basically similar activities. It is not implausible, therefore, that the current turn to leadership may have been motivated, at least in part, by a similar desire to make the old appear new. Thus one risk for the status of leadership is the very popularity it enjoys. A major
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part of its rhetorical appeal would seem to lie in the contrasts that appear to exist between leadership and management. These contrasts would become increasingly hard to maintain if leadership discourses approached ubiquity, and management went out of use. Furthermore, as Robinson and Kerr (2009, p.878) argue, there is often “an ‘unrealistic optimism’ regarding the virtue of […] the leader” among leadership’s proponents. In contrast, they argue that leadership represents “symbolic violence [particularly where] there are no democratic controls or forms of participation” (p.899). This remark seems especially pertinent in the context of contemporary health-care settings, where the contradictions and compromises inherent in providing efficient services have made exploitation, surveillance and unfair treatment some of the defining features of life for many staff, particularly those near the bottom of the hierarchy (Carter, 2000; Finn et al., 2010; Learmonth, 2009). Although we have argued that the discourse of leadership is powerful, we would not suggest that merely rebranding certain practices as leadership would, in itself, transform experiences of those jobs for the better (cf. Newton, 1998). Rather, should there be little substantive change in the day-to-day experiences of these staff, then simply re-labelling activities under the (ostensibly positive) banner of leadership might be interpreted as a fig leaf to hide the more oppressive aspects of life in health-care provision. Ultimately, if the gap between everyday organizational realities and the pronouncements of policymakers does not narrow, then for all its current popularity, leadership itself may become a focus for dissent and resistance.
Riitta Viitala, University of Vaasa A true story of rise and fall of good leadership in a hospital Abstract The aim of this paper is to gain more understanding about the phenomenon of organizational leadership culture, and especially the factors that develop or destroy it. The case -organization is a big ward in a Finnish University Central Hospital, where head nurses had received exceptionally positive appraisals in an assessment by their subordinates in 2001 with regard to their leadership. Their leadership excellence was then investigated in more depth in 2002. The qualitative research indicated that their acclaimed leadership style, behavior and activities had been intentionally developed and had been formed as a collective and cultural phenomenon. According to the head nurses, the exceptional leadership culture had a decisive, supportive, and guiding influence on the leadership represented by the individual leaders of the organization. Eight years later a researcher was informed that the praised leadership culture in the ward had been ruined. In 2012 the follow-up research revealed that the leadership culture really had changed significantly, and the head nurses suffered in many ways because of the situation. Their accounts included several factors that made good leadership now impossible, and most of them were connected to big structural changes in the hospital. It is a widely accepted belief that continuous, accelerating, and increasingly nonlinear change is inexorable in organizational life. Leaders are widely considered to be important actors who influence the change processes and organizations’ capability to handle those changes. According to traditional and positivistic views, leaders make change happen. On the other hand, according to a more process-oriented view of organizational change, leaders are those who take the lead in enabling collective sense-making processes. This research shows that leaders themselves, and thus leadership culture, may also be radically influenced by the changes – at least when their communities of work are only objectives for the changes. The research question is: “Which are the factors in a structural change that may destroy good leadership? The answers for these questions have been sought through two sets qualitative data, from years 2002 and 2012. The question for the data is: How do the head nurses interpret the causes and effects of “spoiled” leadership compared to the previous good level? A content analysis technique was applied to the data. This paper defines leadership as a process of influence and interaction between leaders and followers in a social, local, and historical context. Essential elements in this leadership process are objectives, communication, and influencing. In this process, the actors have differing roles and responsibilities, which may change from situation to situation. Ladkin (2010) conceptualized the interactive and context-dependent nature of leadership in her model of ‘leadership moment’. According to her, leadership moment identifies the “pieces” of leadership which interact in order to for leadership to be experienced. Leaders relate to followers and together they interact within a particular context, and work towards a purpose. All these “pieces” also interact dynamically. (Ladkin 2010: 25-30.) Ladkin’s model acts as a frame of reference when interpreting the qualitative data in this study. Additionally, the literature on leadership culture offers important additive concepts to interpreting the changes in leadership on a collective level in the ward.
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Johanna Andersson & Bengt Ahgren Nordic School of Public Health, Sweden Assessing outcome in collaboration: the impact of assessment on collaboration practice Abstract Today the concept of efficiency is a guiding light in public management. Increased efficiency is thought to control spending and provide better services. Two approaches to achieve this are through assessments such as evaluation and audits; and collaboration between different actors. Collaboration can imply e.g. networks or partnerships and vary in intensity and formality. Regardless of form, collaborative efforts are generally thought to achieve services better adapted to address complex social problems, and diminishing overlaps and unclear responsibilities caused by fragmentation. Assessments are used to determine whether or not a program or a service is efficient, but the act of assessment itself is also intended to increase efficiency. Thus, the act of assessment influences the practice it is assessing. Furthermore, in order to be assessed, a program or a service has to be “evaluable”, which may also influence practice. Collaboration is often a solution to previous sector failure, and at the same time it is perceived as difficult to both achieve and sustain. Assessments are used as a tool to determine whether or not collaborative advantage is achieved and if the investments in collaboration should be pursued. Assessments of collaboration are a challenge since it confronts the regular vertical forms of organizing and thereby the focus of assessment. The challenge can be boiled down to the question of what collaborative arrangements can, and should, be held accountable for. Based on an ethnographic study and two years of field work, this question is critically analyzed with an example from Sweden. The financial coordination of rehabilitation measures act came into effect in 2004, and regulates the construction of coordination associations. The foundation of an association is a pooled budget to which all members, four different public authorities in the field of vocational rehabilitation, contribute. An important condition behind the law was the notion that public services were not adapted to, and therefore had trouble handling, some groups with complex problems needing support from two or more organizations at the same time. The overall, and ultimate, aim with financial coordination is to improve the working ability in the target population. Though the objective of the associations is, according to the law, to support collaboration, finance efforts within the collected area of responsibility and evaluate these efforts. The financed efforts may be both operative and strategic, and should in some way complement the operations of the member organizations or aim at development of new knowledge or methods. The associations have no power to make decisions of authority in relation to the target population, which remains with the professionals in the member organizations. Following this, it may be argued that the first target group of the associations is the regular organizations and next, as a secondary target group; the individuals in the target population. This means also that the target population is not the associations’ own but the regular organizations’ target groups. The aim with the associations is thus to contribute to the regular organizations working better in relation to this group. The associations have no tools at their disposal to contribute to the overall goal but the pooled budget. Their responsibility is to construct the budget, distribute the resources and follow up. However, as the findings presented and discussed in this paper show, the associations are generally held accountable to more than that in the frequent assessments being performed on both the associations and the efforts they finance. First, the associations are generally seen by others as being the efforts they finance. This makes the view of them almost like a new organization or authority, even though the efforts actually are organizationally owned and performed by regular organizations. Second, they are held accountable to the aim of improved working ability of the target group, i.e. the overall policy goal. Their objective to support collaboration and the notion that the law was introduced in order to ensure that, through collaboration, those individuals in the intersection of different organizations get the needed help is thus overlooked and focus is turned to effects on individuals. This paper argues that the assessments have highly influenced practice in the associations, and has shifted focus from organizational outcomes such as increased equity and quality of services due to decreased fragmentation, to individual outcomes such as employment and dependency of benefits. These latter outcomes are easier to account for and are also in line with conventional more hierarchical assessments. Since many associations perceive themselves to be questioned due to lacking efficiency, they may start seek legitimacy and thereby behave in line with the focus of assessments and start to “produce” improved working ability instead of supporting collaboration. Furthermore, the assessments and their focus on individuals tend to treat the associations not as a collaborative structure between four actors with a supportive aim, but as a regular organization with authoritative power. When the associations are held accountable for a group’s outcome, this
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group has been “passed on” from ordinary organizations on to the associations. Organizational outcome related to collaboration is greatly overlooked, in line with the “common wisdom” that collaboration is not an end in itself, and an end in public management collaboration must thus be measured as individual benefit. Increased quality and equity in services are thus outcomes that are not only not being assessed but might also be at risk of being lost with the current assessment focus. Last, there is an evident risk that the narrow and vertical assessment focus increases, instead of decreases, horizontal fragmentation within the welfare system due to its impact on coordination association practice.
SESSION II Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am H5
Ela Klecun1, Tony Cornford1 & Maryam Ficociello2 1 London School of Economics 2 Dar AlHekma College ICT and control of healthcare work
Abstract In the UK, as in other parts of Europe gripped by recession, healthcare services are facing an uncertain future and calls for more efficient and effective healthcare delivery models. In UK policy discourse Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are often singled out as a key factor in achieving this aim. Recently health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced that he wants the NHS to become the “most digital health service in the world” with all records and communications in the NHS to be electronic by 2018. ICT are proposed in policy documents and in academic literature as means of making healthcare ‘better’ (e.g. safer and more patient-centred) and more efficient by facilitating and transforming the management of healthcare organisations and processes. No longer the domain of administrators and managers, ICT are increasingly seen as being at the centre of healthcare practice. Different systems that directly impact on practice include e-prescribing and automatic dispensing of drugs, electronic health records, decision support systems, electronic booking of appointments and hospital discharge systems. This paper focuses on the implications of ICT use for healthcare practice. It is based on the findings from qualitative studies in three hospitals in England. It suggests, perhaps controversially, that ICT control the way healthcare practitioners work. It identifies different ways in which this happens and conceptualises controls as pre-programmed, emergent or accidental. Some pre-programmed controls are designed into the system to enforce adherence to protocols, guidelines and to monitor targets. These usually are direct and visible. Others might arise from constraints on work flow, e.g. when clinical encounters have to follow the logic of computer systems. These are less direct and not always visible (or at least not till the system breaks down). Controls may also be a result of the unintentional, emergent mismatch of practice when computer systems do not reflect the work practices that they were supposed to support (e.g. because they are based on formal procedures). Accidental controls are imposed sometimes by arbitrary systems errors, inadequate hardware or faulty software. These controls are not simply embedded in computers (software or hardware) but they arise in practice. They are negotiated, opposed to or accommodated in different ways by healthcare professionals. However, our research has also revealed that in some circumstances computer systems enable health practitioners to have greater control over their tasks, specifically as to where and when they perform them. We conclude the paper by exploring how these different controls might be influencing the practice and the nature of healthcare.
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Frode F. Jacobsen Bergen University College Continuity and change in Norwegian Nursing homes: an example from a long-term study in one urban home Abstract Care in nursing homes takes place within the frames of architectural and physical surroundings where these surrounding constitute an important dimension in how care is realized and practiced each and every day. Even though the internal and external physical surroundings, routines linked to place and physical space and staff culture varies somewhat between individual nursing homes in Norway, there also exist marked similarities between the nursing homes. Moreover, even though some important changes have taken place with regard to architectural outline and financial and organizational models in the latter decades in Norway, still pronounced continuities exist. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this presentation in particular focuses on continuity and changes in one urban nursing home throughout more than 20 years since 1988, a time span which includes a rebuilding of the institution in 2003.
Gudmund Ågotnes Bergen University College Reimagining hospitalization from nursing homes in Norway: a shift from a quantitative to a qualitative approach Abstract International research has shown that the rate of hospitalization differs between nursing homes, also within smaller geographical areas. Reasons other than patient demographic seem to be a plausible explanation for these variations, especially considering a Scandinavian context, where patients are considered a relatively homogenous sociocultural group. This presentation will focus on how factors contributing to the hospitalization from nursing homes can be understood differently when one moves from the quantitative, statistical and retrospective gaze of most current studies (predominantly North-American) to a more qualitative and holistic approach in a Scandinavian context. The latter approach will be illustrated with an ongoing research project based on participant observation in 6 nursing homes in a larger Norwegian city. The following discussion will be based equally on a comparison between practices of hospitalization within these nursing homes, and on a comparison between these practices as a whole and findings in the alternative approach mentioned. Management strategies and organization can be understood both as a premise of the practices presented, and as an area of potential improvement.
Rodolfo Ludwig & Lucas Casagrande UERGS The coexistence of the public and private health systems in Brazil Abstract This study analyze the viability of having a public health care system that has as its core principles universality, comprehensiveness and equity as the guiding principles as is the case of SUS (Brazilian public health care) according to Law 8080/90. The problem here is the coexistence of the public health care system with the private system, which is growing increasingly in Brazil thanks to the current economic situation of the country. The Brazilian public health, from the colonial era to the present day, has undergone a series of profound transformations, which culminated in the creation of the national health care system in 1988 (SUS), which was regulated two years later in 1990. Until the '20s, nothing concrete had been done in public health, with the exception of vaccination campaigns led by the sanitarist Oswaldo Cruz at the beginning of the twentieth century and had a quasi-military conception, even culminating in riots. After this, only indigents received free health care from the government. However with the arrival of European immigrants, who formed the first masses of workers in Brazil, begins the discussion for the creation of a model of health care to the population. In the seventies was created the INAMPS, a public health care service that was paid by the social security system and only provided health care to who paid the government fee.
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When the current national health system emerged, there was already another system: the private system, older and better structured, which in turn began to fight for space, power and resources with the new public system. The federal constitution of 1988 in its art.199 says "health care is open to private enterprise," but this freedom can be harmful to SUS, since unlike the private, must act according to a set of principles and rules that put the public system at a disadvantage compared to the private. Since the private health system existed before the creation of the SUS, it catered to a specific portion of the population which had enough income to afford health insurance. However with the emergence of a public system, private plans saw an opportunity to maximize their earnings without thereby had to increase the amount of services available. This happens because the private system transfers at the public system the expensive procedures. The private health system through health insurance creates a scheme in which - for some treatments of high complexity, the richest patients end up having better access to public health goods than the less affluent, without it reverses to a reduction of costs for the public sector. When individuals with health insurance require treatment they are met by the private health care services. However, this network has shortage of production capacity specifically for medical care of high complexity. Thus, the citizen that was attended at the primary or secondary care in the private network is routed to the public network in tertiary care, without having to go through the queues of previous care that exist in the public system. The SUS, in turn, has a production capacity of greater goods of high complexity, although insufficient to meet all the demand that exists. Thus, an individual who has health insurance and who is being served by the private sector without waiting time, if needs some treatment of high complexity is transferred immediately to medical care in the public sector. The public sector, that way, uses his budget to pay to the high complexity treatments of patients with private insurance, but fails to offer entry-level health attention for all those who don't have insurance in adequate time. Nowadays, the government began to charge the insurance companies for the treatments their patients require in SUS, but companies generally do not perform the transfer payment for SUS. Another problem that also occurs is that the government ensures deductions on income tax, the main tax collection in Brazil. Who owns private spending on health can deduct the total amount to be paid in this tax without limits. In this way the government is indirectly paying for private treatment and differential healthcare. In 2011 the deductions for medical expenses cost the public purse R$ 48.6 billion, equivalent to 62% of the total health budget public of R$ 77 billion. With these data we find that if there was no deduction on health in income tax, this feature could heavily increase the health budget. With this increase, the budget would be very close to reaching an international level of public expenditure on public health care over GDP. The current ratio is 3.7% of de GDP in SUS. Without this tax evasion values, it could be 6%. This is still a low investment if compared to Canada or United Kingdom (9% and 7%), but would be more than the world average (5.1% of GDP in public health care). More than equity, this would be efficient in the economic way. While the government pays for health care of 150 million of people with 44% of the whole health care budget (public plus private), the private sector pays only for 47 million of people with 56% of the system budget. Although the government pays for more people with fewer resources, the results are better than in the private sector: more hospitalizations, more medical consultations, more exams and more treatments. This is because the public has a greater economic bargaining power than the private system. This paper aims to demonstrate the efficiency of the public sector through the available data, and its potential greater social equity. It also aims to demonstrate how the coexistence of the public sector with the private system is harmful for the first while is beneficial to the second.
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SESSION III Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm H5
Jillian McCarthy The University of Manchester Allowing for Death as a Treatment Option Abstract As life expectancy increases likewise healthcare costs escalate due, in part, to meeting the needs of ageing populations. Modern healthcare with its emphasis on cure or control gives little attention to the life/death cycle. Death a taboo subject, alongside an increase in litigation, has led to healthcare professionals practicing defensively (Kessler et al, 2006); there is less fear of reprisal in treatment, no matter the circumstances, than in the withdrawal of unnecessary treatments and consequent death. Interventions take place without reference to the quality of a person’s life, their age, health status nor the natural course of life (NCEPOD, 2012). Cases of fearful people having ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ tattooed onto their chests are not uncommon (BBC 2011). This paper proposes a humanistic change in conventional practice that will allow for the biological life cycle to take place so that a natural death may occur uninterrupted and without fear of reprisal in cases where the quality of a person’s life is severely compromised. This will require a societal change in attitude and awareness that can only be achieved through extended debate and legislation. This is long overdue, no doubt because of the sensitive and delicate nature of such discourses and the subsequent emotional furore. This paper examines the rationale for supporting natural death in certain circumstances and puts forward suggestions for how this emotive topic may be addressed by society and implemented by health care professionals. The consequences of initiating such proposals are many, however, the most important considerations must be mindful, caring and humanistic. This is a different debate from that of the ‘right to die’ where differences of opinion rage around the morality of euthanasia. This paper considers allowing people to die naturally under certain circumstances without the intervention of treatments to extend their lives short term. Obviously this requires sensitive discussions with the person concerned if possible, patient choice must always be supported. Palliative treatment for such ailments as pain, discomfort and nausea would be ongoing, but active treatments to prolong life would not. The criteria for considering what constitutes a poor quality of life must be given due consideration forming guidelines and protocols to assist healthcare professionals. An anticipated byproduct of the implementation of this proposal is considerable savings for health services in terms of treatments and care although this must never become an influential factor in this debate. Concerns over the medicalisation of death have been ongoing (Illich, 1975) yet the situation appears to have proliferated with fears that it is even encroaching into the arena of palliative care (Kasman, 2004). An erosion of family care and the traditional practices that surrounded death and dying have forced society into a rejection of allowing death as an acceptable means of caring. A recognition that death is the natural conclusion of life is required, thus leading to an increase in health professionals throughout the services who will specialise in advising on the difficult balance between treatment or allowing for a natural death to occur in certain circumstances. This could never take the form of withdrawal of nutrition or fluids to a person capable and willing of eating and drinking, no matter the prognosis. However, a better example may be a fully informed decision being made without fear of reprisal, prior to a procedure to commence enteral or parenteral feeding for a person in the advanced stages of multiple sclerosis. Ironically, it is the fast approaching worsening of the financial crisis in the health services due to dramatic changes in demography that may prove to be the pragmatic catalyst needed to propel this humanistic debate into the public arena. BBC News (2011) Do not resuscitate tattooed on Norfolk pensioner. Sept 6 th 2011 th http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-14802369 Accessed Nov 6 2012 Illich, I. (1975) Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis – The Expropriation of Health Boyers Pub. Kasman, DL (2004) When is medical treatment futile? Journal of General Internal Medicine Oct; 19 (10) 1053 – 56.
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Kessler,DP; Summerton, N. and Graham, JR. (2006) Effects of the medical liability system in Australia, the UK and the USA. Lancet Jul 15; 368 (9531) 240-6. National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (2012) Cardiac Arrest Procedures: Time to Intervene? NCEPOD Pub
Maria Andri & Olivia Kyriakidou Athens University of Economics and Business Emerging tendencies in the organization of medical work in a public hospital: A dialectical approach Abstract The reorganization and management of professional work in recent years has been of growing interest for social scientists as it connects with a number of broader contemporary debates concerning institutional change, the technocratic turn in public administration and the economic crisis-triggered reform of the welfare states. A substantial body of literature attempts to develop alternative conceptualizations of professions (Scott, 2008) and professionalism (Evetts, 2006). Complementing a sociological perspective, others have focused on the discursive processes which are related to changes in professional work (Thomas & Hewitt, 2011) in order to understand the ways in which professionals cope with ambivalent roles within organizations (Iedema, Degeling, Braithwaite & White, 2004) while others attempt to investigate how professionals interpret and respond to administrative innovations (Brivot, 2011; Levay & Waks, 2009) or strive for the maintenance of established privileged arrangements (Currie, Lockett, Finn, Martin & Waring, 2012). Such work foregrounds the challenges addressed to the autonomy of both professions and professionals as the key vehicle through which professional change and the reorganization of professional work has been documented and examined. Even though existing analyses highlight autonomy’s centrality to the organization of professional work and the tensions that’s been under in late modernity, to date, however, the very process of changes underlying the organization of professional work and the self-control that professionals exert in the labor process has received less attention in the context of professional work. Wishing to contribute towards that direction, while responding to the call for geographically pluralizing the empirical focus of healthcare change research (Numerato, Salvatore & Fattore, 2012), the paper sets out to explore the organizational process of evolution of professional autonomy in one public hospital of the National Health System of Greece. Medicine, among ‘the classic protagonists of the first professionalization movements’ (Larson, 1980, p. 143) constitutes an exemplary case of professional organization and has received extensive research interest in the sociology of professions. Ever since the post-WWII-rise of National Health Systems in welfare states, public hospitals have been under reorganizing pressures with a most recent case that of the early 21 st-century economic crisis. Given the ongoing reform of welfare states, the exploration of medical work remains a topical issue that demands further attention due to persistent calls for increasing productivity and reorganizing tendencies evident in healthcare institutions. Along these lines, a considerable body of research has been developed around healthcare change (e.g. Exworthy & Halford, 1999; Farrell & Morris, 2003; Gray & Harrison, 2004; Pollitt, 1993; Scott, Ruef, Mendel & Caronna, 2000) highlighting especially the new roles of the professionals within reconfigured jurisdictional boundaries. This article draws on the qualitative analysis of 20 interviews with medical personnel in a major public hospital to explore and analyse the organizational process of evolution of professional autonomy as an analytic aspect of the organization of medical work. Drawing on the work of sociology and organizational analysis, we do this through the methodological and conceptual lens provided by Heydebrand’s (1977) dialectical approach and analysis of organizational contradictions. This approach is thought to be particularly valuable because it allows us to extend our insights into the emerging tendencies in professional work organization by addressing the need to understand how organizational control structures evolve. It’s been quite some time since concerns of ‘professional ideologies’ dominating sociology (Brante, 1988;; Hafferty, 1988) have given their way to reproducing ‘managerial ideologies’ through an essentially structureagency dual axis (Gleeson & Knights, 2006) in organizational studies of change. As ‘the study of medicine as a profession needs to emphasize process over product’ (Hafferty, 1988, p. 203), materialist dialectics could be considered as a valuable conceptual framework for the conceptualization of social change as a historical process, offering a new insight towards a better understanding of organizational phenomena and highlighting critical challenges for further discussion.
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References Brante, T. (1988). Sociological approaches to the professions. Acta Sociologica, 31, 119-142. Brivot, M. (2011). Controls of knowledge production, sharing and use in bureaucratized professional firms. Organization Studies, 32, 489-508. Currie, G., Lockett, A., Finn, R., Martin, G. & Waring, J. (2012). Institutional work to maintain professional power: Recreating the model of medical professionalism. Organization Studies, 33, 937-962. Evetts, J. (2006). Short note: The sociology of professional groups: New directions. Current Sociology, 54, 133-143. Exworthy, M. & Halford, S. (1999). Professionals and the New Managerialism in the Public Sector. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Farrell, C. & Morris, J. (2003). The ‘Neo-Bureaucratic’ state: Professionals, managers and professional managers in schools, general practices and social work. Organization, 10, 129-156. Gleeson, D. & Knights, D. (2006). Challenging dualism: Public professionalism in ‘troubled’ times. Sociology, 40, 277-295. Gray, A. & Harrison, S. (2004). Governing Medicine. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Hafferty, F. W. (1988). Theories at the crossroads: A discussion of evolving views on medicine as a profession. The Milbank Quarterly, 66, 202-225. Heydebrand, W. (1977). Organizational contradictions in public bureaucracies: Toward a Marxian theory of organizations. The Sociological Quarterly, 18, 83-107. Iedema, R., Degeling, P., Braithwaite, J. & White, L. (2004). ‘It’s an interesting conversation I’m hearing’: The doctor as manager. Organization Studies, 25, 15-33. Larson, M. S. (1980). Proletarianization and educated labor. Theory and Society, 9, 131-175. Levay, C. & Waks, C. (2009). Professionals in pursuit of transparency in healthcare: Two cases of soft autonomy. Organization Studies, 30, 509-527. Numerato, D., Salvatore, D. & Fattore, G. (2012). The impact of management on medical professionalism: A review. Sociology of Health & Illness, 34, 626-644. Pollitt, C. (1993). Managerialism and the Public Services. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Scott, W. R. (2008). Lords of the dance: Professionals as institutional agents. Organization Studies, 29, 219238. Scott, W. R., Ruef, M., Mendel, P. J. & Caronna, C. A. (2000). Institutional change and healthcare organizations: From professional dominance to managed care. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Thomas, P. & Hewitt, J. (2011). Managerial organization and professional autonomy: A discourse-based conceptualization. Organization Studies, 32, 1373-1393.
Ulla-Maija Koivula & Sirkka-Liisa Karttunen Tampere University of Applied Sciences Informal care in formal health care setting – possibilities and constraints from the point of view of professional nursing staff Abstract Finland represents one of the Nordic welfare states where the role of the public sector as the both the organiser as well as the main provider of health and social care is still strong despite the introduction of purchaserprovider models and governance structures of new public management since 1990s. Health and social care professions and duties are regulated by legislation and bylaws in formal health care and social service settings whether run by public, private or non-profit sector. At the same time the amount of volunteering is substantially widespread. In 2009 40% of the Finns had done volunteer work during the last 12 months. The role of informal care whether done by relatives or unrelated volunteers is important and valued but its role varies depending on a service field. The strongest bastion of keeping the volunteers and informal carers outside the fortress is hospitals and health care centres. At the same time they are suffering from shortages of professional staff and staff members are reporting lack of time to provide needed care and support for the patients. This paper studies the attitudes of professionals working in a formal primary health care setting towards informal care given by relatives or volunteers. How they see possibilities, opportunities, constraints and drawbacks of informal care regarding professional roles, work division, coordination and management? The perspective of the study is on the management aspect of a combination of formal and informal care, not on motivational aspects on volunteering which has been studied extensively or politically sensitive issue on the whether volunteering should be increased or decreased. The paper is based on an empirical study done by semi-structured interviews in two formal health care settings, one situated in an urban area and the other in a rural area. The interviewees are professional nursing staff
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members (registered nurses and practical nurses). The aim of the interviews was to find out how nursing staff members see the options and roles of volunteering. Is it a possibility or a threat? What kind of experiences do they have about it, positive and negative? What would welcoming more informal carers to a hospital/health care centre require from organisation of work, management, coordination, quality control? The interviews were done by theme interviews including a role-play question of visualisation of future. The data was elaborated with previous studies and other literary sources. Finnish health care system is run by professionals and professionals are reluctant to open the doors for laymen, whether relatives or volunteers. Professionals see the value and need of the informal care but are afraid of organisational and managerial problems as well as problems in defining the roles and responsibilities. Collaboration and communication problems were brought up also as a problematic area. Since the role and importance of a client/patient and his/her social network to become more engaged and involved in planning, executing and evaluating care, there is a need for renewal of service delivery. This is also needed because of limited resources in health and social care which requires that formal and informal care should form an integrated entity. This cannot be done with force and because of absolute “must” but by being proactive via testing and piloting good practices and governance in integrating formal and informal care. The paper contributes to the theme of volunteering and informal care as partners in official care system.
SESSION IV Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm H5
Kari Jalonen Hanken School of Economics Self Responsibility in a Welfare State: Municipal Strategy as Dialogism Abstract I approach health care management from the perspective of public-sector strategy. Based on an 18-year study of municipal strategizing in a Finnish city organization, I apply Bakhtin’s conception of dialogism to study the effects of the introduction of the concept ’self-responsibility’ to municipal strategy discussions. I find that the concept shifted the subject positions of the citizen and the municipality, legitimated plans to narrow down the public service offering in the social and health care field, and emphasized the financial perspective on municipal services.
Will Thomas & Sue Hollinrake University Campus Suffolk Social Care in Austerity: a marginalisation of care? Abstract Does the drive towards austerity get in the way of the delivery of care services? This paper seeks to provide a critical commentary of the current moves towards austerity in the UK’s public sector through an analysis of the provision of social care services. Particular attention will be paid to support provided to older people living at home. The authors suggest that drives to reduce the cost of care services to the public sector result in a poorer quality of care and marginalise service users in decision-making processes. As a result, rather than improving the efficiency of social care, the drive towards austerity has contracted the social welfare system at a time when a growing number of older people are looking for support and assistance. In the UK, local governments have been forced to cut spending dramatically in response to the recent economic crisis. Social Care has been hit hard by this through a series of cuts to service provision, changes to the criteria for accessing care and reforms to the delivery of services. The demand has been for provision to become more efficient, to embrace the market as a way to drive costs down and to seek greater use of voluntary and community sector service providers.
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The authors report findings from two qualitative studies involving older people living at home. Their analysis points to two key issues arising for older people as they seek to negotiate the complex and ever-changing landscape of care provision. Firstly, the responses to calls for austerity and to moves towards the creation of personalised budgets have resulted in increased uncertainty concerning responsibility for funding, identifying and organising appropriate care. In interviews, older people expressed a wide range of views including those who wanted to choose and organise their own care, those that felt that the public sector ought to have responsibility for doing this and those that advocated an approach in which family, friends and neighbours could play a part in care organisation and management. Secondly, interviewees described the importance of the quality of the relationship between the person being cared-for and the person providing the care (or supporting the access or organisation of care). In many cases, the relationships that were most valued were with family members who provided day-to-day help and support with tasks such as cleaning, cooking and personal care in response to the needs of their older relative. In some cases though, good caring relationships were described in which the provider of care was from a public or voluntary sector organisation. Older people who described strong relationships of this sort were able to articulate how these relationships contribute to their wellbeing; those without strong caring relationships typically described frustrations with the care they were able to access. The reduction in funding for social care services in England resulting from efforts to reduce the total cost of the public sector is a practical constraint on the capacity of local authorities to offer the type of care that is most valued by older people and the most effective way of supporting their wellbeing. Most notable is the move away from preventative services as budgets are reduced. The paper will also highlight two ideological constraints which further limit the effectiveness of care service provision. Firstly, moves towards a managerialist approach in which efficiency and short-term savings are valued over quality, effectiveness and longer-term resilience. This approach also presents a threat to the professional identity of social workers; calling upon them to increasingly act as care managers. Secondly, efforts to introduce personalised care budgets turn older people into consumers of care and marginalise those who are unable or unwilling to play an active role in the management of their care package. By privileging independence over inter-dependence or codependence those people who are unable to take on an active consumer role risk becoming further excluded. The authors suggest that the adoption of a management approach informed by the principles of an ethic of care would permit providers of social care services to deliver good-value care whilst acknowledging a need to respond more closely to the needs of individuals. These discussions are likely to be of interest to scholars interested in the management of public services, particular the health and social care sectors as well as to professionals.
Anneli Hujala1, Mieke Rijken2, Sari Rissanen1 & Sanna Laulainen1 1 University of Eastern Finland 2 the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL) People with Multimorbidity: Forgotten Outsiders or Dynamic Self-Managers? Abstract The problems of multimorbidity have recently attracted increasing attention in policy-level discourse in the context of European health and social care. From the perspective of health and social management, people with multiple chronic conditions are a challenging target group. While the provision of health and social services in many countries currently operates under economic and structural pressures, certain client groups may be at risk of exclusion and underservice. People with multimorbidity, being users of various cost-effecting health services simultaneously in primary and specialized health care and, in addition, in social care, are in danger of becoming one of the marginal groups which will suffer more than average from the demands for greater efficiency, cost reductions and the threat of prioritization. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that the majority of people with multiple chronic conditions are elderly or disabled, and even as such are faced with diverse equality problems in society. In order to better respond to the integral health and social needs of people with multimorbidity, innovative models for managing care are needed (EIH/AHA 2011). The study reported in this paper is linked to a project entitled Innovating Care for People with Multiple Chronic Conditions in Europe (ICARE4EU, 2013–2016). The project is coordinated by the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL), in co-operation with British, German, Finnish and Italian partners and is partly funded by the EU. In this project, the state of art of integrated care programmes addressing multimorbidity piloted and implemented in 30 European countries will be described and evaluated. The project will generate valuable knowledge for developing successful and sustainable health care management and for reassessing and restructuring health care systems from the
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perspective of multimorbidity. The aim of the study presented in this paper is to scrutinize how the position and agency of people with several chronic diseases are constructed in scientific articles. The research material consists of the data provided by the second author and her co-workers for a review article addressing the evaluation of chronic disease management programmes from the perspective of multimorbidity (Rijken et al. 2012). The data was supplemented at the beginning of 2013 by an additional search in order to locate the most recent contributions. The data (consisting approximately of 20 scientific articles) will be analysed by critically oriented discourse analysis paying special attention to the rhetorical and metaphorical construction of texts (Grant et al. 2004; Hujala & Rissanen 2012). The approach relies on postmodern assumptions about the power of talk and language use in the construction of social reality (Gergen & Thatchenkery 2004; Shotter 1993). The theoretical focus of the full paper will be on agency theories (Giddens 1984;; Jyrkämä 2008) and Harre’s (Davies & Harré 1990) positioning theory. In the analysis we focus first on the macro-level ‘Discourses’ (on ‘Discourse’ and ‘discourse’, see Alvesson & Kärreman 2000) as world-constituting phenomena, within which the varying positions and agency of people with multimorbidity are constituted. Secondly, we also pay attention to the micro-level ‘discourse’, the rhetorical and metaphorical ways through which the Discourses are constructed. In our discussion section, we consider the consequences due to the discursive construction of multimorbidity and how these are related to issues of health and social care management. The findings of the study can be utilized in developing health care and service processes and in rethinking care management in this field. The preliminary findings reveal the polyphonic construction of reality faced by people with comorbidities. Based on the tentative analysis of the data, we developed five competing and contradictory discourses, i.e. ‘repertoires of interpretation’ which different actors in political and academic talk draw on when discussing this issue. The ‘medical’ discourse concentrates on fact constructing rhetoric (Billig 1996; Jokinen 1999). The focus is, quite naturally, on medical aspects: symptoms, interventions and treatments. It is typical for fact constructing rhetoric, for example, to use the passive voice in verbs and detailed descriptions drawing on highly specialized professional vocabulary, the ‘jargon’ of medical specialists. According to critical interpretation, the medical discourse may be accused of producing a loss of autonomy for patients, who are constructed as anonymous outsiders and passive objects of medical interventions. The ‘technical’ discourse makes the structures and processes of care explicit through technical and mechanical metaphors. The vocabulary of this discourse includes such expressions as chains, pathways, standards, modules and components of care. Health is represented as a process which can be monitored, controlled and measured. The technical discourse, connected with integration issues, produces people with multimorbidity as mechanical parts of automatically-working care procedures. The ‘collaborative’ discourse moves the focus from the positivistic-realistic sphere towards socially constructed and interactive reality. The terms used in the discourse are, for example, patient-centred consultations, participation, engagement, support and reciprocality. The patient is offered an active role to play in patientprovider interaction. The ‘individual’ discourse goes further in the pursuit of patients’ active agency. The discourse is connected to the contemporary discussion on ‘active (consumer) citizenship’. It consists of dynamic, business-like vocabulary, often with normative connotations: self-management, goal-setting, personal targets, active responsibility, problem solving, choosing and tailoring. In addition, it links health issues with the private sphere of individuals: lifestyle, quality of life, patient education, smoking and exercise groups. The individual discourse challenges the patient to be a ‘vital actor’, a master of his/her own life, a self-manager. It is remarkable that ‘social-cultural’ and ‘affective’ (emotional) dimensions of multimorbidity were mentioned only rarely in the texts. The ‘material’ discourse refers to the ways patients and their health are objectified, made ‘concrete’ (in contrast to personification, see e.g. Moscovici 2000; see also medicalization, e.g. Conrad & Leiter 2004). The ways of objectifying include patient records, care plans ‘on paper’, ICT tools, access to clinical and personal data, patient portals, self-monitoring techniques, diabetes ‘passport’. The material and discursive construction of patients are intertwined. Problems arise when material manifestations begin to serve as representations of human beings. From a critical point of view, materialization may lead to unequal power relations and have deleterious effects on the identity construction of patients.
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The ways in which multimorbidity and other health-related issues are discussed in society, have – often unnoticed and unconscious – effects on the everyday reality faced by patients, health care professionals and other actors. The discourses developed here resemble and mirror the contemporary discussion on the position and agency of patients in general. However, while it concerns people with multiple and chronic conditions, these topics merit extra attention, including the ethical implications. For example, the medical domain being very complex, the self-management orientation may become problematic, despite the advantages of client orientation in general. The application of the notion of ‘consumer citizens’ making their own choices may prove in many ways challenging, while the everyday reality of health delivery systems still seems far from the ‘open service market’, where independent customers could “click” to include health products in their (electronic) shopping baskets. Key references: Alvesson M. & Kärreman D. 2000. Varieties of Discourse: On the Study of Organizations through Discourse Analysis. Human Relation, 53(9), 1125-1149. Billig M. 1996. Arguing and Thinking. A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gergen K. J. & Thatchenkery T. J. 2004. Organization science as social construction: Postmodern potentials. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 40(2), 228-249. Grant D., Hardy C., Oswick C. & Putman L.L. 2004. The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse. Sage, London. Hujala A. & Rissanen S. 2012. Discursive Construction of polyphony in healthcare management. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 26(1), 118-136. Rijken M., Bekkema N., Boeckxstaens P., Schellevis F.G., Maeseneer J.M. & Groenewegen P.P. 2012. Chronic Disease Management Programmes: an adequate response to patients’ needs? Health Expectations. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1369-7625.2012.00786.x/full Shotter J. (1993). Conversational Realities: constructing life through language. Sage: London.
Anneli Hujala & Sanna Laulainen University of Eastern Finland Round-up Abstract Reflections and summary of critical views on health care management based on stream presentations.
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STREAM 12: TECHNOLOGY-BASED CLASSIFICATION PROCESSES IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT Gianluca Miscione Henk Koerten Christine Leuenberger Stephanie Cassilde
TECHNOLOGY-BASED CLASSIFICATION PROCESSES IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT (1) Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm F6
Christine Leuenberger Categorizing the West Bank Barrier Abstract The West Bank Barrier increasingly reshapes Israeli and Palestinian land-and cityscapes. Its physical infrastructure - which consists of walls and an elaborate fence system - are depicted prominently in some maps, but disappear or are omitted in others. This paper examines how different Israeli, Palestinian, and international governmental and non-governmental cartographic institutions delineate the West Bank Barrier in maps. The focus is on how various visual and textual devices as well as spatial markers are used to represent the barrier as a type of infrastructure, ranging from being a wall, a barrier, a fence or a road. The category chosen to represent the barrier communicates certain social and political concerns, constructs particular spatial orders, and portrays the West Bank Barrier as either a negligible feature of the landscape or as a significant obstacle to the freedom of movement. The cartographic construction of the barrier in maps shows how cartographers’ assumptions concerning its function, the map’s target audience, and the adequacy of various national and trans-national cartographic standards, may provide an authoritative and legitimate, yet, an inevitably political and locally produced, representation of the West Bank Barrier as part of a category of things.
Ezra Dessers Geert Van Hootegem and Joep Crompvoets Organised powerlessness in technology-based infrastructures Abstract Successfully established classifications affect thinking and coordination of social activities across different settings and actors (Bowker & Star, 1999). Modern Socio-Technical Systems (MSTS) theory focuses on the structure of the division of labor and the resulting network of social interactions (de Sitter, 2000). Power and power relations are considered to be structure dependent. It should be noted that this statement does not exclude that other factors, such as cultural or psychological elements, also play a role. But the interesting thing here is that the classifications which are contained in an organizational structure seem to have a clear impact on the balance of power within the network. The central MSTS concept of 'control capacity' is in fact a synonym of positional power in a social network. The structure of the division of labor largely determines the nature and extent of this ‘control capacity’, and thus the power(lessness) and (lack of) influence available to each member
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on his or her node in the social network. The structure also determines, to a large extent, the special interests of the different positions in the network, and the degree to which these interests match (or conflict) with the general interest (Kuipers et al., 2010). Bowker & Star (1999) describe how information technology (IT) classifications consolidate the ways of working. But it goes even further: IT systems often implicitly propagate specific production and control concepts (Benders et al., 2006). IT still shows a strong tendency toward standardization, routine and centralized control (Lillehagen & Krogstie, 2008). And it is not just about power relations between individuals and parties within the network. Many compartmentalised and fractionated structures result in collective powerlessness: the responsibility is lost in the complexity. A well-known example of this is the recent credit crisis in the financial sector (Kuipers et al., 2010). Based on research on spatial data infrastructures (SDI) (Dessers, 2013), the paper shows that the collective power of inter-organizational information infrastructures may be strongly conditioned by the existing classifications in the division of labor between (and within) organizations. Moreover, such inter-organisational challenges often seem to lead to the development of extensive bureaucratic procedures, detailed administrative requirements, contained in an all-embracing, centralised IT architecture. The paper further demonstrates how a different structure of the division of labor could create conditions and opportunities for more de-concentrated and de-centralised ways of working. This shift would imply a change in existing classifications, increasing the control capacity of the various positions in the social network.
Henk Koerten and Peter van den Besselaar Sustainable Taxonomic Infrastructures: System or Process? Abstract Discussing infrastructure development we tend to think of physical infrastructures like roads, canals, tunnels, sewers and drinking water and how these systems emerged, evolved, sustained, and faded away (Latour 1996; Dicke 2001; Van Marrewijk and Veenswijk 2006; Edwards, Jackson et al. 2007). However, physical infrastructures spawned other types of more virtual infrastructure, heavily relying upon their tangible predecessors, but envisioned as being information-‐driven and independent from any physical limitations (Kainz 2000; Leadbeater 2010; Brown, Chui et al. 2011; Koerten 2011). However, these information infrastructures are constituted by technology (Kainz 2000; Vonk, Geertman et al. 2007; Koerten 2011). Unlike physical infrastructures, information infrastructures are constituted as dynamic, vivid, and ever-‐changing (Koerten and Veenswijk 2011). They tend to adopt every technological innovation that appears on the horizon. This aspect of innovation is at odds with our classical concept of infrastructure, which is framed as a reliable, institutionalized, ubiquitous, hard to change phenomenon which you only start to miss in case of failure (Star 1999). We could argue that information infrastructures may only play the same inevitable role like traditional, physical infrastructures when they become just as unalterable and stable. So the question is: are there ways to tame the technological volatility in order to create stable, reliable and trusted information infrastructures that go beyond the hype of the day? Looking at social media, they act and can be treated as information infrastructures. On the other hand, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are still developing and none of them has a history longer than a decade and some competitors already have faded away (Leadbeater 2010). The question is: how can we contain ever-‐developing technology in order to create sustainable electronic infrastructures?
Gianluca Miscione The Infrastructures we Practice by Abstract Information systems are pervasive in daily organizing process and most professional practices, not simply through generalist means such as email. The consequences of the interaction of task-oriented artefacts -rather than any of them singled out for research- have been overlooked. This is claimed important here because their locus of encounter manifests in people’s ‘doings’ and has been transforming actual contexts and accountability lines of organizational behaviors, making them rather dispersed and often divergent. Thus, the empirical focus of this article is not on some new ‘thing’, but about a ‘when’ as in Star’s (1999) work on infrastructures, where she aimed at de-reifying infrastructures to surface their relational property. People commonly envision infrastructure as a system of substrates—railroad lines, pipes and
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plumbing, electrical power plants, and wires. […] The image becomes more complicated when one begins to investigate large scale technical systems in the making, or to examine the situations of those who are not served by a particular infrastructure. For a railroad engineer, the rails are not infrastructure but topic. For the person in a wheelchair, the stairs and doorjamb in front of a building are not seamless subtenders of use, but barriers. [I]nfrastructure is a fundamentally relational concept, becoming real infrastructure in relation to organized practices. Star and Ruhleder (1996) claimed that we have to ask “when is an infrastructure?”, not what. Following this line, information infrastructure emerges in relation to contexts, technologies, people, and activities. In different situations, different properties of infrastructure become more visible than others. This means that health information infrastructures are not bigger health information systems (HIS). Rather, when diverse HIS such as electronic patient records and medicine supply or health personnel time accounting systems are integrated into larger assemblages, relationality needs to be foregrounded. For instance, when new health management information systems produce different angles of visibility (peers across health organizations and divisions become more able to compare actions and results, human resource managers see time use at micro granularity, patients and families access the patient record and look for information on the internet, international organizations shape classification systems at the micro level, etc.) physicians have to adjust, often in unexpected ways, their ethnomethods to several accountability lines which may not well be explained by formal organizational affiliations. It is more promising to look at how organizing processes actually happen (Schatzki et al.: 2001 and Czarniawska: 2004). To foreground relationality, a practice lens is useful empirically and theoretically. To the contrary, if we rely on inadequate concepts, we risk constructing the research object in the wrong way, which also implies practical mistakes. Let us use an illustration to address the relational nature of infrastructures and their visibility on breakdowns. Take a look at the picture below, why do road and electricity infrastructures overlap in such 'wrong' manner? Were the builders wrong? Probably not, the mismatch is so evident at immediate perception that it is more likely that they were too respectful in executing wrong plans, which were probably based on poorly geo-referenced and updated spatial data. This as a vivid example of coordination errors derived from non-infrastructural thinking from road and electricity companies, whose geodata production and maintenance are self-accountable (each minding their own business). This is a visual illustration of possible -and rather frequent- failures of information systems as stand-alone and task-oriented artefacts designed, built and managed within organizations as self-contained entities. At some point, when self-referential systems grow and interact, side effects are unpredictable, also because not researched. Still, information system research carries inscribed its original focus on information technologies in organizations.
TECHNOLOGY-BASED CLASSIFICATION PROCESSES IN INFRASTRUCTURES (2) Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am F6
Ashar Saleem and Suleman Dawood How Logics Are Contested: Justifying Technological Choices In Electricity Infrastructure In The Global South Abstract One theoretical tool which can be employed in order to demonstrate the socially constructed nature of classification schemas and categories used in selection of infrastructure related technology is institutional logics. Institutional logics are the formal and informal rules, symbolic systems and interpretations which channel organizational decisions, actions and activities. Some of the logics which dominate organizational behavior are family, religion, market, corporation, professions and the state. (Thronton and Ocasio, 2008). A new classification is developed, or the meaning of an existing classification is changed through change in accompanying institutional logics. If this is the case then it would be worthwhile looking at the process of shifting and contesting institutional logics because this could give us clue as to how different organizational
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forms and technologies are selected over other forms. Especially when the powerful actor’s adopted logic is challenged, the socially constructed nature of classifications become bare. This is all the more intriguing when there are internal inconsistencies in the use of these logics by one powerful actor, within a case or across two cases meant to solve the same problem. The research question we ask is how are institutional logics used strategically by a powerful actor to justify its selection in infrastructure development? The area chosen for this paper is electricity infrastructure development in Pakistan where the role of government has gradually been receding after the implementation of neo-liberal reforms starting mainly in early nineties. However the private sector has restricted itself to thermal power generation and avoided involvement in transmission or distribution sector which are still looked after by government entities. After two decades of continuance of this arrangement the results are disastrous for the industry as a whole. There is a circular debt in the supply chain which often exceeds Rs: 300 Billion despite frequent subsidies by the government. Even the alternate sought to address this problem are premised on the same framework, i.e., private entities invited for thermal power solutions. This paper studies a unique set of incidences in which the state is challenged for its policy decisions taken to address the rampant electricity shortages in the country in recent times. Two separate cases were contested in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in October, 2011.One is the decision by the government to invite rental power plants as a solution. Contracts were signed with 14 different projects in 2008-09, for a total capacity of 2250 MWs (around 12% of the total capacity of the country at the time) worth US$ 2.5 Billion with an additional annual fuel supply cost of USD 1.3 Billion (Asian Development Bank, 2010; Ministry of Water and Power, 2009). The other is the alleged delay by the same government in implementation of two public sector thermal power plants for a combined capacity of around 950MW for a cost of around USD 500Million. Using a qualitative case study approach, the paper uses primary and secondary data for analysis and theory building. The primary data includes participant observations of a legal firm involved in the case and of the Supreme Court proceedings, interviews with key participants in the case and access to documents submitted in the Supreme Court. The secondary data comprises of company reports, third party audits, newspaper clippings and professional analysis in popular journals. The paper makes contributions to both the theory in institutional logics literature and to the policy related to infrastructure development. In institutional theory, although the presence of multiple logics in a given field is an accepted phenomenon (Reay and Hinings, 2005), and a focus on dominant logics is common (Lounsbury, 2007), still relatively little is known about how these logics change over time (Thronton and Ocassio, 2008). By providing an account where a powerful actor is made to defend its action through recourse to different logics , it is attempted to make this process explicit. Further, the logics are not only changing within one case over a period of time, but also across the two cases at the same, time. This also hints at the hidden power behind the use of logics to make and promote different classification schemas. At the policy level, the paper problematizes the readymade solutions sought by the governments to the problem of infrastructure development in third world countries. Why are these inherently plagued with allegations of corruption? By showing the fragmented nature of the state and instances of private interests easily making inroads in to the apparatus of state the paper raises key questions for policy makers regarding the nature and scope of development of critical infrastructure resources, such as electricity. For instance, whether electricity is a ‘good’ or a ‘service’, a commodity or utility, responsibility of the state or prerogative of the ‘free’ market? Questions whose answer may even require a revisit to the constitutions of any democratic society (Graham, 2000 ).
Fareesa Malik, Manchester Business School Dr. Brian Nicholson, Manchester Business School Dr. Sharon Morgan, Centre for Development Informatics A Critical and Theoretical Approach toward Business and Social Models of Global IT/Business Process Outsourcing Abstract Research Findings and Contribution: The research contributes to an academic strand of the global IT and business process outsourcing industry’s dual objectives (Social and Business). The existing academic literature on global outsourcing is mostly skewed toward outsourcing for business advantages. It lacks any debate over business-social outsourcing model. The paper fills this gap of knowledge by conceptually grouping the Impact Sourcing organizations into two categories on the basis of their central mission. The first category can be linked to the Social Enterprise concepts. These are non-profit social outsourcing organizations whose primary goals are social development through capacity building of disadvantaged people. These organizations utilize their business profits for
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sustainability and improvement of the processes. The other category, for-profit socially responsible outsourcing organizations, can find its root from Corporate Social Responsibility literature. The central mission, profit earning, of these Impact Sourcing organizations is strategically aligned with the community development objective; capacity building and employment generation for vulnerable people. The paper further discusses technological models, capital structures, operational processes and business models of theses Impact Sourcing organizations which open up new research dimensions to the Global outsourcing research community. It also considers the existing criticism in the relevant literature to identify the possible threats of Impact Sourcing concepts’ exploitation.
Gianluca Iazzolino, Edinburgh University Mobile money and Somali social networks:Cultivating monetary alternatives in a volatile world Abstract The recent diffusion of mobile telephony across the Global South has spawned a burgeoning literature that examines its implications upon society, economics and politics. A developmental perspective has become prominent in the broader debate on ICT in Developing countries, fostering a “mobile phone revolution” narrative which frames the mobile phone as the technological innovation better positioned to cater to the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The emphasis on the transformative potential of the mobile phone has gained currency in the discussion on ICT for Development (ICT4D), often overshadowing other aspects of the phenomenon: namely, the appropriation of mobile technologies for purposes which do not strictly pertain to development or the integration of mobile-based services within preexisting repertoires of practices
Mostafa Mohamad, Manchester Business School Using The Base Of The Pyramid Strategy As Lens For Cross-Sector Collaboration In Financial Inclusion: Case Of E-Masary For Mobile Financial Services Abstract The lasting misery faced by much of the world’s population can be the reason for and the consequence of poverty and disenfranchising that remains one of humanity’s greatest challenges (Chambers, 1983;; Margolis and Walsh, 2003; Hulme and Mosley, 1996). In response the interest of donors and enterprises in using marketbased strategies has increased to enfranchise the poor micro-entrepreneurs and link them to the financial system (CGAP, 2008; Hulme and Arun, 2009; UNCTAD, 2011; Yunus, 2003 & 2010). Despite the growing trend toward these approaches, critiques are still rising and convincing (Copestake, 2007; Jaiswal, 2008; Karnani, 2007; Morduch et.al, 2009; Walsh and Kress et al., 2005; Morduch et.al, 2003). The Donor-Led Initiatives (DLIs) and Enterprise-Led Initiatives (ELIs) operate relatively independently of one another, as the goals of generating profits and alleviating poverty are often seen as irreconcilable and sometimes conflicting (London and Anupindi, 2011). Getting both approaches compatible may contribute to achieve sustainable development with wider outreach (Kelly, 2009;; London, 2011). A candidate business strategy, the “Base of the Pyramid” (BoP), offers insights into how this could occur (Prahalad, 2004; Prahalad and Hammond, 2002). In this article, we examine DLIs and ELIs and explore how the use of a BoP perspective based on collaborative interdependence can enhance the integration of these efforts. We also investigate how the adoption of central ICT platform can facilitate this interdependence.
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TECHNOLOGY-BASED CLASSIFICATION PROCESSES IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT (3) Friday 12th July, 1.30 – 3.30pm F6
Christine Richter Slum: the power of an unclosed category Abstract Arguably the power of categories created by scientists, statesmen, administrators, and policy makers becomes most evident in their ability to remake the reality that they seek to depict (Law, 2004; Crampton, 2010; Scott, 1998). History abounds with examples. Take, for instance, Dirk’s (2001) analysis, according to which the production of British colonial knowledge established caste as a dominant classification system of Indian social relations. In this paper I will explore another loaded category with a long history: “slum.” Readers of previous versions of this paper have commented that the word is “hanging in the air without attributes or articles” and asked whether I mean the word slum, or the label, whether it is “a slum” or “the slum” and if so, which one. I hope, this paper will in itself explain, why I still write, for the most part, only slum. Material for this paper comes from past five years of participating in an Indo-European research project on spatial information use in Indian cities, the notes and documents interpreted in the process, and engagement with related literature and researchers. My account is structured according to three arenas of slum discourse. First, I will explore the history of the meanings of slum in academic and journalistic publications. Second, I describe the meaning of slum according to procedure and definition within a recent national government scheme in two Indian states. And thirdly, I will analyze the meanings of slum among state and non-state social groups in two Indian cities using a Social Construction of Technology lens. Program and official procedure in part reflect meanings of slum that can be found also in academic/journalistic discourse. However, during implementation of the program procedural definitions disintegrate and become absorbed into the multiplicities of meanings among state and non-state governance actors. Meanings of slum do not only vary by social group producing contesting lists and maps of slums at one point in time, but the same social group can hold different meanings with respect to different areas and change their interests vis-a-vis slum as label or area through time. I will show that even the same individual may induce slum with different meanings in the same conversation depending on what interest or goal is being problematized. The deployment of the category slum does change reality. The most persuasive manifestation of this power, especially when enacted by the state, are slum eviction drives. But as we move beyond these in-the-moment events, I argue, that slum does not gain its power, its ability to change reality, through closure and permanence in definition and subsequent classification (Bowker and Star, 2000) of people and areas, nor does it gain power, because a contesting interest finally wins or a compromise is reached (Aibar and Bijker, 1997), nor because a centralized authority backs one permanent definition (Scott, 1998). Rather the category slum is powerful, because of the variability in meanings through time within social group and government policy. It is the ongoing contestations over the meanings of slum among state and non-state actors that change reality. More precisely my account illustrates how ongoing contestation drives the processes of settling and unsettling the city. Along this line of argument, I will discuss a recent longitudinal study by Ghertner (2010) on slum resettlement policies in New Delhi. His research traces a shift from slum identification based on statistics to an “aesthetic
Francis Harvey The Property Cadastre in Poland: Some Contemporary Stories of Classifications as Flexible Boundary Objects and Related Clever Arrangements Abstract Grounded in the rational traditions of the European enlightenment, the cadastre, in principle, grounds the administration of private land property in logical approaches that through coherency, prudence, and systematic application ensure the equitable access to land and assurance of property rights. Approaching the cadastre as an infrastructure using categories to organize and handle knowledge, its classifications serve to assure the
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administrative coordination of the state’s territory and socio-economic activities. Its enlightenment rationality assumes the subject acts rationaly within the structures of the cadastre. This paper puts that assumption in question, drawing on irreductionist theories and taking up Spivak’s concept of the subaltern. The many vicissitudes of cadastral administration practices point to resistance to the rational modes of power favored by administrators of the cadastre. Power is negotiated and classifications evidence flexibility. Classifications are the boundary objects that facilitate power and the determine formal interactions. Yet, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Politicized processes facilitate related interactions that supersede the cadastre's rational approaches to governance. The boundary objects of the cadastral infrastructure facilitate concealed agreements among interested parties outside of the formal bureaucracy. While appearing to embrace the cadastre, clever subjects develop an alternative power that negates the privileges of rational power. These accommodations begin with the flexibility of classifications that quickly moves into unseen local domains that can temper administrative policies, disadvantage individuals and groups less shrewd, or advantage individuals and groups with the resources to maximize the elasticity of boundary objects to their benefit. The results of these arrangements, at some point, are evident to individuals with immediate contact to the results, but the process is never perceptible. This paper considers exemplars from the Polish Cadastre that point to dynamic processes of making classification pliable, configuring power, and the uptake of ICT. Starting from STS-influenced work on the Polish cadastre, it explores how cadastral related arrangements support interactions that lead to shifting power relationships and the subversion of the cadastral infrastructure’s rational means to coordinate land property rights. These modes are social manifestations of strategies developed over centuries of partition and oppression in Polish society. The arrangements frequently co-constitute rhizomatic interactions for the clever. The introductions of information technology can accelerate the interactions and turn them into wormholes that connect cadastral boundary objects, but still in limited ways compared to rich subaltern interactions facilitated by centuries of tradition. The analysis of the examples illustrates how actors and administrations implicitly sustain a multi-dimensional social coordination of land rights that maintains a Kafka-esque bureaucracy as a rich and structurally independent facade to obscure profound accommodations of civil society. The resulting flexibility simultaneously sustains and undermines the classifications. Masking of the accommodations becomes a predominant mode to separate administrative rational reality from the lived realities of people and their land-related arrangements
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STREAM 13: ANARCHISM AND CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES Thomas Swann (School of Management, University of Leicester), Konstantin Stoborod (School of Management, University of Leicester), Stevphen Shukaitis (University of Essex)
ANARCHISM AND CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES SESSION ONE Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm E5
Thomas Swann and Konstantin Stoborod (School of Management, University of Leicester) Anarchism and Critical Management Studies: An Overview of the Field So Far Abstract This introduction to the stream will provide an overview of the field of anarchism and critical management studies. Given that this is not a field that has never explicitly existed in any formal sense, this overview will involve a search through the history of critical management studies in order to identify both explicit and implicit anarchist influences. Our method will involve assessing the work of those with a self-identified interest in anarchism and critical management studies (e.g. members of the anarchismcms listserv), identifying references to anarchist authors or anarchist themes in critical management journals (e.g. Organization and ephemera) and highlighting the frequency of the use of the terms ‘critical management studies’, ‘critical perspective(s) on management’, ‘anarchism’, etc. in academic work. Our hypothesis is that while anarchism and critical management studies have rarely been explicit bedfellows, there can nontheless be identified several influences of anarchist thought in critical management studies literature.
Norman Jackson and Pippa Carter (School of Management, University of Leicester) Georges Sorel: his relevance for Critical Organisation Studies Abstract 'We must beware of too much strictness in our language because it would then be at odds with the fluid character of reality; the result would be deceptive.' The work of the French anarcho-syndicalist Georges Sorel (1847-1922) has received little attention from Critical Organisation Studies. Certainly, he has sometimes been claimed as a thinker of the Right and certainly, he had some surprising, if relatively transient, flirtations, with, for example, reactionary interests such as monarchism. However, in his major work Reflections on Violence ([1906] 1961), his emancipatory credentials
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are secure. Llorente (undated) sees him as best understood as an anarcho-marxist. Meisel characterises Sorel as 'a much maligned man' (Meisel, 1951:11ff). The above mildly Deleuzean quote comes not from post-structuralism but from Sorel (cited by Meisel 1951:19). This is somewhat at odds with scientististic understandings of language at that time and prefigures the understanding of a socially constructed subjective reality now dominant within the critical tendency. It was not just with ontology that Sorel was remarkably prescient. He argued that ameliorative gestures to relieve the conditions of the working-class, 'given' by the ruling interests, lessened the possibility of emancipation. Contemporary trends of infantilisation, increased surveillance, intensification of work, anaesthetisation by popular culture and consumerism, etc. confirm both Sorel's diagnosis and his prognosis. Thus, for example, Foucault's articulation of his concept of Governmentality -'The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of the very specific albeit complex forms of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security.' (Foucault, 1991:102) - can be seen as highly relevant. Other relevant links can be found in Sorel's work, such as the delineation of oligarchic tendencies inevitability consequent on parliamentary socialism (predating Michels), the critique of tolerance, later prominent in Critical Theory, etc.. This is not to credit Sorel with initiating these ideas, which were no doubt circulating amongst progressive thinkers at the time, but to it is to suggest a potential relevance in Sorel for current concerns. Another relevant contribution from Sorel was his advocacy of the motivating potential of 'myth'. There has, of course, been a widespread interest in both the ontological and epistemological function of myth but its dynamic function has also been noted (for example, Jackson & Carter 1984, Carter & Jackson 1987). However, we may ask, in the light of recent and more rigorous development of these ideas, why bother with Sorel? The particular value of re-visiting Sorel's work is his profound emphasis on action. We have noted the confirmation by history of Sorel's prognosis. What, necessarily, has never been tested is his prescription. Sorel's syndicalism, which in the late 19th Century seemed to offer real possibilities for the overthrow of bourgeois capitalism, has been largely negated by technical, social and economic 'progress'. But perhaps recent events signal a resurgence of such consciousness. Most immediately relevant is Sorel's general demand for action - those averse to 'the revolutionary myths' are those who 'were anxious to find a pretext for abandoning any active role, for remaining revolutionary in words only' (p45). A not unrecognised problem now with CMS. But, to coin a phrase, if not now, when? References Carter, P. & Jackson, N. 1987: 'Management, myth and metatheory', ISMO, XVII, 3, 64-89 Foucault, M. 1991: 'Governmentality', in Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P. (eds): The Foucault Effect. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 87-104 Jackson, N. & Carter, P. 1984: 'The attenuating function of myth ...', Human Relations, 37, 7, 515-533 Llorente, R. undated: 'Georges Sorel's Anarcho-Marxism', www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk Meisel, J. H. 1951: The Genesis of Georges Sorel. Ann Arbor, Michigan: George Wahr Sorel, G. [1906]1961: Reflections on Violence. New York: Collier
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Richard J White (Sheffield Hallam University and Colin C Williams (University of Sheffield) Hidden in plain sight: recognising the centrality of anarchist spaces of work and organisation in "capitalist" society Abstract 1. The focus, aims and objectives of the paper The aim of this paper is to argue that anarchist spaces of work and organisation in contemporary western society are not in the process of becoming but are to be found everywhere in the here and now. It is argued that the challenge for anarchism is to make these non-commodified spaces (more) visible so as to demonstrate the feasibility of opening up the future to more empowering and inclusive economic modes of production, exchange and consumption. This requires an opening up of the economic imagination. Moving beyond the narrow confines of a "capitalo-centric" reading of economic exchange provides the opportunity to produce more appropriate ways of interpreting and envisioning the economic landscape in a manner that recognises the multiple, vibrant, creative (and contested) economic practices and tendencies in society. To achieve this, a more nuanced understanding of the lived practices of livelihood practices is sketched based on a total social organisation of labour (TSOL) approach, which presents the capitalist mode of production as just one singular mode of economic organisation. 2. The research evidence base underpinning the paper Using the TSOL as a conceptual framework, this paper draws on research obtained through time-use surveys and the mixed-methodologies employed by household work practice surveys. This reveals of the extensive and pervasive existence of non-commodified work practices in ‘capitalist’ society: work characterised by mutual aid, reciprocity, co-operation, collaboration and inclusion. Importantly, this evidence further dismantles the dominant metanarratives that promote the spectre of an all persuasive all totalising commodified world. In bringing into plain sight the very real and important limits to capitalism in contemporary society, and the raft of opportunities to construct a "post-capitalist" future, the paper brings to light future economic possibilities that can be imagined and enacted, particularly at the community level. As the crises of the 'capitalist' economy continues to wreak havoc across the western and non-western world, these future anarchistic directions of work and organisation importantly reveal very real, and tangible alternative economic futures far removed from shallow capitalist-based assumptions concerning the future of trajectories of work and organisation. 3. How the paper will contribute to the theme The paper will contribute to the over-riding theme of the Session in a number of ways, not least by explicitly engaging with anarchist-based visions of work and practice and seeing these as offering important theoretical and practical ways to challenge, or circumvent the dominant meta-narratives of neoliberal readings of work and exchange in contemporary society. In this way the paper appeals to the spirit of the Session by opening up important critical directions for meaningful discussion and debate to emerge, not least those intent on developing new intersection(s) of critical management studies and anarchist praxis.
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George Kokkinidis (De Montfort University) Spaces of possibilities: Workers self-management in Greece Abstract During the current financial crisis, and especially since the closing months of 2011, Greek people have witnessed one of the most dramatic drops in living standards that post-war Europe has seen. The privatization of natural resources and public-owned organisations remains the top priority in the political agenda, while the "lazy" Greek workers continue to be subjected to generous cuts in their incomes as part of the government's punishing austerity programme that is dictated by the troika (EU-IMF-ECB). Meanwhile, the deregulation of the labour market has further contributed to the massive erosion of jobs and the rapid increase of precarious labour. Within this context of crisis, people started to create popular assemblies and gather in public spaces to discuss the problems of their communities. The "Movement of the Squares" and other similar social innovations have cultivated a spirit of “politics without politicians” (Garrigues, 2002: 1) where people try to govern themselves and take control of their own affairs through a network of assemblies established in neighbourhoods. There is also a great interest in experimentation with alternative organizational forms. In particular, non-capitalist social experiments and innovations such as workers' collectives and cooperatives, ecovillages, Local Exchange Trade Systems (LETS), Free Schools, Freecycle networks and Timebanks, constitute attempts to remedy some of the shortcomings of our current era by offering an alternative way of organising based on principles such as that of user-ownership, user-control and user-benefit. This paper focuses on the process of workers’ self-management brought about by a wave of experimentation with alternative organizational forms taking place in Greece since the beginning of the current financial crisis. These cases are interesting because they constitute, what Chatterton (2010) and Chatterton and Pickerill (2010) coined, "autonomous geographies"; local spaces that are "simultaneously anti-, despite- and post- capitalist" (Chatterton and Pickerill, 2010: 475). The discussion is supported by empirical evidence from qualitative fieldwork conducted in three workers' collectives. Drawing on the findings of my research I argue that the members' values and everyday practices give shape and meaning to their aspirations of creating a space that not only critiques the existing forms of work but also puts in practice other possibilities that give emphasis in reciprocal relationships and prioritise collective working, egalitarianism and autonomy. I also argue that their established consensus based decision making models, far from being a state of agreement, constitutes an institutionalisation of conflict in constructive ways; encouraging the development of more inclusive models of participation and the construction of rule-creating rather than rule-following individuals.
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ANARCHISM AND CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES SESSION TWO
Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm E5
Adin Crnkić (University of Ljubljana) Organizational norms and practices in affinity groups: an anarchist perspective Abstract We can agree with Colin Ward, who has already written 1973 in Anarchy in Action, that ‘organisation and its problems have developed a vast and expanding literature because of the importance of the subject for the hierarchy of government administration and industrial management. Very little of this vast literature provides anything of value for the anarchist except in his role as destructive critic or sabouteur of organisations that dominate our lives. The fact is that while there are thousands of students and teachers of government, there are hardlyany of non-government. there is immense amount of research into methods of administration, but hardly any into self-regulation. There are whole libraries on, and expensive courses in, industrial management, and very large fees for consultants in management, but there is scarcelay any literature, no course of study and certainly no fees for those who want to do away with management and substitute workers' autonomy’ (Ward 1973: 20). Situation today is basically the same. This paper is an attempt to introduce anarchism as organized order. My thesis is, that study of management and organization of anarchism si much needed in theory and praxis, because it examines conditions and levels of relationships within anarchism itself. Because of practising nonhierarhical and non-autoritarian methods and tehniques, anarchism should be examined through theory of organizations in the context of science. In doing so, I am helping with Von Bertalanffy's general systems theory, more specific, open system theory, thus I will study self-organization within anarchist movement, precisely affinity groups and their activity, decision-making and self-learning within them. I will also try to show, that anarchist theory of organization links with theory of organization based on theory of adhocracy, learning (cybernetics) and holographic organization. Also, my intention is to expose what is the role of the manager within affinity group – of course not in authoritarian sense, but as stimulator, researcher, facilitator or moderator. So paper is also going to examine if this sociopolitical system could be organized beyond the ideological apparatus of neoliberal capitalism and doing so, I'll try to focus on self-organization in all aspects of organizing, whether it's political system, direct democracy, economy, healthcare etc. Is it possible to speak about new paradigm of theory of organization? Nevertheless, most of the sociopolitical theories understand anarchism as ‘move away from exclusively materialist accounts of change to consider matters of psychology, human nature and people's 'need' for authority is seen to be unscientific’ (Purkis: 2004, 41). Yet, such discourse is -in the age of continuously rebellions, insurrections and changes on sociopolitical domain -changing. Anarchism is moving out of margins – it has become struggle on political agenda. Therefore opens new question: whether is it possibile organization past the state?
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Fabian Frenzel (School of Management, University of Leicester Partial organization as spatial practice. Imagining and building futures in the camps for climate action Abstract From 2006 to 2010 the camp for climate action (CFCA) made headlines news in the UK and beyond. It contested the climate policy of the government by protesting against key infrastructure developments with massive GHG emissions. But climate camps also became places where alternative futures were imagined and build. In this paper I investigate the CFCA through the lens of its organization, the protest camp. In protest camps physical territory is claimed outside the political status quo. This enables a fundamental challenge to its continuation in favour of alternative futures. Protest camps enable ‘partial organization’, somewhere between network structures and full organization through antagonistic spatial practice. In the literature ‘partial organization’ is defined as the presence of some elements of organization but not all (Ahrne and Burnsson, 2011). This paper shows that spatial practice should be included in the understanding of partial organization. The analysis of the development of CFCA from previous camps also indicates that camps can choose to limit their antagonistic spatial practice, for example to open up their boundaries to newcomers and to forge coalitions with political neighbours. But as a result, elements of organization like hierarchy, rules, bureaucracy may become more visible. This observation allows discussing the potential as well as the limits of horizontal organization and to expand our critical understanding of the possibilities of emancipatory social organization.
Neil Sutherland (University of Essex) In search of leadership: Meaning-making in Anarchist organisations Abstract Organisation studies’ scholars have long recognised that when meaning-making occurs in a collective context, leadership is happening (Pfeffer, 1981; Gioia Wilkens, 1983; Grint, 2000; Robinson, 2001; Fairhurst and Grant, 2010), or, as defined by Smircich and Morgan, “leadership is realised in the process whereby one or more individuals succeed in attempting to frame and define the reality of others” (1982: 134). Despite increasing interest however, various theorists suggest that comparatively little has been written about the concrete processes associated with leadership and meaning-making in the thirty years that have passed since Smircich and Morgans introduction of the topic (Wilkens, 1983; Barley, 1986; Weick, 1991; Shamir, 2006). Meanwhile, in social movement research, whilst a number of scholars have sought to investigate meaningmaking (Kurzman, 2002; Poletta, 2002; Mellucci, 1996; Ganz, 2000), none have explicitly linked this with the process of leadership, or demonstrated how this work can be done in the absence of permanent and stable leaders. In this paper, I will seek to address this gap, by highlighting how meaning-making (and by proxy, leadership) is collectively performed within Anarchist organisations that ideologically reject individual, authoritative leaders. Drawing on examples from a year-long ethnographic study, I will introduce three ‘levels’ of meaning-making, that is, three separate (but interrelated) ways in which meaning is derived and reality defined. This begins with the macro-level processes that provide the underlying meaning for organisational functioning. These can be considered as big ‘D’ Discourses, or, general systems of thought that influence organisational actors and the repertoires they employ. Discourses provide people with implicit and taken-for-granted meanings, which in turn influence their day-to-day interactions and meaning-making processes, or, little‘d’ discourse (Fairhurst, 2008: 1616). Thus, following on from a discussion of the impact of Discourses on meaningmaking, I will examine micro-level discourse. I will begin by looking at individual processes, such as framing, use of
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language, stories and theatrical performances, before turning my attention to the ways in which shared meanings are navigated and agreed upon, through collective processes such as argumentation and negotiation. This final level is crucial, as argumentation offers the opportunity for all to get involved in leadership work, providing space for expressing ideas “in talk or action that are recognized by others as capable of progressing tasks or problems which are important to them” (Robinson, 2001: 93). This unsettles previous writings on leadership in SMOs, which generally accepts that it is the responsibility of certain, often charismatic, individuals to provide a meaningful direction for the organisation – that is, to formulate appropriate visions, articulate ideologies and forge collective identities. This re-thinking of the way in which we understand ‘leadership’ is important for both Critical Management Studies (CMS), as well as broader studies of Anarchist organising. Indeed, theorists from both disciplines have called for a more relational, collective and cooperative conceptualisation of leadership (Fyke and Sayegh, 2001; Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2012; Alvesson and Spicer, 2010). As Western notes: “theorists must go beyond identifying 'bad leadership practice' and aim to create and support successful ethical frameworks for leadership more generally” (2008:21). References Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2012) ‘Critical leadership studies: The case for critical performativity’. Human Relations, 65(3): 367 –390. Fairhurst, G. (2008) ‘Discursive Leadership: A Communication Alternative to Leadership Psychology’. Management Communication Quarterly, 21(4):510-521. Fairhurst, G. and Grant, D. (2010) ‘The Social Construction of Leadership: A Sailing Guide’. Management Communication Quarterly, 24(2): 171-210. Fyke, K. and Sayegh, G. (2001) ‘Anarchism and the Struggle to Move Forward’. Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, 5 (2): 30-38. Ganz, M. (2000) ‘Why Stories Matter: The Arts and Craft of Social Change’. Sojourners: 16-21. Grint, K. (2000) ‘The Arts of Leadership’. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kurzman, C. (2002) ‘Introduction: Meaning-making in Social movements’. Anthropological Quarterly, 81(1): 5-15. Mellucci, A. (1996) ‘Challenging Codes: Collective action in the information age’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pfeffer, J. (1981) ‘Power in Organisations’. London: Pitman. Poletta, F. (2002) ‘Freedom is an endless meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements’. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Robinson, V. (2001) ‘Embedding leadership in task performance’. In: Wong, K. and Evers, C. (eds) ‘Leadership for quality schooling’. London: Routledge: 90-102. Smircich. L. and Morgan, G. (1982) ‘Leadership: The Management of Meaning’. Journal of Applied Behavioural Studies, 18(3): 257-273. Weick, K. (1991) ‘Sensemaking in Organisations’. London: Sage. Wilkens, A. (1983) ‘Organisational stories as symbols which control the Organisation’. In Pondy, L., Frost, P. and Morgan, G. (eds) ‘Organisational Symbolism’. Greenwich: Connecticut: 81-92.
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STREAM 14: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, LEADERSHIP AND NEOLIBERALISM Convenors: Helen Gunter (University of Manchester, UK) David Hall (University of Manchester, UK) Tanya Fitzgerald (La Trobe University, Australia) Roberto Serpieri (University Federico II, Naples, Italy).
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, LEADERSHIP AND NEOLIBERALISM 1 Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm G2
Dr Charlotte Woods, University of Manchester UK Business Practice and Public Service: negotiating values and priorities interprofessionally Abstract This article examines how competing values and priorities are managed by school leaders in the midst of business-oriented reforms. Conceptually the paper draws on scholarship on values conflict strategies. Empirically it is grounded in the individual perspectives of primary headteachers and site-based school business managers (SBMs). An original and nuanced understanding is presented of how individual agency and interdependence in integrating education and business practices mediate attempts to reform schools along business lines. This research and theory work in educational settings has resonance for research within and for other public services.
Owain Smolovic Jones New Zealand Leadership Institute University of Auckland Business School, NZ Keith Grint Professor of Public Leadership & Management Warwick Business School, UK A Game of Thrones: Power Plays and Politics in Public Collaborative Leadership Abstract Collaborative leadership in the public sphere is written about as if it is a solution to an agreed-upon, stable series of ‘complex’ problems. This paper will argue that both theorists and practitioners would benefit from viewing the collaborative challenge as a politically charged, ideological space, where the case for collaboration must be made with and against other ideological leadership narratives. Such a view might highlight the fragilities, as well as opportunities, of constituting a collaborative leadership narrative.
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Lieke Oldenhof, Annemiek Stoopendaal, Kim Putters Erasmus University, institute of Health Policy and Management (iBMG), The Netherlands Collectivizing leadership in neighbourhood governance: everyone ‘in the lead’? Neighbourhoods are increasingly seen as a ‘good scale’ for implementing neo-liberal reforms regarding the integration of public services and the empowerment of citizens in service design. A key question is how leadership is being reconfigured in the policy space of the neighbourhood. This paper examines how middle managers of public service providers reconfigure leadership in daily talk. Based on a Dutch Neighbourhood Program, we show that middle managers decouple leadership from their own management position and reframe it as a ‘collective effort’ in which citizens and frontline workers are ‘in the lead’ to provide neighbourhoodbased care and support. Three main effects of collectivizing leadership are: 1) increased responsibility for frontline workers and citizens to solve organizational problems, 2) the repositioning of middle managers as coach, 3) new maneuvering room for frontline workers. Our findings show that collective leadership is difficult to establish given simultaneous efforts to decollectivize leadership via the development of new coordinating roles. We conclude that collective leadership in neighbourhood governance provides opportunities for more locally tailored services, but also carries the risk of potentially overburdening citizens and frontline workers.
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, LEADERSHIP AND NEOLIBERALISM 2 Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm G2
Patricia A.L. Ehrensal Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Policy The George Washington University, USA Waiting for Superleader: Leadership as Anti-Resource Discourse Abstract For more than a decade there has been a focus on (one might even say a fetishizing) of “leaders” in school organizations, privileging agency over structure. In doing so, it shifts the focus to the individual agent and away from the structural role of administrator or manager, ignoring the disproportionate external controls and constraints imposed on school organizations. Further, it places the leader at the apex, even if leadership is constructed as “distributive.” This paper will contribute to the theme by exploring how the construct of “good” leaders in an era of neoliberal austerity relieves the state of appropriately funding schools, while blaming these same leaders for the poor performance of their students. This paper will examine the discursive construction of “leadership” in the school context. Particularly it will look at the constructs of “transformational,” “turnaround,” and “distributive” leadership. It will locate these “leaderships” in the externally controlled school organization, as well as the external control of “leadership” knowledge and practice by accrediting bodies. Further, it will interrogate these constructs and their role in defining “reality” and thereby controlling other organizational actors. Particularly, it will examine how leaders encourage individuals to identify with policy aims, and thereby reducing/eliminating dissent. The paper will then turn to the discourse of economic hardship and fiscal austerity prevalent in the U.S., as well as in Europe, with its call for budget cuts especially in the public sector generally and education particularly. “Good” leaders then, identify with the need to do more with less, and impose this “reality” on and making this policy a common aim for all in the organizational actors. Consequently, “doing more with less” becomes a new grid for the perception and evaluation of the “good” leader. In doing so, the full responsibility of effective teaching and learning falls on the school leader, deflecting the lack of responsibility and accountability of policy-makers and legislators. Thus, excusing them from finding ways to adequately fund schools. Leadership, the paper concludes, becomes an anti-resource discourse. However, as such budget cuts have a disproportionate impact on poor urban and rural schools, reproducing systemic violence of inequality. “Good” leaders then, ironically act against the best interest of themselves, the staff, children and indeed the entire community.
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Victoria Carruthers and Edward Wray-Bliss Deakin University, Australia Portraits of Power: The Visual Construction of Leadership as/and Neoliberal Individuality Abstract This paper critically examines that key mobilising and legitimising figure of the ideology of the individual within neoliberal society, the business leader. We do so through consideration of a genre which has been central to the construction and articulation of individuality in Western society since the renaissance: namely portraiture. Specifically, we analyse the ubiquitous photographic portrayal of the business leader in business magazine culture – a media who’s ideological and communicative function, we suggest, may be influential precisely for being largely taken-for-granted and critically unexamined. From an analysis of over 800 photographs of business leaders in the popular business press, we deploy visual semiotics and art (portraiture) theory to decode the specific nature and quality of the individuality pictured, charting the subtleties of the portrayed subject’s (elevated) relation to the other organisational members and audiences that are absent from, yet encoded by, the image. As with other socio-historical moments when portraiture of professional subjects proliferated - for example, during the emergence of the Dutch bourgeoisie in the 17th century and professionalization of medicine in the late 18th and early 19th century – our research shows how portraits of business leaders encode the conceits, contradictions and abiding anxieties at the heart of the subject’s status. We conclude the paper by reflecting more broadly upon the implications of our work for an understanding of the ideological appeals at the heart of neoliberal corporate life.
Dr Alison Taysum, University of Leicester, UK Purposes of the doctorate of education for educational leaders in a context of Higher Education policy, university prototypes, and an accountability regime Abstract This research has three aims. First, to generate new knowledge about how eight programme providers of doctorates of education in England, and the United States, and three professional researchers into the doctorate, describe and understand the impact of different kinds of universities on knowledge production. Second, to provide new insights into how different kinds of universities can be framed as ‘prototypes’ and the impact these prototypes have on Higher Education Policy. Third, to examine the purposes of the doctorate of education for educational leaders, within the complex Higher Education sector discourses. Finally, to represent from the empirical findings, practical and social implications for Higher Education Policy for doctorates in education for educational leaders within a neo-liberal context. The practical implications of this research for Higher Education Policy, is to enable educational leaders to access doctorates of education with characteristics of a ‘nostalgic’ prototype, and to recognize these programmes as a public good for two reasons. First, the new knowledge leaders create enables them to understand their rapidly changing contexts that students in their institutions are competing within. Second, their new knowledge potentially underpins work for stakeholder participation in educational processes, practices, and informed career trajectories.
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KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, LEADERSHIP AND NEOLIBERALISM 3 Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am G2
Bernie Grummell and Michael Murray National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland Further Education in Ireland: responding to community needs or shaping communities to a global marketplace in crisis? Abstract This presentation examines the relationship between the discourses, knowledge claims and leadership in the Irish Further Education sector as it is undergoing a process of formalization and professionalization. It highlights dilemmas for further education leadership as changes in the knowledge basis of the sector shift the nature of leadership work. We trace the development of this professionalization as further education is being repositioned as a) New Managerialist solution to the current economic crisis of global neo-liberalism, b) professionalism and performativity is reconstituting the knowledge basis of further education and c) technical and operational definitions are constraining the learning potential and transformative capacity of further education.
Kevin Burgess, Cranfield University, UK Impact of Neoliberal Reforms on Defence Abstract The progressive outsourcing of increasing numbers of tasks previously carried out by the military, including using contractors to provide security services within the battle space, has created a raft of complex legal issues. Deregulation of defence markets has resulted in a weakening of the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) power over suppliers. Major defence suppliers, now freed from monopsony arrangements, have moved their business focus away from a single state to a global market. The outsourcing of key knowledge creating activities, such as research and development (R & D), has generated major challenges around issues such as how the MoD can remain an intelligent customer – a critical role when engaging in a market operating at the leading edge of technological sophistication. Defence markets have never been competitive in respect to providing major weapons platforms. Far from rectifying non-competitive markets, globalization has resulted in fewer, and more powerful, defence suppliers. The foundational neoclassical economic assumptions which inform neoliberalism simply do not apply. This paper examines some of the major issues that have emerged as a result of applying neoliberal ideology to defence acquisition.
Joysi Moraes, Sandra Mariano, Andrea Marino, Brazil The Role of Leadership in the Creation and Planning of Pacification Police Units (UPPs) in Rio de Janeiro Abstract The Pacification Police Units (UPPs), created to recover territories (favelas) dominated by drug traffickers in the city of Rio de Janeiro, came about as a result of the courage and leadership of the head of Public Security Bureau in the State of Rio De Janeiro. The UPPs were created at the initiative of a public administrator and, initially, without the support of the State, and have since become one of the most respected and widely recognized organizations in Brazilian society. Due to success at dismantling the gangs that controlled and constituted a parallel state within the favelas, they have become the center of a public policy which has allowed the deployment of other UPPs in underserved communities, enabling the installation of other public services and facilities such as schools and health centers in the favelas, as well as creating the conditions for the local
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population to freely come and go. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to tell the story of the creation and planning of the UPPs, of which there are currently 34 distributed among the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. In preparing this article, emphasis has been given to the use of oral history, a methodology that focuses on the history of the present through the narrative of the subjects who participated in or witnessed the events. This allows the researcher to recover content not found in other types of documents and to produce reference material for other researchers. To begin with, we highlight the words of the leader who conceived of, created and installed the first UPP in the favela Morro Santa Marta: “I saw an opportunity because I knew the situation in Morro Santa Marta. In December 2008, there had been a large police operation there and the result was that the Morro Santa Marta was kind of leaderless. The gang leaders had been arrested and the main leader had been killed in confrontation with the police. So I said to my staff, ‘it's now or never’. Let’s seize this opportunity because if we don’t another gang leader will assume the role of community leader.” We went to Morro Santa Marta, entered and took over an old nursery school building that had belonged to the City Hall but that the drug gangs prevented the local community from using. We went to Morro Santa Marta, but we did not have specially trained police officers to put there, police trained in the concepts of community policing. It was an impromptu move, but the improvisation worked very well”.
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, LEADERSHIP AND NEOLIBERALISM 4 Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm G2
Giovanna Barzanò, IoE, University of London and MIUR, Italy, Emiliano Grimaldi andRoberto Serpieri, University of Naples Federico II, Italy NPM discourse, testing and the selection of head teachers. Education Policy innovation as a collective performation Abstract In this paper we examine a process of policy innovation in the field of education, focusing on the conditions under which a new mechanism for selecting head teachers through testing, inspired by NPM discourse, comes into being as a new ‘regime of practices’. We combine sensibilities derived both from governmentality studies and tools from the ANT-inspired research framework developed by Michel Callon on performativity, focusing on the actualization of the new testing device (and its related formula) that makes more calculable the core of a process formerly based on professional appraisal and peer judgement. The work highlights a set of paradoxical performations of the socio-technical agencements (STAs) through which the new formula on candidate selection is actualized: a) the making of the test as a contestable and vulnerable obligatory passage point; b) the commodification of knowledge about testing and the reinforcing and opening up of intertwining markets; c) the disentangling and fragmenting of aspiring head teachers’ professional identities.
Dr James Duggan, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK The emphasises, biases and constraints of a leaderist approach in the enactment of collaboration in children’s services Abstract This paper explores the emphases, biases and constraints of New Labour’s approach to improving collaboration in children’s services through organisational change, leadership and cultural change. Through the case study of the Stockborough Challenge, a local level response to the Every Child Matters agenda the paper documents how the representation of collaboration as a problem to be solved through leadership imposed particular biases and assumptions that obscured the practical tasks of organising for collaboration and emphasised a professional’s motivation to collaborate. The outcome was a curious initiative that set out to improve collaboration never defined or attempted to understand collaboration. The role of targets and motivation in the initiative was found however to perform a strategic and logical function in relation to the on going managerialisation of the public sector and the tensions and contradictions between collaborative policies in a managerial context. The paper concludes with two recommendations for how to better understand and engage with collaboration in the future.
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STREAM 15: CRITICAL HRD Professor Jim Stewart, Coventry University, UK Professor Jamie Callahan, Drexel University, USA Dr Clare Rigg, Institute of Technology, Tralee, Ireland Professor Sally Sambrook, Bangor University, UK Professor Kiran Trehan, University of Birmingham, UK
HIGHER EDUCATION AS SITE OF HRD PRACTICE: SOME CRITICAL ISSUES Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm F2
Professor Jim Stewart, Coventry University, UK Professor Jamie Callahan, Drexel University, USA Dr Clare Rigg, Institute of Technology, Tralee, Ireland Professor Sally Sambrook, Bangor University, UK Professor Kiran Trehan, University of Birmingham, UK Stream Introduction Abstract The stream conveners will suggest some themes and issues for discussion and analysis across all sessions and papers. They will also announce publication opportunities arising from the stream and invite contributions.
Sophie Mills, Senior Lecturer, Coventry University Issues associated with the use of monthly reflective journals as a means of data collection for the analysis of critical reflection and reflexivity in doctoral business and management students Abstract Summary This paper relates to issues associated with the research methods ulitised within my doctoral research that involves the analysis of 15 part time and full time doctoral student reflections on the development of their own doctoral research, with particular interest in any emotion or affect that might be documented within their reflections. Difficulties associated with the engagement of research participants in the monthly journaling of their doctoral activities are discussed along with the interventions adopted to attempt to overcome them. The purpose of my research My research focuses on the extent to which participant reflections could be considered as critical and/or reflexive in nature. The influence of emotion and affect and its potential relationship with critical reflection and reflexivity within these reflections is also a focus of this research. The study includes the longitudinal analysis
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of monthly student reflective journals/logs over the period of one year. In addition, semi-structured interviews are due to be carried out with all 15 research participants at the beginning, middle and end of this period, as a means of clarification and further exploration of their reflections. Research participants The 15 research participants are a mix of part time and full time business and management students from across four UK higher education institutions. My rationale for selecting doctoral students for the purpose of this study are related to the claim that individuals operating at doctoral level are more likely to be engaged in higher levels of reflection and reflective thinking than those at lower levels of study, with lower levels of education or at earlier stages of their adulthood (Jackson 2008; King and Kitchener 2004; Perry 1970). My analysis will, therefore, endeavour to identify evidence of critical reflection and reflexivity within student reports. Levels of reflection and their relationship with emotion Scrutiny of the critical reflection literature suggests that there is a need for empirical research into the role of emotions within critically reflective activity. It is argued that descriptions of critical reflection and reflexivity are based upon instrumental rationality (Stanovich, 2001), linking a person’s actions with obtaining personal aspirations. Van Woerkom (2010) supports Stanovich’s perspective that research involving the scrutiny of emotions is needed to develop understanding of the extent to which people are capable of critical reflection, and the extent to which it leads to ideals fulfilment. Swan and Bailey (2004) support this perspective, acknowledging that the consideration of emotion in reflection has been missing from the literature until relatively recent times. Similarly, Mary Holmes (2010) maintains that the role of emotion within theories of reflexivity, whilst not having been completely ignored, has not been sufficiently explored. I aim to consider these perspectives in my analysis of the monthly reflective journals by identifying any linkage between critical reflection and reflexivity with evidence of emotion documented in response to the particular issues discussed. Difficulties associated with journaling as a data collection method Hayman et al (2012) identify three main difficulties that are associated with the involvement of respondents within the use of journaling as a data collection method. These include poor participation in journaling, feeling exposed and staying on track. It is argued that although some of my 15 participants within this research are fully engaged in the process, others are less so. According to Hayman et al, the reasons for this lack of engagement could be attributed to any or all the following: the lack of confidence to write; participant issues associated with the length of time it would take for them to complete a journal as opposed to an interview, and potential anxieties related to the participant’s creation of a permanent record of his or her experiences and emotions. Some of the strategies adopted by the researcher to overcome the issues of poor participation include: keeping in individual regular contact with each participant throughout the period under scrutiny; the provision of reassurance as to the security and confidentiality of any information provided; and encouragement of participants to engage in the process by means of highlighting the potential personal benefits that could be associated with their involvement. Also, Moon (1999) suggests that in order for individuals to engage in metacognition (‘knowing about knowing’ (see Metcalfe and Shimamura (1994)) within the process of journal writing ‘such reflection might require a particular form of guidance and structure to ensure that both of the stages of initial observation and later reflection on reflection can occur’ (Moon 1999:188). Therefore, careful consideration was given to the journal’s design in terms of the types of questions that would prompt participants to reflect on their issues without leading them to consider only a restricted selection of subject areas. In terms of the data collected, another issue relating to the use of monthly journals to encourage participants to recall their actions, behaviours and feelings could be argued to be that of the reliance on participant retrospective recall of events and issues, rather than asking them to keep a diary of noteworthy issues, experiences, thoughts, feelings and so on, soon after their occurrence (Almeida and Kessler (1998). Issues associated with the collection of retrospective research data will also be considered. Concluding Remarks One of the most significant challenges of this research is considered to be maintaining ongoing commitment from as many of my research participants as possible in the journaling process. References
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Almeida, D.M. and Kessler, R.C. (1998). Everyday stressors and gender differences in daily distress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 75. 3. 670–680. Hayman, B., Wilkes, L. and Jackson, D. (2012). Journaling: identification of challenges and reflection on strategies. Nurse Researcher. 19, 3. 27-31. Holmes, M. (2010). The Emotionalization of Reflexivity. Sociology, 44(1), 139–154. Jackson, M. (2008). New Directions for Teaching & Learning. Wiley.114, p47-61. King, P.M. and Kitchener, K.S. (2004). Reflecctive Judgement: Theory and research on the development of epistemic assumptions through adulthood. Educational Psychologist. 39(1)., 5-18. Metcalfe, J. and Shimamura, A. P. (1994). Metacognition: knowing about knowing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Moon, J. A. (1999). Reflection in learning and professional development: Theory and practice. London, UK: Kogan Page. Perry, W. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. Troy, MO.Holt, Rinehart & Winston. In R. Jackson (2008) New Directions for Teaching & Learning. 114, p4761. Stanovich, K. E. (2001). The rationality of educating for wisdom. Educational Psychologist, 36(4), 247-251. Swan, E., & Bailey, A. (2004). Thinking with feeling: The emotions of reflection. In M. Reynolds & R. Vince (Eds.), Organizing reflection(pp. 105-125). Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited. van Woerkom, M. (2010). Critical reflection as a rationalistic ideal. Adult Education Quarterly, 60(4), 339-356.
Gary Connor, Coventry University Equity, Fairness & Suitability of UK business school assessment methods Abstract Initial analysis of results from research at a Midlands University raises questions as to whether fairness and equity exist in university assessment strategies. In addition, the research highlights the issue of employability skills currently being offered by HE institutions. In an attempt to offer a more diverse, relevant and alternative mode of assessment, a Midlands University has recently introduced an interactive verbal exam (IVE) onto their P/G HR programmes. Assessment now includes a written report, written exam and the newly introduced IVE. The IVE allows students to display their knowledge in ways that are not possible in written formats and better prepares them for the real world of business. It is proposed that an IVE can offer students a key employability skill much needed by graduate employers. Kent University (2012) report that Employers, including Microsoft, BBC, NACE and Prospects, states the number one employability skill required from potential graduate employees is “Verbal communication…able to express your ideas clearly and confidently in speech”. The seventh (out of 10 reported) required skill is “written communication….able to express yourself clearly in writing” (Kent University 2012). Whilst report writing is an accepted requirement, so is the need to clearly discuss and verbally articulate HRD/HRM issues. Initial analysis of results confirm relationships between grades obtained, demographic of student and mode of assessment: mean scores for international students were 9 points lower in written exams compared to that obtained by home/EU students, 8 points lower for the written report, but only 2 points lower in verbal exams. t-test results confirm statistically significant differences only for the written tests. A repeated measurement ANOVA confirms that the pattern of performance between two groups in 3 assessments (two written, one verbal) was significant. F 1.9, 100.4=3.27, p=0.044. This paper raises the following questions: 1. 2.
Taking into consideration the demography of business and human resource management P/G masters students, is it equitable to assess in written format only? Are we offering suitable employability skills for all students?
Imagine that all business schools used a mode of assessment (amongst others) where this was the only mode of assessment that international students performed as well as home/EU students. What would be the
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reaction of stakeholders if business schools announced this mode of assessment was to be stopped for no other reason than a perceived cost saving, resulting in automatically lower grades and subsequent degree classification for international students? Informal discussions by myself with a number of UK business schools shows in general that UK HE business schools assess P/G students using traditional written assessment. A typical taught Masters degree is modular based, with the majority of these modules assessing students using written reports, written exams and pre-prepared presentations. Thus, degree classifications are calculated based on student’s results achieved from predominantly written assessments. One accepted discourse on the written exam is that it is meant to assess and measure a student’s knowledge. However, my experience and that of many colleagues shows that students offer answers not wholly in line with the set question, students often veer off the subject to the point of no return, or simply misunderstand the question. On numerous occasions, there is a contrast between the high levels of knowledge and ability students show in the lecture room, with the formal grades they obtain; often far below their classroom potential. Students who have discussed business issues in seminars in great depth, proving their business and HR acumen, have then handed in written exam papers destined for the pile marked as fails/re-sit required. There is a marked discrepancy between the levels of ‘knowledge’ exhibited in these two contexts. An estimated 50% of Business and Administration P/G students are classified as non-EU (Higher Education Commission 2010). At a Midlands university, international students account for 70% of students enrolled on their P/G HRM/HRD programmes. It is being suggested that a proportion of these international students would obtain a higher classification of degree if assessments included a range of written and verbal assessments. Using written assessment only could have wide implications: i) ii) iii)
It may lead to international students achieving a naturally lower classification of degree. It reduces the number of students fully prepared for the real world of business and HR (the need to verbally communicate and think on your feet). International students could face a reduced chance of gaining employment with employers who use degree classification as a recruitment or selection criteria.
Cycle 1 of the research process has already inadvertently taken place, offering quantitative evidence highlighting possible lack of equity and fairness in HE business schools via their modes of assessment. Intentions are to continue investigating the use of IVE’s via Action Research (AR) with underpinning values of equity and fairness. Cycle 2 of the AR will investigate students’ discourse on preferred assessment methods via the use of repertory grids “the repertory grid can elicit people’s constructs without influencing them by the researcher’s preconceived question” (Zuber-Skerrit & Roche 2004:84). Intended outcomes of the research are to allow students to make an informed choice of method of assessment rather than the incorrectly perceived more economical methods of written assessment. References Higher Education Commission (2010). Postgraduate Education – an independent enquiry by the higher education commission. Retrieved from: http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/hec/sites/pol1006/files/he_commission_-postgraduate_education_2012.pdf. Viewed 20/1/2013 Kent University (2012). What are the top ten skills that employers want? Retrieved from: http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/top-ten-skills.htm Viewed 2/11/2012 Zuber-Skerrit, O., & Roche, V. (2004). A constructivist model for evaluating post-graduate supervision: a case study. Quality assurance in education. Vol.12 (4), pp 82-93.
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Jeff Gold, Leeds Business School and John Bratton, Napier University Towards Critical Human Resource Development Education (CHRDE): Using the sociological imagination to make the HRD profession more critical in the post-crisis era Abstract If we consider the findings from a recent survey (CIPD 2012), there is evidence of a retreat for HRD professionals. There are predictions of a falling median annual training budget per employee with particular pessimism in the public sector. There are concerns about the effectiveness of key activities such as talent management and development. Further, it was found that new insights on learning and development from areas such as neuroscience, social psychology, economics, computing and the natural sciences are currently rarely incorporated into learning and development practice in organisations. It would seem therefore that there has been a failure by those in the HRD profession (hereafter referred to as the Profession) to critically challenge key assumptions (Rigg et al, 2006). Firstly, assumptions about the status of HRD in organisations, where rather than sustaining a shift in understanding towards seeing learning and development as an investment in human capital, there is a return to the dark days of a low status budget item as a cost to be cut. This seems to have occurred in spite of recent evidence to support the centrality of learning, development and skills in the mediation of the impact of high performance working and successful organisation outcomes (Camps and LunaArocas 2012: Jiang et al, 2012). Secondly, assumptions about the tools of HRD practice still seem centred on ideas from another age. For example, the classic systematic training model, which emerged in the 1960s, engenders a linear view of training, remaining blind to key contextual features that impact on training and learning at work such as the vagaries of culture and history (Chiaburu and Tekleab 2005). Similar concerns could be expressed about the normative nature of competency frameworks, described by Bolden and Gosling (2006, 160) as ‘a simple representation of a highly complex and changing landscape’ and models of evaluation that imply linear causality from training to application, where research suggests that the act of learning alone, is not sufficient for training to be considered efficient (Grossman and Salas 2011). Against such concerns, has been the pace and magnitude of change in the world over the last two decades, mark by such contingencies as privatization, deregulation, free markets, free trade, and withdrawal of state intervention in many areas of social provision, the essence of the hegemonic neo-liberal political-economic agenda (Harvey, 2007). Further, from 2007, a banking crisis that triggered the greatest economic recession to hit the global economy since 1931 have, arguably, impacted negatively on the credibility of western business models (Bennis and O’Toole, 2005), including management models (Simpson, 2011) utilized by HRD professionals. This is the neo-liberal context within which management education in general, and HRD in particular, has been taught since the late 1970s. In HRD, in the UK, professional status is achieved by following the professional development scheme (PDS) offered by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). It is a path, which seems to emphasize an explicit ‘what’ knowledge, with less attention to the ‘how’ of practice, mostly valued by those in professional practice. Further there is hardly any attention to ‘why’ knowledge nor a reflexive critique of the purpose of HRD, its outcomes and the interests it serves. Indeed, there is evidence that HR professionals suffer overload and ambiguity in the face of more dominant line managers (Harrison 2011), with little questioning of the connection of such domination to the wider issue of the privileged position of managerial ideology and how privileged interests benefit certain groups in our society. In our paper we propose to explore the professional standing of HRD in the post-financial crisis period and argue for the necessity to expose HRD students to the “sociological imagination” – the ability to connect local and personal problems to larger macro and global forces (Watson 2009) – and the concept of reflexive critique, to explain the beneficial learning to be gained from teaching HRD that is sensitive to context, power and inequality. We will call such a move Critical Human Resource Development Education or CHRDE. This interpretation focuses on the development of a teaching and learning culture that focuses less on the ‘what’ of HRD, but shifts the emphasis towards the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of HRD;; with the everyday processes and human actions that occur in the workplace and their impact on employees and the local community in which any work organization is situated.
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References Bennis, W. and O’Toole, T. (2005) How business schools lost their way, Harvard Business Review, 83: 96104. Bolden, R. and Gosling, J. (2006) Leadership competencies: time to change the tune?, Leadership, 2, 2: 147– 163. Camps, J. and R. Luna-Arocas. 2012. A matter of learning: how human resources affect organizational performance, British Journal of Management 23, 1: 1-21. Chiaburu, D. and Tekleab, A. (2005) Individual and contextual influences on multiple dimensions of training effectiveness, Journal of European Industrial Training 29, 8: 604 – 626. CIPD (2012) Learning and Talent Development Survey, London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Grossman, R. and Salas, E. (2011) The transfer of training: what really matters, International Journal of Training and Development 15, 2: 103-120. Harrison, P. (2011) Learning culture, line manager and HR professional practice. Journal of European Industrial Training, 35, 9: 914 – 928. Harvey, D. (2007) A brief history of neoliberalism, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Jiang, K., Lepak
, D.P., Hu, J. and Baer, J. C. (2012) How does human resource management influence organizational outcomes?
A meta-analytic investigation of mediating mechanisms, Academy of Management Journal, 55, 6: 1264–1294 Rigg, C., Trehan K. and Stewart, J. (2006) Critical Human Resource Development: Beyond Orthodoxy, London: Prentice Hall. Simpson, J. (2011) Trading partner, sure thing; economic model, no thanks. The Globe and Mail, 7 September, p. A15. Watson, T.J. (2009) Work and the sociological imagination, Sociology, 43, 5: 861-877.
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, ENTREPRENEURS AND SUSTAINABILITY Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm F2
Professor Kiran Trehan, University of Birmingham, Alex Kevill, Lancaster University and Professor Mark Easterby-Smith, Lancaster University Critical Leadership Development as a conduit for Evolving Dynamic Capability: A Path into the Future for Micro Firms? Abstract Objectives: This empirical study looks into the potential relationship between leadership development courses undertaken by owner-managers of micro organizations and dynamic capabilities within such organizations. Specifically it looks at the role leadership development courses could play in the evolution of dynamic capabilities through their influence on micro-organization’s owner-managers. Prior Work: Critical approaches to Leadership development and dynamic capability pay particular attention to the goals of interventions, the importance of context and environmental dynamism; yet their potential to enrich each other’s perspectives has rarely been explored. Furthermore, dynamic capability research has largely ignored the context of the micro-organization. This study will improve understanding of the HRD practices of owner-managers related to dynamic capabilities within such firms. Such understanding could prove significant given the substantial contribution such firms make to the economy. Approach: This qualitative study will look to understand the perspectives of owner-managers and the meanings they assign to experiences. To generate the data for this study interviews have been undertaken with one ownermanager from two private sector micro-firms based in the UK. Results: The analysis illuminates that the leadership development course undertaken by the owner-managers included in this study has had very different effects on the evolution of dynamic capability in each organization.
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One of the owner-managers embraced concepts and ideas introduced to him on the course, and the change in his cognition associated with this provided a vehicle towards dynamic capability evolution. However, economic and social relationships have acted to construct road blocks on his path toward dynamic capability evolution, and leadership development itself may play an important role in overcoming these. The evolution of a dynamic managerial capability in the other owner-manager’s organization was facilitated not so much by the content of the leadership development course but rather the social capital it helped him to build. Emotion played an important role in the evolution of this dynamic managerial capability. Implications: The analysis illuminates the potential that leadership development courses could be undertaken by owner-managers of micro organizations to influence the evolution of dynamic capabilities within their organization with the aim of improving organizational performance. This could help such owner-managers to improve their ability to strategically develop their organizations. This study also highlights however that this is by no means a simple endeavour and that leadership development courses can have very different effects on different owner-managers based in different organizational contexts. A critical approach to leadership development requires a genuine commitment to engage with emotional and political dynamics associated with dynamic capability Trehan and Pedler, (2009) Ram and Trehan (2009) Value: By providing original insights relating to the synthesis of leadership development and dynamic capabilities in the context of the micro-organization this study offers potential avenues for future research in furthering debates relating to both leadership development and dynamic capability. Fresh insights on dynamic capabilities from a critical perspective are also provided in this paper. The insights gained will also help to move forward policy debates relating to supporting owner-managers in developing micro-organizations for the benefit of the economy. The study also informs research methodology used to understand leadership development and dynamic capabilities through taking a narrative research approach. Overview The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform define micro firms as consisting of ‘up to nine employees’ (Bridge et al., 2009: 175). At the beginning of 2011 enterprises employing between 0–9 people made up 95.4% of private sector enterprises in the UK and contributed 19.9% of the UK’s private sector turnover which equates to over £600bn (Department for Business Innovation & Skills, 2011). Given the importance that the government are placing upon enterprise in their quest for economic growth (HM Government, 2010) the development of micro-organizations is a timely and important area of consideration. The topic of dynamic capabilities has become an area of great interest during the past 15 years (Easterby-Smith et al, 2009) as a potential source of performance for organizations (Helfat et al, 2007). Therefore, it seems worthwhile to investigate dynamic capabilities within micro-organizations. As such, this study looks to investigate the role leadership development courses can play, if any, in dynamic capability evolution in two UK micro-organizations. How might a critical perspective on dynamic capability cast light on leadership development within micro organizations? We address this question by first outlining some of the key features of dynamic capability particularly its focus on performance, competitive advantage, and human agency. We then consider some pertinent gaps in debates on dynamic capability from a critical perspective in relation to leadership development. Finally, we briefly consider the implications of these ideas for future research and practice. Our paper is structured as follows. We begin by outlining some key tenets of dynamic capability which highlights a lack of research on the role leadership development may play in dynamic capability evolution. Next an overview of the methodology used will be provided, following which will be the presentation and discussion of the findings from the research. Finally we consider the implications of these ideas to the theory and practice of critical approaches to dynamic capability and leadership development in micro firms. References Easterby-Smith, M., Lyles, M. A. and Peteraf, M. A. (2009) ‘Dynamic Capabilities: Current Debates and Future Directions’, British Journal of Management, 20, S1-S8 Helfat, C. E. and Winter, S. G. (2011) ‘Untangling Dynamic and Operational Capabilities: Strategy for the (N)ever-Changing World’, Strategic Management Journal, 32, 1243-1250 Ram, M and Trehan, K (2009). Critical by Design; Enacting Critical Action Learning in Small Business Context. Journal of Action Learning Research and Practice, Vol 6 (3), pp 305-318 Trehan, K, and Pedler, M (2009). Animating critical action learning: Process based leadership & management
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development. Journal of Action Learning Research and Practice, Vol 6 (1), pp 35-49
Judi Morgan, University of Central Lancashire and Pete Thomas, Lancaster University Special ones, zombies and tissue rejection: An exploration of the experience of a leadership development programme and its impact on participant identity Abstract The purpose and process of leader development and coaching in organizations is largely regarded in positive terms and is increasingly seen as an important part of contemporary management (Passmore 2005; Hamlin et al 2006), supporting individual, team and corporate development (Skiffington and Zeus 2005). At its best coaching is thought to offer improvements in organizational performance as participants develop heightened self-awareness, self-belief and motivation (Anderson and Anderson 2005). The quasi-therapeutic nature of coaching suggests that it is at the very least a benign mode of development intervention. However, a more critical reading of coaching would highlight the darker aspects of a process geared towards delivering the ‘unspeakable’ (Hall et al 1999), patronizing the ‘little people’ (Berglas 2002) or, through attempts to regulate identity to produce the ‘appropriate individual’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002) In this paper we explore this darker side of coaching by examining the experiences of participants on a leadership development programme in a large UK bank. We explore the ways in which coaching relates to identity construction in the organizational context, our aim being to provide a thick description of the phenomenon that better accounts for the nuances of the process (Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003). In particular we consider the influence of coaching on the participants’ sense of self and the ways in which this might involve socialization and compliance, but also resistance. Simpson and Carrol (2008) argue that these processes are not simply a question of internalizing managerial discourse and exercising self-regulation; relating the ‘outside’ to ‘inside’. They deploy the idea of role as a boundary concept or a ‘relational intermediary’ that appreciates the relationships between social actors rather than simply positioning actors in relation to discourses. The concept also acknowledges the flux of identity construction and the idea of improvisation in the process. Our case examines experiences of the leadership development programme and its impact on the identity of participants in a corporate programme of leadership development. Through a process of qualitative fieldwork involving semi-structured interviewing and the use of the Twenty Statement Test (Spitzer et al., 1973, Rees and Nicholson 1994) data was collected and analysed for a number of participants in and facilitators of the programme. The TST allowed the exploration of participants’ self identity and a comparison of their ‘work’ self with their broader sense of self identity. The results were then expanded upon through a series of interviews with participants and a number of programme facilitators. The study demonstrates varying degrees of congruence between the work and non-work selves and a sense of ‘strategic’ behaviour in the workplace, as participants were very conscious of roles being played in a way that confirms Simpson and Carroll’s (2008) ideas of identity construction at work. Further, the rich language and metaphors used by interviewees indicates that participants were keen to preserve a sense of self they were happy with whilst manoeuvring through the organization. The study illuminates the organisation’s attempts to shape and colonise their employees’ sense of who they are through the ‘civilising process’ of the programme (Elias, 2000) and in doing so, it is argued, waste what they have to offer. The critical perspective offered here encourages the ‘asking of questions which are not meant to be asked’ concerning the competing discourses evident in the programme and amongst its participants, (Rigg, Stewart and Trehan, 2007 p. 9) The sense of specialness in being involved in the programme was countered at times by views that expressed the importance of resisting the controlling discourses; of not becoming a zombie. References Alvesson, M and Wilmott, H. (2002), Identity regulation as Organizational Control: Producing the Appropriate Individual Journal of Management Studies, 39 (5) Anderson D. and Anderson M. (2005) Coaching That Counts. Oxford: Elsevier Berglas S. (2002) ‘The very real dangers of executive coaching’, Harvard Business Review 80(6): 86—92. Elias, N. (2000), The Civilizing Process Oxford: Blackwell Hall D., Otazo, K. and Hollenbeck G. (1999) ‘Behind closed doors: What really happens in executive
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coaching’, Organizational Dynamics 27(3): 39—53. Hamlin R.G., Ellinger A.D. and Beattie R.S (2006) ‘Coaching at the heart of managerial effectiveness: A crosscultural study of managerial behaviours’, Human Resource Development International 9(3): 305—331. Passmore J. (2005) Excellence in Coaching. London: Kogan Page. Rees, A. and Nicholson, N (1994) The Twenty Statement Test in Cassell, C and Symon, G. (Eds) (1994) Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research, Sage: London pp. 27 - 54. Rigg, C., Stewart, J. and Trehan, K. (eds.) (2007) ‘Introduction, Critical Human Resource Development, Beyond Orthodoxy. Essex: FT Prentice Hall Simpson, B and Carroll B. (2008) ‘Re-viewing role in processes of identity construction’, Organization 15(1): 29—50. Skiffington S. and Zeus P. (2005) Behavioural Coaching. Roseville: McGraw-Hill. Spitzer, S., Couch, C and Stratton, J., (1973) The Assessment of the Self. Iowa City: Sernoll Inc. Sveningsson S. and Alvesson M. (2003) ‘Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle’, Human Relations 56(10): 1163—1193.
Dr Valerie Stead, Lancaster University Management School Gender, power and Action Learning; developing critical learning for women entrepreneurs Abstract This paper focuses on the need to introduce criticality into learning activities for women entrepreneurs. Drawing on the reflective accounts of 10 women entrepreneurs’ who participated in a leadership development progamme for small business entrepreneurs, the paper examines gendered power relations in Action Learning. The paper adopts a view of social learning activities and leadership development as important sites for women’s leadership and entrepreneurial identity work (Ely et al, 2011). Employing post-structuralist ideas that draw our attention to the performative nature of discourse, the analysis of women entrepreneurs’ reflections illuminates how social learning activities such as Action Learning can be instrumental in the production and reproduction of leadership and entrepreneurial discourses that can impede the development of women entrepreneurs. Context to the study Research that focuses on the development of small business entrepreneurs is of contemporary importance to HRD scholars in a time of economic recession when small businesses may be experiencing difficulties in growth. In the UK an estimated 4.8 million small businesses employing 23.9 million people account for 99% of all private sector businesses (Cowling and Liu, 2011). There is a trend towards an increase in female owned small businesses, both in the UK (Fielden et al 2003), and in the US where women are twice as likely to be entrepreneurially active as women in the UK (Harding, 2007). The developmental needs of an increasingly female small business entrepreneurial workforce are therefore an important concern for leadership and entrepreneurial developmental programmes and for critical scholars of HRD. Critical studies that examine women’s experiences of being entrepreneurs show that gender has a significant impact on their development and their identity as entrepreneurial leaders (Bruni et al, 2004). However, there remain relatively few entrepreneurial studies that attend to women’s experiences and gender (Hamilton, 2006 and 2013). Contribution to debates of critical HRD Against this background this paper contributes to critical debates of HRD in two key ways. First this paper responds to debates for a critical developmental agenda for women (Ely et al., 2011). Research on women leaders highlights the impact of gender on women’s leadership learning (Gherardi and Poggio, 2007) and observes how drawing on their experience enables women leaders to make sense of how gender and power operate in everyday leadership practice (Stead and Elliott, 2012). Making these connections is seen as crucial in the construction of women’s identity as leaders (Ford, 2010). Ely et al (2011) point out however that much leadership development practice adheres to traditional approaches, where it is either assumed that gender should not matter, or where women are seen as a problem and require socialisation to fit in with a male world. These approaches, they argue, fail to take account of the ‘subtle and pervasive forms of gender bias’ that can
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impede the identity work required for women to take up leadership roles (p.475). Second this paper responds to research that highlights the need for more work that takes social conditions such as gender into account in leadership and management learning (Swan et al, 2009). Research by Vince (2012) encourages challenging Action Learning as a social learning process and calls for a critical engagement with the ways in which power relations undermine the impact of action learning (Vince, 2012). Furthermore, studies on critical approaches to Action Learning (Ram, 2012; Ram and Trehan, 2009; Vince, 2012) and research on introducing critical management education (Reynolds, 2002) propose a need for further empirical work to understand power relations and the impact of social conditions in social learning activities. The core contribution of this paper then is to add to critical debates of HRD by examining gendered power relations in Action Learning sets with a view to informing the development of critical learning activities for entrepreneurial women leaders. Action Learning and Women Entrepreneurs I begin the paper by outlining how Action Learning draws on ideas of social learning theory (Lave and Wenger, 1991), and how it recognises the importance of learning as a situated and social practice embedded in everyday practice of social phenomena such as leadership and entrepreneurship (Hamilton, 2011). With reference to women’s leadership learning and development literature I observe how action learning, with a focus on working with peers to challenge assumptions and to identify strategies for action (Revans, 2011), is recognised as helpful in enabling women to develop their identity as leaders (Stead and Elliott, 2009). Research by Howorth et al (2012), for example, points to the usefulness of social learning activities including Action Learning for small business entrepreneurial leaders who may feel isolated and who may typically have little time for reflection. A post-structuralist approach I provide an overview of the empirical data; the 10 women involved in a leadership development programme for small entrepreneurial businesses and I outline the central role of action learning within the programme. Adopting a post-structuralist approach I examine the women’s reflective accounts. Thus, using illustrative examples from the data I consider how the women’s reflections on their experience of Action learning bring attention to the performative effects of gender (Ford et al, 2008), that is for instance how particular gendered understandings of what it is to be an entrepreneur or what might constitute an entrepreneurial business are brought into being through discourse and interaction in Action Learning. This analysis, I argue illuminates how gender and power can operate in social learning activities to produce and reproduce dominant discourses on leadership and entrepreneurial identity that serve to impede women’s identity work as leaders and entrepreneurs. Conclusions The paper concludes by exploring how social learning activities might attend to gender. I draw on research that is concerned with the development of a critical pedagogy (Trehan and Rigg, 2003; Vince, 2012), and that encourages ‘an explicit conception of criticality’ (Ram, 2012: 221). I also draw on post-structuralist ideas from entrepreneurial research (Bruni et al 2004). This research and the insights from the data, I propose, suggest practical ways forward for the development of critical learning activities for women entrepreneurs. References Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B (2004) Entrepreneur-mentality, gender and the study of women entrepreneurs, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 17 Iss: 3, pp.256 – 268 Cowling, M. and Liu, W. (2011) Business growth, access to finance and performance outcomes in the recession. Department for Business Innovation and Skills; Universtiy of Exeter Business School Ely, R.J.; Ibarra, H.; Kolb, D. M. (2011) Taking Gender Into Account: Theory and Design for Women’s Leadership Development Programs Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2011, Vol. 10, No. 3, 474–493. Fielden, S.L., Davidson, M.J., Dawe, A.J. and Makin, P.J. (2003) Factors inhibiting the economic growth of female owned small businesses in North West England. Journal of small Business and Enterprise Development Vol 10(2): 152-166 Ford, J., Harding, N. and Learmouth, M. (2008) Leadership as Identity: Constructions and Deconstructions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ford, J. (2010) Studying Leadership Critically; A psychosocial lens on leadership identities. Leadership, 6(1):
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47-65. Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B. (2007) Tales of Ordinary Leadership: A Feminist Approach to Experiential Learning. In: Reynolds, M. and Vince, R. (eds), Handbook of Experiential Learning in Management Education. Oxford: OUP Hamilton, E. (2006). ‘Whose story is it anyway? Narrative accounts of the role of women in founding and establishing family businesses.’ International Small Business Journal, 24: 253-271 Hamilton, E. (2011) ‘Entrepreneurial Learning in Family Business: A situated learning perspective’, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development 18 (1) 8–26. Hamilton, E. (2013). ‘The discourse of entrepreneurial masculinities (and femininities).’ Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, (forthcoming) Harding, R., (2007) ‘State of Women’s Enterprise in the UK’, Prowess. Howorth, C., Smith, S., & Parkinson, C. (2012). Social Learning and Social Entrepreneurship Education. Academy of Management Learning & Education. Vol. 11 (3): 371-389 Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ram, M. (2012) Critical action learning: extending its reach. Action learning: Research and Practice Vol 9(3); 219-224 Ram, M., and Trehan, K. (2009). Critical by design: enacting critical action learning in a small business context. Action Learning: Research and Practice, 6(3), 305-318. Revans, R. (2011). ABC of action learning. Gower Publishing Company. Reynolds, M. (2002). Grasping the nettle: possibilities and pitfalls of a critical management pedagogy. British Journal of Management, 10(2), 171-184. Stead, V. and Elliott, C.J. (2012) Women's leadership learning: A reflexive review of representations and leadership teaching. Management Learning. DOI: 10.1177/1350507612449504 Stead, V. and Elliott, C. (2009) Women’s Leadership Basingstoke; Palgrave Macmillan. Swan, E., Stead, V., Elliott, C. (2009) Feminist Futures and Challenges: Women, Diversity and Management Learning. Management Learning, 40(4): 431-437. Trehan, K., & Rigg, C. (2003). 14 Propositions for incorporating a pedagogy of complexity, emotion and power in HRD education. HRD in a Complex World, 6, 204. Vince, R. (2012): The contradictions of impact: action learning and power in organizations, Action Learning: Research and Practice, 9:3, 209-218
Dr Tim Bickerstaffe and Dr Dave Devins, Leeds Metropolitan University Sustainability and Progression Abstract Whilst organisational sustainability is often argued to be more of a ‘symbol’ rather than a scientific concept, it nevertheless provides a focus, signpost, or map pointing to and showing the general direction organisations could or should take (Gollan, 2006). Environmental, economic and social sustainability encompass the main tenets of organisational sustainability but a sustainable organisation is also seen as one that is built to last and which continually adds value (Wilkinson et al, 2001). Many organisations regard sustainability as lacking any grounding in commercial strategic need but it is argued that benefits such as improved people skills and deeper loyalty from employees and customers can be achieved from sustainability-focused HR policies and functions (Buckley et al, 2008). In this context, human resource sustainability requires the organisation to recognise and place value on human capabilities and this entails taking a more holistic and integrated approach to people management. Importantly, human resource sustainability requires a shift from short-term financial profit to more broadly-defined long-term returns (Pfeffer, 2009; Benn & Dunphy, 2005). However, existing research on human resource sustainability tends to focus on high-skilled and/or managerial occupations within organisations. There is relatively little dedicated to a holistic and integrated approach to managing lower-skilled staff and particularly scarce research into service organisations that develop and progress their low-skilled staff under HR policies designed to reduce employee turnover, maintain and develop
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internal skills, and contribute to longer-term sustainable competitive advantage (Bickerstaffe et al, 2012; Bickerstaffe et al, forthcoming) Currently, many of the UK’s services occupations – such as in hotels, retail and catering – are part-time, temporary and poorly paid. Moreover, the removal of many rungs from internal job ladders as a result of delayering and flattened organisational hierarchies have given rise to vertical gaps between the various layers of these organisations, which in turn have had effects upon training provision and the internal progression of employees from the lower end (Grimshaw et al, 2002). At the same time, many organisations employing lowskilled, low-paid staff report continued problems with high staff turnover, low morale and absenteeism (Cox et al, 2009). Within this context, the paper will detail the main findings from research conducted by the authors into the progression practices of employers who progress their low-skilled, low paid employees. Notably, the HR policies and practices of these organisations were based upon, or had been re-designed to, define and develop inclusive and planned approaches to progression based upon the rationale that progressing low-skilled employees represents good business practice for sustainable operations. Organisational benefits cited include improved retention rates and reduced turnover, greater flexibility, improvements in productivity, and improved reputation. Organisations with an established internal culture of progression in particular see it making good long-term business sense to ‘grow your own’. References Gollan, P.J. (2005) ‘High Involvement Management and Human Resource Sustainability: The Challenges and Opportunities’ in Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 43:18 pp.18-33. Wilkinson, A., Hill, M. & Gollan, P. (2001) ‘The Sustainability Debate’ in International Journal of Operations and Production Management 21:12 pp.1492-1502 Buckley, G., Herinques, M. & Salazar-Xirinachs, J.M. (2008) The Promotion of Sustainable Enterprises Geneva: International Labour Organisation Pfeffer, J. (2009) Building Sustainable Organizations: The Human Factor Research Paper Series No. 2017 Stanford: Graduate School of Business Benn, S. & Dunphy, D. (2005) ‘Towards New Forms of Governance for Issues of Sustainability: Renewing Relationships between Corporates, Government and Community’ in Electronic Journal of Radical Organization Theory http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/10.1.1.133.3833.pdf accessed December 13 2012 Bickerstaffe, T., Walton, F., Kelsey, S., Devins, D., Sutton, M., Hooley, T. & Hutchinson, J. (2012) Employer Practice in Progressing Low-Paid Staff Wath-upon-Dearne: UK Commission for Employment and Skills Bickerstaffe, T., Halliday, S. & Mitchell, B. (forthcoming) Progression of Low-Skilled, Low-Paid Employees in the Care, Catering and Retail Sectors York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation Grimshaw, D., Beynon, H., Rubery, J. & Ward, K. (2002) ‘The Restructuring of Career Paths in Large Service Sector Organizations: ‘Delayering’, Upskilling and Polarisation’ in The Sociological Review 50:1 pp.89-115 Cox, A., Higgins, T. & Speckesser, S. (2009) Management Practices and Sustainable Organisational Performance: An Analysis of the European Company Survey 2009 Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
WORK ORGANISATIONS AS SITES OF HRD PRACTICE: SOME CRITICAL ISSUES Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am F2
Claire Valentin, University of Edinburgh “The extra mile is the new normal” – Deconstructing Employee Engagement Abstract In the 20 or so years since the term was first introduced (Kahn, 1990) there has been a burgeoning interest in the concept of Employee Engagement (EE). More recently we have seen an emerging interest from an HRD perspective. EE is commonly described as a combination of commitment to the organization and its values, a
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willingness to help out colleagues, motivation, job satisfaction and discretionary effort by employees (CIPD, 2008). EE has become big business with large and small consultancies offering to enhance engagement. Governments have commissioned major studies and put in significant resources. However, EE as a construct should not be accepted uncritically. Despite its widespread popularity, there are competing interpretations in how EE is defined and perceived, and limited academic research to back up many claims made as to its worth. How engagement develops, how it is measured, and whether there are different types of engagement are all subject to debate. Definitions and meanings of engagement in the practitioner literature often overlap with other earlier constructs such as commitment, motivation, burnout, empowerment and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). Commonly used engagement measures are adopted without consideration of context or their limitations. Measures may focus on a general level and say little about the different experiences of individuals, or the nuances of factors that may impact upon engagement. In contrast to attempts to quantify the benefits, the costs of seeking to drive up EE have received limited consideration. Over-engagement may have potential (unintended?) consequences, such as the experience of work/ family conflict (Brewster et al., 2007). EE is ripe for critical analysis. The win-win discourse which characterizes much discussion on EE within a traditional management paradigm presents a decontextualised, depoliticised vision of the organization, similar to earlier work on the learning organisation. EE can be analysed as a discursive construction; rather than a preexisting, social object, a discourse plays a role in constituting material reality. As Chia (2000) argues, discourse acts at a constitutive level ‘to form social objects such as ‘organizations’ (Chia, 2000:514). Language does not simply reflect reality, but has a constructive function, regulatory and ideological function (Dick, 2006). A discourse is ‘a set of interrelated texts, and related practices of text production, dissemination and consumption, that serve to bring an object or idea into being’ (Grant et al., 2009: 214). Viewed through the lens of critical discourse analysis EE provides a fascinating example of how management ideas and practices are constituted. Engagement surveys and consultant interventions take on a new meaning. Dominant discourses can be viewed as ‘generative mechanisms’ though which new ‘regulatory regimes’ carried out by expert groups become established and legitimated (Reed, 2000). One can clearly see this occurring in the context of EE. EE is providing a convenient focus for the development of essential ‘new’ management interventions – presented as the ‘solution’, it also acts to shape the ‘problem’. There is evidence of ‘entitive thinking’ around the issue of EE (Chia, 2005, in Tsoukas, 2005), which is treated in much literature as a given rather than a contested and nebulous concept. A discourse rules in certain ways of talking about objects and subjects, and thus also rules out, limits or restricts (Grant et al., 2009). Dominant meanings emerge from ‘the power-laden nature of organizational contexts’, and the ‘discursive practices and rhetorical devices that are deployed in these struggles around meaning’ (Grant & Hardy 2003:5). So what is being ruled in and ruled out of the EE discourse? How does the idea of ‘engagement’ sit in a context of work intensification and global recession? How does if feel to be part of an engagement intervention? Does it impact upon subordinates’ experiences of relations of domination and power (Fleming and Spicer, 2007). Organizations can be viewed as ‘sites of struggle’ where different groups compete to shape the social reality (Grant et al., 2009). However it is inadequate to set up a dichotomy, for example one of ‘managers’ and ‘the managed’. This paper will draw on research on EE being undertaken with staff in a health service context, to seek to highlight the contradictions and constraints which operate at different levels of organisational practice. Managers struggle with a policy-driven agenda and financial constraints. Staff experience conflicts over professional objectives of patient care and an environment of targets and audit. Organisational cultures vary across departments and professional groups. Staff were asked for their view on the drivers and barriers to EE. One respondent said “the extra mile is the new normal”. References Brewster, C., Higgs, M., Holley, N. and McBain, R. (2007) Employee Engagement. Report from the HR Centre of Excellence Research and Members meeting, Henley. Chia, R. (2000) Discourse Analysis as Organizational Analysis, Organization, 7, (3) 513-518.
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CIPD (2008) Employee engagement. Factsheet, CIPD. Dick, P. (2006) Discourse Analysis, in Catherine Cassell and Gillian Symon (Eds) Essential Guide to Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, Sage Publications, 203-214. Fleiming, P. & Spicer, A. (2007) Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistence in Organizations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Grant, D and Hardy, C. (2003) Introduction: struggles with organizational discourse, Organization Studies 25 (1) p:5-13. Grant, D., Iedema, R. & Oswick, C. (2009) Discourse and critical management studies, in Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman & Hugh Willmott, The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies, Oxford & New York, Oxford University Press, p213 – 232. Kahn, W.A. (1990) Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work, Academy of Management Journal, 33 (4): 692-724. Reed, M. (2000) The limits of discourse analysis in organizational analysis, Organization 7 (3) 524530.Tsoukas, H. (2005) Afterword: why language matters in the analysis of organizational change, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 18 No 1. P96-104.
Dr Rosemary Caesar, Independent Consultant The Official, the Unofficial and the Deceit: The effect of management practices on corporate storytelling in the workplace Abstract Companies always say that employees are their most valuable assets. However, few organisations do act accordingly during these unsettled economic times. Like so many organisations, continuous global pressures has driven organisations to restructure and down-size their workforce in order to maintain their competitive edge. This in turn, has put a strain on the way in which managers have adapted to using corporate stories to deliver difficult news about the organisation in order to discourage ambiguity in the workplace. Given the trends that call for managers need to respond to a changing work environment in which they are not familiar with or they can easily find the answer to in a management reference book. As a consequence, changes in the workplace and in society have spurred renewed interest in management practices in the workplace. Human resource development (HRD) has existed for so many years but recently it has been experiencing tremendous changes to the theory which is the critical theory. The increasing importance being placed on the role of HRD in improving organisational performance highlights the changing contributions of HRD within organisations. Such changes affect organisations and individuals alike. That being so, this raises the importance of the organisation (such as managerial and HRD practice) to start thinking critical and this makes it the right time to think critically. In contrast to the traditional HRD practice, the critical approach provides the opportunity to reveal the use of power and control which provides the voice of those oppressed. In view of the above, this paper seeks to examine a doctoral research project in order to highlight a new conceptual framework for exploring the nature of corporate storytelling in the workplace, whereby the coexistence of official and unofficial stories influence the culture and challenges in existing working relationships. The framework is derived from the literature and an interpretative study of a single case organisation. The conceptual framework has been developed (DBA-research) by the author, who provides context and commentary. Empirical findings are presented as an actual single event to illustrate the framework in practice. Through the interpretative case study, the research finds that the use of corporate storytelling within and between social environments can influence misinterpretation in an unstable workplace. For instance, the
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stability of an organisation’s internal environment will be beneficial to determine, facilitate and constrain the type of storytellers in the workplace. Furthermore, the case study suggests that cross-contamination of an official and unofficial story will influence corporate communication and hamper trust within and between the social environments. That being so, the responsibility is on organisations who wish to circumvent conflict with the corporate values and foster members’ commitment and trust of management. In sum, this paper is drawn from a doctoral research project. Its originality and value contributes to the storytelling literature by exploring this new conceptual framework to fully illustrate the influence of corporate storytelling practices in the workplace during these unsettled economic times. It also highlights the process a story can go through and how the introduction of multiple misinterpretations can threaten the essence of a story.
Richard J. Cotter, National University of Ireland Maynooth Critical Reflection at Work: Insights from an Insider Organisational Ethnography Abstract At the end of their intriguingly titled paper ‘Critical reflection in the workplace: is it just too difficult?’ Rigg and Trehan (2008) seem to conclude that it probably is but nevertheless, given the stakes involved, the game is still worth the candle so to speak. This paper agrees with their assessment and seeks to build on their constructive efforts by switching the question slightly and posing it from a different stance - ‘It is too difficult, still, how does it get off the ground?’ The plight is paradoxical and might be analogous to Derrida’s notion of the irreducible aporia which calls for reflexive endurance when the way forward, and how to go on, seems lost or unclear (Derrida, 1994). The paper begins by reviewing critical HRD research with a special focus on the pedagogical intent of this paradigm. The assumption guiding this review follows Sambrook’s (2004) statement that critical HRD is still trying to ‘find space’ amongst theorists and practitioners. This idea applies to critical management studies generally which has recently seen calls for the pursuit of a more pragmatic and inclusive agenda which would help create such an opening (Spicer et al., 2009). It also dovetails with Alvesson and Willmott’s (1992) notion that the hope for critical approaches lies in the interstices between apparently competing scholarly and practitioner discourses, embodied in the particular roles and identities of the multiple stakeholders involved. Such spaces will have a complex, polyphonic character (see Belova et al., 2008, Sullivan and McCarthy, 2008) and dissolve of necessity the tempting but ultimately false utility of any simple ‘critical versus conventional’ dichotomy which stalemates rather than advances both the theory and practice of critical research efforts, HRD or otherwise (see Callahan, 2007). To paraphrase Fenwick (2004, p.206) what look like fundamental differences and intractable contradictions in these areas may often be more apparent than actual. Indeed, the complex ecology of organisational environments (Tsoukas and Dooley, 2011) tend to defy any and all naïve dualisms whether academic or practitioner based (Lorino et al., 2011, p.775). I hope to show in this paper that contentions like these hold considerable water. I aim to do so by concentrating on one strand of critical HRD thinking; critical reflection and reflexivity in learning. Homing in on this line of inquiry is appropriate. According to Clegg et al. (2011) if critical management scholarship is to make headway beyond it’s own margins then pedagogy is probably it’s most potent mode of expression. Critical reflection is the learning method par excellence of critical approaches to management and organisation studies (Raelin, 2008, Reynolds, 1998, Rigg and Trehan, 2004) and reflexivity is one of it’s cardinal elements (Boje and Al Arkoubi, 2009, Fournier and Grey, 2000).
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A focus on critical reflection and reflexivity in learning is also relevant because it continues and deepens the polyphonic theme just mentioned. Given it’s inherently indeterminate character1 critical reflection invites pluralism (Cotter and Cullen, 2012) and when practiced on the ground this can seriously challenge it’s collective enactment towards collaborative, let alone critical ends (Rigg and Trehan, 2008). Even in the relatively benign setting of an executive education classroom, critical reflection can be provocative, capable of arousing strong and distressing responses (Sinclair, 2007). In the workplace where the stakes are undoubtedly higher, we can reasonably predict such effects to be exacerbated. Critical HRD sets an extremely challenging agenda for the HRD practitioner who because of the potential risks involved (Rigg et al., 2007) can naturally be expected to resist rather than embrace it’s principles and operation (Trehan, 2007, p.80). Yet there are different ways of being critical (Sambrook, 2004) and isn’t it possible that such learning could be both critical and careful (in the fullest, ethico-political sense of this word), yielding knowledge which goes beyond what we know already about the exigencies involved? As I began with, we can safely assume difficulty, even impossibility, yet still go with the grain of this in praxis. This is the sort of paradoxical, negative regulative principle crucial to all critical efforts in which “…the problem is part of the solution” (Zizek, 2012, p.24). It is praxis as imaginative engagement (Mir and Mir, 2002) of the sort endorsed by Knights (2008) and others. It also has affinities with Callahan’s (2007) important concept of ‘critical constructionism’ in HRD research which the paper will explore. The paper draws on empirical data gathered during the author’s Ph.D study which is a reflexive, insider organizational ethnography (see Aull Davies, 2008) focused on exploring and theorising how practicing managers respond to critical reflection and reflexive approaches to development in the workplace. Analytically, Hannah Arendt’s theory of action (Arendt, 1999) is used to complicate but ultimately support theories of critical reflection and reflexive learning which the paper suggests stand to benefit from a deeper, more contextually enriched understanding of the nature of the challenges involved with deploying this approach in practice (see Cotter and Cullen, 2012, p.245). The author works full time as a HRD manager in the organisation involved and represents an example of a practitioner who is willing to become critically engaged in a “…creative and smart…” way (Callahan, 2007, p.79) and experiment with deviating from the orthodox HR mould (Rhodes and Harvey, 2012, p.55). Notes 1
Meaning critical reflection is first and foremost a method, or a way of learning. It does not produce predetermined pedagogical results. This may be both it’s strength and it’s weakness, however, judging this depends on the job at hand and (to use Lenin’s famous phrase) on Who [is doing what to] Whom? (see Geuss, 2008). This is important because with critical reflection various forms of power are always in play. Indeed critical reflection itself is a form of power, a potentially liberating one according to Habermas (1986). Whether this potentiality is actually realised or not is invariably an empirical matter. References ALVESSON, M. & WILLMOTT, H. 1992. On the Idea of Emancipation in Management and Organization Studies. The Academy of Management Review, 17, 432-464. ARENDT, H. 1999. The human condition Chicago University of Chicago Press. AULL DAVIES, C. 2008. Reflexive ethnography: a guide to researching selves and others, London, Routledge. BELOVA, O., KING, I. & SLIWA, M. 2008. Introduction: Polyphony and Organization Studies: Mikhail Bakhtin and Beyond. Organization Studies, 29, 493-500. BOJE, D. & AL ARKOUBI, K. 2009. Critical management education beyond the siege In: ARMSTRONG, S. J. & FUKAMI, C. F. (eds.) The Sage handbook of management learning, education and development. London: Sage.
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CALLAHAN, J. L. 2007. Gazing into the crystal ball: Critical HRD as a future of research in the field. Human Resource Development International, 10, 77-82. CLEGG, S., DENY, F. & GREY, C. 2011. Introduction to the Special Issue Critical Management Studies and Managerial Education: New Contexts? New Agenda? M@n@gement 14, 271-279. COTTER, R. J. & CULLEN, J. G. 2012. Reflexive Management Learning. Human Resource Development Review, 11, 227-253. DERRIDA, J. 1994. Aporias, Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press. FENWICK, T. 2004. Toward a critical HRD in theory and in practice. Adult Education Quarterly, 54, 193-209. FOURNIER, V. & GREY, C. 2000. At the Critical Moment: Conditions and Prospects for Critical Management Studies. Human Relations, 53, 7-32. GEUSS, R. 2008. Philosophy and real politics, New Jersey, Princeton University Press. HABERMAS, J. 1986. Knowledge and human interests, Cambridge, Polity Press. KNIGHTS, D. 2008. Myopic rhetorics: reflecting epistemologically and ethically on the demand for relevance in organizational and management research. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7, 537552. LORINO, P., TRICARD, B. & CLOT, Y. 2011. Research methods for non-representational approaches to organizational complexity: the dialogical mediated inquiry. Organization Studies, 32, 769-801. MIR, R. & MIR, A. 2002. The Organizational Imagination: From Paradigm Wars to Praxis. Organizational Research Methods, 5, 105-125. RAELIN, J. A. 2008. Emancipatory Discourse and Liberation. Management Learning, 39, 519-540. REYNOLDS, M. 1998. Reflection and Critical Reflection in Management Learning. Management Learning, 29, 183-200. RHODES, C. & HARVEY, G. 2012. Agonism and the Possibilities of Ethics for HRM. Journal of Business Ethics, 111, 49-59. RIGG, C., STEWART, J. & TREHAN, K. 2007. In: RIGG, C. & STEWART, J. (eds.) Critical human resource development: beyond orthodoxy. Harlow: Pearson Education RIGG, C. & TREHAN, K. 2004. Reflections on working with critical action learning. Action Learning: Research and Practice, 1, 149-165. RIGG, C. & TREHAN, K. 2008. Critical reflection in the workplace: is it just too difficult? . Journal of European Industrial Training, 32, 374-384. SAMBROOK, S. 2004. A “critical” time for HRD? Journal of European Industrial Training, 28, 611-624. SINCLAIR, A. 2007. Teaching leadership critically to MBAs: experiences from heaven and hell. Management Learning, 38, 458-472. SPICER, A., ALVESSON, M. & KÄRREMAN, D. 2009. Critical performativity: The unfinished business of critical management studies. Human Relations, 62, 537-560. SULLIVAN, P. & MCCARTHY, J. 2008. Managing the Polyphonic Sounds of Organizational Truths. Organization Studies, 29, 525-541. TREHAN, K. 2007. Psychodynamic and Critical Perspectives on Leadership Development. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 9, 72-82. TSOUKAS, H. & DOOLEY, K. J. 2011. Towards the ecological style: embracing complexity in organizational
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research. Organization Studies, 32, 729-735. ZIZEK, S. 2012. Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism London, Verso.
Milena Gojny and Janusz Struzyna, University of Economics in Katowice The doubts and questions in POS theory Abstract The current economic crisis has strengthened the tensions that are associated with the position of HRD specialists in organizations. One of the sources of these tensions is a “contradiction of serving two masters, one the dominant social structures […], the other those who work within these structures” [Trehan 2009]. HRD researchers have developed many concepts and models that aim at lowering the level of these tensions. However, the effects of their implementation have not stopped seller’ greed and The Wall Street buccaneering. Between 2007-2008 there was a decline in the value of human capital in most EU countries, the crisis impact on human capital formation also in Poland. The studies show that the economic crisis matters significantly for personal well-being and employee- organization relationship. Some homeostatic mechanisms are activated by the organizations [Panas 2013] and one of those is support given to employee by organization. Perceived Organizational Support (POS) is one of those resolution. Universality of this theory gives a hope to decrease social tension during economic crisis and growth as well. To enable this we need to make a critical analysis doubts growing along the theory. The purpose of this paper is the identification and description of the results of studies on the current state of scientific knowledge about POS. We base the analysis on Citation Map and similar tools. The below-mentioned doubts open the discussion about POS from new perspective. The concept of Perceived Organizational Support (POS) has been homogeneously interpreted by different researchers since Eisenberger and colleagues defined it in 1986 as “global beliefs concerning the extent to which the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being” [Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, Sowa 1986, p.501]. Most of the researchers frame POS in Social Exchange Theory (SET). In SET context the part of relationship receiving profit like support- an employee, needs to reciprocate, reward the organization. This approach is based on the norm of reciprocity, according to which the recipient of benefits is morally obliged to recompense the donor [Gouldner 1960]. The repayment strengthens the mutually beneficial exchange of profits [Blau 1964]. Literature review, which I conducted using Citation Map and similar tools, indicates that most of the authors interpret POS from SET point of view. Advancing argument for legitimacy of Social Exchange Theory perspective might be its moderating role between POS and outcomes which is certain behaviour or attitude. The results of the Eisenberger et al. (1986) study show that the strength of the negative relation between Perceived Organizational Support and absenteeism is greater for employees with a strong believe in rule of reciprocation than for those who have weak believe in exchange ideology [Eisenberger et al. 1986]. POS has also been found to be related to other work attitudes and behaviours such as affective commitment [Whitener 2001], job satisfaction [Muse, Stamper 2007, Reinardy 2009], perceptions of justice [Cho, Kessler 2008], Organizational Citizenship Behaviour [Ahmadi et al. 2010], job performance [Farh, Hackett, Liang 2007, Webster, Adams 2009] and creativity [DiLiello et al. 2011]. There is also a negative correlation between POS and turnover, turnover intentions [Ovadje 2010, Griffeth, Campbell, Allen 2007] deviance [Sady et al. 2008, Chullen et al. 2010] and psychological contract breach [Kiewitz et al. 2009]. Metaanalysis research on POS from 1986 to nowadays reveals a pattern which shows POS as an input in employeeorganization relation and according to social exchange mechanism, as an outcome we have intensification some employee’s behaviour and weakness others. The list of possible variables is not catalogued and complete. Those relations are explained by reciprocation norm and Social Exchange Theory. These explanation is very convincing, convenient and logical, assuming rationality and unification of people reactions and behaviour. As POS has become more and more popular topic of the research, it is important to make sure that the growing
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concept is founded on proper assumptions. We find symbolic matter in process of communication, interpretation- perception worthy investigation. Symbolic Interactionism is sociological theory assuming that much of human behaviour is determined not by objective facts of a given situation, but by the meanings people ascribe to it. Human behaviour is influenced by subjective interpretations of reality [Mead 1922]. Symbols become language and set of social constructs consisting of symbols that are assigned meaning and acted upon in accordance is a reality [Lynch, McConatha 2006]. We propose to complement Social Exchange approach in discussion about POS with Symbolic Interactionism, which helps understand such issues as communication, judgements, perceptions and attitudes in investigated topic. Researches on personality characteristics as direct predictors of many variables in employee-organization relation are crucial. For example personality traits and dispositional traits are evidenced to influence turnover intentions significantly [Chiu, Francesco 2003], suggesting that training methods for different employees should be different [Chiu, Lin, Tsai, Hsiao 2005]. We do not find in literature any study of relation between psychological and perception variables and POS. We think this kind of investigation may be useful to fully understand Perceived Organizational Support. Another issue is lack of identified dimensions of POS. The classification of POS aspects would help diversify all kinds of acts inducing Perceived Organizational Support and help with cross-culture study. Whether POS, as we now think of it, would reflect the same dimensionality in a different socio-cultural environment or in a different system of economic organization that we do not know. Another doubt we have studying POS is the distinction between POS and other variables e.g. Perceived Supervisor Support (PSS). Eisenberger et al. [1986] assumed that employee personify the organization, viewing actions taking by agents of the organization as actions of the organization itself [Levinson 1965]. We found study differentiates PSS from POS [Griffeth et al. 2007] but it stands in contradiction with the previous assumption. Moreover, there is no evidence if employees can separate supervisor’s behaviour in perception of organization. In the paper we develop those thoughts and try to verify usefulness of Symbolic Interactionism as an approach for investigating Perceived Organizational Support. We do not know possible limitations of this direction yet.
DISSENT AND REFLECTION th
Friday 12 July, 1.30 – 3.30pm F2
Tim Hatcher, North Carolina State University Dissent: Grounding critical HRD Abstract The paper begins with an explanation as to why Critical HRD (CHRD) is ineffective in changing practice followed by a review of dissent in organizations from selected critical sociology and management literature. An inquiry into the possible impact that certain approaches to researching and teaching dissent may have on CHRD practice completes the paper. CHRD: Why it is not working in practice Critical HRD is an ‘off-shoot’ of Critical Management Studies. While the ‘critical turn’ in HRD began in earnest with the work of Rigg, Stewart and Trehan in 2001 and continues with publications, and conference presentations and proceedings written by a small group of scholars there is little if any evidence that critical HRD (CHRD) has any impact on practice. Whether it is the application of critical theories a la The Frankfurt School and the works of Horkheimer, Marcuse, Habermas and others to academic enquiry or simply questioning the status quo, CHRD attempts to change the practice of HRD and the organizations where it is practiced by challenging underlying performative assumptions. But is challenging an assumption enough? What is it that we want CHRD to do? Should HRD be the liberator of worker oppression, alienation, or injustice – assuming these are bona fide problems in HRD practice? Are we ready to usurp skill development and renege on our responsibility to provide tools that improve productivity and learning tied to organizational needs?
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Short (2004, 2006) and others have lamented the neglect of practitioner’s interests and concerns by HRD scholars. This is especially troubling when critical HRD suggests practitioners question their work and workplaces. If CHRD is not contributing to ‘critical’ practice then is it actually CHRD that is ineffective? Critical studies in general have been criticized as being too theoretical (Hancock, 2008: Voronov, 2008). Yet theory is important in research and practice. Can critical theories help solve problems of oppression and inequality in the real world of work? Theories that have little obvious and immediate impact within academia or in practice are not necessarily a bad thing. Theory is emergent not immediate. Its impact on practice from research happens at some point. Theory must have longevity enough to be able to influence practice or be shown to be invalid or otherwise irrelevant. Holton (1999) made the point that if an applied discipline like HRD focuses solely on research that is readily acceptable to practitioners it will not challenge the basic underlying values and assumptions of research or practice. The result may be a sort of collusion between practitioners and researchers, leading to superficial, nonthreatening research that fails to challenge organizational status quo. For CHRD to be sustainable within the academy and to enhance the ability of the academy to address problems of oppression and inequality in organizations (again, assuming actual problem status in HRD) critical theories need to be applied to more research with the understanding that actual impact on practice may be delayed for some time or not at all. To change HRD practice within a value-oriented time frame requires that viable techniques be identified, explored and implemented. Dissent is a potential technique to achieve the goals of CHRD in practice. Dissent: A review of selected sociological and management literature Conformity does not guarantee a well functioning organization. Groups need dissenters because they stabilize and keep groups vibrant (Erikson, 1966; Jetten & Hornsey, 2011). Butera, Darnon and Mugny (2011) suggested that dissent stimulates task-oriented activity resulting in progress and learning. Learning is especially important to HRD practice. Opposition to dissent creates unhealthy and in severe cases unethical organization climates. A principled minority voice that questions a particular course of action or decision exemplifies the important tenet of addressing marginalized voices in CHRD. Dissent occurs when people are dissatisfied or disillusioned with current conditions. It is taking a position that differs from the status quo through protests and voicing objections (Kassing, 1997). Events that trigger dissent include significant workplace issues such as intolerance and inequities (Kassing & Armstrong, 2002). A comparison across types of dissent revealed that organizational climate, loyalty and commitment, adversarial perception and retaliation were important considerations (Kassing, 2008). There are several theories that support dissent as a research construct including the theory of unobtrusive control, independent-mindedness, and the Exit-Voice-Loyalty model of dissent (Kassing, 1997; Tompkins & Cheney, 1985; Hirshman, 1970). There is little cause and effect in HRD research/theory-to-practice because research may take years if ever to cause changes in practice. Just because research is not immediately relevant or usable to practitioners does not mean it is useless. It is unrealistic to expect practice to immediately change just because dissent is taught or researched. It would be silly to suggest that cancer research using rats should be halted because rats are not humans. So, the answer to the question of teaching and researching dissent making a difference in practice is a resounding ‘it depends’. Researchers of dissention and deviance in organizations (Kassing, 2008; Jetten & Hornsey, 2011) suggest it depends on the worldview of HRD scholars and practitioners and the contexts in which they carry out teaching, research and practice. Teaching and researching dissent: Impact on HRD practice Will teaching and researching dissent make a difference in the practice of HRD? Unfortunately, the dominant model of Western education where students are socialized into the traditions and truths of the prevailing culture in order to fit into society is an impediment to learning dissent. This traditional method of teaching fails to
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promote minority voice and does not encourage divergent thinking, a powerful tenet of dissention. Conversely, critical pedagogy is an approach to learning that helps learners recognize authoritarian tendencies, connect knowledge to power and enhance the ability to take constructive action (See the work of Henry Giroux and bel hooks). Thus, if HRD scholars adopt critical pedagogy and related concepts such as narrative and discourse theory to teach dissent it’s potential to affect practice will be greatly improved. Employing dissent as a variable or phenomenon in HRD-related research has potential to provide researchers and scholar-practitioners the opportunity to learn more about how dissention influences learning, group communications and decision making, and other HRD-related variables. Examining the phenomenon of dissent through a qualitative paradigm will shed light on how it is influenced by various contexts. In summary an explanation was offered as to why Critical HRD is ineffective in changing practice followed by a review of dissent in organizations from selected critical sociology and management literature. An inquiry into the possible impact that researching and teaching dissent may have on HRD practice completed the paper.
Linda Perriton, The York Management School, University of York Critical reflection. Has criticality been reduced to technique? Abstract The late Phyllis Cunningham suggested that it was important for educators to know what the ultimate concern of their practice was; concern was the foundation on which philosophy and commitment was built. Learning was not about technique in Cunningham’s view; it was about philosophy (Cunningham, 2004). And it is true that many writers who have sought to define what Critical Human Resource Development (CHRD) is have usually sought to bring a wide-ranging set of practices together by appealing to a central set of ideas that amount to a critical philosophy i.e. a statement of their ultimate concern in practising. Reynolds’ summary of that philosophy is one that many authors return to when looking for a succinct statement as to these shared aims (e.g. Sambrook, 2009; Fenwick 2005). Criticality is: concerned with questioning assumptions, focused on the social rather than the individual, attentive to the analysis of power and desirous of emancipation (Reynolds, 1998). Leaving aside any difficulties related to the critical practice of HRD in workplaces by practitioners; the CHRD literature is replete with accounts of the difficulty of operationalizing a critical approach to the teaching of HRD as a subject area within business school constraints (e.g. Corley & Eades, 2006; Hibbert, 2012; Lawless, Sambrook & Stewart, 2012; Welsh & Dehler, 2012). Most educators who want to teach HRD critically incorporate some element of critical reflection, or critical self-reflection (Van Woerkman, 2003), in their design. Where course design is freed from the need to incorporate individual assessment there is often an emphasis on process radicalism (Reynolds, 1998), which usually features critical reflection within a group setting i.e. with the facilitator using a Freirean questioning style in an attempt to unsettle the students’ reception of traditional management content (Fenwick, 2005). Where there is a need to build in an assessed element then most CHRD influenced programmes tend to opt for some element of critically reflective writing i.e. aiming for radical content (Reynolds, 1998) outcomes. The recent financial pressures on UK universities, and on prospective students, have threatened the continued survival of many process radical programmes that include, or are actively marketed to, HRD practitioners. Small student cohorts and a perceived resource heavy mode of delivery has put programmes built on a philosophy of critical engagement with management practice under pressure, either closing them completely or forcing them to adjust the pedagogical design to a more cost-effective model. Whilst the model of facilitative critical reflection was not without its theoretical and practical issues (see Perriton, 2004) it did help retain a wider, socio-political focus for collective exploration. The (increasing) retreat from the pedagogic field of collective sense making results in the individual becoming the focus of the critical project. And the written self-
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reflective account becomes the dominant pedagogical design. It is the argument of this paper that criticality is ill served by its reliance on written accounts of the individual critical ‘journey’ and that Critical HRD’s faith in this method is, in turn, unreflexive. My proposed paper focuses on what I believe is the increasingly problematic format of the reflective essay as a tool designed to encourage and capture critical reflection. Based on my experience as an external examiner for two ‘critical’ programmes that were underpinned by critical HRD philosophies, I summarise the difficulties of accounting for the ‘learning’ within these programmes, which is often equated with personal growth (variously defended) and/or the ability to articulate personal failings and the redemptive path back to self-esteem. I question whether critical reflection has been forced, or allowed, because of the pressure on resources to become ‘about’ technique, rather than about philosophy. Or whether critical reflection has always been more effective as a way of building an identity for Critical HRD academics than as a pedagogical method. Corley A and Eades E. (2006) Sustaining critically reflective practitioners: competing with the dominant discourse. International Journal of Training and Development 10: 30-40. Cunningham P. (2004) Critical Pedagogy and Implications for Human Resource Development. Advances in Developing Human Resources 6: 226-240. Fenwick T. (2005) Conceptions of Critical HRD: Dilemmas for Theory and Practice. Human Resource Development International 8: 225-238. Hibbert, P (2012) Approaching Reflexivity Through Reflection: Issues for Critical Management Education, 10.1177/1052562912467757
Journal
of
Management
Education.
DOI:
Lawless A, Sambrook S and Stewart J. (2012) Critical human resource development: enabling alternative subject positions within a master of arts in human resource development educational programme. Human Resource Development International 15: 321-336. Perriton L. (2004) A reflection of what exactly? A provocation regarding the use of 'critical' reflection in Critical Management Education. In: Vince R and Reynolds M (eds) Critical Reflection. London: Ashgate, 126-141. Reynolds M. (1998) Reflection and critical reflection in management learning. Management Learning 29: 183-200. van Woerkom M. (2004) The concept of critical reflection and its implications for human resource development. Advances in Developing Human Resources 6: 178-192. Welsh MA and Dehler GE. (2012) Combining Critical Reflection and Design Thinking to Develop Integrative Learners. Journal of Management Education. DOI: 10.1177/1523422304263430
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Ciarán McFadden, School of Business, NUI Maynooth LGBT Identity and Human Resource Development: A Systematic Literature Review Abstract This paper outlines a recent systematic literature review (Cook et al, 1997; White and Schmidt, 2005) within the business, management and broader social sciences fields on the careers and workplace experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workers. Completed as part of a wider study on the influence of an LGBT identity on one’s career, this review examines major themes within the literature surrounding the topic of LGBT experiences in the workplace, outlines major findings and consensuses, categorizes and critiques existing research, and highlights areas that require further study. The study takes an inductive exploratory approach, influenced by both queer and feminist theories, critiquing and disturbing the dominant narratives within current research and organizational policy-making in the field. For the purpose of this review, the following databases were used: EBSCO Academic Source Complete (over 13,600 journals, various fields), the EBSCO Business Source Complete (over 2,400 peer-reviewed journals in the business and management fields), and the Thompson Reuters Web of Knowledge (over 23,000 journals, various fields). Firstly, searches of the databases were made using search strings relating to LGBT and careers, employees, employment or workplaces. Resultant articles were then narrowed down by selecting those that exhibited the key words, phrases, methodologies and areas of relevance to this study, and by deselecting those that were irrelevant. The papers that cited these articles were narrowed down according to the same criteria. From this analysis the main scholars in the field were identified, and their papers reviewed. By reviewing and assigning keywords to each article, a definitive search string was created with which to query the databases. The resultant 137 articles were then categorised, included or excluded according to their relevance, novelty and quality, and those deemed suitable make up the basis of this review. One of the findings addressed in this paper is the growth of academic interest in the LGBT community since the mid-2000s. However, the focus remains firmly in the sociology (Lerum, 2004; Tilcsik, 2011), psychology (Poteat and Mereish, 2012; Velez and Moradi, 2012; Budge et al., 2010) and gender and sexuality domains (Bernstein and Swartwout 2012, Bowleg et al. 2008), with a relative gap in management studies regarding this workforce population. Existing research on LGBT issues in the workplace tends towards quantitative methodology, with topics such as discrimination and disclosure examined using surveys and questionnaires. Analyses can therefore be centred more upon the researcher’s own point of view. This research contributes to knowledge as it puts the participant’s own subjective experiences at the centre of the research. Rather than treating the LGBT group as homogenous, as so often encountered in the literature and organizational practices, this research looks at within-group differences and how one’s unique standpoint and identity influences how they interpret the workplace setting. The inclusion of the transgender community into research surrounding diversity in the workplace has been very limited. The majority of studies examine lesbian, gay and bisexual participants, with the transgender community treated as a separate population; however, the commonalities and historical associations between those in the LGB and transgender populations have led to an interlinked, unified and recognizable LGBT community, suggesting a possible disconnect between the academic community and those whom it examines. The literature reviewed thus far has also shown that narrative analysis has had limited usage in this area. With this technique, the researcher gains a rich understanding of how the participant views their world. It provides HRD practitioners a highly descriptive insight into LGBT employees’ perspectives and experiences on issues such as discrimination, identity disclosure, diversity policies and the workplace itself, and is of benefit in
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developing both organizational and individual efficacy. The systematic literature review, whilst having limitations (Crowther and Cook, 2007; Bartolucci and Hillegass, 2010), is an important stage in mapping this under-explored research domain in management studies. The review shown in this paper will be supplemented with empirical qualitative data to be collected in the next research phase. This review is of relevance for the LGBT individuals themselves, for managers and HR practitioners within organizations, for policy-makers interested in the promotion and development of equal opportunities and diversity at work, and for LGBT-focused civil rights groups and NGOs. References Bartolucci, A. A. and Hillegass, W. B. (2010) Overview, Strengths, and Limitations of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. In: Chiappelli, F., Caldeira Brant, X. M., Neagos, N., Oluwadara, O. O., Ramchandani, M. H. (eds.) Evidence-Based Pracitce: Toward Optimizing Clinical Outcomes, New York: Springer. Bernstein, M. and Swartwout, P. (2012) Gay Officers In Their Midst: Heterosexual Police Employees' Anticipation of the Consequences for Coworkers Who Come Out. Journal of Homosexuality, 59(8), 1145-1166. Bowleg, L., Brooks, K. and Ritz, S. F. (2008) "Bringing home more than a paycheck:" an exploratory analysis of Black lesbians' experiences of stress and coping in the workplace. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 12(1), 69-84. Budge, S. L., Tebbe, E. N. and Howard, K. A. S. (2010) The Work Experiences of Transgender Individuals: Negotiating the Transition and Career Decision-Making Processes. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(4), 377-393. Crowther, M. A. and Cook, D. J. (2007) Trials and Tribulations of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. Hematology, 2007 (1), 493 - 497. Cook, D. J., Mulrow, C. D., and Haynes, B. R. (1997) Systematic Reviews: Synthesis of Best Evidence for Clinical Decisions. Annals of Internal Medicine, 126(5), 210 – 216. Lerum, K. (2004) Sexuality power, and camaraderie in service work. Gender & Society, 18(6), 756-776. Poteat, V. P. and Mereish, E. H. (2012) Ideology, Prejudice, and Attitudes Toward Sexual Minority Social Policies and Organizations. Political Psychology, 33(2), 211-224. Tilcsik, A. (2011) 'Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 117(2), 586-626. Velez, B. L. and Moradi, B. (2012) Workplace Support, Discrimination, and Person-Organization Fit: Tests of the Theory of Work Adjustment With LGB Individuals. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 59(3), 399-407. White, A. and Schmidt, K. (2005) Systematic literature reviews. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 13(1), 54 – 60.
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Professor Jim Stewart, Coventry University, UK Professor Jamie Callahan, Drexel University, USA Dr Clare Rigg, Institute of Technology, Tralee, Ireland Professor Sally Sambrook, Bangor University, UK Professor Kiran Trehan, University of Birmingham, UK Stream conclusions and next steps Abstract Stream conveners will summarize the main outcomes of the discussions and pose questions for debate. Next steps will also be explored with a view to agreeing future actions
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STREAM 16: REFLEXIVITY: ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE Manfred Moldaschl Matthias Wörlen Tobias Hallensleben Chair for Socio-Economics and Entrepreneurial ResponsAbility Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Chair for Innovation Research & Sustainable Resource Management Faculty of Economics, Chemnitz Univ. of Technology
[email protected]
PERSPECTIVES ON REFLEXIVITY Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm F2
Manfred Moldaschl, Prof. Dr. Dr. Chair for Socio-Economics and Entrepreneurial ResponsAbility & Director European Center for Sustainability Research (ECS) Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Chair for Innovation Research & Sustainable Resource Management Faculty of Economics, Chemnitz Univ. of Technology
[email protected] Introduction: Institutional and personal Reflexivity Abstract Reflexivity is a common reference point in modernization theory (Luhmann, Beck, Giddens, Sandywell), developmental psychology (Piaget, Raithel, Groeben, Kohlberg), critical social theory (Bourdieu, Habermas, Jessop), the philosophy of science (e.g. Bunge, Gouldner) and organizational learning (Argyris & Schön). Some of the work is on critical self-‐awareness of social research, concerning premises, values, and unintended consequences of intervention, like in the area of CMS the work of Alvesson and Sköldberg or Gouldner. The latter is not our focus here. While in the theory of reflexive modernization Beck and Giddens portrait reflexivity as a more or less “digital” alternative to fundamentalist reactions (TINA-‐principle, the politics of “There Is No Alternative”) on contingency in the modern world, we see very different forms and levels of reflexivity in (other) social practices. For us reflexivity is an important feature of critical thinking, of critical self-‐reference in individual development, organizational innovation and social change. Although we lost trust in the continuous diffusion and linear progress of enlightenment, the question remains relevant, which organizational, societal, educational settings foster reflexivity with respect to reigning rules within these settings. Neoliberal capitalism has wiped away many securities, but also the security that social practices organized along its principles are desirable and without alternative. Therefore the question arises to which extend people and organizations cope with that in the form of (new) fundamentalism or reflexivity. And how to identify, measure, evaluate levels of reflexivity in organizational cultures and subjectivity. If reflexivity is not understood as a digital construct, we have to discuss how to conceptualize epistemological qualities of knowledge, practice and culture in organizations; and how this might
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contribute to understanding self-‐reference, inertia or innovation capabilities. As a personal epistemological style, reflexive perceiving and acting can be described by the ability to take up an observational perspective on one’s own action and conception;; an awareness of perspectivity, of being situated inevitably; it comprises an attentiveness of unintended side effects of own action, and a high readiness to accept ambiguity and alternative interpretations of social reality (e.g. skepticism concerning “one best way”). In organizational cultures reflexivity can be identified and observed in epistemological practices like “strong” project management, forms of discourse, ways of knowledge absorption, and also in practices described as mindfulness by Karl Weick. In an institutional perspective, reflexive practices, or better, the level of reflexivity can be interpreted as an indicator of personal and organizational innovativeness or dynamic capabilities, as addressed in modern theories of the firm. Since these theories (Dynamic Capabilities Approach, Knowledge-‐based View of the firm, Competence-‐based View of the firm etc.) deal with innovativeness and hysteresis, but have little or no critical potential and intention, the sub-‐stream also invites contributions which discuss the relations between CMS, critical systems thinking, capability theories of the firm, and heterodox economics.
Stephen Allen, Dr., Lecturer Department of Management Learning and Leadership Lancaster University Management School
[email protected] Are predominant ideas about reflexivity privileging individualism and stifling more relational (sustainable) ontologies? Abstract In this paper reflexivity is associated with a set of ideas that can help researchers bend back in order to consider the possible implications of their situatedness – i.e. being of our 'native roots' and part of the collective practices of our time (Polanyi, 1962). Reflexivity has evolved as an important stream of writing that has included challenging the claims to truth and value neutrality of scientific methods and practices (Lawson, 1985). From these origins a variety reflexive appreciations have been given prominence by social researchers (e.g Beck, Giddens & Lash (1994), Bourdieu & Wacquant (1992)). However, the challenges of performing reflexivity in research have led to calls to somehow leave it behind and move on (e.g Lynch (2000) Rhodes (2009)). These critiques have included arguments that reflexivity lacks sufficient theoretical grounding and that its emancipatory potential is limited. This paper attempts to open up some new possibilities for reflexivity by exploring how the ways it is conceived and critiqued can be understood as being caught amongst the 'grip of an individualistic cosmology' (Holland, 1999, p. 480). By seeking to work within Gergen's (2009) relational ontology this paper attempts to stimulate debate through grappling with the concept of an 'unbounded' researcher. The primary intention of doing this is to help consider different ways of thinking and researching about how issues such as sustainability (seeing social and ecological as intertwined) can come into conversation with us and our bodies. By using a counter metaphor of the body as a 'sieve' alternative ways of considering and performing reflexivity are explored (Gergen, 2009, p. 97). The paper argues that reflexivity seems to simultaneously offer and suppress potentials to think and research differently. It proposes some new possibilities for drawing upon ideas of reflexivity and offers some alternative images of researching.
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Elena Antonacopoulou, Prof. GNOSIS University of Liverpool Management School
[email protected] www.gnosisresearch.info The Reflexive Turn in Organizational Change Research: The Role of Logos and Phronesis in Practising Changing Abstract One of the biggest challenges for organisational change research remains to better understand how individuals engage with organisational changes at work and how stability and change co-exist in the process of changing. This is not simply a matter of returning to longstanding concerns about ways of enhancing individual’s receptivity to change, by fostering greater readiness to change (Beckhard & Harris, 1987; Beer & Walton, 1987; Armenakis et al., 1993) whilst working to minimise resistance to change; itself a natural part of the change process (Coch & French, 1948; Lewin, 1951; Lawrence, 1973; Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979). If we are to more fully appreciate the complexities underlying the way individuals engage with change at work and experience the process of changing, we need to move beyond visible aspects that signal their reactions. Although valuable, our understanding of individuals’ reactions to change to-date remains limited to the emotional, cognitive and interpretative accounts of individuals’ responses to change (Isabella, 1990; Marshak, 1993; Antonacopoulou & Gabriel, 2001). Several contributions (Westenholz, 1993; Reger et al., 1994a and 1994b;; Balogun & Johnson, 2004) have already usefully accounted for individuals’ existing mental maps, meaning, perceptions, frames of reference and cognitive structures as factors influencing the way they interpret organisational events and show that at different stages of the change process individuals are guided by a different set of assumptions and expectations. If we are to make a marked contribution to the study of organisational change we need to consider new concepts and potentially review the way change is enacted as well as, embodied. In this respect, we know relatively little about individuals’ lived experiences of change, how they form their practical judgement as they act and react to change. These are integral dimensions in understanding organizational change, but they are also central to capturing aspects of reflexivity that hitherto remain unaddressed. In this paper, attention is drawn to the role of logos and phronesis in what will be referred to as the reflexive turn in organizational change research. The analysis draws on the Heraclitian notion of ‘logos’ and the Aristotelian notion of ‘phronesis’, which provide fresh insights about the ways individuals engage in practising changing as they negotiate competing priorities in relation to the management of change in the organization. Heraclitus introduces through logos a principle according to which the world is organized. This principle is the notion of unity not as a single substance but as an arrangement which connects separate things into a determinate whole (Kirk, 1954). This principle, it is argued, provides a valuable means of understanding how the rational coherence underlying our customary experiences of the world is constructed (Antonacopoulou, 2011). Such experiences entail in the meanings individuals deduce, the explanations they attribute to such experiences and the way such explanations are made sense of when they describe them to others who may not share the same experience. In other words, they reflect how individuals balance competing priorities, deal with the internal conflict they may encounter in situations when they are called upon to exercise judgment between good and bad, right and wrong. Organizational change as a lived experience provides a valuable lens for reconsidering reflexivity both in the choices individuals make, exercise their judgment and take action. Logos provides clues about the ways in which individuals engage in internal conversation with themselves, to determine not only in the ways they act but also react to situations. In short, in this paper logos is employed as a way of explaining individuals’ lived experiences of change which in turn affect their reactions which also provide access to the judgements (phronesis) that guide them. The Aristotelian notion of Phronesis (prudence, wisdom or practical judgment) has been receiving attention in management studies and has been employed as a basis for rethinking leadership and management education and more recently managing change (Badham, et al., 2012; Antonacopoulou, 2010a; Eikeland, 2009; Nonaka & Toyama, 2007, Flyvberg, 2001). Across the variety of ways in which the concept has been interpreted, there is general agreement on its basic principle of explaining the ways people act in everyday situations. Phronesis demonstrates through the actions man takes ‘his’ capacity to exercise judgment with regard to what is deemed good or bad (Dunne, 1993). Hence, phronesis is a way of acting, thinking, knowing and living, which reflect the character of man described as phronimos (Noel, 1999) or homo-phroneticus (Antonacopoulou, 2012). Perhaps more intriguing are the processes that are integral to the act of phronesis itself as some scholars
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laboriously explicate the role of discernment, practical syllogism, insight, wisdom, virtue, and moral excellence (Wall, 2003). Phronesis then, opens up the scope to better appreciate that reactions to change are part of the practice of judging, acting and living well, where such practices are bounded by personal choice as much as by social, cultural, political and historical values grounded in the communities of practice in which actors perform their work. Put differently, phronesis provides access to the profound tension between self and community (personal and organizational priorities, personal and work identity) and ways this is reflexively worked with in a practising mode. This scope for reflexivity is not just about the meanings that inform action. It is about the choices and judgments that guide one’s predisposition. In other words, taking a stance towards a situation is not merely a sensemaking process of negotiating competing priorities. It is also a process of practising how to balance competing priorities that create internal conflict. Practising is defined as “deliberate, habitual and spontaneous repetition” (Antonacopoulou, 2004b; 2008a, 2008b). Central to practising is rehearsing, refining, learning and changing actions and the relationships between different elements of an action (intension, ethos, phronesis). Practising is a space where possibilities are born as individuals try things out. Practising is analogous to a regular routine followed by a performing artist when they systematically engage in a process of performing again and again a set of actions integral to perfecting both their technical skills as well as, their ways of expressing themselves in their performances which are never the same. Whilst practising reflects a systematic and conscious drive to improve performance it is also a subconscious process. It is this subconscious practising that is integral to reflexivity guided by logos and phronesis that this paper draws attention to, because it provides scope to see organizational change as a learning space and not merely as a challenge imposed by management to which individuals just react to. This perspective on reflexivity has affinity to empirically informed accounts of the dynamics of managers’ reflexive practice as they engage in learning from changing and changing from learning (Antonacopoulou, 2004). Understanding the dynamics between practising, learning and changing presents a unique opportunity to reconsider reflexivity. Reflexivity through this lens can be considered as an act of imagination, a process of wondering, improvising and innovating. By broadening the ways in which we understand reflexivity as a practice we not only embrace the role of practising, learning and changing as integral dimensions of the process. We also allow a greater sensitization to the role of logos and phronesis that have hitherto received little attention. The paper seeks through this fresh lens to also mark a new chapter in organizational change research in what is referred to as the reflexive turn. The paper will discuss systematically all concepts and their relationships to articulate in the discussion section an agenda for future research and practice adopting the reflexive turn in the organizational change field. Particular attention throughout the analysis will be paid not only on reflexivity as a practice that individual actors engage in when they exercise logos and phronesis. The analysis, will also account for the tensions and potential traps that individuals may experience practising changing. Insights in accounting and demonstrating both the concepts and the agenda for future research as part of the proposed reflexive turn, are based on going projects pursued by the author. Anecdotal evidence from empirical findings will be offered in the paper to illustrate the issues.
REFLEXIVITY AND THE FORMATION OF CHANGE Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm F2
Robert Burisch, Katharina Höhne European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) Doctoral Program “Dynamic Capabilities and Relationships“
[email protected] [email protected] Reflexivity and the Concept of Dynamic Capabilities: A Stakeholder Perspective Abstract The concept of dynamic capabilities aims at the utopian vision of continuous and allencompassing adaptation to whatever kind of environmental changes by implicitly assuming the full flexibility of
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organizational capabilities. Despite this heavy emphasis on constant innovativeness, mainstream literature on dynamic capabilities is far from providing a meaningful statement about how a sufficient degree of reflexivity, as a foundation for successful change, can be achieved. Since dynamic capabilities are perceived as being most valuable in dynamic environments we conceptualize organizational reflexivity as one essential challenge for organizations operating in such settings. Likewise, an organization must be able to act and to react on emerging opportunities and threats quickly. We argue that reflexivity and (re-)action speed represent two opposing organizational functions standing in competition for scarce internal resources and requiring a respective organizational design. Subsequently, we discuss both aspects with regard to the distinct interests of organizational stakeholders by applying the Habermasian concept of communicative action. Regardless of the large body of stakeholder management literature, a systematic elaboration of a respective perspective is still missing within the field of dynamic capabilities. The latter could potentially be enriched by the stakeholder view since major works on dynamic capabilities tend to overestimate managerial discretion and therefore oversimplify the complex process of organizational change. Instead of taking fully flexible capabilities for granted, we explore the role of stakeholder management with respect to the potential dynamization of organizational capabilities. Particularly, we address the question how discursive interactions between management and other stakeholders could affect the opposing organizational requirements emanating from high-velocity environments, namely organizational reflexivity and (re-)action speed. In a sense of a double-edged sword, these effects are essentially twofold which leads us to introduce respective contingency factors. Thereby, we are aware of the potential trade-off between the organizational need for legitimacy on the one hand and the need for reflexive managerial practices on the other. Finally, we develop testable propositions for an empirical investigation.
Mikko Lehtonen, M.Sc.(Tech.), M.Sc.(Econ.) Katriina Järvi, MA (Ed.) Tiina Tuominen, M.Sc.(Econ.) Aalto University School of Science, BIT Research Centre
[email protected] Three Takes on Reflexivity in the Productisation of Services Abstract Service productisation has been investigated in small professional service firms. In those organisations its role has been to develop the service offering to be able to interact better with customers and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the service operations as well as improve the marketability of the services (Jaakkola, 2011; Valminen & Toivonen, 2011). In these roles service productisation can be understood as service and knowledge codification (cf. Morris, 2001). In a broader context it can be seen as a part of the contemporary process of knowledge and service commodification (cf. Suddaby & Greenwood, 2001) both as a response to the existing process present in contemporary society as well as a practice reproducing and enhancing this development (cf. Beck, Bonss, & Lau, 2003). Service productisation is also used in large organisations. The purpose is often represented as more or less the same as in small organisations. However, the context of the larger organisation also brings with it alternative representations to the purpose of service productisation. Also, the level and type of knowledge intensity of services has an impact on the possibilities and practicalities of service productisation. Evaluating these aspects of service productisation we look into the controlling aspects of knowledge and service codification, especially from the perspective of professional elites in organisations (cf. Clegg & Courpasson, 2004; Courpasson, 2000). We describe three perspectives on reflexivity in service productisation. First, a key challenge of service productisation is the fine line between proper codification and flexibility, i.e. standardisation of services and room for tailoring services for individual service encounters. This calls for reflection both within the activities of service productisation as well as in allowing for reflection within the actual service processes, in which the codified knowledge is to be used. Second, we look at reflection as an activity of professionals as they are subjected to the outcomes of service productisation. Knowledge and service codification can be seen to reduce the knowledge-based, proprietary power of professional elites as they are subjected to more transparent processes and evaluation of success. New modalities of control develop with reflection being a key mechanism in them. Third, we look at service productisation as responses to the commodification fetishism of contemporary society. Instead of reflexivity treated as reflection performed by individuals it can be seen as a reflexes on pressures imposed on the organisations and individuals as well as reflexes on the past actions of the individuals and the organisations (Beck et al., 2003). While responding to the commodification of services the practice of service
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productisation also reproduces and enhances it. This leads to the intensification of competition in the markets the companies take part in. Through these aspects the practice of service productisation and reflexivity related to it present themselves as practices of neobureaucratisation of service organisations (Reed, 2011) and neoliberalisation of society (Harvey, 2007). We analyse a study of appr. 40 semi-structured interviews with themes on the interviewees’ organisations’ services, development of services, service productisation and the success of these. We perform a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003, 2005) to evaluate the different representations given to service productisation and identify the competing discourses producing them. In this we focus especially on the meanings, purposes and objectives assigned to service productisation. We also evaluate the styles of being that present the subject positions of those performing service productisation, those subjected to its outcomes and those managing the service organisations. As results, we will present competing representations of service productisation, its purposes and its objectives. Within these results we evaluate the challenges of service productisation presented by interviewees as stemming from the complexity and knowledge intensity of the services being codified and the tacit nature of knowledge possessed by the professional. We also evaluate the desire to control the service organisations through predictable and efficient service processes, which are presented as one key output of service productisation. We look into the subject positions of professionals in service organisations produced through service productisation and compare these to those presented in the neobureaucratic ideal type of organising. The three takes of reflexivity in service productisation allow us to look into the interplay between personal and institutional reflexivity. The competing demands of flexibility and efficiency in professional work, the attempts to codify tacit professional knowledge and the societal development of commodification force individuals to engage in critical reflection – not only regarding their work, but also their employment (Roper, Ganesh, & Inkson, 2010). Managers are forced to deal with the competing desires over controllability, predictability and the professionals’ autonomy and flexibility along with the increasing importance of service customers participating in the service processes thus challenging the traditionally clear boundaries between the service provider and its customers.
Klaus Neundlinger, Dr. Beratungs- und Forschungsinstitut 4dimensions, Wien http://www.4dimensions.at
[email protected] Immaterial objects of organisational change. Reflexivity seen as speech act narrative Abstract In my paper, I would like to address the question how to conceptualise reflexivity in processes of organisational change. On the one hand, I will add a theoretical perspective to recent studies on subjectivation (Moldaschl/Voß 2002) and reflexivity (Hildebrandt/Linne 2000) in sociology of labour and ethnology (Schönberger 2003). On the other hand, I will present some considerations on the concrete experience in consulting and organisational development my institute has been making in the last years. 1. Communication as paradigm of work organisation Economic activities involve an ever increasing amount of planning, coordination, communication and other immaterial, symbolic forms of action (Müller 2006). As Zarifian (1996, 2003) pointed out, the communicative paradigm has been introduced in industrial organisation and became a general feature of work by spreading in the advanced services and IT sector. By communicative paradigm, we can understand the intensification of the involvement of the single worker’s or employee’s capacity to react to, interpret and co-create situations that cannot be resolved by simply applying a given procedure, technique or method. The more communication fosters an overlapping of the executive and the organisational aspect of labour, the more reflexivity can become a crucial resource in production and service and will be subject to managerial intervention. But can there be criteria for a distinction between the “dark side” of subjectivation and reflexivity, i.e. the alienation or exploitation of the single employee’s creativity and adaptability (Matuschek/Arnold/Voß 2007) for pure profit purposes, and an actual involvement of autonomous, critical collaborators into organisational decision processes and change? 2. The speech act approach to work organisation Seen from a normative point of view, this could imply that reflexive modernisation (Beck/Giddens 1995) proves to be labour organisation as communicative action. Such an approach allows us to account for a novel relationship between representing and reasoning (Brandom 1994). Work organisation would shift from simply
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representing something as “to be done” (“the one best way”) to a kind of semantic production under normative premises: to the burden of giving reasons for what one assumes that has to be done (e.g. stakeholder analysis and management, involvement of costumers and cooperation partners, strategic planning etc.). In terms of theory, to conceive of reflection as symbolic action adds something to existing fruitful approaches based on the concept of subjectivation as it was developed by Foucault’s theory of governmentality (Foucault 1979, Bröckling 2007) and sociological theories (Moldaschl/Voß 2002). After having been reduced by taylorist methods to a pure means of transmission of commands and information, language regains complexity within organisational processes, structures and procedures. In some theoretical studies on the impact of language on economic conduct (Männel 2000), organisational communication has been analysed from a language pragmatics view, especially on the basis of speech act theory (Cooren 2000, Gramaccia 2003). This approach allows us to understand communication, on the one hand, as organisation, as activity that structures processes and dynamics in projects and institutions (Bourdieu 1980). On the other hand, by providing a typology of the diverse speech acts, it enables us to individuate and describe those acts as immaterial objects (Cooren 2000). These objects, be they illocutionary (i.e. based on modal, informational or institutional transformations) or perlocutionary (i.e. rhetorical or procedural transformations, Cooren 2000), are not created in an isolated way. Rather, they serve to provide projects and organisations with cohesion. Speech acts like assertives, directives, accreditives or commissives organise symbolic action in form of narrative structures (Cooren 2000). Furthermore, they serve to introduce reflexive forms on communicative action aimed at contributing to a determined project (or phase) of organisational development (Habscheid 2003). 3. Theoretical implications and practical considerations on organisational change As initially stated, my double aim for the presentation is 1) to briefly outline the theoretical importance of the concept of speech acts as “immaterial objects”. In this context, I would like to concentrate on the tension between approaches to speech acts that presume the possibility to analytically establish ideal conditions and rules for the accomplishing of such acts (Searle 1979) and theories that consider that the idealness of speech acts is nothing else than a fundamental undecidability and therefore requires an “infinite” narrative production (Derrida 1988). 2) to draw on several consulting experiences my institute made in the context of organisational change or development in diverse companies. Here, the task will be to show if it is possible to operationalize the above mentioned normative dimension of reflexive speech activity (Van Eemeren/Grootendorst 2004). In the seminaries planned and organised by us, we try to set up conceptual grids and forms of collective reflection that allow for a higher degree of involvement of project team members, team leaders and executives. Organisational change appears then not so much as initiated from above, but as something that can be influenced and organised from below by creating and exchanging own narratives. Speech acts are communicative actions that transform the social reality. What makes them interesting from the point of view of the analysis of reflexivity in organisations is the fact that they do not only trigger organisational development, but are also products of such a process. As immaterial objects they make people do something, they generate consequences that can be conceived of as social productivity (Barnett 2011). Yet, the external perspective of the consultants has to account also for the question if the productivity achieved in the seminaries actually changes the organisation or if the management, in the long run, tends to limit the critical impact of the immaterial objects, the new narrative structures created during the consulting process.
RELATING PERSONS AND ORGANIZATIONS Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am F1
Michela Cozza, PhD Research Unit on Communication, Organizational Learning, and Aesthetics Department of Sociology and Social Research – University of Trento (Italy)
[email protected] Forgetting and remembering the past. A study of organizational change Abstract Working the past is the title of a Charlotte Linde’s book and it describes exactly the reflexive practice at the center both of this paper and stream. Retaining the focus on organizations, I agree with Linde when she writes that “institutions and their members use narrative to remember. And in remembering, how they work and
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rework, present and represent the past for the purposes of the present and the projection of a future. Individuals and groups may have a variety of purposes for recalling and representing the past. These include using the past to establish legitimacy of authority, to claim ownership, to claim political or intellectual priority, to establish stability, to indicate the working out of divine purpose in history, to compare the past with the present to show that things are getting either better or worse. All these are ways of working the past: invoking and retelling parts of the past for present purposes” (2009, p.3). Yet, all these may be conceived as practices often mediated by narratives in organizations (Weick 1995). As mentioned, the organizational actors tell stories or use narratives in organization for different purposes. In this paper I want to shed light specifically on the reflexive process by which the members of an organization – our case-study – remember or forget, maintain or dismantle, construct and reconstitute meaning about a critical event (Oswick et al. 2000) after a breakdown such as an organizational change. With this paper, I wish to discuss some results of one among four lines of a research project realised in the period 2008-2010 by the Research Unit on Communication, Organizational Learning, and Aesthetics of the University of Trento. This project was aimed at studying the transformation of an important Research Center of North Italy. This line of inquiry investigated the values underlying organizational choices and the differentiations which the organization’s various sections established in order to reinforce their identities. Specific actions like drawing up the programme and reaching agreement on the personnel’s working conditions has been treated as symbolic spaces in which cultures and organizational representations were compared and developed. This approach to the new organization has considered events of this kind as processes of organization-building but also as sources of conflict among competing interests. Using narratives collected in the form of weekly diaries - when the change was still ongoing - I wish to discuss how the “institutional remembering” (Linde 2009) has taken place, sidestepping in this abstract the problem of reification that these words raise. Drawing from Madeleine Akrich (1987) my concern is not to know if the organizational remembering is an extra-ordinary process or an ordinary one. Instead, I am interested to understand the conditions and mechanisms through which the individual memory allows to a partial reconstruction of the organizational heterogeneous relationships. I am interested to interpret narrative practice, shedding light on delegation mechanism whereby storytelling is endowed with the “competence” to work reflexively past and present (Easterby-Smith, Crossan, Nicolini 2000) after an organizational breakdown (the institutional transformation) (Akrich, Latour 1992). Many among the storytellers invited to “work the weekly past” for six weeks, have talked about change and organizational life remembering particular social events (meetings, conferences, brainstorming and so on). For my analytical object, the organizational actors telling about these social events position themselves and a network of relationships (Fox 2000). Then, narrative practice may be interpreted as a sort of “dialogical scripting” (Oswick et al. 2000) used by storytellers to working reflexively the past and the present. Oswick and colleagues define a dialogical scripting as “a powerful and evocative means of enabling managers and professionals to reflect upon a common area of concern or a mutual problem in order to develop new insight and understanding. The expectation is that the approach permits organizational actors to reflect more widely on the possible meanings and alternative readings of organizational behaviour (…) The potential of dialogical scripting resides in forcing us to be reflexive about taken-for-granted phenomena” (2000, pp. 888, 899). In this case-study, this process enables to focus on the underlying “intertextual aspects” (Bakhtin 1986) of the organizational change, starting from context-specific elements and social events mentioned by storytellers. The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies provides the opportunity to further discuss these insights.
Ian Towers, Prof. Dr., Anabel Ternès, Prof. Dr. SRH Hochschule Berlin http://www.srh-hochschule-berlin.de/
[email protected] Change journeys, language and reflexivity Abstract When planned organisational change happens, the members of the organisation experience it in different ways at different times. Their “change journeys” begin with the original response to the change initiative and they pass through a sequence of steps from the initial realisation that there is a discrepancy or inconsistency with pre-existing schemas (i.e. when the individual learns of a change, or perceives that there has been a change) to
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an actual change in their own schemas (George and Jones, 2001), which is the point where the change journey has (temporarily) ended and the destination been reached. Such a journey becomes possible when individuals start to question their own position(s) in regard to the change, when they start taking into account their own reactions to it together with developments and responses to the change initiative at the meso and macro-level over time. As individuals reach different understandings about themselves during the change process, their change journey itself changes: they may set out for a new destination, or continue to the original destination but follow a different route. Much of the literature on reactions to change ignores the tendency of individuals to pay attention to their own reasons for how they react and tends to view responses to change – especially resistance – almost as an involuntary reflex rather than as part of a complex process of interpretation and action carried out by self-aware individuals. This paper reports on how reflexivity is a vital aspect of the change journey. We carried out a longitudinal, multi-level qualitative study of a planned change initiative at PCo, the Canadian subsidiary of a European pharmaceutical company, which involved the introduction of a new organisational structure – the creation of a matrix structure. Grounded theory was used to guide the research. More than sixty in-depth interviews were carried out over a period of eighteen months. The data from these interviews were supplemented by quantitative data. We describe how members of the organisation thought through what the change was “really” about and what it meant for them. They told stories and passed on anecdotes, which provided a way of demonstrating their own analysis of the change and their role in it, and of then building on this in order to achieve particular goals, like simply securing their own position or moving up the career ladder. We show that there was an element of playfulness in these processes. The employees analysed their own position and changed this according to developments in their groups and in the organisation. For some, it was like playing a game where they had to react to what was going on and change their tactics and strategy. This could then meant replanning their own change journeys. In analysing this process, we pay particular attention to the role of language. Language is not simply a mechanism of communication, but rather a fundamental aspect of organisation and organising (eg Westwood and Linstead, 2001). One view is that organisation exists only through language, leading to views of organisation as text, or as narrative, or as constituted in discourse (e.g. Mumby and Clair, 1997). So there is great value at investigating discourse during change processes because language, in the form of conversations, stories and rumours, is a significant factor in the way change is conceptualised (Balogun and Johnson, 2005). The way in which organisational members negotiate meaning in the change process is through discursive practices and textual objects (Anderson, 2005). Indeed, coherent language use can play a significant role in the outcome of change initiatives (Sillince, 1999) and there are fragmented and competing discourses within an organisation during a change process. Conversation – “language-based interactions of individuals within organisations” (Woodilla, 1998: 33) – is one of the most common forms of communication in the workplace. Studies of managerial activities (e.g. Mintzberg, 1973) have shown that managers spend a large part of their time in carrying out oral communications. The act of conversation and the content of conversation produce action (Hardy et al., 2000), which indicates why conversations can play an important part in a change process. Stories play a significant role in the creation and maintenance of meaning in organisations. Stories are passed from one person to another through conversation, and storytelling is “something done around the water cooler” (Boje at al., 2001: 166). The informal nature of storytelling does not mean that it is not important. Boje (1991) shows how the use of stories enabled change to take place, as when an executive's storytelling enabled him to convince colleagues to move in new direction. Indeed, Tsoukas (2005) argues that organisational change is the process of constructing and sharing new meanings and interpretations of organisational activities. Discourse, then, is a mechanism through which change happens and through which change journeys are planned and re-planned and made. The members of an organisation use discourse in all its various forms to reflect on and change (or not) their own position and to influence the change journeys of others.
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Tiina Tuominen, M.Sc.(Econ.) Mikko Lehtonen, M.Sc.(Tech.), M.Sc.(Econ.) Aalto University School of Science, BIT Research Centre
[email protected] Legitimate and non-legitimate reflexivity and power in change agency – introducing novelties in professional service firms Abstract Current innovation theories call for employee- and user-driven innovation models, where everyone’s capabilities to act innovatively are encouraged (Jensen, Johnson, Lorenz, & Lundvall, 2007). Whereas many organisations are still in their path for making this real, innovation activities in many professional service firms (PSFs) have always depended on the professional employees’ expertise and motivation to explore and to implement novel and useful ideas. As customer contacts are considered as important sources of new ideas, the front-line employees are considered best able to reflect the firm’s objectives on upcoming customer cases and on the professional knowledge base (Alvesson, 2004; Sundbo, 1997, 2001). Due to their autonomous positions, the professionals can also develop and apply their ideas in real customer cases (Gallouj & Weinstein, 1997). Innovation activities are viewed either as collective responsibilities or professional hobbies, where professionals develop their ideas seemingly freely (Sundbo, 1997; Heusinkveld & Benders, 2003). Professionals’ work settings are, however, not homogeneous;; also these firms face pressures towards becoming more competitive and ‘business-like’, which has led some firms to formalize their activities and to introduce new forms of control (Cooper, Hinings, Greenwood, & Brown, 1996; Robertson & Swan, 2004; Brivot, 2011). Even though everyone’s input is still valued, also innovation activities are increasingly considered as corporate investments. Some PSFs have been suggested to follow the model of ‘strategic reflexivity’, where the management’s task is to balance the innovation and development activities by stimulating and controlling them based on strategic objectives (Sundbo, 2001). In all these variants, innovation and development activities still predominantly rely on ‘ordinary employees’. There is not much knowledge, however, on how exactly the employees are able to participate and what explains differences between individuals within a firm. The present study explores and explains differences in individuals’ ability to participate in innovation and development activities in PSFs. This is conceptualised as an individual’s change agency. As agency is defined as the ability to exercise power, that is, to make a difference (Giddens, 1984), change agency is here defined as the ability to exercise power and to engage oneself in innovation and development activities. It can be reasonably assumed that instead of following one dominant logic, innovation and development activities in such an autonomous work environment may take a variety of directions, as different individuals aim to advance their own ideas; innovative behaviour is been argued to be essentially political (Buchanan & Badham, 1999). Agency in general is considered as socially constructed and as deriving from social structure (Giddens, 1984). Social structure, conceptualised as schemas and resources, is viewed as enabling and constraining the practices in social systems (Giddens, 1984; Sewell, 1992). Structures enable individuals’ behaviour differently based on their position (Battilana, 2006; Ibarra, 1993). These differences are here explored empirically through analysing individuals’ roles related to innovation and development activities. The main research questions are: - How is change agency distributed among organisational members in a PSF? - Where does this agency derive from? The study is a qualitative multiple-case study that bases on critical realism. The empirical data derives from 54 interviews that were carried out at different organisational levels in five PSFs. A variety of innovation and development activities were included, ranging from the development of new business areas to the development of new, customer-specific work practices. The analysis focused on identifying, comparing, and explaining typical practices and roles of employees acting in specific position, as well as exceptions from these practices and individuals’ ability to shape their roles. The findings show that change agency is dispersed throughout the studied PSFs. However, there exists a variety of innovation and development activities that can be seen to form distinct social systems with different structural properties. The roles of organisational members differ between these activities. The findings suggest that the social structures related to these activities are flexible and often very local, and that they interact with individuals’ resources and motivation in determining their role in innovation and development activities. Three types of abilities that stemmed from both position-related and individual characteristics explained the form of individuals’ change agency in developing a novelty: 1) the ability to explore novel ideas, 2) the ability to evaluate the usefulness of the idea, and 3) the ability to mobilise resources for its implementation. The
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individuals who had a role in a certain innovation and development activity possessed at least one of these abilities, and the dispersion of these abilities among organizational members explained the participants and their roles in the creation of a certain novelty type. The abilities to explore and evaluate can be viewed as reflexive abilities that derived from customer contacts and access to relevant professional and organisational forums, domain-specific knowledge, and individual skills and experience. The creation of a useful novelty often presumed combining and evaluating various perspectives represented by organisational members at different positions. The ability to mobilise resources predominantly derived from position-related authority or autonomy; depending on a novelty type, individuals needed to be able to convince others to develop and utilise the novelty or to autonomously implement it. The study shows how the identified abilities are socially constructed and collectively determined in a specific organisational context. Tensions in these processes arise because organisational members’ perceptions vary considering two matters. First, individuals have different opinions about which novelties are useful, as they tend to evaluate the impact of novelties from the perspective of their own work. Second, those abilities that were socially acknowledged and accepted were sometimes different from individuals’ perceptions of their own abilities. In both cases, individuals that possessed either enough authority or autonomy were able to create new innovation and development activities, even if such change agency was not expected or accepted in the organisational context. These activities can be viewed as manifesting another dimension of reflexivity; in addition to the ability to explore and evaluate novelties, reflexivity involves individuals’ ability to shape and negotiate their agency in the given social context. By showing how abilities underlying change agency are socially constructed in a given organisational context, the study challenges the simplified assumption that an individual’s creativity and innovativeness is based on dispositional abilities. It also contributes to the current understanding of how innovation activities become organised in PSFs by emphasising local structures, which create differences in individuals’ agency in the development of seemingly similar novelties. These ideas are elaborated on in the full paper.
Heike Nolte, Prof. Dr. University of Applied Sciences 26723 Emden (Germany)
[email protected] From Individual Reflexivity to the Reflective Organization A Case from the Shop Floor Abstract Focus of this paper By starting from the problem-solving capacities of workers, this conference contribution focuses on organizational innovation. It aims to show the interaction of reflectivity and reflexivity. Both aspects are part of an organizational model, the Reflective Organization, which can be regarded as a specific type of democratic learning organization. This model will be described and illuminated by a case of shop floor management. These empirical results are based on a longitudinal study with cross-sectional elements run at assembly lines of a big German manufacturer. This case shows how such a Reflective Organization can look in real life. It also helps to discuss the interaction mentioned above. The case study Between November 2009 and January 2012 three interview waves were run with assembly line workers at a big manufacturer in Germany. These qualitative interviews aimed at the problem solving processes of individual workers, respective teams of workers and the impact of work organization on these processes. The same workers were interviewed three times. Since the work organization changed gradually over the course of time, and since four assembly lines at the same plant, which differed to some extent, were included a natural experiment took place. More details about the specific methodology and design will be explained in the paper. The overall organizational model The Reflective Organization proposes a democratic organizational model seeking a competitive advantage based on problem solving by workers as part of a differentiation strategy. In total, it is a cybernetic model based on Stafford Beer's work (1972, 1979). But its starting point – the problem solving capacity of the individual – originates in the work of Groeben & Scheele (1977). At first glance, it has similarities with Schön (1983), but because of its tradition in empirical psychology its core constructs differ as well as its methodology. This organizational model can be regarded as one specific kind of a learning organization. It is developed in more
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detail in Nolte 2007 and 2010. The starting point: Individual Reflexivity Following Beer's terminology, the starting point is System 1 as the basic viable system. In the empirical case presented in this paper this is an individual worker, acting according to his/her subjective theories. Due to feedback on these actions, the worker develops new knowledge and adapts his/her future actions. On the next recursion the respective System 1 is a team of workers. But how can this individually produced knowledge lead to organizational learning? Going on to the organizational level: Reflectivity System 1s are inter-connected by communication. This is referred to as System 2. The communication takes place horizontally with other workers and teams but also vertically between superiors or specialists and workers. Moreover, also information provided by the management is incorporated. With System 2 one leaves the more psychological perspective of reflexivity of individuals and comes to the reflectivity of an organization. Connecting Reflexivity and Reflectivity The term reflectivity refers to a recursive systems theorem saying that each viable system contains a viable system. In the end, core features of one system – here the individual worker and his/her reflexivity (problemsolving and acting) is repeated on the next more inclusive level. Thus the reflexivity is reflected. The core issue of implementing reflexivity at the bottom level of a firm's hierarchy – the assembly line worker – is to make sure that the firm's overall objectives and goals are pursued. In managerial terms this refers mainly to monitoring and rules, in the Reflective Organization these functions are covered by System 3. If one refers to the future, it is System 4. The core feature of the Reflective Organization is that the managerial functions of System 3 and System 4 are established in a self-referential way by the joint reflexivity of System 1s. In the managerial practice this effect is referred to by concepts like team work, organizational culture or continuous improvement processes. The Reflective Organization combines System 3 and System 4 as described above with the concept of recursion. This implies that these kinds of functions are repeated on different levels of inclusiveness: At the first recursion the System 1 is an individual position, at the second recursion a team of workers, at the third one a part of the assembly line …. and so on, up to the level where the entire firm is controlled. Thus the Reflective Organization can be regarded as a democratic model of corporate control, since – in the end – each worker has (indirect) impact on the rules and monitoring, but also planning (System 4) of the entire firm. Contribution to the topic of the conference's sub-theme The Reflective Organization describes how individual reflexivity can be ported to an organizational level. The core challenge here is to reconcile the autonomy the individual needs in order to act according to his/her reflections and the integration the organization – here the firm – requires in order to meet its overall goals. A solution is given both on a theoretical and an empirical basis. Due to the case study at the manufacturer mentioned above, this paper is able to present practical managerial solutions to this challenge. Over the course of the longitudinal study, the individual reflections changed as well as the work organization: Learning took place individually and organizationally. Enhancing and hindering variables are described. Overall, this paper contributes to the discussion of reflexivity by showing a way to overcome the gap between the individual and organizational levels. It also adds a dynamic perspective to this solution. Last but not least it provides a translation of concepts of systems theory and psychology into managerial thinking.
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CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK Friday 12th July, 1.30 – 3.30pm F1
Martin Wood, Prof. Centre for Sustainable Organisations and Work RMIT University Melbourne, Australia
[email protected] Troubling the limits of form: conditions for digital interventions in organisation and management studies Abstract A digital intervention might be an action, series of actions, or form of practical activity in the world that is intended to make some kind of change for the better, yet it might simultaneously subvert or otherwise challenge orthodoxy. In academic life a digital intervention could be an applied form of fieldwork, it could be an art and design based practice or it might be a form of activism. I engage with the question of how digital media are participating in contemporary and emergent organisation and management studies. Using a personal example I evaluate the potential contribution digital interventions might make beyond the established order and toward new dispositions. We know that digital media, methods and practices, particularly those that rely on the visual, are participating in contemporary organisation and management studies and leading to a variety of insights into the way in which organisational day-to-day life is represented. These include, for example, motion pictures (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004; Hassard and Holliday, 1998; Tyler et al, 2009), documentary film (Höpfl and Letiche, 2002; Steyaert et al, 2012; Wood and Brown, 2012) and photographic images (Warren, 2002, 2005; Wood and Ladkin, 2008). Yet we also know there is often a simple arrogation of these processes among researchers, making them seem inferior to those in dominant positions within the field, who are thus led to exclude them from legitimate practices (Bourdieu, 1993). This situation provokes some interesting questions: what is at stake in this hierarchical distinction among the genres? What sort of efforts could be made that would render digital media, methods and practices legitimate in organisation and management studies? And what are the likely practical benefits for the field by doing so? As an example, I have co-written, directed and produced a documentary, Lines of Flight (Brown and Wood, 2009). The film contributes an appreciation of resistance as a creative strategy in general and more particularly shows how this is connected to and contested through much wider transformations in culture and capitalism over time. It blends labour history, romantic poetry, late twentieth century French philosophy and free solo rock climbing in an ethnographic study of the Pennine region of northern England, where manufacturing has been and still is part of the culture. In a reflexive manner, the film is a form of practical intervention, pointing out some of our most ‘cherished academic processes’ (Rippin et al, 2012) and forms of presentation. As a signal of quality, Lines of Flight received institutional recognition – marked, inter alia, by prizes, nominations, etc. – from some of the world’s biggest mountain film festivals concerned with social, cultural, environmental and sustainability issues, as well as mountain exploration and adventure more broadly. Despite this strong performance, it is interesting to note that subsequent attempts to have Lines of Flight published as a research output have resulted in the film being forced to serve the orthodox format of written texts (Wood and Brown, 2011, 2012) rather than stand-alone as a (heretical?) digital media product. This leads me to consider the different weights placed by researchers across the field of organisation and management studies and arts and design disciplines on what counts as academic knowledge. Ontological and epistemological commitments ascribed by natural science still hold legitimacy, in many respects, over core practices in organisation and management studies (Nord, 2012). This makes digital media products difficult to understand and quantify in terms of orthodox scholarship precisely because they tend toward affective perception that is performed in material processes rather than the contrary call to scientific method, which is written by disinterested minds and generally intends to be as objective as possible (Merton, 1973). Thus, a perceived problem of pulling digital media, methods and practices into organisation and management studies is the former’s supposed lack of rigour (Thrift, 2008). As a result, serious limitations are placed upon the capacity and expectations of researchers in the field to use alternative forms of presentation. This behaviour is encouraged by the pressure of journals ranking systems and the use of citations data
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(Macdonald and Kam, 2011), both of which further depress heterodox work (Willmott, 2011). Although the shift away from physical formats and toward electronic formats (Harvie et al, 2012) is perhaps why a few influential US-based and European journals have become somewhat more receptive to submissions that are innovative or risky (cf. Burrell, 1993), many dominant outlets still have administrative processes in place that ‘stifle imaginative work’ (Butler and Spoelstra, 2012: 897). Hence, despite the current interest in digital media, methods and practices in organisation and management studies, I remain unconvinced that the relationship between the genres since the last century is a fundamentally changed one now. In an effort to evaluate the conditions for digital interventions in contemporary and emergent organisation and management studies I adopt DiMaggio’s (1987) framework of arts classification. To wit, I examine whether shortcomings in the promotion of digital processes is for (a) professional or cultural reasons: the defence of rational discourse and debate that prioritises science over art and words over images, even though the latter can bring us to new levels of intimacy between researchers and their audiences (Pink, 2009); (b) economic or commercial reasons: strategies and practices within the field of publishing, which, despite huge levels of profitability from academic publications, provides no incentive and limited support for digital media products that go beyond writing; or (c) political or institutional reasons: the result of a risk-averse audit culture, which does not want to induce innovation (and certainly not subversion) but rather to stick to the rules of the tried and tested, where the highest scores are awarded for publishing ‘in the small number of so-called elite journals’ (Willmott, 2011: 430). The task for researchers seeking to extend their usual activities under these conditions, I argue, is to take action ‘to refuse “playing the game”’ (Calás and Smircich, 2012: 15) and establish the values and expectations of digital interventions de facto as research. In this case, a digital media product such as Lines of Flight becomes, at a minimum, a heuristic by which established hierarchies can begin to be questioned and the limits imposed on alternative forms of presentation can be legitimately transgressed.
Matthias Wörlen, M.A. Tobias Hallensleben, Dipl. Soz. Chair for Socio-Economics and Entrepreneurial ResponsAbility Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Chair for Innovation Research & Sustainable Resource Management Faculty of Economics, Chemnitz Univ. of Technology
[email protected] Conclusion: Dimensions and Explanations of Reflexivity No Abstract
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STREAM 17: PROFESSIONS AND THE NEW INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY James Faulconbridge, Daniel Muzio, Mirko Noordegraaf, Len Seabrooke
PERSPECTIVES AND DEBATES ON THE PROFESSIONS Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm G5
John Flood (Westminster University) A Revolution in Professionalism? The Coming of the Alternative Business Structure Abstract Despite all the changes that the legal profession has undergone in the past twenty years or so, it remains a fundamentally traditional occupation. While it has adopted more commercial approaches (financialization) and become more bureaucratic and corporate in form, we can question whether these changes are at best cosmetic or indicative of something more radical. Partnership remains the dominant ideology of even the largest global law firms and few consider the implications of long term investment in either human resources or capital. The paper argues that the legal profession now faces a series of professional ruptures that will result in radical new forms of organization and practice that will bear little resemblance to prior forms. The Legal Services Act 2007 introduced the concept of Alternative Business Structure (ABS) which was designed to enable legal services to be supplied by a range of providers more extensive than just lawyers. The ABS is both disruptive and transgressive in that it shatters the old ideology but does not replace it with a new model but rather a range of possibilities that will thrive or founder on the basis of experimentation. The ABS licensing scheme was implemented in 2012. At the global level the introduction of ABS has engendered a huge reaction with, for example, the German Federal Bar Association hoping to oppose their introduction and the New York State Bar Association recently voting to reject the idea of nonlawyer ownership in law firms. The only significant ally in the restructuring of legal services is Australia. Yet the IMF has seen fit to use the idea of liberalization of legal services as a precondition to bailout packages in debtor Eurozone countries. ABS means that legal services can be offered to the market by all kinds of organizations including banks, supermarkets, insurance companies, and private equity. By the end of 2012 sixty ABS had been granted licences by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Council of Licensed Conveyancers. The paper will take a number of ABS as empirical case studies. It will trace how they were formed and explain how they anticipate transforming the legal services market. Ultimately, the paper raises the question of whether these new institutions are indeed part of the development of professional services, transgressive or otherwise, or whether they herald a new platform that is separate and distinct from professions.
Daniel Muzio (University of Manchester) and Roy Suddaby (University of Alberta) Professions and institutions Abstract Professions are, themselves, institutions which, over the last thirty years, have experienced profound changes. Professional service firms are increasingly adopting both the logic and structures of business corporations. Professional identities are increasingly framed around logics of efficiency and commerce which have displaced traditional logics of ethics and public service. Professional firms now tend to be multidisciplinary and transnational eroding the value of traditional institutions of self-regulation and making the professional service firm the primary site of professional control and regulation. Professions are thus not only key mechanisms for, but also primary targets of institutional change. They act and are acted upon by a myriad of social, economic,
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technological, political and legal forces. Yet the consequences of and mechanisms for these actions and changes are far from clear. This paper explores such issues from an institutional perspective.
Stephen Ackroyd (Lancaster University) Allocative Regimes and Systems of Professions Abstract In this speculative theoretical paper, an overview of the general trends in the UK affecting expert workers are analysed through a consideration of four different types of organisation and their associated types of worker: collegiate, organisational, and new professional one and two. This discussion takes place without any reference to the scientific basis of the knowledge the professions are assumed to monopolise. However, it is argued that the four types of organization and expert worker are sub-variants of two more basic types of organisation – traditional professions on the one hand and new professions on the other. As is well-known, traditional professions enhance their status and pursue their developmental projects primarily by strategies of exclusion (usually understood theoretically as labour market closure); which are justified by rhetorical appeals to service quality and collectivist notions of the public good. In the course of a consideration of various examples of the professions in the UK it is argued that these organisational forms continue to bear the imprint of the allocative regime extant at the time of their formation. The argument is that the allocative regimes (compounded from the institutional context in the form of the economy plus government and the state), were quite different for the traditional and new types of profession. The allocative regime for the traditional professions involved bargains between the state and professional occupations in which autonomy and professional self-regulation was granted by the state (and later sanctioned by government) in return for socio-economic regulatory activities by professions. The early modern allocative regime in which the traditional professions were formed has almost entirely disappeared to be replaced by a late modern regime which increasingly favours market based modes of organisation and new forms of direct regulation. As a result, new types of professionalism and employing organisations have grown up that have efficiency and economy as their main defensive rhetoric. They also necessarily proceed with exclusion, but on a market monopoly basis. Despite this, and an increasingly hostile ideological climate, the traditional professions have not adopted the new organisational forms but have continued with the old forms which show remarkable resiliency and durability. Theoretically, the argument is based on recognition that, essentially, professions of any kind entail one form or another of rent-earning, based on artificially sustained scarcity. The rent-earning capacity of the early modern professions is well understood, but it is doubtful if this can be said for the late modern forms. The case for new forms of rent-earning that underlie the success of the new professions is set out. The paper is concluded by arguing that the contestation unleashed by the ideological denigration of traditional professional modes of organising has been counterproductive for British society. Today, for good reason, few professional organisations actually make the scientific basis of their activities central to their rhetoric or indeed their practice, almost certainly to the relative detriment of the growth of knowledge and skill.
Leonard Seabrooke (Copenhagen Business School) Epistemic Arbitrage: Transnational Professional Knowledge in Action Abstract Professionals are key players in transnational governance. Authorities working with transnational policy areas that are characterized by multiple stakeholders and high levels of uncertainty lean heavily on professionals to provide solutions. The professionals involved are also engaged in various forms of professional mobilization, competition and protection to ensure that they are the ones providing answers. This article discusses transnational professional knowledge in action by tracing a range of professionals who combine different forms of knowledge to address issue complexity and gain personal strategic advantage. The concept of ‘epistemic arbitrage’ captures how these professionals are able to draw on different knowledge pools to provide solutions, while also acting as arbiters who reinforce how particular problems are to be understood. Different environments for professional knowledge production are discussed and linked to a range of conditions, including funding support, social sensitivities of the issue at hand, and organizational form. The article outlines how transnational professionals can be understood as unique groups that are tied to their professional background and socialization but also have autonomy to mobilize in ‘thin’ transnational space as opposed to ‘thick’ domestic institutional environments, where jurisdictional battles are more prominent.
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PROFESSIONS AND THE TRANSNATIONAL REALM I Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm G5
James Faulconbridge (Lancaster University) and Daniel Muzio (University of Manchester) Transnational corporations shaping institutional change? The case of English law firms in Germany Abstract Questions remain about the factors which influence the ability of TNCs to shape processes of institutional change. In particular questions about power relations need more attention. To address such questions, this paper adopts a neo-institutional theory inspired analysis to interpret the case of English law firms and their impacts on institutional change in Germany. The paper shows that the shaping of the direction of institutional change by English legal TNCs was a product of conjectural moments in which local institutional instability combined with the presence, resources and strategies of the TNCs to redirect the path of institutional evolution. This draws attention to the need to go beyond the TNC and its resources and to consider the way a diverse array of local actors and their generating of instability in existing institutional structures influences the ability of TNCs to become involved in processes of institutional change.
Markus Walz (Stockholm University) Conflicts between occupational and organizational professionalism within international commercial arbitration Abstract This paper explores the tension between ‘occupational professionalism’ and ‘organizational professionalism’ (Evetts, 2006b) as experienced by commercial lawyers within the field of international arbitration. The internationalization of commerce created a push for a system of transnational justice, and therefore a ‘transnational legal profession’ (Dezalay & Garth, 1995) is emerging. In different roles, commercial lawyers are in a powerful position, applying ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ (Francis, 2011) to shape transnational institutions. At the same time, this environment challenges their understanding of legal work and influences the legal profession as a whole, as commercial law is often seen as the elitist subgroup or the “training ground for the profession” (Hanlon, 1999). On an individual level, identity motives are an important aspect to explain how these changes are experienced and rationalized (Noordegraaf, 2007). Literature on identity work suggests that discomfort with change and eventually resistance to change is normally expected to be stronger if a person’s core identity motives become violated (Eilam & Shamir, 2005). For licensed professions, like physicians or attorneys, their occupational values are core to their work identities (Goode, 1957) and experienced threats to occupation-based identities are one important motivator for resistance (Van Dijk & Van Dick, 2009). Within the field of international commercial arbitration, commercial lawyers can experience tensions between what they perceive as their occupational professionalism (the requirements they are trying to live up to as a member of a profession), and their organizational professionalism (the requirements their organization, most often a firm or a chamber of commerce imposes). On the basis of semi-structured interviews with commercial lawyers and observations collected, partly but not exclusively, during the world’s biggest international arbitration moot court competition, this tension is further explored. Embedded in the growing literature on identity work in organization studies (e.g. Alvesson & Kärreman, 2007; Alvesson & Willmott, 2002), the purpose of this paper is to better understand the role of occupational professionalism for identity work in an environment that gives the opportunity for institutional entrepreneurship, while at the same time challenging the self-understanding of people identifying with a traditional profession. By entering a conversation with commercial lawyers within the field of international commercial arbitration about their understanding of what it means and what it takes to be a successful lawyer and a successful arbitrator, these professional challenges within commercial law are described. The interviews evolve around the participants’ own understanding of the development of the field and the effect of the field on the legal profession. The analysis will expand the idea of a ‘dual-identity conflict’ (Van Dijk & Van Dick, 2009) between occupational and organizational professionalism by introducing the concept of field professionalism (the special requirement of their niche, i.e. international commercial arbitration), as a form of hybrid professionalism (Noordegraaf, 2007). I will argue that field professionalism functions as a mediator between occupational and organizational professionalism, similar to how an elitist
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organizational identity offer can help to overcome identity conflict (Alvesson & Robertson, 2006). Commercial lawyers within international commercial arbitration can refer to field professionalism to resolve the tension between occupational and organizational professionalism and use it as a tool to rationalize their own behavior.
Mehdi Boussebaa (University of Bath) Andrew Sturdy (University of Bristol) Glenn Morgan (Cardiff University) Between the global and the local? Horizontal knowledge sharing, social embeddedness and geopolitical power in professional service multinationals Abstract This paper explores the nature of the contemporary multinational corporation (MNC) through a study of the use of global knowledge management systems in the UK subsidiaries of four international management consultancies. In particular, we examine how these systems facilitate (or not) horizontal (i.e. inter-subsidiary) knowledge sharing in practice and compare this against the two dominant conceptualizations of the MNC: as an integrated network where knowledge flows in multiple directions and as a fragmented space where knowledge is socially embedded and therefore difficult to transfer. Our analysis reveals the presence of horizontal knowledge flows within the case study firms, but flows that are constrained by inter-context differences and partly shaped by geopolitical power relations. Thus, our study gives partial support to both of the dominant images of the MNC, but also, and importantly, provides a critical development of both perspectives by drawing attention to the geopolitics of intra-MNC knowledge transfer. At the same time, it challenges the claims of consulting firms that knowledge flows freely as well as of critics of knowledge management systems who question their potential to facilitate knowledge transfer.
Mari Sako (Oxford University) Varieties of Professionals: the Case of Lawyers Abstract Building on a typology of professionals developed in my SASE presidential address (Sako, 2013), this paper presents a framework which enables us to analyze the impact of national institutions on the nature of professions and professionals. In particular, the mix of different types of professionals (independent, statesponsored, organizational, and knowledge-based) differs according to whether the political economy is liberal or coordinated (Hall & Soskice, 2001). Moreover, it will be argued that the role of professionals in corporate hierarchy varies in different varieties of capitalism. This relates directly to the last bullet point in the call for papers. The aim of the paper is to further our understanding of the causes and consequences of national varieties of professionals, as they are subject to various mechanisms for convergence including global business. The paper will also seek to provide evidence of the national varieties of professionals by focusing on the case of in-house lawyers who work in global corporations. I intend to compare lawyers in England (and possibly the US) and Germany. The in-house lawyer’s role in the corporation is not fixed but evolves over time, with the needs of business, competition amongst specialist professionals in top management teams, and the role of the state in deregulating the market for professional services. Thus, there are three lines of enquiry that appear to be fruitful. First, how has the status and prestige of general counsel (inside the firm) relative to external lawyers change over time, and how does this differential status vary from country to country? Second, in what ways is the ‘system of professions’ perspective (Abbott, 1988) useful in understanding the rise of in-house lawyers in the corporate-wide managerial hierarchy in relation to other professionals who run other business functions in modern corporations? Third, how important are the external regulatory and compliance pressures that have made ‘legally astute’ corporations (Bagley, 2008) coopt their general counsel to be part of the top management teams (TMT)? This paper will draw on evidence from multiple sources, including existing literature on the history of the legal profession, and interviews with general counsel (Sako 2011).
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th
PROFESSIONS AND THE TRANSNATIONAL REALM II
Friday 12 July, 9 – 11am G5
Mirko Noordegraaf (Utrecht University), Arjen Boin (Utrecht University) Sanneke Kuipers (Utrecht University) Managing Transboundary Policy Issues: Fuzzy Roles for Professionals Abstract The policy issues that confront Western nation states are increasingly transboundary in nature. Problems reach beyond geographic borders and the boundaries of policy sectors. When left unaddressed, transboundary problems can take on crisis proportions; think of the ongoing financial crisis, the volcanic ash crisis (2010) or the prospect of cyber-terrorism. Transboundary policy issues and crises pose a special set of challenges, which require transboundary responses, as nation states and policy domains cannot cope with these challenges by themselves. Such responses are unavoidably complex, not only because of political turmoil, public exposure and institutional barriers, but also because there will be no clear and uncontested knowledge base that prescribes how to act, let alone convincing evidence on how to develop joint action and solve problems. In fact, knowledge and expertise will be even more contested than in case of in ‘regular’ policy problems, as different fields of knowledge, multiple forms of expertise and various kinds of professionals will be activated. Transboundary problem-solving, in other words, implies managing ambiguous knowledge and expertise, represented by multiple professional and expert fields. This prompts the question which policymakers, experts and professionals are active in transboundary problem-solving and how they face up to daunting governance challenges. This paper seeks to delineate transboundary challenges, identifies relevant policy professionals and experts, and analyzes how these professionals and experts (can) use their expertise to prevent, mitigate and respond to these transboundary problems. By drawing upon various types of literature (e.g., policy sciences, knowledge management, sociology of professions) we especially highlight the fuzziness of professional and expert work in transboundary spaces. When those who govern and manage transboundary challenges are not equipped for dealing with this fuzziness – it is hypothesized – professional policy management might really be in crisis.
Tor Halvorsen (University of Bergen) Professions and multilateral organisations Abstract The question asked in this paper is how the growing role of the multilateral organisations influences professions, and how professionals position themselves within multilateral organisations to influence its policies and practices. This will again tell us something about the role of the professions at the post-national level, as well as their status within the profession due to this (seemingly growing) influence of professionals working beyond the nation state encirclement. Most multilateral organisations are based on nation-state membership. But they also acquire influence beyond the mandate delegated from the members. Due to their bureaucracies, their "think tank" -like activities, and also due to the profile and qualities of the professionals, they create policies that gain hegemony beyond its membership basis. If professionals due to the growing influence of the multilateral organisations and due to their own key role in these organisations, also acquire a high status within the profession as such, we may also see a movement within the nation states professional organisations towards this new status-group, despite (or in addition) to the nation -state identities. The empirical question is how can we pin down, observe and describe, such a shift from the national status hierarchy towards the post-national? In what way and to what degree are multilateral organisations arenas for such a drive towards a professional status outside of the national hierarchies of valuation? And if professionals within multilateral organisations achieve such a new elevated status, through what mechanism is this mediated? Is it to the whole of the profession for example by help of the education and curriculum - change, is the education system hierarchically divided to serve an elite thus contributing to a diversification of the professions, is it more individually through the labour market, is it by how clients select and are selected, by help of new types of post-national professional networks, or by other means? The case to be focused on in the paper to begin answering these questions is OECD. OECD has lately been analysed as a bureaucracy, as a think tank, but not, to my knowledge, as an arena for professional influence, nor as an arena for particular selection and training of professionals to create a post-national hegemonic force (thus
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tentatively also within the profession across borders). For the sake of brevity let us say that the purpose of OECD is to analyse and give policy advice that makes capitalism survive, preferably in the shape of democratic capitalism. OECD is marked by the neoliberal ideologies as most "western" multilaterals, still we may also say that the orgnisation has a more complex knowledge base due to its broader membership basis with memories that make for example post-Schumpeter theories relevant, resistance to public poverty a legitimate argument, and the development state (with democracy and welfare demands) more than words for festive occasions The “experts” of OECD come with the dual authority of office and knowledge. The recruits to the professional jobs are supposed to be the best within its nation -state bureaucracies, and the most advanced within its profession, that is mostly economists. Their success depends on the quality of their data, their ability to be "innovative" in term of policy advice, and their success in gaining public attention. Use of comparison that point to winners and losers within a competitive approach seems to be the method most developed. Thus, a strategy of blaming, shaming and framing (number of health-professions pr. euro spent, Pisa-comparisons, good governance indicators) all show that the professional success within OECD depends on its ability to shape the identities of others within societal fields, like health, education, public administration, in addition to the economy, to be successful. A likely hypothesis is that there has to be links between internal hegemony and external domination of contested fields of interests (like health and education) to succeed in OECD. In the paper the OECD as an arena for the formation of a "political economy" profession of post -national character with potential influence on other sectors of society will be analysed with the purpose of discussing in what way and to what degree OECD serves as an arena for a certain professional identity formation with a potential of gaining a post-national hegemony - for the benefit of OECD as well as a new hegemonic breed of a profession within the post-national space. And then; how can we generalise from his one case?
Reidar Øygard (University of Bergen) Globalization and Profession: The Agronomists Abstract Historically, the definition of agronomy as a distinct and socially valued form of knowledge is related to the technical and economic modernization of the agrarian societies in Europe, first in the Netherlands and Scotland/England and then in France and in some of the German states. Subsequently it was disseminated to the European periphery. The central context for the establishment of this knowledge system was industrialization and the emergent nation states in Europe. Thus, in the aftermath of the Westphalian arrangement of the sovereign, territorial based state, agronomy and its ‘professionals’ (the agronomists) were, if to a varying degree and in different ways due to local (national) contexts, one among other knowledge systems which was formed by and played a role in the building of the nation states in Europe. This nation-state context was in many respects decisive to how research and education in agronomy were organized, as well as for the conditions under which the practitioners of the emergent agronomist profession found themselves. Most relevant here, thought, is the fact that characteristic features of the agronomy as a knowledge system in this formative phase reflected power structures – relations in and between different groups in the agrarian society as well as between rural and urban interests – which effectively was contained and arranged within the boundaries of the territorial nation state. This embedding of agronomy in the social, economical and political order confined to the nation state was not limited by the time span or its original conditions needed for its installation and consolidation. Quite to the contrary, the further evolution in central aspects of the organization of the agronomy as knowledge system sustained for a century a close link to (changes in) the domestic orders, and demonstrates as such continued profession-society relation of causal reciprocity whereby the latter part of the equation (still) represents the power dimension of the societal structure contained within the nation state’s territorial space. The profession of agronomy has so far been linked to the ‘national project’, whatever the content of that project may be (or was). However, serious doubts have been raised about the reality of the nation state as the principal entity and as a source of collective identity, of governance and container of societal forces (cf. Held 1999, Scholte 2005). If there are some realities to these ‘descriptive projections’, and in so far as they points toward a global identity, a world government and a truly global society, the agronomists is just one among other professions which are forced to reorient their professional practice in a rather radical fashion. Furthermore, claims about the changed nature of agriculture have been put forward; some argue that it has become globalized (cf. Le Heron 1993). From being a traditional, family based subsistence activity where some part of production was delivered to local or national markets, agricultural activity has become “… a very complex system which is global in its extent.” (Whatmore 2002). The role of the multinational corporations (MNCs) in the sector is central to this development, as “agribusiness” expand both vertically and horizontally
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and increasingly gain control over the productive resources as well as over the distributional channels in the sector (LeHeron 1993). As a result, even agriculture is in a process of becoming ‘de-localised’ and disembedded from the nation state’s economy. Moreover, the post-war period has witnessed the creation of numerous new political-administrative bodies at the global level with the purpose of regulating the agricultural sector. A regime of “Global Food and Agricultural Institutions” (Shaw 2010) has emerged. This global regime has been installed with different sets of knowledge systems, agronomy being one of them. At the local level, agronomy and its profession has been restructured under the pressure of globalization; educational and research institutions as well as the public admini-stration in the sector has undergone considerable reforms in order to meet this new situation. Some specifications/research questions Given the enhanced intersectional sphere between the global and national level in the agricultural sector, some dimension related to knowledge systems will be highlighted: • Organization of knowledge production: The agronomist profession’s earlier emphasis on domestic agriculture has been challenged by globalization. A general reorientation among research and educational institutions suggests a process of searching and re-embedding. This process include, among other aspects, establishment of relations to new sets of clients/users. However, these processes are, of course, not predetermined, and needs to be analyzed empirically. • The profession’s national and global associations: The national professional associations among agronomists have in most (developed) countries also undergone a process of change. Domestically, it includes a reorientation toward other sections of the economy and public management. This coincides with a similar process in the global association of agronomists, which has grown in prominence as the profession’s frame of reference. • Agricultural activity has changed, and in important respects shows globalized features. The growing dominance of the MNCs in the sector pose a significant challenge to formerly established power constellations contained within the nation state. What role knowledge systems plays in this process, will be of great importance. • Knowledge systems and global governance in the food and agricultural sector: The increasingly importance of these regulatory bodies suggests a more polycentric, multi-layered structure of governance. However, the relationships between the global bodies and systems of knowledge are, at best, unclear. What types of knowledge are they based on, and what interests and values do they represent and promote (cosmopolitan vs national etc)?
Emily Porschitz (Keene State College) Young Professionals: Linking hyper-careers to regional growth Abstract If more graduates stayed, they would make [the state] a “younger” state, contributing to the cultural landscape, further stimulating and developing entrepreneurial ideas, and possibly attracting more young people from out of state to come to [our state]. (higher education administrator, quoted in newspaper article, 2007). In his work The Creative Class, aimed at pointing regional leaders towards creative people as the key to increasing the competitive positions of their regions, Richard Florida (2002) encourages leaders to focus on attracting young people to their cities and states. He explained, …one group that has been neglected by most communities, at least until recently, is young people. Young workers have typically been thought of as transients who contribute little to a city’s bottom line. But in the Creative Age, they matter for two reasons. First they are workhorses: They are able to work longer and harder, and are more prone to take risks, precisely because they are young and childless. In rapidly changing industries, it’s often the recent graduates who have the most up-to-date skills. This is why so many leading companies from Microsoft to Goldman Sachs and McKinsey aggressively target them in their recruiting strategies. (Florida, 2002: 294-295) In the “Creative Age,” as Florida calls it, being able to work “longer and harder” matters, but it is the type of work that individuals do, how fast they can do it, and how they ultimately present themselves and their finished products that are truly valued. Within the modern narrative of what Florida calls “rapid change”, creativity is now linked to images of “successful” business practices. In current popular usage creativity typically involves mixing and pulling together multiple ideas and images rather than coming up with something wholly new (Osborne, 2003). In his rant “against creativity” Osborne (2003) disagrees with Florida’s claim that it is the “creative class” that revolutionizes regions. Osborne explained that creativity today is much more about image than about substantive new ideas, thus, it is the more “transient” young workers who (at least appear to) move fast among various circles and gain access to new ideas, places and people who can more easily embody the
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new corporate-minded creativity Florida also informs us that young people are also more willing than older workers to take risks. Being “risky,” is, however, fundamental to life in a privatized neoliberal economy. Martin (2002) explained in his work The Financialization of Daily Life that a major tenet of the new economy is the passing on of debt and risk from states and large organizations to individuals. This particularly impacts young workers as they are asked to take on more debt than previous generations to pay for their education. They are also asked to take personal responsibility for saving for their retirement, taking on the risk of investing that money themselves. Most of us accept this risk, however, because being “risky” is now part of our routines, and is a positive attribute to have in the new economy. As Martin explained, “to be risk averse is to have one’s life managed by others, to be subject to their miscalculations, and therefore to be unaccountable to oneself” (Martin, 2002). Part of managing ourselves is to be able to manage risk. In a sense, being a young professional can be seen as a hyper-version of having a career in the new economy. Our careers coordinate our actions and link us to external social organization practices. Today, the more flexible and willing to have a “dynamic” career you are, the more successful you will be (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996). As Blatterer (2010) explained Today the tropes and ideology of youthfulness are not only understood as desirable in their embodied sense. Elan and verve, flexibility and mobility, risk-taking, improvising and experimenting propensities, creativity and thirst for change, situational living and present-centeredness, cutting-edge know-how, up-to-datedness, and beauty are case as desirable, if not imperative, from the standpoint of employers and corporations. (72) Young professional careers are the perfect careers, as the discourse tells us that their youth, energy, and typical lack of families and mortgages, make young professionals the most flexible and transient. They are the group with the best chances of embodying the creativity, hard work and risk required by the new economic and social regimes. This qualitative paper uses the case study of Generation Now, a government and university-sponsored initiative to attract and retain more young professionals in a region. Ethnographic data was collected over a three-year period. Time spent within this initiative shows the work that happened when universities, state government, corporate interests and young professionals themselves worked to promote the idea of a “younger state” that could be an attractive place for more young professionals. The perceived gaps between “young” and “old,” “professional” and “non-professional” helped to exacerbate existing discourses of inequality through the growth and expansion of Generation Now, as well as through the construction of the identity/subjectivity defined as “young professional.”
EVOLVING FORMS OF PROFESSIONAL WORK AND PROFESSIONALISM Friday 12th July, 1.30 – 3.30pm G5
Roman Abramov (National University Higher School of Economics Moscow) Managerialism and academic profession in Russia: conflict and interrelationship Abstract The academic profession in Russia is going through difficult times. In this article, I will explore the conflict between academic autonomy and administrative procedures in the modern Russian university. I see academic autonomy as an important characteristic of the academic profession. Researchers are concerned about the prospects of higher education transformation and reduce the negative space of academic autonomy. Academic autonomy is facing serious challenges: the massification of education; the process of managerialisation university structures, commercialization and privatization of education and science education market globalization, the integration of the University of the ideological project of "nation state." The primary method of this research - it is personal interviews with employees of the University (lecturers, administrators, heads of research centers, a total of 20 interviews). All informants work in the famous Russian university humanitarian and economic profile, which is a leader in education reform and in Moscow. The results show that for the professional academic community one of the key characteristics of academic autonomy is the freedom to dispose of their time. Freedom to dispose of his time today is perceived as lost property academic life. The principles of scientific management and managerialism let its roots as control
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procedures and policies, which are used in the practice of modern universities. The regulation of the life of a professional academic research participants understood as an attack on individual academic freedom and disavowal of the principles of the university corporation. Electronic communication and control technology provides additional opportunities for observing scientists at the university. This includes the creation of a virtual profile of the intranet, forced use of corporate e-mail, electronic badge with fixing the time of arrival and departure. All of these tools are technical tools limitations of academic autonomy. An expert survey showed that the disputed territory of the modern university is the interaction between ordinary employees of administrative units and academic staff who do not hold management positions in the university. The collision between middle management and academic staff of the university lies in the differences of professional cultures. His last years were marked by the university of the growing number of academic and administrative staff, with increased volumes and the number of research students. Restriction of academic autonomy in universities is the result of global changes in the institutional role of higher education. Mass education in high schools, the development of the education market, the growing demands of public accountability contribute to bureaucratic university management and penetration managerial control principles at all levels of academic life. Our research was a small illustration of a broader transformation of the academic profession, the central organizing principle of which is the academic autonomy. The question is, will the employment of scientists and teachers "lost profession" or preserving academic autonomy to protect her from deprofessionalization.
Clea Bourne (Goldsmiths, University of London) ‘Relationship Management’ and ‘Relationship Marketing’: Parallels between Public Relations and Marketing as separate professional projects Abstract The spread of globalisation has coincided with the growth of public relations and of marketing as separate ‘industries’ and professions, with the geographic penetration of major public relations firms and marketing consultancies closely matching that of multinational corporations (Sriramesh and Verčič, 2003). The public relations and marketing professions have helped to express and organise globalisation’s movement and progress by stimulating trust and organising informational flow in global markets (Thompson, 2006), by privileging globalisation’s discourses (Hardt and Negri, 2000), and by becoming institutionalized practices of modernity (Firat, 2013). Both professions have, for example, contributed to the production of ‘thought leadership’ successfully used to deploy the term ‘BRICs’ into global discourses, simultaneously marginalising those developing markets deemed ‘lesser’ investment opportunities (Bourne, 2012). BRIC discourses are but one example of the role played by public relations and marketing activity in perpetuating inequality between nations and stakeholder interests in the new International Political Economy (IPE). However, the growth of public relations and marketing as separate professions in recent decades is itself the story of tension within each field where practitioners have struggled to formalise their managerial status and establish themselves as trusted experts to dominant coalitions. Equally notable, from a critical perspective, are the tensions between public relations and marketing as each has struggled for dominance over the other. This has been less obvious in smaller and/or emerging markets, where practitioners may operate flexibly across the public relations, advertising and marketing disciplines, offering a ‘full service’ to client groups. However, in larger, mature markets where new specialisms perpetually form and proliferate (Brint, 1994), tensions have arisen between public relations and marketing, as they have between other expert fields throughout history. Of course, professional tensions between public relations and marketing have been partially incited by accompanying academic discourses which have played an important part in formalising public relations and marketing techniques and practices. From as far back as the 1970s, well-known marketing theorist, Philip Kotler, writing with Mindak (1978), questioned whether PR and marketing would evolve as ‘partners or rivals’, critiquing the lack of scientific discipline within the public relations field. A decade later, Kotler and other representatives from marketing scholarship and practice met counterparts from public relations in a San Diego colloquium designed to clarify public relations and marketing’s conceptual domains and mark their ‘operational turf’ (Broom et al, 1991). This paper takes up the challenge of rescaling professional projects by comparing the development and formalisation of the public relations and marketing professions, specifically in mature markets, where each discipline has been increasingly compelled to ‘engage’ with stakeholders (rather than merely to ‘promote’ products, services, people or ideas), in the hope that resulting long-term relationships will secure profits and recognisable gain. This increased pressure has resulted in the development of parallel paradigms in the two fields — Just as public relations has witnessed the increased prominence of ‘relationship management’, ‘relationship marketing’ has become increasingly important to marketing practitioners during the same period. In this paper, I examine how these two ‘relationship’ paradigms have contributed to evermore ‘complex
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methods of observation’ (Foucault, 1963/1989), a form of ‘gaze’ over the individuals and organisations which constitute markets. The complex methods of organisation to be explored range from technologies such as Customer Relationship Management systems used in marketing, to the indices and surveys used by public relations firms to measure trust (a vital component of relationship management), as well as continuous engagement via social media used by both disciplines; all of which contribute to increased public surveillance. I intend to show that relationship marketing and relationship management have become important joint sources of power through which public relations and marketing simultaneously ‘legitimize’ their managerial expertise (Skålén, P et al, 2007), while propping up dominant coalitions by eking further ‘growth’ from saturated markets. The paper contributes to perspectives of professional projects in the new International Political Economy in the following ways: Firstly, by setting out the tensions between public relations and marketing as separate, distinguishable professional projects. Secondly, by making the first determined effort to establish links between the fields of critical public relations and critical marketing – two vocal communities of scholars whose research agendas have evolved separately but offer great potential for productive convergence and insight. Finally, the paper aims to contribute to further understanding of the new International Political Economy by dissecting contemporary technologies of power used by two of the professions which help to orchestrate global discourses.
Odeta Liesionienė (Vytautas Magnus University) Vidmantas Tūtlys (Vytautas Magnus University) Competence-based vocational integration of retired soldiers and military officers in the civil labour market: search of patterns Integration of retired soldiers and military officers in the civil labour market is important question from the different perspectives: social integration and professional self-realisation, assuring the rights to work and continuing employment, effective usage of the human resources in the conditions of the contemporary demographic and labour market challenges, etc. The relevance and importance of this issue highly depend on the type of the military service (based on conscription or professional), labour market models and structures and many other factors. The aim of this paper is to explore and define possible patterns of the competence based vocational integration of retired professional soldiers and military officers in the civil labour market referring to the analysis of the situation and cases of vocational integration in Lithuania. This goal is achieved by: - defining the main concepts linked to competence-based vocational integration of retired professional soldiers and military officers; - conceptualising the process of competence-based vocational integration of retired soldiers and military officers in seeking to define theoretical patterns of this process; - empirical exploring of the factors and conditions of competence based vocational integration of retired soldiers and military officers in Lithuania. This research is based on the different theories related to labour market and professionalization. Human capital theory provides the framework for analysis of investments and efforts directed to the acquisition and development of competences needed for vocational integration. The theories of insular labour market will help to understand the specificities of the transition from the employment in the military service, as to certain extent insulated part of labour market to the open civic labour market and implications of these transitions to the requirements of skills and competences. The theories of competence based vocational didactics will be applied in analysing the processes of training and skills development used in the vocational re-integration of retired soldiers and military officers in the civil labour market. One of the initial assumptions of this research is that the features of vocational integration of retired professional soldiers and military officers are strongly influenced by the specificity and transferability of competences of the retired soldiers and military officers, that are defined by their executed functions. Another assumption is that the duality of the human capital of military officers shaped by their functional (occupational) duties and qualification of the military command is essential factor to be considered in the vocational integration of retired military officers in the civil labour market. The empiric research will be based on a survey and in-depth interviews of retired soldiers and military officers in order to determine their perceptions of their acquired competences and how these competences help them to integrate in the civil labour market and shape their further career paths to date and future aspirations. There will also be analysed and compared the contents of the descriptors of the occupations and qualifications of the military service and other sectors seeking to disclose the principles and possibilities of the application and conversion of the specific functional competences and general competences in the transition from the military service to the employment in civil labour market.
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The findings of this research will help to understand the role of competences and their development in the successful transition from the relatively insular military service environment to the civic labour market, as well as to understand how the profiles of competences and their development in the military service influence the career possibilities and aspirations of retired soldiers and military officers outside this sector. Research limitations/implications are related to rather limited insight into a complex phenomenon of vocational integration of retired soldiers and military officers and transition from the military service to civil labour market. The findings of research will be based on a relatively limited population and influenced by the specificities of the military service and labour market of one country (Lithuania). Practical implications – the paper will outline the patterns of competence based vocational re-integration of retired soldiers and military officers in the civil labour market, that could be applied for the design and implementation of the different related measures and policies of continuing vocational training, professionalisation and human resource management. Originality and value – the study is an original example of the research of the patterns of competence based vocational re-integration in the transition from the insular sectors of activities to the open labour market.
Tomas Brant,(Lund University) Discussant Abstract Closing remarks and comments synthesizing key themes revealed by papers in the session will be provided
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STREAM 18: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: THE ROLE OF THE EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES Bobby Banerjee Steffen Böhm Maria Ceci Misoczky
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EXTRACTIVISM Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm H2
Devin Holterman, York University The Biopolitical War for Life: Uganda as a Petro-State Abstract Scholarship conducted by Mitchell (2011) and Campbell (2005) among others illustrates the necessity to push analysis of extractivism past the notion of the resource curse and other rent based analysis. In so doing, scholarship can avoid the dangers of Herbert Marcuse’s concept of “one dimensional” thought and avoid a concept that Bauder (2011) argues can deny “meaningful reflection and critical engagement in social progression” (p. 1131). In an attempt to avoid such thinking, this paper analyzes the growing oil and gas industry in Uganda using Foucault’s concept of biopolitics as its main tool of analysis. After the discovery of commercially viable oil and gas deposits in the Albertine Graben, the Republic of Uganda can be viewed as involved in a state centered discourse on what I call “oil for development,” which is found simultaneously alongside an ever-growing discourse of state security. Despite the focus on point resources, such as oil and gas I argue the aforementioned discourses and the treatment of particular populations, such as human rights defenders and migrating Congolese nationals, can be analyzed as a shift from a focus on territorial sovereignty to a more direct focus on controlling the population of the Ugandan state, amongst others. In other words, a shift from sovereign power to biopower, specifically within the resource regime (constituting the state, multinational corporations, and donors) of the Ugandan state. This paper demonstrates how discourse and state action is creating an environment focused on the biopolitical control of life en masse by the strategic use of statistics, shaping of social expectations, and the promise of peace and security, all centered on resource development. The paper illustrates how resource governance can be shown as moving away from a historic focus on territory to a permeable focus on the “problem of population.” As Dillon (2008) has shown, through the means of selective population control, biopolitics is a violent endeavor in that a very particular life is selected in attempts to make live. With this in mind, and empirical research focused on the treatment of human rights defenders throughout Uganda’s oil and gas sector, I then pose what Agamben’s (1995) furthering of biopolitics, mainly the notion of bare life, can tell us about resource governance in Uganda and extractivism more broadly. The paper offers insight into a “new” extractive state and its focused approach to the development of its resources. This paper includes a critical analysis of the focus on highlighting the potentiality of positive developmental benefits from the proposed oil development, while at the same time probes the increased militarization of resource areas and questions its impacts on life within East Africa. In analyzing the historic shifts within extractivism, analysis can move past a focus on resource sovereignty and rents. In the case of Uganda and perhaps more broadly, this contemporary analysis views the oil industry as being led by both state and corporate violence through a biopolitical war waged for peace (or
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life). Bibliography Agamben, G. (1995). Home sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bauder, H. (2011). Towards a critical geography of the border: Engaging the dialectic of practice and meaning. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 5(101), 1126–1139. Campbell, D. (2005). The biopolitics of security: Oil, empire, and the sports utility vehicle. In E. Dauphinee & C. Masters (Eds.), The logics of biopower and the war on terror: Living, dying, surviving (pp. 129– 156). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillian. Dillon, M. (2008). Security, race and war. In Michael Dillon & A. W Neal (Eds.), Foucault on politics, security, and war (pp. 166–196). London: Palgrave Macmillian. Mitchell, T. (2011). Carbon democracy: Political power in the age of oil. London: Verso.
Hans Krause Hansen and Julie Uldam, Copenhagen Business School Disrupted Disclosures: The Politics of Visibility and Surveillance in the Extractive Industries Abstract While projects of ‘governance by transparency’ have become widespread in many issue areas over the past decades, and not least in the extractives industries as exemplified by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the organizational form, specific objectives, participants of and resistance to such projects are very often investigated and theorized in isolation from the wider field of visibility and surveillance in which they are embedded. Building on theories of governance, surveillance and stakeholder management, this paper examines two dimensions of resistance to company practices in the extractive industries: (1) reformist NGO initiatives calling for increased transparency in the extractive industries, and (2) radical social movement initiatives to highlight CSR efforts in the extractive industries as ‘greenwashing’, and corporations’ responses to these attempts in online media. In addressing these dimensions, the paper asks: (a) why and how transparency has been constructed and mobilized in recent international attempts to regulate the extractive industries, specifically oil and gas companies;; (b) how oil companies’ normal appearances are challenged through disruptive disclosures in media environments characterized by multiple levels of visibility, with companies both observing and being observed by civil society groups that criticize them; (c) why and how mobilizations around transparency and ensuing practices of surveillance produce new forms of governing, potentially widening the space of manoeuvring for corporations. Empirically, the paper draws on document research, interviews and participant observation. More specifically, the section on NGO initiatives calling for increased transparency in the extractive industries draws on document research in relation to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and Publish What You Pay initiatives. The section on radical social movement actions on CSR efforts and corporate responses to these actions draws on examples of online protest as well as interviews with managers of online communications at oil companies. Selected references Aaronson, S. A (2011) Limited Partnership: Business, Government, Civil Society, and the Public in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Public Administration and Development, 31: 50-63 Barry, A. (2004) Ethical Capitalism, in W. Larner and W. Walters (2004) Global Governmentality. Governing International Spaces, London: Routledge, p. 195-211. Baur, D. and Schmitz, H.P. (2012) Corporations and NGOs: When Accountability Leads to Co-optation, Journal of Business Ethics, 106(1), 9-21. Beder, S. (2002) bp: Beyond Petroleum? In Lubbers, E (ed), Battling Big Business: Countering greenwash, infiltration and other forms of corporate bullying, Devon: Green Books, 26-32. Brighenti, A. (2007) Visibility: a Category for the Social Sciences. Current Sociology, 55(3): 323-42
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Brunton, M. (2011), Communicating Sustainability, but Producing Pollution: The Case of the BP Oil Spill. In: Gabriel Eweje, Martin Perry (eds) Business and Sustainability: Concepts, Strategies and Changes, Critical Studies on Corporate Responsibility, Governance and Sustainability, Volume 3, pp.169-191 Cammaerts, B. (forthcoming 2012) Protest Logics and the Mediation Opportunity Structure, European Journal of Communication, in press. Chatterton, P., Featherstone, D. and Routledge, P. (forthcoming 2012) Articulating Climate Justice in Copenhagen: antagonism, the commons and solidarity, Antipode. Du, S. and Vieira Jr., E.T. (2012) Striving for Legitimacy Through Corporate Social Responsibility: Insights from Oil Companies, Journal of Business Ethics: 413-427. Ellerbrook, A. (2010) Empowerment: Analyzing Technologies of Multiple Variable Visibility, Surveillance & Society 8(2): 200-220. Florini, A. (ed.) (2007) The right to know: Transparency for an open world. New York: Colum¬bia University Press. Fung, A., Graham, M. & Weil, D. (2007) Full disclosure: The perils and promise of trans¬parency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gillies, A. (2010). Reputational Concerns and the Emergence of Oil Sector Transparency as an International Norm. International Studies Quarterly 54: 103–26. Goldsmith, A.J. (2010) Policing’s new visibility. British Journal of Criminology, 50: 914-934. Haggerty, K. and R. Ericson (2000) The surveillant assemblage, British Journal of Sociology 51(4): 605-622 Hansen, H.K. (2012) The power of performance indices in the global politics of anti-corruption, Journal of International Relations and Development, 15(4): 506-532 Haufler, V. (2010) Disclosure as Governance: The Extractive Industries Initiative and Resource Management in The Developing World, Global Environmental Politics, 10(3): 53-74. Lubbers, E. (2012) Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark. Corporate and Police Spying on Activists, London: Pluto Press. Mol, A.P.J (2010) The Future of Transparency: Power, Pitfalls and Promises, Global Environmental Politics 10(3):132-143. Goffman, E. (2010[1971]) Relations in Public. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. McCurdy, P. and Uldam, J. (forthcoming 2014) Connecting participant observation positions: towards a reflexive framework for studying social movements, Field Methods, 26(1). Rajak, D. (2011). Theatres of virtue: Collaboration, consensus, and the social life of corporate social responsibility. Focaal –Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 60, 9-20. Zyglidopoulos, S. & Fleming, P. (2011). Corporate accountability and the politics of visibility in ‘late modernity’. Organization, 18(5), 691-705.
Gavin Hilson, Surrey Business School Repartitioning the Landscape: REDD+, Amerindian Rights and Gold Mining Claims in Guyana Abstract One of the most comprehensive Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programs implemented to date is the agreement reached between the Governments of Guyana and Norway. This scheme, now the centrepiece of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), spawned an innovative ‘payment for ecosystem services’ program, under which the latter has agreed to dispense, over the period 2010-2015, US$250 million to the former if it protects 16 million ha of rainforest. But whilst the scheme could potentially yield significant environmental benefits, the steps taken to fulfill the Guyanese Government’s commitments to it have altered significantly the fates of indigenous small-scale gold miners and Amerindians, the country’s two largest and most influential forest-based groups. Drawing upon findings from recent fieldwork, this paper examines how the fortunes of both groups have changed considerably since the implementation the LCDS. Amerindians, who hold titles on 22 percent of the country’s land, have been provided considerable ‘space’ under REDD for renegotiating their titles. This, in large part, has to do with new restrictions imposed on small-scale gold mining which, despite being Guyana’s largest industry, fetching over US$400 million in revenue annually, has been incorrectly blamed for significant deforestation country-wide. Findings reveal the opposite: that the impact of small-scale gold mining on forests is negligible, and that operators concurrently reclaim the landscapes they temporarily deface. The Guyana experience underscores the importance of carrying out comprehensive social impact assessments of forest-based groups before forging ahead with REDD+-type initiatives.
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GOVERNANCE AND EXTRACTIVISM
Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm H2
Johannes Knierzinger, Universität Leipzig Three crises of chain governance. The production network of aluminum between Guinea and Europe Abstract Guinea is together with Ghana, Sierra Leone and Cameroon one of four West African countries that have the best preconditions for an integrated aluminum industry. This mainly necessitates bauxite reserves and cheap energy. Because of its climate in the mountainous Fouta Djallon, the French colonizers even seriously intended to offshore their production of military planes to Guinea. Today these plans appear utterly fanciful: The necessary facilities are scattered all over West Africa, but they are not directly linked to each other. Guinea produces almost exclusively bauxite and a small quantity of aluminum oxide, the middling product between bauxite and aluminum, in spite of a French feasibility study for a huge dam that has been finished already on the eve of independence. In Ghana, the construction of such a dam has actually been carried out by an American company, but its strongest advocate, President Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown with the help of the CIA a few months after completion of the dam. Instead of Nkrumah’s comprehensive plans for an aluminum industry, industrial rice farming and a fishing industry on the dam, Ghana is forced until today to export its bauxite and import aluminum oxide to produce Aluminum. The missing link has never been inserted. In spite of excessive socialist rhetoric in both countries, the typical capitalist incongruence of economic and political spaces therefore rather intensified in the 1960s: decolonization went along with a deterritorialization of resource flows. Aluminum production is very capital intensive and has been controlled by six big companies until the 1970s. The rather uneconomical production network of today is mainly an outcome of risk minimizing strategies of these multinationals and the states, where the aluminum is processed. Three critical junctures in the genesis of this production network can be made out: Decolonization, which took place at the same time as the start of production in Africa; the energy crisis of the 1970s; and the situation since the turn of the millennium. All the three moments can be described as crises of chain governance: In all three instances, the control relations that frame the material flow of aluminum were challenged - by independence, nationalizations, protectionism, new mining codes, producer cartels, worker uprisings etc. The crisis was therefore foremost one of the capitalist centers and until now, the answers of industrialized states and companies – raw material strategies, shifts in exploration, the modification of production networks, free trade and investment agreements often based on aid conditionality, the rescaling of control relations, etc. – have been successful insofar, as they lead to consolidated relations of control and to a reestablishment of the unequal terms of trade, which have been challenged after independence and after the Yom Kippur War as they are challenged today. I want to focus on these three moments on the basis of a mapping of the entire material flow of aluminum that has transcended the Guinean borders since the start of production in Africa in the 1950s. For about 6000 out of approximately 15.000 bauxite vessels that have left Guinea since independence, I have already been able to verify the destination ports. These figures already reveal that refining still takes place mainly in Europe, while European shares in the mines are actually negligible. Based on this empirical data, the paper will analyze the political and social relations framing the material flow of aluminum on different scales between Guinea and Europe.
Cyrlene Claasen, David Weir and Julia Roloff, Rennes School of Business Public Private Joint Ventures in the African Extractive Industry – Legitimacy Issues Abstract This focus of this paper is to critically assess the legitimacy of the public private joint venture (PPJV) which is often the preferred method of developing country governments to exploit natural resources. The study was conducted to better understand the factors affecting the legitimacy and consequent effectiveness and efficiency of this type of partnership. Suchman (1995) describes legitimacy as “a generalised perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, believes and
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definitions” (Suchman, 1995). In the case of the PPJV in the extractive industries, two broad issues affecting its legitimacy are identified - Firstly, its ownership structure which consist of joint-ownership between the government and a multinational company and the consequent conflicting roles of the government as business partner, business enabler and custodian of the people and the broader natural environment. Secondly, the reputation of the extractive industry is affected negatively because of the general costs of mining such as pollution and destruction of the environment. On a theoretical level it can be argued that the state ownership ensures strong governance as the role of the government would be to represent the interest of its citizens (Commission of the European Communities, 2004). This implies that it would emphasize its contribution to social welfare in order to legitimise its privileged position. However, in reality, PPJVs are often considered to be in contradiction with this perceived constructive role which ideally includes ensuring a just distribution of the profits, an efficient exploitation and a strong bargaining position on the international market (Bult-Spiering & Dewulf, 2006). This is referred to as the resource curse which is described as a negative correlation between resource richness and economic development which seems to be strained by the quality of the countries’ governance institutions (Boschini, Pettersson & Roine, 2007; Shaxson 2007; Heller 2006) and by the inability of governments to implement and monitor their own policies. We investigated Namdeb, a PPJV between De Beers and the Government of Namibia. 42 Representatives from nine stakeholder groups were asked open-ended questions in face-to-face interviews. They were identified through stakeholder mapping and snowballing and mostly held leadership positions. The researcher collecting and analysing the data is Namibian and critically examined the data by taking cultural and political aspects into consideration. The findings show that a continuous flux of everyday, dynamic and often interconnected political, economic, social, environmental and legislative issues affect the PPJVs organisational legitimacy. We critically discuss and evaluate the impact of these issues on PPJV legitimacy and raise the question of whether this is indeed the best way to exploit natural resources in the African extractive industry. Bibliography Boschini, A. D., Pettersson, J. & Roine, J. (2007). Resource Curse of Not: A Question of Appropriability. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 109(3): 593-617. Bult-Spiering, M. & Dewulf, G. (2006). Strategic Issues in Public Private Partnerships: An International Perspective, United Kingdom, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Commission of the European Communities (2004). Green Paper on Public-Private Partnerships and Community Law on Public Contracts and Concessions. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. Heller, T. C. (2006). African Transitions and the Resource Curse: An Alternative Perspective. Economic Affairs, 26(4): 24-33. Shaxson, N. (2007). Oil, Corruption and the Resource Curse. International Affairs, 83, 1123-1140. Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches, in: Academy of
Malu Villela, FGV/EAESP and Glen Morgan, Cardiff Business School Transnational blood in the open veins of the Brazilian Amazon forest: the implications for national governance and regulation Abstract The exploration and exploitation of timber has been intense in Brazil since the beginning of the colonisation period, migrating from one region to another across the country and replicating the model of internal colonialism (Banerjee 2011) and neo-developmentalism (Misoczky 2011) seen in many extractive industries across the world. In the recent period, this process has gone beyond the two-way relationship of unequal trade between the developed imperial power and the colonised developing country that used to exist. In this phase, especially in countries such as Brazil, which in formal terms were no longer colonies, the national state, controlled by national elites organized into national firms, mainly coordinated and managed the process of timber exploitation. More recently, however, multinational firms, international financial markets, global social movements and transnational regulatory bodies have become more influential in what has been called a transnational world (Djelic and Sahlin-Anderson 2006). As a result, governance and control have shifted from national state in which hierarchical rules enforced by hard law are the dominant constraint on action to more sophisticated networked modes that operate on the basis of soft power, expertise, technology and forms of selfregulation enacted by non-state and market-based elites (Newton et al. 2011). The emergence of non-state actors articulated into such governance networks, with a growing regulatory authority and power, is seen as overcoming the paradigm of a state-centric world (Gulbransen 2010; Djelic and Sahlin-Anderson 2006; Pierre 2000) and replacing it with transnational private regulation (Cutler et
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al. 1999; Hall and Biersteker 2002), where resistance is increasingly incorporated through the admission of new groups into the process of governance (Newton et al. 2011). The implications for state governance and regulation in this process are poorly addressed. While some authors argue that states appear to be powerless or uninterested, when constrained by these new governance actors and regulatory approaches (Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson 2006; Haufler 2003; Cashore 2002), others suggest that non-state and market-driven models were only made possible and dominant because the state, under the influence of neoliberal globalization, withdrew its own alternatives (Bartley 2007). Thus, states may still be relevant if they develop new capacities and new ways of engaging with transnational forces (Levy 2006; Weiss 2003). Given this context, this paper aims to address the implications of the emerging transnational governance and regulation mechanisms on the role and jurisdiction of the state. The focus of the paper is the Amazonian timber industry, which is one of the main economic activities of the Brazilian Amazon forestry sector. In the past, this was controlled mainly by local firms, local power elites and the local state. The nature of these relationships was often corrupt and damaging to the Amazonian ecosystem and to indigenous peoples, reflecting the specific balance of social forces in Brazil and the nature of the interplay between capitalist forms and political power, an interplay that has evolved since the restoration of democracy and the electoral victories of the Workers Party. However, more recently, the Amazonian region has become transnationalized. In discursive terms, the Amazon is seen as ‘the lungs of the world’ and its biodiversity a treasure trove for humankind as a whole. This discursive transnational appropriation of the Amazon goes along with the increasing presence of Brazilian and foreign multinational firms in the area and, the influence on these MNCs of international financial markets. Global social movements have also entered the space, publicising issues and engaging in certification schemes and other activities designed to constrain the way the firms deal with the environment. This transnationalization of the Amazon challenges Brazilian sovereignty in terms of the legitimacy of its state and social groups (including indigenous Amazonian peoples) to play a major role in the future of the Amazon. In this paper, we explore how the Brazilian state and Brazilian social groupings are responding to the transnational governance processes underway in the Amazon timber industry. Through this example, we aim to show the importance of this neglected dimension in the analysis of transnational governance more generally and expand the discussion on the interplay between national and transnational domains of governance and regulation. References Banerjee, S. B. 2011. Voices of the Governed: towards a theory of the translocal. Organization 18(3), pp. 323– 344. Bartley, T. 2007. Institutional Emergence in an Era of Globalization: The Rise of Transnational Private Regulation of Labor and Environmental Conditions. American Journal of Sociology 113(2), pp. 297-351. Cashore, B. 2002. Legitimacy and the privatization of environmental governance: How non--state marketdriven (NSMD) governance systems gain rule--making authority. Governance 15(4), pp. 503-529. Cutler, A.C. et al. eds. 1999. Private authority and international affairs. Albany: State University of New York Press. Djelic, M.-L. and Sahlin-Andersson, K. 2006. Introduction: A world of governance: The rise of transnational regulation. In: Djelic, M.-L. and Sahlin-Andersson, K. eds. Transnational governance: institutional dynamics of regulation. illustrated, reprint ed. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-29. Gulbrandsen, L.H. 2010. Transnational environmental governance: the emergence and effects of the certification of forests and fisheries. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, USA: Edward Elgar. Hall, R.B. and Biersteker, T.J. 2002. The Emergence of Political Authority in the International System. In: Hall, R.B. and Biersteker, T.J. eds. The emergence of private authority in global governance. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-40. Haufler, V. 2003. New forms of governance: certification regimes as social regulations of the global market. In: Meidinger, E. et al. eds. Social and Political Dimensions of Forest Certification. Remagen-Oberwinter: Verlag Kessel, pp. 237-248. Levy, J.D. 2006. The State After Statism: New State Activities in the Age of Liberalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Misoczky, M.C. 2011. World visions in dispute in contemporary Latin America: development x harmonic life. Organization 18(3), pp. 345-363. Newton, T. et al. 2011. Responses to Social Constructionism and Critical Realism in Organization Studies. Organization Studies 32(1), pp. 7-26. Pierre, J. 2000. Debating Governance: Authority, Steering, and Democracy. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Weiss, L. 2003. States in the Global Economy: Bringing Domestic Institutions Back In. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
CSR, SUSTAINABILITY AND EXTRACTIVISM Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am H2
Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes, Hanken School of Economics Confronting CSR and Development by constructing new realities: the cultivation of a ‘Buen Vivir’ Discourse in the Uruguayan countryside Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore how anti-development legitimacy can be constructed under conditions of near complete hegemony of the development paradigm. The paper asks, under almost complete naturalization of the development paradigm, how can marginalized voices construct counter-discourses visualizing an alternative future? Through a case study approach, this paper is based on real life stories told by small scale farmers in the Uruguayan countryside. In Uruguay the highly mediated boarder conflict with Argentina regarding the construction of one of the world’s largest pulp mills reinforced the support for such megadevelopment projects among Uruguayans. National pride overrode the concerns for environmental and social consequences. In the shadow of the conflict, Uruguayan small-scale farmers continued to fight a silenced battle against the spread of eucalyptus tree plantations that affected their lives by drying up water wells and depopulating the countryside. Those resisting the country’s plight for economic growth through forest sector development were considered anti-patriotic and backward-minded. In addition, the absence of indigenous groups in Uruguay has impeded the emergence of an authentic indigenous discourse that would challenge the development paradigm. This counter-discourse, found in similar conflicts over territory in other parts of South America, is based on a set of values and norms originating from indigenous beliefs, based on a different worldview (cosmovisión) commonly denominated “buen vivir” (collective wellbeing). Without the awareness or support from the masses, many affected small farmers were left on their own, forced to give up their resistance and sell their land to forestry and soy prospectors. As new areas of agricultural land is facing the ‘threat of monoculture’, some of the remaining resisting groups have chosen a different strategy: instead of confronting development in the traditional way - dialoguing with the corporations and thus participating in the construction of corporate social responsibility (CSR) - these individuals have chosen to build a real alternative to that depicted in the dominant development discourse. Through small scale ecological farming, applying ancient knowhow on how to farm land and raise cattle, they are building a reality in line with “buen vivir”. Through their project, and by educating school children and agronomy students, this community is setting an example of an alternative to development, and raising the awareness of an alternative worldview. Through their project they are building the discourse of “buen vivir”, in a society where ancient indigenous worldviews have been extinct for almost two centuries. The article explores the positive consequences this “new alternative” could have on other small scale farmers and their resistance towards forestry and mining projects in remote rural areas of Uruguay and the rest of South America.
Diego Vazquez Brust, Royal Holloway and Natalia Yakovleva, Winchester Business School Mining FDI in Argentina: perceptions and challenges to sustainable development Abstract
This paper presents results of a study, carried out during 2008-2009, that aims to assess social and environmental challenges within the gold mining industry in Argentina. Argentina is an emerging economy
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with a significant mineral resource endowment. Large foreign direct investment (FDI) in the mining sector in Argentina had been encouraged since 2001 with the reform of the Mining Code. Gold has become one of the most important national export commodities. However, social resistance – sustained on environmental and social grounds - to mining activities has been growing steadily and spreading throughout the country to an extent that six provinces have been forced by public pressure to introduce a legal ban to open-pit mining within their territories. The paper proposes that causes for such social resistance can be found in differences of perceptions between companies and communities regarding the ‘quality’ of FDI in the extractive sector in Argentina. The paper applies a model for evaluating perceptions of quality of FDI drawing on theories of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and stakeholder theory. In this model the ‘quality’ of FDI is defined as the ability of FDI to increase the welfare of the country’s population in a sustainable way within four dimensions: social, environmental, economic and organisational (i.e. governance). The proposed model combines Dicken (2004) framework for the analysis of bargaining relationships between MNCs and the state, with stakeholder and business ethics theories. The latter substantiate a normative model, whereby weak role of government is addressed by firms through adoption and implementation of codes of ethics and involvement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in order to maintain social contracts and develop their businesses. References: Dicken, P. (2004) Global Shift: reshaping the global economic map in the 21st century, London: Sage.
Martin Brigham, Lancaster University and Alison Stowell, Anglia Ruskin University Extraction, Value and Waste: The Urban and Organisational Mining of e-Waste Abstract This paper reports on research with one of the UK’s largest e-waste companies. e-Waste comprises of discarded technologies and is one of the fastest growing waste streams at 3-5 per cent per annum (ICER, 2004; Schluep et al., 2009). Our focus is on how e-waste can be conceptualised as a form of extractivism connected to practices of urban and organizational mining. We report on how waste and value is assembled and reassembled across global and local commodity networks. e-Waste companies such as the one that is the focus of our paper (eWasteOrg) exert considerable sales and marketing efforts to maintain a supply of e-waste objects (computers and laptops, servers, photocopiers, and mobile phones, to name a few) to supply global trading networks: eWaste companies are intensively focused on maintaining a stream of e-waste for the global commodity markets to which they are integrally connected. e-WasteOrg do this in order to provide a range of national and transnational markets with recovered metals and minerals (copper, etc.), which are destined for global commodity trading markets, but also to supply refurbished technological objects which are redeployed in organisational contexts. e-WasteOrg focuses on promoting education and secure disposal to up-stream supply chains: this includes constructing the proper disposal of e-waste as a progressive CSR policy. At the same time, the economic value that can be extracted from e-waste throughout a chain of assemblage and disaggregation is minimised in an effort to ensure that organisations willingly and voluntarily relinquish property rights to technological objects that increasingly have value—value that can be realised only through extraction networks across global commodity chains (Crang et al 2013). We are interested, then, in how waste and value is variously assembled and reassembled as ewaste circulates across organisational, urban and national boundaries. Our research to date has suggested that the there is a sustained focus by the e-waste sector in maintaining the market for e-waste. At the same time the environmental dimensions of waste management are minimised in decisions about market exchange. The current e-waste regulation, for example, does not call for the reduction or consumption of material goods (Science and Technology Committee, 2008). Waste policy focuses, rather, on diversion from landfill and capturing the material to be recycled. Similarly, decisions by eWasteOrg about whether an e-waste object is redeployed, reused, or recycled is premised on calculative practices centred on the economic value that can be accessed through a range of global networks. The paper aims to contribute to the stream’s overall focus on extractive industries, particularly the stream’s interest in how global and local commodity chains are organized over times and spaces. We suggest that analysing the e-waste sector in the UK as a form of contemporary extractivism within developed economies, and how this is connected to markets in developing countries, opens up an interesting line of thinking about how extractivism might be a concept that can be thought to have a wider significance for contemporary analysis of forms of
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organising. References Crang, M.A. and Hughes, A. and Gregson, N. and Norris, L. and Ahamed, F.U. (2013) 'Rethinking governance and value in commodity chains through global recycling networks.', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38, 1, 12-24. Schluep, M., Hagelueken, C., Kuehr, R., Magalini, F., Maurer, C., Meskers, C., Mueller, E. and Wang, F. (2009) Sustainable Innovation and Technology Transfer Industrial Sector Studies. Recycling from e-Waste to Resources. Berlin: United Nations Environment Programme and United Nations University. Science and Technology Committee (2008) Waste Reduction, Science and Technology Committee 6th Report of Session 2007-2008. London: House of Lords, 1-128
Reine Bohbot, University of Montreal Experience-based knowledge transfer from the mining sector to international investments in agriculture Abstract This paper provides a perspective of the contributions and the gaps of the self-regulation model developed in the mining sector to the actual debate on international agricultural investments, commonly leading to so-called «land grabbing». According to present knowledge, international agricultural investments are characterized by a lack of regulatory and self-regulatory frameworks and some softness in the ethical criteria governing their economic, social and environmental impacts, both at the national and international levels. They would appear to impede more than contribute to the development challenges faced by host countries. These statements are reminiscent of the feedback with respect to mining industry developments throughout most of the XXth century. In fact, both areas of investment raise the question of whether rational, inclusive, equitable and sustainable natural resource management is feasible, and a real asset for the development of poor countries and their quest for the reduction of poverty, the development of human rights and the mitigation of adverse environmental impacts. Drawing on the last decades of self-regulatory environmental governance experiences in the mining sector, we inquire how this model could be applied to international investments in agriculture This paper would be constructed on two objectives: 1) building the basics of a cross-sector practical knowledge 2) determining how experience-based knowledge transfer from the mining sector to international investments in agriculture can be made, particularly regarding transparency principles, self-regulation model of environmental governance. The research evidence base underpinning the paper: From a methodological point of view, this paper will present the results of an interdisciplinary approach, including law, economics, politics, and sustainable development in analyzing general press articles (national media, blog and websites), both regulatory frameworks, reports of national governments or international organizations and academic articles. The results of more than 15 interviews conducted with experts from international organizations (International finance corporation, World Bank) NGO’s (Grain, Oxfam, Sustainable investment group), and the private sector will be also presented. How the paper will contribute to the theme: ‘The relationship between the extractive industries and other mega-development projects’ Obviously, the mining sector is still confronted to significant challenges. However, as the various academic literature, the different case studies and the structuring of resistance movements demonstrate, this sector has begun to develop thinking criteria and basics of alternative models which may enrich the debate on land grabbing. Developing the relationship between the extractive industries and international investments in agriculture will contribute to the establishment of the basics of a cross-sector practical knowledge and ‘extending the limits’ of parasitical politics.
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CONFLICTS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm H2
Şükrü Özen, Atılım University and Hayriye Özen, Yıldırım Beyazıt University What Makes Locals Protestors? A Comparative Study of the Struggles between Local Communities and Gold-Mining MNCs in Turkey Abstract This paper focuses upon the question of why different patterns of conflicts emerge between local communities and multinational companies concerning the use of local lands for extractive purposes. It comparatively examines four cases that involve different levels of conflicts on the issue of gold-mining in a range of local settings in Turkey, namely, Artvin, Uşak, İzmir, and Erzincan. Employing the conceptual framework developed by Ernesto Laclau in his various works on political struggles (Laclau, 1990, 2005), and incorporating insights both from social movement theory (Della Porta and Diani, 2006; Melucci, 1996) and organizational institutionalism (Greenwood et al., 2008) within this framework, these cases are examined by focusing on the struggles between local communities and multinational companies to establish their hegemony in the field. It particularly analyzes the data gathered by in-depth interviews with the protestors, company managers, and local governmental authorities, and the documents related with the cases such as the news in the daily newspapers, company reports, and web sites. The main contention of the study is that both the emergence and intensity of conflicts in these local settings are highly related to the symbolic construction of gold-mining as a substantial threat to local space as well as spatially bounded identities of local people. The constitution of such anti-gold-mining discourses is further related with a number of other factors that include ability and leadership of organic intellectuals, availability of ideological materials, and political culture in local contexts. The success of anti-gold-mining discourses in establishing their hegemonies in local contexts depends not only on their own popular appeal but also on the popular appeal of the pro-mining discourses of the rival parties. Besides attempting to subvert anti-gold-mining discourses, pro-mining discourses also endeavor to promote gold-mining by emphasizing its benefits to both local and national economy. The appeal of pro-mining discourses of multinational companies is usually increased through a number of activities directed to local communities under the strategies of corporate social responsibility. In these struggles between the two parties, the one that takes action earlier than the other is more likely to succeed in establishing its hegemony since, by doing so, it considerably limits the space for its rival. References della Porta, Donatella, and Mario Diani.1999. Social Movements: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Greenwood, Royston, Christian Oliver, Roy Suddaby, and Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson, (eds). 2008. Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Laclau, Ernesto.1990. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Melucci, Alberto. 1996. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maria Ceci Misoczky, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, and Steffen Böhm, University of Essex Anti-Mining Movements in Argentina: A critical analysis with Enrique Dussel Abstract The philosopher of liberation neither represents anybody nor speaks on behalf of others (as if were his sole vested political purpose), nor does he undertake a concrete task in order to overcome or negate some petit-bourgeois sense of guilt. The Latin American critical philosopher, as conceived by the philosophy of liberation, assumes the responsibility of fighting for the other, the victim, the woman oppressed by patriarchy, and for the future generation which will inherit a ravaged Earth, and so on – that is, it assumes responsibility for all possible sorts of alterity. And it does so with an ethical, “situated” consciousness, that of any human being with an ethical “sensibility” and the capacity to
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become outraged when recognizing the injustice imposed on the other. (Dussel, 2008, p. 342) Since 2006, when the Canadian corporation Barrick Gold first received authorization to start exploring the Famatina hills for gold and uranium, the people have been organizing themselves to protect their livelihoods, the hills and the glacier located in the Department of Famatina, in the Argentinean Province of La Rioja. Vecinos de Famatina Autoconvocados en Defensa de la Vida (Famatina’s Self-Convened Residents in Defense of Life), Coordinadora de Asambleas Ciudadanas por la Vida de Chilecito (Chilecito’s Coordination of Citizens Assemblies for Life), Vecinos Autoconvocados de Chañarmuyo (Chañarmuyo’s Self-Convened Residents), Vecinos Autoconvocados de Pituil (Pituil’s Self-Convened Residents) and Vecinos Autoconvocados de Los Sauces (Los Sauces’ Self-Convened Residents ) – these are some of the names of the many people’s assemblies that have been organized to resist the onslaught of mining companies. Their united slogan is: El Famatina no se toca (Don’t touch Famatina).
Source: http://www.elperiodico.com.ar/2012/02/01/famatina-los-vecinos-solo-levantan-el-corte-si-osiskoanula-el-convenio-con-beder-herrera/ The people of one of the poorest regions of Argentina – humble, common people – have so far been able to stop large, powerful, transnational corporations, which have closely worked with national and provincial governments supported by corporative media and other powerful institutions: first Barick Gold, recently Osisko Mining Corporation. The transformation of these common people into a political force involved the construction of a new critical consensus (Dussel, 2012), the consensus of the social bloc of the oppressed (Gramsci, 1975). Such construction has been achieved in the space of horizontal autonomous organizations (the assemblies), in public demonstrations (often repressed with violence), in the meetings of the Unión de Asambleas Ciudadanas (Unions of Citizens Assemblies), as well as in the constant awareness and recognition that the struggle will last forever – the mountain will always be there, full of precious metals; therefore, its defense will last the life time of the current activists and go beyond the present generation. In this chapter we will present and discuss the people’s struggle to protect Famatina against transnational mining corporations and their allies through the lens of Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation. To make our argument more understandable for those unfamiliar with the context of Latin American philosophy, we will introduce Dussel’s propositions first, and then present and discuss the case of Famatina in the light of his philosophy of ethics and politics. The data presented here was collected from documents produced by the “Argentinean communities of NO”, a designation provided by Antonelli (2011, p.7) to identify the “network of environmental and citizens’ asambleas (assemblies) as well as other actors who oppose mega-mining projects and share the same “ethical values, epistemic evaluations, and the promotion of citizens’ consciousness disseminating the discourse of NO by different means (professionals, academics, media etc.)”. We have also used data collected during a field trip in August 2012, when we visited Chilecito and the roadblock at El Carrizal, conducting in-depth interviews with a range of activists. Excerpts from these interviews are in italics, making it easy to identify them without repeating the reference. The pictures we took during the research trip will also be presented without specifying the source.
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Otto Bruun, University of Helsinki Extractivism as green anti-colonialism? Contested story-lines of mining in Finland Abstract During the last two decades multinational institutions including the EU and OECD have prepared the ground for Arctic mining in Europe. After the rise of key mineral prices in the last decade, what has been denoted as a 'mining investment boom' has emerged in the peripheral parts of Finland and Sweden involving multinational corporations. Several of the operations extract 'ores of weak concentration' in massive open-cast mines. In Finland in particular, policy-makers, regulatory actors and mining companies have joined forces in supporting a notion of 'green mining'. Here, mining is framed as technologically sophisticated and environmentally sound, and contrasted to established notions of harmful extractivism in the global South. Additionally, justifying arguments of EU mineral self-sufficiency and decreasing pressure on mineral deposits and land-use in the global South are utilized. Extractivism in scarcely populated Finland is thus referred to as a win-win strategy: supporters of the mining industry efficiently employ certain environmental and anti-colonial story-lines in promoting little regulation and vast rights for extractivist corporations in ecologically vulnerable Arctic locations. Additionally, minerals extracted and technologies being developed are argued to support a shift to 'the green economy'. This paper presents narratives utilized by civil society groups and NGOs in the contestation of national extractive policies and the Talvivaara mining project in Kainuu in particular. The paper claims that notions of local rights and ecological justice, widely employed in opposing extractivism in the South (cf. Özkaynak et al. 2012) are used in resistance of mining projects also in the global North. However, civil society has so far not been able to challenge the narrative of 'green mining', in spite of widespread displacement of local communities, water pollution and mining accidents at new mines. The paper employs global commodity chain (GCC) analysis and methods (cf. Gibbon 2006) to analyse the role of the Talvivaara mine within global commodity chains, international division of labour and power relations within it. The paper investigates the GCC that the Talvivaara multimetal mine forms, looking at the spatial distribution of extraction, production and consumption. As extractivist industries can be seen as relying on (neo)colonial patterns of mining in the Eastern and Northern parts of Finland the paper aims to use the GCC analysis in anwering: to what extent are story-lines utilizing 'green' and 'anti-colonial' arguments justified, and how could this storyline best be challenged? The paper is based on close reading of the national mineral strategy 2020 and other key documents, participatory research with civil society movements in Kainuu region in Finland in September-October 2012, and previous research and 12 current interviews with actors in the relevant commodity chain in 2013. The paper discusses emerging forms of neoliberal environmental governance and CSR strategies in extractive industries. Literature: Özkaynak, B et al., 2012. Mining Conflicts around the World, EJOLT Report No. 7. Gibbon, P. 2001. Upgrading Primary Production: A Global Commodity Chain Approach. World Development Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 345-363.
Abigail Ackah-Baidoo, Aston Business School Fishing in Troubled Waters: Oil Production and Grievances in the Western Region of Ghana Abstract This paper offers insight on the anatomy of grievance-based conflicts in oil-rich sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on the case of Ghana, one of the region’s ‘newest’ oil producers, the discussion captures how such communitylevel disputes are often ignited and perpetuated by misunderstandings. Failure to reconcile and even avoid entirely what seem to be preventable disputes magnifies an even bigger problem: the oil industry’s lack of ‘community presence’ throughout the region. This outcome is linked heavily to the (mainly) offshore oil extraction that persists across sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana included. These oil-producing ‘enclaves’ tend to
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shield operators from the day-to-day concerns of local populations. Decisions made in the area of community development, and more broadly, policies on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), therefore, effectively gestate within these enclaves, often with very little local input. In the case of Ghana, two of the more contentious community-level issues in the oil sector of late have been 1) the rapid proliferation of saragassum (free-floating seaweed), which has clogged fishermen’s nets and hindered their catches;; and 2) what is referred to here as ‘the lighting issue’ – how lights on oil rigs are attracting schools of fish from areas where fishermen cast their nets to the ‘no-go’ areas where crude is being extracted. Operating offshore in an enclave has shielded Tullow, the country’s oil producer, from the day-to-day activities, concerns and problems in coastal villages, and these concerns in particular, which have mounted in the absence of adequate company presence at the local level. The Government of Ghana, which has been extremely complacent on the CSR front, has done little to bridge crucial information gaps, failing to supply Tullow with the data needed to enhance relations with affected communities. Failure to do so has left the company heavily ‘disconnected’ from coastal villages, which has led to the two abovementioned issues, which could have been resolved if tackled at an early stage, morphing into unmanageable crises.
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STREAM 19: CYNICAL? CONSTRUCTIVE? COMFORTABLE? CRITICAL? RETHINKING THE C IN CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES Ronald Hartz (Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany) Matthias Rätzer (Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany) Elke Weik (University of Leicester, UK)
SESSION 1 Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm E6
Antonio Blanco-Gracia (AutonomousUniversity of Madrid) Against management, sure… Wait! Where is my toolbox Abstract This paper forms part of a performative attempt for interveningin the organizational dimension of CMS. Its aim is stimulating the imagination of CMS scholars byprototyping and depicting a new form of critical engagement. Suggests and applies a toolboxconceived as fourbricolaged “paragrammes”(a “concept which entails something written down ('gramme') but not used as written ('para' as in paraphrase, parody and paradox”. It is not an exemplar,a model or a set of instructions, but a set of ideas which acts as a prompt and guide for action” (Gabriel, 2002).The toolbox pays attention to the symbolic structures of the organization, its forms of selfquestioning and problematization, the way it gives rules to itself, and how members’ values are oriented to those rules. Instead of looking for a dominant factor, it understands the organization as a tensional and paradoxical relation between those aspects, and explores possibilities to intervene in management practices in such way that self-realization and micro-emancipation is promoted.
Steen Valentin (Copenhagen Business School) Corporate Responsibility Within and Beyond Cynical Reason Abstract This paper applies Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of cynical reason (Sloterdijk, 1987; see also Zizek, 1989) to developments in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our starting point is that while CSR is undeniably a widespread and powerful phenomenon, it is also subject to considerable suspicion and criticism related to disconnects between corporate words and deeds and the societal ramifications of relying on voluntary social responsibility. While its advocates tend to consider it as a socially progressive movement, critical sociologists and political science scholars alike have suggested that CSR is little more than an embodiment or reflection of neoliberalism, i.e. an ideology that supports deregulation and thus the free rein of market forces (Banerjee, 2007; Shamir, 2008). Enter cynicism, which is traditionally considered as a sort of ‘cheekiness from below’ (Sloterdijk, 1987): a “popular, plebeian rejection of the official culture [and ideology] by means of irony and sarcasm” (Zizek, 1989, p. 26). In regard to CSR, this plebeian motif is related to reactions of stakeholders on the receiving end, so to speak, of corporate policies and actions, most notably employees and consumers, but also for instance social activist and media who take upon themselves to represent the public interest or the common good. The literature on organizational cynicism exemplifies this perspective as it relates to how employees use cynicism as a tactic of transgression to thwart or cope with the cultural colonization they are subjected to (Fleming & Spicer, 2003), or the lack of organizational integrity they encounter (as when a company shows interest in environmental issues only to generate good public relations) (Dean et al., 1998).
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SESSION 2 Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm E6
Antonia Langhof (Leibniz University Hannover) Thinking Outside the Box. A Systems-theoretical Contribution to Critical Management Studies Abstract The concern of the paper is (1) to suggest a conceptual theoretical framework based on systems theory that allows to analyse the relationship between management discourse, the attractiveness of (certain) management ideas for (specific) organisations and the (unintended) outcomes of their adoption and implementation in organisations. Therefore the paper aims to theoretically connect the level of societal discourses, in this case the management discourse, and the organizational level. In contrast to postmodern or poststructuralist approaches, systems theory offers theoretical assumptions on semantics (and therefore discourse) as well as social structures (including organisations). In this case 'structure' refers to social phenomena beyond discourses and/or language. Therefore it allows to examine management ideas and the management discourse as well as their relation respectively their impact on organisational structures and negative and/or unintended effects. (2) Findings of empirical research on a specific discourse that is addressing the management of humanitarian aid agencies, the impact of certain management ideas on these organisations and the negative and unintended outcomes of their adoption and implementation will be presented to illustrate the (critical) potential of the conceptual theoretical framework.
Edward Barratt (Newcastle University Business School) C. Wright Mills, Power and Critique Today Abstract I have suggested elsewhere (Barratt, 2011) that Mills can be conceived as a ‘noble gadfly like Socrates’ (Casanova, 1964, p.66) seeking to warn American citizens of the 1940s and 1950s of the dangers of their era. But Mills’s primary contribution as an engaged scholar was to attempt to warn Americans of a new distribution of power associated with the hegemony of business, political and military elites in an era in which, as he saw it, they had become increasingly politically apathetic and indifferent to the forces that determined their existence. This paper revisits Mills’s analysis of power in the first and last of his major substantive texts (Mills, 1999; 2002). We consider elements of his project that often attract less comment: Mills’s search for possible ways of redistributing power and his attempt to forge an ethico – political stance in rapidly changing conditions. Reflecting on evidence of a revival of interest in Mills’s thought in recent times, we reflect on what critics of contemporary management and organization might take from his analysis today - considering an array of criticism of his project.
Brigitte Biehl-Missal (Essex Business School) “Performing the Managerial Project: Aesthetic and Artistic Approaches to Critical Management Studies Abstract
Taking seriously the idea of critical management studies (CMS) as a “performative project” (Spicer et al. 2009), I draw on approaches originating in the arts and humanities, particularly in performance studies, to sketch a specific approach that involves arts-based methods, which already are being used in management studies. The idea is to create performances as organisational research. Such approaches add a new dimension to critical performativity, namely “performativity” in the sense of theatrical performing, showing and doing. Drawing on the specific expertise of management scholars, these performances may involve organizational stakeholders and the public and provide a critical perspective on management practice. Performative forms are accepted research activities in the humanities alongside the writing practices which are traditional in universities. On an institutional level, this topic opens the door to a “performative turn” in CMS, to academic activism, alternatives to the publishing treadmill, forms of resistance towards “masculine” academic writing,
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and last but not least to opportunities within business schools for researchers with a performing arts background.
SESSION 3 Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am E6
Dirk Postma (University of Johannesburg) The performativity of critique Abstract This paper rethinks critical research by defining critique as a performative sociomaterial practice through which reality is being enacted differently. Such critical practices originate from an expanded concept of agency where both humans and nonhumans actively participate. This conception of critique aims to address the theory/practice divide and the humanistic assumptions within most critical research. Critical research as a form of theorising could gain new impetus when it focuses on the multiple ways in which forms of domination are challenged through everyday practices.
Kevin Scally; Donncha Kavanagh (University College Cork) Games as Theory: Theory as Games Abstract This paper examines the remarkable and unexplored correspondence between games (and board games in particular) and what is commonly understood as theory in the social sciences. Even though we say ‘commonly understood’, a common, or at least a precise, understanding of the meaning of ‘theory’ is elusive in the social sciences, more so than in other disciplines. Hence, we begin with an attempt to ground what is meant by ‘theory’, recognising Merton’s (1967: 39) concerns about the meaning of the word. ‘Because its referents are so diverse’ he suggests, ‘including everything from minor working hypothesis, through comprehensive but vague and unordered speculations, to axiomatic systems of thought – use of the word often obscures rather than creates understanding.’ Sutton & Staw (1995: 371) echo Merton’s concern: ‘there is lack of agreement about whether a model and a theory can be distinguished, whether a typology is properly labeled a theory or not, whether the strength of a theory depends on how interesting it is, and whether falsifiability is a prerequisite for the very existence of a theory’. Meanwhile the ‘lack of consensus on exactly what theory is may explain why it is so difficult to develop strong theory in the behavioral sciences’ (Sutton & Staw 1995: 372). For Weick (1995: 385) ‘products of the theorizing process seldom emerge as full-blown theories, which means that most of what passes for theory in organizational studies consists of approximations’. To add to the complexity, people may subscribe to a theory in practice independently of whether its principles have been observed or articulated. For instance, when Hornick, in 1684, articulated the principles of a mercantilist theory he merely proposed – for formal national policy – what had long been established as a normative pattern of behaviour. Notwithstanding this complexity, social scientists are routinely concerned with what theory is and is not, what constitutes a theoretical contribution, and how the practice of theorising should be done. Such conversations have a particular tenor in management and organization studies probably because these disciplines can trace their roots to the 1950s when there was a rampant fetish for formal theory across the social sciences (Hage 1994). While management and organisation studies imbibed, along with other disciplines, at the antipositivist well from the 1980s onwards, a particular understanding of theory and theorizing is still ‘hard-wired’ into its disciplinary DNA as can be seen in the values inherent in journal rankings (see also the highly cited special issues of Academy of Management Review in 1989, 14(4), and Administrative Science Quarterly in 1995, 40(3)). The second part of our paper will briefly review the nature of games and board games in particular. There is a growing literature on play and games but little, that we are aware of, about the correspondence between games and theories, how a knowledge of one can inform our knowledge of the other, and what game-playing can tell us about theorizing (and vice versa). We will centre our discussion around board games like Monopoly because the polyphonic concept of play includes everything from the excitement of a roller-coaster to the playing of a musical instrument. At the same time, our ideas could be extended to other games and forms of play.
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The method used in this paper will be to establish a set of criteria typically used or accepted as defining of a theory and to compare with this set the characteristics of a selected number of board games. We begin by inquiring into the degree to which board games meet the four ‘defining criteria’ which Wacker (1998) proposes that a theory must have – conceptual definitions, domain limitation, relationship-building, and predictions. Wacker’s understanding is contestable and comparing and contrasting board games and theoretical models is a useful way of drawing out and highlighting some of these contestations. We will do this through inquiring into the following series of question: To what extent does either a theory or board game: a)
represent, in abstract form, a ‘true’ picture of ‘the world’?
b)
help constitute ‘the world’?
c)
have an end or purpose solely in itself (the technical term is ‘autotelic’)?
d)
play a part in the constitution of emergent phenomena?
e)
facilitate the assimilation of counter-factual data?
f)
engage with ambiguity, chance and différance?
g)
operate at the visceral and emotional levels?
h)
incorporate history?
i)
incorporate ethics [here we will leverage the Aristotelian distinction between poíēsis and praxis, with the former largely isomorphic with the domain of the board game]
Csikszentmihalyi and Bennett (1971) have emphasised the autotelic nature of play, where the direction of behaviour is completely inwards, onto the very essence of the activity itself. In contrast, we see games as necessarily open rather than closed. Just one example is the evidence that the precursor to the game of Monopoly was ‘originally the product of a passion for social and economic justice’ (Dodson 2011). Moreover, when we move from the structure/rules of a game to the playing of a particular game in a particular context, we see that the Derridian concept of différance is always at work, opening up new possibilities, interpretations, imaginative connections and meanings.
Simon Parker (Warwick Business School) The Limits of Critique: Criticising the Critical Organisation Abstract Are some organisations beyond critique? This paper introduces a dilemma concerning critique faced by the author during and after an ethnography at a sustainable financial services organisation called Anuvelar Investment. More specifically, it entails an exploration of critique, of its purpose and, crucially, when it should start. The paper contributes to existing theoriesof critical research and introduces an understanding of critique that is based on Phronesis (Flyvbjerg, 2001, 2006 and Flyvbjerg et al, 2012) as a performative way (Spicer et al, 2009) of critiquing “alternative” organisations. Moreover, it offers an empirical/pragmatic contribution to the study of “alternative” organisations and organisations working within sustainability.
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STREAM 20: TRADITION, REVISION, CRITIQUE Toru Kiyomiya, Seinan Gakuin University, Japan Thomas Taro Lennerfors, Uppsala University, Sweden Masayasu Takahashi, Meiji University, Japan David Sköld, Uppsala University, Sweden
TURNING TO TRADITION Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm E5
Toru Kiyomiya, Seinan Gakuin University, Japan Thomas Taro Lennerfors, Uppsala University, Sweden Masayasu Takahashi, Meiji University, Japan David Sköld, Uppsala University, Sweden Introduction to the track Abstract Introduction
Dr Carole Elliott, Durham University, UK
[email protected] Dr Ron Kerr, Newcastle University, UK
[email protected] Dr Sarah Robinson, University of Leicester, UK
[email protected] The trompe l’oeil organization: Mondelez International as corporate spectacle Abstract Introduction: The focus, aims and objectives of the paper In this study, we respond to this stream’s call for ‘papers which empirically critique the use of tradition, and thereby throw light on new forms of power and dominance that such a return to tradition may invoke’ by providing an ‘empirical example of revisionist history in organizations’. The focus of our study is the case of Mondelez International (MI), ‘a special case of what is possible’ (Bourdieu 1998:2), and our aim is, starting from the corporate website of MI, to demonstrate that MI, a corporation founded in 2012 as a spin-off from Kraft Foods, is an example of (1) the invention/fabrication of corporate history (Hobsbawm 1983), (2) the organisation as spectacle (Debord 1967) linked to neoliberal capitalism, and (3) what we term the trompe l’oeil organisation. In our paper, we address the Theme of CMS2013, ‘extending the limits of neoliberal capitalism’ by asking the following questions: How does MI legitimise its present by inventing a corporate history, i.e, by the ‘social organisation of appearances’ (Debord 1967)? In what ways is MI an example of a neoliberal ‘hollow corporation’ (Jessop 2002)?
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Methodology In a recent paper the authors called for ‘studies of the physical and virtual links between corporate HQs, their corporate websites and their customers, the re-appropriation of other people’s histories and the vanishing corporation/corporation as spectacle’. In this paper, we draw on the historical role played in the art of the Late Baroque by trompe l’oeil painting, creating spectacle and illusion through e.g., ‘a feigned architecture painted in perspective’ (Kitson 1966:46). Methodologically, then, we start with the visual, the corporate website, drawing on existing (Elliott & Robinson 2012) and continuing work (Elliott and Robinson forthcoming), which looks at links between website projections and the development of corporate identity. We conduct a critical hermeneutic analysis of the MI site and its functionality which applies the above concepts as hermeneutic cycles and in another adapts and applies Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual methodology to this medium. The research evidence underpinning the paper: The case of Mondelez International MI is represented as a ‘reimagined company’: i.e., ‘a whole new company that has been reimagined with a single focus in mind’. The ‘whole new company’ has a fabricated name (the result of a staff competition), intended to represent a ‘delicious world’ (monde+delice). The organisation is also presented as a ‘house of brands’. On the home page a purple/white globe opens and brands leap out - rising, falling, appearing, disappearing accompanied by teardrops and then the word ‘welcome’ in various languages appears (Fig. 1).
Figure 1: Mondelez home page However, the corporation – in contradiction to its ‘newness’ - also presents a fabricated history: ‘while Mondelēz International is new, the company’s brands are as diverse and rich with heritage as the 170 countries in which its products are marketed’;; while the ‘Heritage’ web page contains a list of ‘Some of Our Founders’ (Fig 2), with photos and ‘short biographies’ of Kraft, Cadbury, Tobler, Suchard, etc. We suggest that this is an example of the invention of tradition, i.e., the appropriation of fragments of corporate history in order to legitimate the ‘new’ corporation.
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Figure 2: ‘Our founders’ In Our Values, Our Manifesto, the corporate manifesto evokes: ‘A world full of differences./Different lives…But really, we're all the same…We all seek joy’. From this perspective, the ‘actual class divisions of society’ (Best & Kellner 1999) – the global divisions of labour - are ‘abolished in the spectacle and replaced with signs of unified consumption which address everyone equally as consumers’ (Best & Kellner 1999). But while ‘we’ are all the same, the brands are ‘diverse and rich’. We cannot see the workers in the website – but we can see the ‘management team’ (represented by colour headshots), and the ‘founders’ (in sepia headshots). But what is most visible – and animated – are the bouncing brands (the ‘manipulated movement of the non-living’, Debord 1967), beside whom the founders maintain a spectral presence. Conclusions So how can we see through such revisionist history? In this paper, we argue that looking at the corporate website as a Late Baroque trompe l’oeil production is helpful in developing our understanding of what is going here. Trompe l’oeil is based on perspective as illusion. Those Late Baroque ceilings painted on the interiors of church domes are only coherent to the spectator from one fixed position. But when you move your perspective, the illusion collapses, you begin to see how it is fabricated. So such an approach helps us to ask: wait a minute, what’s going on here? What is not being shown? When you look away from the corporate website, the illusion of a unified corporation collapses: it is revealed as a spectacle – a neoliberal ‘hollow corporation’ assembled from fragments of history and tradition. References Best, S. & Kellner, D. 1999. Debord, cybersituations, and the interactive spectacle, SubStance, 28, 3/90:129156. Bourdieu, P. 1998. Practical reason: On the theory of action. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Debord, G. 1967/1977. The society of the spectacle. Accessed at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm Elliott, C and Robinson, S. (2012) ‘MBA Imaginaries – projections of internationalisation’. Management Learning. 43(2) 157-181. Elliott, C. & Robinson, S. (2013 forthcoming). Towards an understanding of Corporate Web Identity. In The Routledge Companion to Visual Organization. Bell, E., Warren, S. & Schroeder, J. London: Routledge. Hobsbawm, E. 1983. Introduction: Inventing Traditions, in Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, p. 1-14. Jessop, B. 2002. The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity. Kress G and van Leeuwen T (2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
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Masayasu Takahashi, Meiji University
[email protected] Thomas Taro Lennerfors, Uppsala University
[email protected] Learning and Inheriting Tacit Knowledge in Japanese organizations: Turning to the traditional notion of “Dojo” Abstract Up until now there has been plenty of debate about tacit knowledge. The SECI Model of Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) is well known, but there is reason to believe that the argument that the conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge in knowledge creation is overly optimistic. This is because tacit knowledge is indeed tacit for the very reason that it is unable to become explicit knowledge, which exposes a logical contradiction in the first instance. Tacit knowledge needs to be acquired or inherited as tacit knowledge, and a hint for how to accomplish this may be said to lay with the attention paid towards learning through participation in social practice and the social world that supports this (Takahashi & Lennerfors, 2012). Here, the proficiency of knowledgeable skills found within practices for learning tacit knowledge is achieved in communities of practice, which embody a creative process that generates the future, and which become institutionalized socially and culturally in places of activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The learning of skills is the positioning of learning within the process of participating in social communities in this manner. Furthermore, in Japan this manner of learning has since olden times been called “Shugyō”, which may mean “Ascetic” or “Spiritual Practice”, “Apprenticeship”, or “Training”. As can be discerned in expressions such as Judo, Kendo and the Way of Tea, traditionally the place of learning was the “Dojo”, and the learning of proficient skills, that is to say the process of learning tacit knowledge, was referred to as the “Way”. This type of traditional learning of tacit knowledge has been inherited within contemporary Japanese corporations, and in fact at many Japanese companies such as KDDI, including Toyota Kyushu, internship centers and education centers are referred to as “Dojo”. In certain cases, the workplaces of Japanese corporations that fundamentally employ OJT are also referred to in the same manner. These “Dojos” are communities of practice. They are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Knowledge is tacit as well as explicit, and sharing tacit knowledge requires interaction and informal learning processes such as storytelling, conversation, coaching, and apprenticeship of the kind that communities of practice provide (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). This space is the “Dojo”, and the “Way” is the process of “Satori” which is to understand the real significance of our world (Takahashi & Lennerfors, 2012). Our research engages the concept of the “Way” for a Communities Based View of Organizations (Takahashi, 2012) and discusses about learning and inheriting knowledgeable skills, that is to say, the learning of tacit knowledge in Japanese firms.
Toru Kiyomiya, Seinan Gakuin University, Japan
[email protected] Yasushi Masuda, Suido Kiko Kaisha, Ltd., Japan Shigeaki Hayashi, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Tradition as a Key to Organizing in the Crisis Situation of Natural Disaster: Japanese Discourse Perspective to Capitalist Mode of Organizing Abstract Japan experienced a tragic natural disaster when a tsunami struck on March 11, 2011, which caused an earthquake that resulted in approximately twenty thousand casualties in the Tohoku area, the northern part of Japan. The Japanese government estimated the cost to industry as 17 trillion yen, making it the worst financial damage resulting from a natural disaster in history. Approximately 29% of the domestic companies incurred losses, and 70% of companies had relationships with business partners and clients that were affected. Over 20 months, the number of corporate bankruptcies reached 1000 (Jijishinpo, 2012), 93% of which were caused by
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damages to business partners (Tokyo Shoko-Research, 2012). A key issue after the 3.11 disaster is to resume the business as soon as possible. The focus of this study is on the process of recovery from devastation with respect to reinstating the continuity of business relationships. According to Miura et al. (2012), there have been three ways of resuming business: self-recovery (Ji-jo: 自助), collaborative assistance (Kyo-jo: 共助) among competitors and suppliers, and public support (Ko-jo: 公助) from governments and public organizations, and they find effectiveness of collaborative assistance (Kyo-jo) when public support is not expected during a crisis. In this paper, we are interested in kyo-jo (collaborative assistance) as an alternative mode of organizing through exploring how devastated companies made sense of crisis through collaborating with competitors and community in order to resume their business, and we focus on such efforts of collaborative assistance. Three perspectives are considered to analyze the cases of the collaborative assistance; 1) social reality of crisis from constructionist point of view (postmodernist assumption of risks), 2) competing and shifting institutional logics (from market logic to community logic), and 3) traditional Japanese discourse as tradition of organizing. In this paper, in particular, we focus on cultural perspective that is contained in traditional Japanese discourse. We find collaborative assistance under capitalism usually centers on market competition, not cooperation. In this paper, we are interested in the collaboration that works in the crisis of the nonmarket system. Before the 3.11 disaster, popular discourse included the phrase “winners and losers” in life, which had been embedded in Japanese society and seemed to reflect a neoliberal economy. After the 3.11 disaster, kizuna (絆), “ties or relationship,” has become a popular discourse. We paid attention to this shift from the market-oriented discourse to the community-oriented discourse that has facilitated collaborative assistance. Particularly, we would like to discuss two key concepts of Japanese culture, Ko and Bushido, in conjunction with the related Japanese discourse. In our understandings, tradition is considered as discursive interactions in the long-term, and it is told and maintained in a community. Such discursive formation of Japanese tradition is strongly related to collaborative assistance in the crisis situation of the 3.11 disaster. This paper has the case studies of two devastated companies, and discourse analysis is conducted on the interview data. For data collection, our research team initially attempted to contact several companies in the 3.11 disaster areas. Two companies were willing to participate in 2011. These two companies are in Miyagi Prefecture, which suffered the highest number of casualties. Company A is cleaning sewage water facilities and is engaged in the intermediate processing of recycling (Case Study 1), whereas Company B is recycling industrial oil (Case Study 2). The narratives in the interviews are analyzed as sources of understanding social reality of the crisis situation. We particularly pay attention to discourse of risks and discourse of collaboration with regard to community. First, in the discourse analysis of risks, throughout interview data of two cases, our research finds that tsunami and earthquake are not the objective reality of risks among the organizational members, but rather risks are told in the local community as well as an organization and shared in their collective memory. Namely, an organization or a community is a locus of storytelling about risks, creating social reality of crisis and sharing it in the organizational collective memories. Another important finding in discourse analysis of risks is that the crisis is often told with regard to organizational survival (ikinokori in Japanese). Interviewees mentioned that their successful collaboration was one of effective way to survival with competitors. In this analysis, we find that Japanese discourse that contains tradition has influenced collaborative assistance (kyo-jo) as an alternative mode of organizing Second, in discourse analysis of collaboration, the discourse data shows emphasis on the relationships with two types of communities; business community and local community. In facts, the interviewees in both companies talked about many examples of collaboration with business and local communities. Their relational discourses that emphasize relationships seems to reflect Japanese discourse of義gi (rectitude) and 仁jin (benevolence). These discourses are strongly connected with the notion of respecting competitors and taking care for the counterparts. Thus, Japanese tradition is maintained though discursive interactions, and it emerged as an effective way to organizing in the crisis situation. In the end, we would like to discuss effectiveness of tradition with regards to critical perspectives. The market logic is no longer effective in the crisis situation, but collaborative assistance as alternative mode of organizing is effective while it is strongly related with Japanese traditional discourses. Before the 3.11 disaster, dominant discourses are to escalate competition and marketanization (discursive commodification). The dominant discourse after the disaster is to facilitate connecting people and enhance the relationships (discursive decommodification). An important implication is that community logic of discourse is effective in the crisis where the market economy does not work, and collaborative assistance is considered as a key to organizing in the crisis, instead of competition as the market logic of discourse. The disaster provides people with a chance to reconsider the market discourse, and they became aware that the daily lives are commodified in the world of capitalism. The tradition of Japanese organizing does not emphasize competition but emphasizes relationship, and thus articulation of relational discourse is a core of tradition in Japanese organizing that emerged in the crisis. In addition, community as discursive entity shares social reality of risks and crisis, which transform the dominant mode of market economy to an alternative mode of community discourse. Such transformation of
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decommodification with traditional Japanese discourses is discursively remedial, and deconstruction of commodification must be centered in the tradition of Japanese organizing. References Jijishinposya (2012). Bankruptcy related to the 3.11 Disaster (retrieved on November 16, 2012). [Online: http://newsbiz.yahoo.co.jp/detail?a=20121119-00000092-jijnb_st-nb] Tokyo Shoko-Research (2012) Bankruptcy related to the 3.11 Disaster (retrieved on December 14, 2012) [Online: http://www.tsr-net.co.jp/news/analysis/2012/1216027_2004.html]
INVENTING, DISRUPTING AND TRANSFORMING TRADITION Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm E5
Anna Laura Hidegh, Budapest Business School, Hungary
[email protected] Corporate Christmas: an Invented Tradition Managing the Symbolic Sphere of Organizations Abstract In this paper I would like to present the first results of an on-going research project on corporate Christmas using critical ethnography as research methodology. The changing traditions around Christmas season and re-interpretation of the meaning of Christmas in modern capitalist and consumerist societies turn Christmas into an exciting research topic for critical management scholars. In spite of this, Christmas has not been particularly popular with organizational scientists as a research topic, even though its economic significance could hardly be questioned (Hancock and Rehn 2011). Christmas is a special period of the year both from a manufacturing and a retail point of view, just as well as from a work organisation perspective (Hancock and Rehn 2011). This paper would like to continue breaking the silence around Christmas following Hancock and Rehn’s special issue in Organization by focusing on the way Christmas is celebrated at the workplace. In this paper I argue that Corporate Christmas can be considered as an invented tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) the purpose of which is to lend meaning to the present corporate existence by borrowing the symbols and the world of meaning of past traditions. Invented traditions were typically examined in their relation to the age of nation states, where the use of folk symbols was clearly politically loaded. According to my proposition, the situation is quite the same with companies, yet with a slightly different purpose: it does not serve the building of the national community and national identity, but to lend meaning to the workplace community and identity, and hence to create legitimacy for the economic system. As an analytical background, I rely upon Habermas’ theory of communicative action. Habermas (1981) argues that society has to be considered as the unity of system and lifeworld. The former is responsible for coordination through instrumental rationality which includes economic, political and administrative processes. The latter incorporates cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization which are reproduced through communicative action. His main thesis is that in modern societies the system colonizes the lifeworld causing pathologies in the latter’s reproduction processes. (Habermas 1981) In the organizational world, practices and interpretations related to instrumental rationality of the system dominate and crowd out the discourses and practices related to the everyday issues of the lifeworld. Management operates as a colonizing power: deploying symbols and ceremonies, it influences the processes through which people construct the meaning of and participate in social reality (Alvesson and Willmott 1996). Thus, management acts to substitute communicative practice with structures of conscience, language and action that align to the rules of instrumentality and utility (Hancock and Tyler 2008). Christmas as a festivity interrupts the flow of normal “everydays”, and has a symbolic significance, and thus, paradoxically, has an especially important role in the renewal of everyday corporate life. Christmas is a cultic festivity, and those in power have always strived to shape related traditions according to their own ideas. The Christian Church aligned the celebration of the birth of Jesus with the winter solstice, thereby sanctioning existing pagan traditions (Bálint 1973). The question is how the traditions and the symbolic system of Christmas change if and when they are brought into a corporate setting. How corporate Christmas, as a festivity with ritual and symbolic elements, does shape the reproduction process of the lifeworld: the renewal of the interpretive domain born by traditions, the reinforcement of social attachments and the construction of individual identities? Thus my attention turned to the investigation of management practices concerning Christmas which aim is to
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shape employees mind and behaviour in a conscious or unconscious way. The research questions touch upon three levels of analysis: - How cultural meanings and norms, interpersonal relationships and personal identities are reproduced during Christmas time at the workplace and on Christmas parties? - How do steering media affect these reproduction processes? - May lifeworld pathologies occur, and how do employees resist to colonizing efforts? The research methodology is a critical and partial ethnography. Critical, because the focus is on the control mechanisms; and the repressive and constraining aspect of corporate culture (Duberley and Johnson 2009). Partial, because it has a situational focus (Alvesson and Deetz 2000). As a field site, I have chosen a Hungarianowned multinational company in the IT industry with 1100 employees. In line with the recommendation of Alvesson and Deetz (2000), I spend a shorter period of time at the company, restricting my data collection efforts to the period around Christmas (2-3 month). I used participant observation and semi-structured interviews. I spend 2-3 days per week in the company as participatory observer, and I also took part at the Christmas party. I am conducting interviews with employees, managers, and HR associates responsible for organizing Christmas party. The analysis will follow what Alvesson and Sköldberg (2000) call ‘reflexive methodology’, which is based on triple hermeneutics. Research results cannot be discussed in this abstract yet, since research is in progress at the moment. References Alvesson, Mats, and Stanley Deetz. 2000. Doing Critical Management Research. Sage Publications. Alvesson, Mats, and Kaj Sköldberg. 2000. Reflexive Methodology. New Vistas for Qualitative Research. London: SAGE. Alvesson, Mats, and Hugh Willmott. 1996. Making Sense of Management: A Critical Introduction. Sage Publications Ltd. Bálint, Sándor. 1973. Karácsony, Húsvét, Pünkösd. (Christmas, Easter, Whitsun) Budapest: Neumann. Duberley, Joanne, and Phil Johnson. 2009. „Critical Management Methodology”. In Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott (eds), 345–368. The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies. Oxford University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. A kommunikatív cselekvés elmélete. (The Theory of Communicative Action) Budapest: Gondolat. Hancock, Philip, and Alf Rehn. 2011. „Organizing Chtistmas”. Organization 18 (6): 737–745. Hancock, Philip, and Melissa Tyler. 2008. „Beyond the Confines: Management, Colonization and the Everyday”. Critical Sociology (Sage Publications, Ltd.) 34 (1): 29–49. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Teresa Oultram, Keele Management School, UK
[email protected] Re-inventing tradition: The case of English Apprenticeships Abstract The paper is an empirical critique of the use of tradition in the field of apprenticeship education in England. The paper traces briefly the history of apprenticeship schemes over the last 300 years in order to provide the historical and cultural context in which the new apprenticeship scheme has been launched and supported by the current coalition government. In so doing the paper throws light on new forms of power and dominance that such a return to tradition may invoke: indeed, the apprenticeship discourses while building on the traditional values of providing education and employment has now been coupled with an enterprising and citizenship discourse in an attempt to normalise behaviour at an individual and institutional level. The paper shows how government is drawing on the tradition of apprenticeship to portray permanency and security in a time of ambiguity and insecurity. Many people appear to have a sentimentalized view of apprenticeships which harks back to a time when apprenticeships were epitomised as a ‘rite of passage’ into the world of work. A time when skills were gradually transferred from one generation to the next through a 5 to 7 year apprenticeship, with the trainee learning the skills by working side-by-side with a skilled ‘master’ of the trade or profession. This image of the apprentice is still invoked by the government despite the reality of contemporary apprenticeship often being very different. Most apprenticeships are of a much shorter duration, for example, the BIS (2012) apprentices’ survey found that 72% of apprenticeships lasted less than 2 years. Equally, the idea of apprenticeships to learn a skilled trade has also become questionable, with only a minority of apprenticeships being taught to advanced level (skilled occupation). Many occupations which have in the past been seen as semi-skilled and low-skilled are being translated into more ‘aspirational careers’ by requiring the
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worker to undertake an apprenticeship. The roles and activities of these jobs have not necessarily changed but through the apprenticeship scheme, the ‘skills’ become externalised and codified in order for them to be recognised and certified. So for example, today, the largest category of apprenticeships is within retail and hospitality. Thus the tradition of apprenticeships is being utilised in a way to give substance and reassurance to contemporary forms of workplace learning. At the same time as the government is using this stable image of the apprenticeship, it is also drawing on the rhetoric of the threat of global competition and continuous change, to impel the young workers to accept the role of enterprising workers who are flexible and always willing to adapt and upgrade their skills and abilities in anticipation of market needs (Zemblyas 2006). Whilst the apprentice is learning the skills for a particular occupation, he/she needs to accept that this is likely to only be a transitory phase, with the need to swap and change occupations throughout their life-course, as the capitalist system demands. Thus the framework for apprenticeships is no longer just about learning the skills for the job but also includes much more generic and transferrable skills, including elements of being a good citizen. Government policy on apprenticeships has also adapted to reflect the continual need to update skills and to switch career paths by opening up apprenticeships to anyone of working age. These ‘adult’ apprenticeships have actually become the growth area for new apprenticeships, with 71% of new starts in 2010/11 going to workers over 19 years of age (National Audit Office, 2012). The discourses surrounding the apprenticeship thus on the one hand draw on the traditions of the past to provide assurance to the learners that there is a stable career path, but on the other, that there is no such thing as a stable career path and that he/she will need to continually adapt and learn, in effect becoming the perpetual apprentice (Rikowski, 1999). References BIS (2012), “Evaluation of Apprenticeships: Learners”, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Research Paper 76, published May 2012 National Audit Office (2012), “Adult Apprenticeships”, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Skills Funding Agency National Apprenticeship Service, HC 1787 SESSION 2010–2012 Rikowski, G. (1999), “Nietzsche, Marx and Mastery: The Learning unto Death” in Ainley, P. and Rainbird, H. (eds) Apprenticeship – towards a new paradigm of learning, London: Kogan Page: 62-73 Zemblyas, M. (2006), “Work-based learning, power and subjectivity: creating space for a Foucauldian research ethic”, Journal of Education and Work, 19(3):291-303
Sarah Eagen, Parsons, The New School, US
[email protected] Cheryl Hsu, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
[email protected] Nicole Bezuin, Toronto, Canada James Warrack, Ryerson University, Canada
[email protected] Wendy Cukier, Ryerson University, Canada
[email protected] “Honey I’m Home”: Disrupting Traditional Gender Roles In SitComs Abstract Our interest is the presentation and disruption of the sitcom as a representation of traditional gender roles. Just as Emma Bell (2008) argues TV and film can provide resources to inform critical reflection on organizations, this project drew on extensive theories about the role of art in organizations and society as well as theories of the interaction between broad cultural carriers and organizations. Situational comedy is a dominant cultural form that has shaped our expectation and assumptions about the nuclear family, patriarchy and gender relations (Olson and Douglas, 1997; Butsch, 1992; Shabbaz, 2005; Dalton and Linder, 2005; Scott, 2011). This paper extends their theoretical framework through a participatory action research case study of a popular collaborative participatory art exhibit – “Honey I’m Home!” - that was part of a contemporary art festival in Toronto. Sponsored by the Diversity Institute, a research and practice organization
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aimed at promoting inclusive environments, the project was conceived, produced and evaluated by a team lead by three young female artists – a filmmaker and director, an installation artist and curator and a painter with the support of an extensive team of professionals and volunteers. The exhibit, “Honey I’m Home!”, was interactive film installation which allowed the audience to co-create episodes of a situational comedy (sit com) by playing the role of “father” regardless of race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or age. The intent of the project was to disrupt both the genre of sit com as well as the stereotypical notions of “family”. The Nuit Blanche exhibit is an interactive video art piece that consists of film and live-television elements. The exhibit parodies the familiar formula of situational comedies, or “sitcoms” of the 1990’s, specifically the popular representation of the archetypal Caucasian nuclear family and their formulaic plots. The episodes depict a traditional sitcom setting: a mother and her two children in dialogue with the father character. However, the role of the father will be missing from this pre-filmed segment, and instead performed live by the guests of Nuit Blanche. Participants of any age, gender, cultural background, and sexual orientation assumed the role of the sitcom father figure. The guest-actor delivered the father’s lines from cue cards, performing without the context of the situation and the other characters within it. The footage of the “father” during Nuit Blanche was then inserted into the pre-filmed episode and broadcast live outside on a projection screen. The intent of the installation was described as follows: As Nuit Blanche guests view this outdoor broadcast, they will recognize the traditional aesthetic and content of a sitcom. However, the inclusion of our unusually cast “father” figure will disrupt and challenge their expectations of conventional gender roles, and the constructed sitcom form. Instead of mindlessly consuming the media, we allow viewers to participate in the process of production. Through this experience, the participants are privy to elements that construct the sitcom. They learn that the culturally engrained power dynamics assumed by patriarchal “father” role are determined by the writers and producers of media, and experience firsthand the absurdity of the stereotypes by stepping into his shoes. The collaboration was produced by three female artists who assumed specific equal roles as 1) artistic director 2) business manager 3) producer who mediated between the other two. The production involved more than 50 professional and volunteer artists, screenwriters, writers, musicians, film editors, designers, technicians, stage crew, actors and others and engaged more than 60 audience members in 60 five minute film episodes created during a 12 hour exhibition period. Two faculty members acted as advisors – one on the production side and the other on the business side. The process took place over a xx month period, from the creation and submission of the original proposal to a competitive review process in November 2010 to the Exhibition September 2011 and follow up. The critical stages in the process included: 1) Submission of the proposal 2) Acceptance of proposal and assignment of space (it was a site specific project) 3) Revisions to proposed project 4) Assembling the team 5) Securing initial financing 6) Writing three five minute episodes 7) Writing musical score 8) Securing film space and equipment 9) Securing additional sponsors and financing 10) Hiring professional actors 11) Set construction and costume design 12) Rehearsals 13) Filming prepared segments 14) Fundraising events 15) Editing prepared film segments 16) Designing technical aspects of live performance 17) Marketing and promotion 18) Set up in public space 19) Live performances inter-spliced with prepared footage and projected live to audience 20) Take down 21) Wrap up and evaluation. Method The research method employed was a participatory action research case study using a variety of data sources. The entire process was documented through diaries, correspondence and notes taken by the participants. In addition, surveys were conducted of the team members (15) as well as the audience (50) and 20 video interviews
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were undertaken with the audience and members. In addition, all of the production materials and processes as well as raw and edited film footage documented the process. Some of the material was used for an evaluation of the program itself. Results The outcomes of the event can be viewed from a variety of perspectives. On the evening of the presentation, more than 500 people attended the exhibition with close to 100 actively participating in the creation and filming of episodes. The exhibition was highly rated and received extensive media coverage. From a managerial perspective, the event was a success given its technological complexity, the challenges of drawing in an audience and raising sufficient fund to cover the costs. From an educational perspective the participants rated the experience as valuable and documented a wide range of learning and the interplay between the artistic, didactic and economic objectives of the event while at times creating tension, overall resulted in a high quality experience. From an audience satisfaction perspective, the evaluations were highly rated and the number of attendees who sat through multiple screenings was a strong indication of success. The entertainment value and production quality were extraordinary, given the scale of the undertaking. The parodying of the genre – and exposure of the unreality of the representation, reinforced by the interaction of live actors with pre-filmed footage (shown over and over and over again with different participants) was effective according to the audience survey. In spite of the fact that the genre itself was being ridiculed, the extent to which the audience, was excited to have the opportunity to achieve their 5 minutes of screen-time was an astonishing homage to the pervasiveness of celebrity culture. When names were drawn, for example, individuals shrieked with excitement and their friends gathered around to watch the spectacle of men, women, children performing the role of “dad”. In terms of the artistic objectives of the event which were to disrupt stereotypes in a playful, engaging, interactive way, the results are less clear. From the evaluations it would seem that individuals who came to the exhibit with well developed understandings of gender identity and sexual orientation politics, the impact was clear – they got it. On the other hand, individuals not aware of the complexity of these issues, basically “saw” in a different way. For example rather than viewing the women in the role of father as a challenge to conventional patriarchal notions of nuclear families, they seemed only to see it as humorous. When the drag queen and Toronto based performer - Fay Slift appeared - there was little evidence of the perception of “disruption” rather the reaction seemed to be shaped by deeply ingrained notions of humour associated with men in women’s clothes. In this regard, there is something of a paradox with respect to the didactic objectives of the performance.
Takaya Kawamura, Osaka City University, Japan
[email protected] Chisako Takashima, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, Japan
[email protected] Materiality and Subjectivity of Modern Tradition: A critical analysis of the transformation of modern food tradition Abstract This paper analyses the transformation of Japanese food tradition in the 1960s and 1970s as the interactive processes of citizens, food-related organizations, nutrition/health professionals, and the nation-state government. It explores how the “disembedding” (Giddens, 1990) of material activities of food-related organizations concerning raw food producing, processing, distribution, and consumption (cooking and dining), on the one hand, and the transformation of subjectivity and identity of citizens, on the other hand, proceeded in a mutually constitutive relationship, and resulted in (un-intended) drastic changes in the food tradition in a rapidly developing economy. The objective of this historical study is to obtain theoretical and practical implications for critically examining the contemporary “invention” and “re-embedding” of modern food traditions, which needs to be understood both as “rationalization”, “systematization”, and “commodification” of food-related activities that are often proposed and driven by food-related organizations and as the citizens’ subjective processes of “appropriation” (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, and Negus, 1997) of the materiality that those organizations provide. While we see a recent growing interest among Western societies in “Japanese food” as a healthier, and often alleged as a more sophisticated and thus finer, alternative to Western food, Japanese government and food authorities have found it extremely difficult to define “Japanese food tradition” in its attempts to apply for UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. One of difficulties in the attempts of “definition” is that ordinary foods in
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contemporary Japan are so diverse and “seemingly so different” from what Japanese people used to eat until the 1950s and from “de-facto standard of Japanese food” widely appropriated by Western societies such as Sushi, Sashimi and Tempura. Another difficulty is that if the government and authorities define Japanese food tradition in terms of domestic agricultural produce and sea food to protect domestic agriculture and fishery and to safeguard against cheap foreign (and sometimes genetically modified) produce, it might accelerate the tendency of genuine traditional Japanese food to become finer and more expensive dining. The historical origin of these difficulties, in our understanding, can be found in the 1960s and 1970s of the rapid economic growth. From the perspectives of the institutional approaches to organization studies (Seo and Creed, 2002; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Scott, 2008) and the cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, 1987), we analyze statistics of food producing, processing, distribution, and consumption in this period as well as extant studies on food tradition and culture in Japan. We especially focus on the changes in vegetable consumption in relation to changes in vegetable producing, processing, and distribution. Inspired by the conceptualization of “artifacts as carriers of institutional knowledge”, we aim at answering the question of how changes in vegetable producing, processing, and distribution, and consumption have transformed Japanese food tradition, especially of home cooking, by helping housewives create new institutional knowledge in the forms of time-saving “Westernized Japanese” national-standard home dishes. The historical and anthropological studies on food tradition and system in Japan have argued that Japanese food tradition experienced a remarkable transformation in the 1960s and 1970s. The transformation can be characterized by an increased consumption of meat, dairy products, and fat/oil at home in the forms of foreign, especially Western, cuisines, and also by a corresponding decreased consumption of rice as the staple food (Figure 1). Most textbook explanations attribute this drastic change of food tradition to a rapid change in citizens’ preferences. They emphasize that Japanese people in this period became fonder of Westernized food because of (1) a strong “desire” to enjoy affluent American-style living, which had become affordable to larger population thanks to the rapid economic growth, and (2) continued governmental and nutrition/health professional campaigns that urged people to eat more nutritious dishes that used more meat, dairy products, and fat/oil. Figure 1 Food consumption in Japan from 1955 to 2008
Source: Ministry of Agriculture (1970) “Food Consumption Statistics 1968,” Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, “Food Consumption Statistics” as of May 28, 2008.
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Our research findings suggest that in addition, and prior, to these “seemingly-natural” human desire and governmental/professional guidance, such material factors as prices and availability of raw food as well as the conveniences of purchasing, storage and cooking at home should be taken into consideration to understand this drastic change. Among various raw foods, we focus on vegetables that showed a symbolic shift in the consumption pattern compared with fish and meat. We would argue that it might be simply more rational for Japanese people in the 1960s and 1970s to consume more Western vegetables such as cabbage, potato, carrot, onion, lettuce, tomato, and green pepper than “Japanese” vegetables such as spinach, Chinese cabbage, leek, Japanese radish, burdock, and eggplant. Although senior Japanese still preferred conventional dishes such as simmered or pickled “Japanese” vegetables for daily meals, most “Japanese” vegetables experienced higher price increases, larger difficulties in constant year-round supply, and less conveniences in purchasing, storage, and cooking at homes compared with Western vegetables. It naturally led to a striking decrease in cooking conventional dishes. We also argue that such decline of conventional dishes did not result in the simple increase of Western dishes such as beefsteak, roast beef, omelette, hamburgers, or fried chickens accompanied by bread. Instead, utilizing Western vegetables that became less expensive and were easier to purchase, store, and cook at home kitchens, Japanese housewives created new “national” home dishes such as “curry rice,” “Hamburg-style steak,” and deep-fried fish and meat (Furai and Kara–age). As a product of “negotiated interpretations” (Hall, 1980), these new “national standard” home dishes can be considered as still belonging to the lineage of conventional dishes because they were regarded as more gorgeous, nutritious, and economical accompaniments to boiled rice as the conventional staple food. We conclude with some critical discussions, from the perspectives of social complexity theory (Letiche, 2008; 2011), on the contemporary issues concerning food traditions considering the mutually constitutive nature of the material foundations that neo-liberal food-related organizations provide and the subjectivity and identity construction of citizens.
REVISION AND CRITIQUE Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am E5
Yasushi Fukuhara, Senshu University, Japan
[email protected] Yasushi Masuda, Suido Kiko Kaisha, Ltd., Japan A Revision of Japanese-style Management: reconciling the paradox of entrepreneurship in an organization Abstract Middle management has played an important role in Japanese companies for a long time. Middle managers have provided their leadership in the field of R&D and production. For instance, they often force through their ideas for the product development in R&D projects behind the back of their boss even if they are not approved by him or her. Such a deviant behavior sometimes leads to product innovation. Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) argues that middle management functions as catalysts or promoters for knowledge creating in the R&D and production, and becomes a source of competitive advantage in Japanese companies. That is, entrepreneurial behaviors of middle management have given product and process innovation to companies. Their entrepreneurial behaviors have been encouraged by leadership style of top management. Top managers in Japanese companies tend not to give precise instruction but to offer a general outline to their subordinates on the job. It just appears that such a leadership style is considered as not much top-down with entrepreneurship but rather bottom-up with delegating. In that sense, we could probably say that strong entrepreneurship often prevents organizational members from taking their entrepreneurial behavior. Such a leadership style of top management in Japanese companies, however, has become dysfunctional in recent years. Fukuhara (2011, 2013) points out some dysfunctions in terms of the above advantage of Japanesestyle management by critical discourse analysis and concludes that high group cohesiveness and the introduction of American-style management like performance-based pay system caused such a dysfunction. That is, top management in Japanese companies doesn't articulate a vision and strategy with entrepreneurship, which makes it impossible for middle managers to justify their deviant behaviors by appealing to them in combination with peer pressure through the high group cohesiveness. In addition, American HRM such as performance-based pay
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system deprives a company of organizational slack so that middle managers never venture into innovation through deviant behaviors and tend to accomplish an easy goal. In fact, Japanese middle managers sometimes have spun out for founding a company because it's difficult for them to realize their innovative ideas in existing companies. In this context, it can be said that the entrepreneurship of top management is too important for organizational members to take their entrepreneurial behaviors in an organization. As above mentioned, the entrepreneurship of top management encourages and discourages organizational member to take their entrepreneurial behaviors in an organization. What creates a borderline in terms of these two functions of entrepreneurship? The aim of this research is to clarify this research question through discourse analysis of followers' perception toward leadership. Since Shumpeter argued, the term of entrepreneurship has been multifariously defined by a lot of social scientists and then is extremely equivocal. In general, it means a spirit and behavior to create an innovative product, service and business process. Entrepreneurship, therefore, can be asserted by everyone in an organization (Drucker,1985). Entrepreneur is often motivated by not extrinsic rewards such as money and promotion but intrinsic rewards such as needs of esteem and achievement because he or she often has integrity and professionalism. Japanese companies had offered a position to employees as an incentive to make them work harder in the past. As a result, most companies were overstaffed at the middle management level. Middle managers, however, had traditionally taken entrepreneurial behavior in their companies. They exhibited their proactive behaviors to their subordinates so that lower managers were also able to exert entrepreneurship by observation learning. Such a virtuous cycle was the big engine of innovation in Japanese companies. But as is well known, most Japanese companies in particular electronics makers have struggle to survive in the global market place. Some researchers points out the delay of strategic decision making as one of failure factors. Because the bottom-up process in Japanese companies has high cost for coordination and thus delay strategic decision they must make rapidly. How do companies balance entrepreneurship at diverse levels in an organization? We start to review some studies of entrepreneurship, in particular, in relation to leadership literatures and discuss the Japanese term of ‘Kuki’ that strongly influences behaviors of Japanese people both in a positive and negative way. ‘Kuki’ directly means air and indirectly implies mood in Japanese. Japanese people are apt to read Kuki (the situation) excessively and bite their tongue. ‘Kuki’, therefore, often suppresses Japanese behavior and decision-making. Reizen (2006) distinguishes between ‘Kuki’ of relationship and ‘Kuki’ of field. The former is defined as a dyadic relationship that one person and the other tacitly share. The latter is defined as an atmosphere that general public tacitly hold in common. He insists the issue of power politics or hegemony rises when people bring ‘Kuki’ of relationship into ‘Kuki’ of field. We focus on and critically interpret this ‘Kuki’ to resolve an issue of paradox in terms of entrepreneurship. As a result, we will suggest a coexistence model of entrepreneurship in an organization as a revision of traditional management-style in Japanese companies. References Drucker, P.F. 1985. Innovation and Entrepreneurship, New York: Harper & Row. Fukuhara, Y. 2011. A Critical Interpretation of Bottom-Up Management and Leadership Style in Japanese Companies: With Focus on Empowerment and Trust, Proceedings for Critical Management Studies 7th conference (Naples, Italy). Fukuhara, Y. 2013. The Dark Side of Japanese-Style Management: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Followers' Perception of Leadership, Senshu Management Journal, 2: 1-13. Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. 1995. The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press. Reizen, A. 2006. Kankei no Kuki Ba no Kuki [Air of Relationship and Air of Field], Koudansha. Sharma, P. and Chrisman, J.J. 1999. Toward a Reconciliation of the Definitional Issues in the Field of Corporate Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 23(3): 19-39.
David Sköld, Uppsala University, Sweden
[email protected] Revision, Critique Abstract This paper revisits the joint works of Deleuze and Guattari’s on Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972/1983; 1980/1987), to explore to what extent the politics of desire they proscribe, stills holds a potential for critiquing and resisting the dynamics of the contemporary capitalist machinery. In a times when innovation strategies often look to the customer’s input in different guises – in the form of creativity (in, e.g., co-creation), production (in, e.g., crowd-sourcing), or even financing (in, e.g., crowd funding) – the creative ethos often ascribed to Deleuze and Guattari’s political philosophy has as of late been accused of re-enacting and reinforcing the machinic
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workings it was once supposed to counteract. Slavoj Žižek (2004) has for instance suggested that this politics has been subject to shrewd appropriation by the same forces that motivated Deleuze and Guattari to launch their critique in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Others, such as Daniel Smith (2004), have however argued that Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking in fact eludes the kind of criticism that for instance Žižek has directed towards it. In the light of this debate, and of contemporary management ideals, the paper seeks to revise the critique issued towards Deleuze and Guattari’s political project. References Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1972/1983) Anti-Oedipus. University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1980/1987) A Thousand Plateaus. University of Minnesota Press. Smith, D.W. (2004) The Inverse Side of the Structure: Žižek on Deleuze on Lacan, Criticism 46(4): 635-650. Žižek, S. (2004) Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. Routledge.
Thomas Taro Lennerfors, Uppsala University, Sweden
[email protected] Can traditionalism be critical? Exploring the potential of tradition for critical thought Abstract This paper aims to discuss the connections between tradition and critique. It will do a literature review of Critical Management Studies and Management and Organization Studies discussing possible turns to tradition as a form of critiquing Western modern society. I will also connect to discussions about tradition in philosophy, for example the work of Simon Critchley and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Toru Kiyomiya, Seinan Gakuin University, Japan Thomas Taro Lennerfors, Uppsala University, Sweden Masayasu Takahashi, Meiji University, Japan David Sköld, Uppsala University, Sweden Concluding and Closing Remarks
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STREAM 21: MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND THE LIBERAL ARTS: CRISIS AS OPPORTUNITY Bogdan Costea, Kostas Amiridis, Norman Crump
SESSION 1 Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm H6
Mary Godwyn, Babson College The Odd Couple: Can Management Education and Liberal Arts Work Together Without Driving Each Other Crazy? Abstract In the Neil Simon play, The Odd Couple, Felix Unger, a culturally-sophisticated, newly-divorced man, moves in with his friend, Oscar Madison, a street-smart, rough-around-the-edges, sports columnist. Hilarity ensues. The comedic situations revolve around the interplay between Felix’s refined tastes – he enjoys opera, gourmet dining, and is compulsively neat, and Oscar’s cavalier attitude – he is slovenly, impulsive, and is a habitual gambler. The audience is left to wonder, can these two men live together, without driving each other crazy?” In some ways, the relationship between liberal arts and management education parallels the Felix and Oscar caricature. Liberal arts offerings are often dismissed as intellectual and academic; management courses are useful and practical. Liberal arts are far from exigent real-world problems, too delicate and theoretical to offer serious solutions. Management, on the other hand, is situated within the domain of business and involves various types of market exchange, giving it immediate economic significance, a vitality associated with action and a self-evident importance. Within the academy, these orientations have erroneously become defined as polar opposites, undermining the power and effectiveness of each. Recognizing this, Mary Parker Follett urges us to become thinking-doers; she writes: Many of us are ashamed of our ‘mechanical age’…but we must realize that our daily living may itself become an art, that in commerce we may find culture, in industry idealism, in our business system beauty, in mechanics morals…Only when the spirit of art rises from the roots of our mechanical age will it ‘redeem our civilization.’ The divorce of our so-called spiritual life from our daily activities is a fatal dualism. We are not to ignore our industry, commerce, etc., and seek spiritual development elsewhere; on the other hand we shall never find it in these, but only by an eternal influence and refluence.” (Follett 1924/1995: 60) The argument here is that liberal arts and management education are irrevocably entangled and mutually interdependent. When we ignore that central to liberal arts education is the critical evaluation of and determination to act upon the most pressing economic and political issues, we trend into idealism and irrelevance. When we forget that management education must be engaged with and constantly attendant to the development and redevelopment of intellectual and ethical foundations, we plunge into corruption, alienation and environmental disaster. The solution is for liberal arts and management education to work together – without driving each other crazy. In this paper, I argue that a liberal arts and management education might most productively be integrated on the basis of ethics and entrepreneurship.
Carl Rhodes, University of Leicester ‘Permission Taking’ and Critical Pedagogy in the MBA Abstract “Business and liberal learning must be woven together to prepare students for their professional roles and work and also prepare them for lives of social contribution and personal fulfilment” (p. 2). So says the Carnegie report Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education (Colby et al. 2012). In the increasingly vocationalized university the report distinguishes undergraduate from MBA education – suggesting that a first degree should
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be a preparation for life that does not mirror the more functionally focussed MBA curriculum. But the MBA is not without its critics either – criticisms that in many cases echo the issues that the Carnegie report surfaces about undergraduate education. The MBA has been said to be a vanilla course that reinforces ‘functional silos’ of business knowledge (Navarro, 2008). Even worse, this functionalism has been held to account for “propagating ideologically inspired amoral theories” that serve as a “pretence for knowledge” (Ghoshal, 2005: 75). The MBA has also been implicated in the “the systemic failure of leadership that led to the current financial crisis” not the least because it has privileged function over values (Podolny, 2009: 63). Beyond the details of the critique of business education there are two interesting features of these dialogues. The first is that they are couched in the language of crisis, just as they have been so many times before (Thomas, 1997). MBA programs, we are told, are at the crossroads – they need to leave the solitary path of developing analytical business functionaries, and embark on the enlightened road of managerial “values, attitudes and beliefs” (Datar, Garvin and Cullen, 2010). The epochal vision is for fundamental change. The second feature is that the solution – the road out of the crisis – is most commonly said to be found through structural and curricula changes to business education programs, with scant attention to syllabus and pedagogy. We are told of the need to revisit the whole organization of the programs, refocusing the entire ethos of our endeavours to this or that. It’s all very macho – big changes implemented by big men … the others will follow. With stinging irony, the chief protagonist of this narrative, the one who can navigate the crisis is still that character who is the hero of the MBA narrative – the manager – in this case the educational manager. Answers lie, we are advised, in the management and organization of business education such that the required changes can be boldly implemented and the problems of the past be cast asunder in the awe of the new. What is especially notable about this narrative is the relative absence of the educator as anything but a receiver of managerial imperative. If there is a role for that lonely person who inhabits the class room it is just to be beholden to the whims and fancies of those epochally minded managers who thrive on the crisis as the raisond’etre of their own leadership prowess. Management education might get questioned, but managerial selfimportance and the grand pretensions of its own agency escape unreflexively unscathed. So what then for this seemingly minor character – the educator who teaches in a classroom? If this figure to be accepted as an epiphenomena swept away by the all-encompassing narrative of crisis and progress? Is the educator to be considered only in terms of how he or she can implement the curriculum that is handed down from educational authorities? This paper will consider these questions in relation to the possibilities for how pedagogy can be enacted in the MBA classroom and how this might emerge from long standing relationship between management research, the liberal arts and the humanities. The very idea that pedagogy in the MBA classroom might somehow be disciplined by functionalist and managerialist forces will be dismantled in favour of the possibilities and realities of the enactment of critical pedagogy in the MBA. The possibilities for an MBA education that is ‘relevant’ to managers will be discussed by reformulating the meaning of ‘relevance’ in a liberal-critical tradition – one where what is relevant is that which enables managers to question and reformulate their own professional practice. Moreover these changes do not require managerial decree, but are at the disposal of educators without recourse to bureaucratic approval. In many sense what is marked out here is a pedagogy that resists such authority and self- reinstates the agency of the educator. It is suggested that critical pedagogy and more specifically Critical Management Education are a vehicle for this if the goals are less about handing over an approved bag of tools to students and more about providing opportunities for developing an enhanced understanding of managerial practice through an engagement with the dilemmas, ideas and contradictions that are inherent to management.
François Fourcade, ESCP Europe, Luca Paltrinieri, CIRPP, Valentin Schaepelynck, Université Paris 8 Is critique “teachable”? Action-research and humanities in a French business school Abstract This paper aims to investigate the role Humanities can play in the construction of an “alternative” management perspective, viewing the pedagogical approaches practiced in French management education context. Not only we’ll demonstrate how research can be a tool for a critical self-education as well as underline the real difficulties and contradictions of such perspective. We will explore two researches carried out in cooperation with French business school HEC. This research is developed by the Center for Pedagogical Research and Innovation (CIRPP), a research lab of the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, having as mission to foster innovation and accompany organizational development in some well-known management universities and business schools (HEC, ESCP-Europe, Novancia, ESIEE). The CIRPP approach finds its roots into Kurt Lewin’s action research (Lewin, 1997) and is
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close to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, which allows teachers to develop a critical look at their own teaching practice (McKinney, 2004). Principles of the New Public Management governance, especially when applied in public services, have become a common sense for a large part of the Left oriented researches in France. Nevertheless, without giving the tools that could really transform the neoliberal paradigm. Even in a critical perspective, more and more analysis emphasize neoliberal governance as an invincible force that we only could observe and describe from an external point of view : “crisis” is depicted as a disease addressed to our whole “civilization”, as if it was a destiny/prophecy of total powerlessness of social agents. This lack of critical perspectives may show as well that transforming neoliberal management is a hard task, in so far as this governance, based on nanotechnologies (Pezet, 2010), changes pedagogical and microsocial relations between workers and with him/herself. A certain sort of pedagogical relation is very connected with the neoliberal management. In France, many reports about management and business education advisethe introduction of Humanities subjects in business schools as an alternative to the mainstream curricula (FNEGE, 2010). Philosophy, Sociology, History and Literature are often seen as an alternative of economic, financial, management knowledge: liberal arts need “long-term” reflexion to face the short-term perspectives of current industries and private companies. On the other hand, Humanities promote reflexion and give complexity to management’s quest – the search of (a more) effective action. Thus, Humanities are supposed to “empower” and emancipate actors by giving them critical competencies: if financial crisis is been thought as a disease, abstract ethical knowledge is supposed to be the antidote. However can the classical teaching of “humanities” really improve the criticism of management students habitus (Bourdieu)? How to change these times of endless crises into the crisis of neoliberal subjective disposition, within future managers? Assuming that management relations imply a certain pedagogy, it seems that its transformation supposes an alternative pedagogy and not only another sort of teachable knowledge. We’ll explore this issue from two cases of critical management education that we’ve observed. The first case concerned a Chair created between Renault and the Business School HEC, whose title is “Multicultural Management and Enterprises Performances”. The great interest of this Chair is to understand “humanities” not as theoretical knowledge that would be injected in student’s minds like “moral principles” but as skills that can improve their research abilities. Conceived by an historian (Eric Godelier, Polytechnique) and a critical sociologist (Eve Chiapello, HEC), the Chair is based on a research-action approach: French, Indians, Japanese students have passed 6 months working about a real issue in a French automobile company, far from their country. Ethnographical, sociological and historical knowledge are mobilized to make a real research on a fieldwork. Being on a company as a researcher and not as a manager (in search of effectiveness) is a great experience, which enables students to develop a reflexive attitude. Nevertheless, this attitude can often induce a real misunderstanding with company’s leaders, who are looking for a diagnostic that can be useful and offer concrete and real solutions. So the underpinning question is the “use” of critical knowledge: it can change the organization or only give skills that future managers can sell on the work market. The second case shows an apparently similar contradiction. The master “Alternative Management”, created by Eve Chiapello in HEC in 2006, promote an approach that gives an important place to social economy and sustainable development, without staying only inside those limits, it tries to enable students to write research on very different et concrete subjects - co-workers places, social habitations…This curricula not only gives an important place to social sciences - a place that is really perceptible in the contents of the courses given - but to a “researcher attitude” that is able to put any object in question, asking about this hypothesis and principles behind economical decisions. Here “Humanities” are not only the “contents” of teaching, but something like the way those contents can be embodied in an ability to question different sort of states of things. As the previous case, this one can also be put in question, in particularly regarding the paradox of something like a “critical training”. This Master seems to address itself to rated “good students” and tend to mobilize their rational capacities in a critical approach of management. In which sense it proposes or not a critical or alternative pedagogy ? Based on those two empirical observations, we’ll question the paradoxes and perspective of critical management education, considering the critical pedagogy as a privileged field to ask this question. According to us, the two cases show that crises of capitalism not only can impact social sciences but, above all, the way business schools consider their own forms of teaching. From this observation, we will question how this type of education is facing the demand of a critical perspective in management, knowing that it tries to introduce “nonconformist” curricula based on what social sciences are able to teach.
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Michał Zawadzki, Jagellonian University, Cracow Novel as an emancipatory case study in management learning Abstract In my paper I would like to consider the condition of modern management education using the perspective of Critical Management Education (Contu 2009; Grey 2004). This kind of reflection is relevant, because management education as currently practised in western Europe and USA is strongly based on positivistic paradigm which constitutes strong concern about economic efficiency without the concern about the human dignity or freedom in organizational reality. Thus, I would like to defend the thesis, that knowledge transferred through the process of modern management learning is parochial, pernicious, and danger for human. The economic and technical perspective of human, management and world, deep-rooted in management learning is seen today as the “one best way” of thinking. As a result, there is still little humanities in curriculum of business schools and also in curriculum in university’s programs of management learning, so there is little chance to teach students (managers) how to think in the critical way. Thus, management education don’t equip students with an adequate management competences - critical thinking is one of the most important competency which can make possible to cope with the complex cultural and social problems associated with the modern organizational world. It is connected with the fact, that without the extensive, transdisciplinary knowledge delivered by humanities, there is no chance for manager to be really concerned for people engaged in organizational practice (Kostera 2012). Curriculum of modern management education has to be radically changed in more humanistic direction. This change must constitute a kind of deviation from traditional curriculum and must include experimentation with art and popular culture (Czarniawska, Gagliardi 2006). According to this I would like to consider using novels as a emancipatory case study in management learning. I am trying to show that novel can be treated by managers, academics and teachers as an act of reading the world, which in turn need to be interpreted (Czarniawska 1999). Thus, reading novels might produce creative insights into the practices of organizing and can develop the discourse of management sciences. Novels may help to grasp processes that are inaccessible for the scientific theory, and which are sometimes theoretically cumbersome for the theorists and managers. They can saturate the researcher’s and manager’s competences and enable them to develop their knowledge about the organizations and management in the more courageous way. In the other words, reading the novels is the process that leads to develop an organizational imagination (Czarniawska, Gagliardi 1994). I believe that a novel, as Milan Kundera believes, is a laboratory of human existence which demonstrates the “carnival of relativity” of values and norms. Good novels have always complex plots, experimental structures, paradoxical resolutions - reading them, both in a research mode and in a teaching mode, offers a variety of insights not always easily accessible in field studies. After all, claims Milan Kundera: "The novel dealt with the unconscious before Freud, the class struggle before Marx, it practiced phenomenology (...) before the phenomenologists" (“The Art of The Novel”). Thus the point is not that managers and scientists are to become literary critics, but that the wisdom of novels can make the constructive de-construction of their particular point of view in the process of studying and experiencing the organizational world. But the materialization of this change depends on the appropriate strategy of reading. The ambition of narrative analysis in management sciences and management education should be an inspired reading, as Richard Rorty calls it, which is not aimed at gathering information from the novel but which is subjective and idiosyncratic. The creative nature of learning is enhanced by knowledge through experience. Thus, knowledge must involve the creation of knowledge through the personal experience without the personal contact and experience with the text (novel’s narration as well as the scientific one) we cannot say that someone acquire the knowledge. As Hermann Hesse shows in his novels, the processes of reading and learning are real only when they are connected with an existential triad “Experience–Awakening– Transformation” on the ground of reader’s subjectivity. So I am trying to prove that an appropriate way of reading, which can be described as an “explosive” contact with the narration can lead an individual to “symbolic revolution” (Pierre Bourdieu) and constitutes the critical distance to the external world - can contribute to a “existential awakening”.
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SESSION 2 Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am H6
David Anderson, University of Lincoln Sociomaterial Assemblages in Critical Management Education: Setting Uncertainty and Tracing Practice Abstract An empirical contribution is offered which draws from a 10 month deep field ethnography in a UK University. The study traces a pedagogy which integrates sociology of translation with management education. The focus of this paper is on an innovation used in teaching to create an extended period of uncertainty in Higher Education learning. This paper foregrounds attempts to settle uncertainty into the pedagogical approach, traces performances of students as they make sense of uncertainty and reveals powerful actors which resist uncertainty as a vehicle for learning. Three contributions are made, firstly, the materials and discourses are revealed which were enrolled to stabilise uncertainty within the pedagogy. Secondly, the brief, an actor inscribed with uncertainty, is followed into distant spaces to reveal student performances of education as they organise with uncertainty. Finally, resistances are revealed which face uncertainty in the dynamics of Higher Education. Universities face multiple demands and operate within contexts of tension. Demands stem from a variety of sources including communities of business, research, and education. The Higher Education sector aims to satisfy the concerns of each community, however, in practice these communities value mutually exclusive educational outputs, designing management education is a political practice. The recent expansion of management education across the UK has prompted critics to again question the function of business schools (Grey, 2002, 2004; Starkey, Hatchuel and Tempest, 2005) which are now under increased pressure to respond to the concerns of these communities and justify the value and relevance of management education to the ‘real world’ (Schiller, 2011). Consider two competing discourses shaping management education. First, the demand from industry for graduates educated with skills suited to contemporary business needs, the crux being that management education is only seen as relevant and valuable if what counts as education conforms to currently accepted frameworks of business logic. A second discourse, which this paper is situated within, places critical thinking at the foundation of the business school, where independent learning, traits of critical and reflective thinking are central skills for confronting marginalised aspects of business practice. At the heart of this perspective is the development of transferable skills, business schools must teach the ability to learn independent of structured educational environments. The point is that in the ‘real world’ education is not delivered in structured environments. Contemporary business demands graduates with skills to learn in contexts of uncertainty. The dominant pedagogy in management education is ‘technical rationality’, which limits education to a relationship encouraging passive absorption of discrete facts as units of knowledge (Apple, 1979; Roberts, 1996). Whilst this approach is well suited to the accumulation of information, it is poorly adapted to developing performances of management. French and Grey (1996) demonstrate that management education is well positioned to train for lived experiences of management practice, arguing the need for repositioned approaches to pedagogy. There is a opportunity to develop pedagogies which can train skills needed in contemporary business, such as developing confidence and responsibility under conditions of uncertainty. However, achieving this requires significant innovations to reconceptualise the possibilities of management education pedagogy (Grey, Knights and Willmott 1996; Jenkins, Breen and Lindsay, 2003; Healey and Jenkins, 2009; Colby, Ehrlich, Sulivan and Dolle, 2011; Giroux, 2011). There may be value in rethinking management pedagogy by connecting disciplines of science and technology studies (STS) with critical management studies (CMS), both share common concerns for denaturalisation and reflexivity (Law, 1994; Fournier and Grey, 2000). This connection has been made within organizational studies (Hassard, Law and Lee, 1999) and continues to shape the field (Woolgar, Coopmans and Neyland, 2009). Hitchin and Maksymiw (2009a) reveal the value of STS contributions for developing critical management pedagogy which raises politics of hidden, silenced and marginalised aspects of organizational practice. Pedagogies capable of raising marginalised discourses make a valuable contribution to management education. The ethnography draws from sensibilities of sociomaterial networks (Latour, 2005) and Law’s (2004) concept of mess for theoretical and methodological insights. The study traces performances of undergraduate management education during a single module of higher education delivered throughout an academic year. The module aims to offer a critical management education and incorporates a deliberate attempt to introduce
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uncertainty into student learning. This paper is framed around a period where students compete for the opportunity to manage the organisation of an event. The research traces the effects as students experience uncertainty as a powerful actor in their student learning. A recent review of research using actor-network theory (ANT) to explore educational contexts is offered by Fenwick and Edwards (2010). ANT informed school ethnographies have been valuable for getting close to educational practices and revealing the materiality of learning in primary educational contexts (Nespor, 1997; Sorensen, 2007). However, the sector of Higher Education has a fundamentally different approach to learning. Nespor’s (1994) study uses an ANT theoretical framework to understand conventional Higher Education management pedagogy. Whilst Hitchin and Maksymiw (2009b) focus their study on a management pedagogy connected with STS sensibilities and illustrate how three versions of STS are put to use in management education. This paper extends Hitchin and Maksymiw (2009a, 2009b) by tracing how an STS informed management pedagogy stabilised uncertainty as a valuable educational actor and revealing hidden performances of management education.
Ken Ehrensal, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Illiberal by Design: Some Insights from an Ethnography of a Business School Abstract Focus, Aims and Objectives of the Paper The underlying premise of Colby, et alia (2011), and by extension, this stream, is that the recent financial crisis of 2008 has created an opportunity for the introduction and integration of the liberal arts into business education. This paper will take a contrarian position to this premise. In American universities, undergraduate business education is embedded in larger university structures, including a significant General Education (read, liberal arts and sciences) program. That being the case, the liberal arts are already a major part (often about 50%) of the typical undergraduate’s course of study. So, if this is true, then why has there been a failure of the liberal arts to influence the thinking of business and financial decision makers? Is it, as Colby, et alia, suggest that there is a lack of integration of these materials with the business curriculum? Based upon my ethnographic fieldwork at an AACSB accredited business school (see below), I will argue that the business school curriculum is purposefully designed to minimize the impact of the insights that might be brought by the liberal arts. The Research Evidence Base Underpinning the Paper This paper will be based upon the author’s academic year (2003-2004) long ethnographic fieldwork at an AASCB accredited business school that is a part of a large publically funded university. During the course of that fieldwork, classrooms were observed, students, faculty and administrators were interviewed, and documents were collected. That data will be combined with textual analysis of the accrediting standards of AASCB. How the Paper will Contribute to the Theme Drawing upon the ideas of Bourdieu, and to a lesser degree, Foucault, this paper will offer a counter-argument to the premise of this stream. I will argue that the business curriculum, both at the macro (overall structure) and the micro (individual course) levels are designed as institutions of reproduction of what I have called in past publications “the foot soldiers of capitalism.” The purpose of this institution is to take individuals who desire to enter the ranks of business management and make them proto-managers. The business school, in the process of carrying out anticipatory socialization shapes both subjectivities and worldviews of these students that discount or exclude perspectives that would be ‘counter-productive’ to the needs of these students’ future employers. I will argue that, even within the business curriculum, some units, particularly CSR/Business and Society, function as a foil for other faculty as models of how not to think. At the end of my paper, I will return to the premise that the better integration of the liberal arts directly into the business school curriculum will a means of fending off future crises such as the one experienced in 2008. I will argue that given the design of both the business school curriculum and accreditation standards, changing the mindset of business school graduates will take significantly more than just infusing some more liberal arts into the curriculum.
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Cynthia L. Krom, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania Uusing the four central dimensions of liberal education as a framework to develop and assess a business program Abstract The academic discipline of business education includes practical applied skills (such as accounting), instrumental knowledge (such as theories of motivation or influence tactics), and neoclassical approaches to human social interactions (the idea of rational, self-interested actors), as explored by authors such as Khurana (2007) and O’Connor (2011). In many business programs liberal arts requirements are viewed as “add-ons” to pacify institutional members rather than an important part of the business curriculum. This session challenges traditional business education to reflect on the purpose of business, its role in the shaping of the greater social framework, and the use of liberal arts as a lens for the study of economic value creation. As the authors of Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession note, “the current troubles of the world economy…may stem in no small part from blind trust in an exclusively economic view of business and the world” (Colby et al, 2011, 29). The Carnegie Foundation Report suggests that professional training in management topics should be integrated with the concepts and pedagogies associated with the liberal arts. This is affirmed by recent debates about the social purpose of business education and the theoretical and institutional contexts for such integration (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005;; Datar, Garvin & Cullen, 2010; Nesteruk, 2011; Viswanathan, 2012; and many others). Despite such attention, the question remains how to execute this integration. The purpose of this session is to help answer that question. The Business Department at XYZ College seeks to provide undergraduate students with a business education that is integrated with the broader liberal arts mission of the school. The guiding principles behind the department’s efforts to fulfill this dual mission are outlined in the Colby et al Carnegie Foundation Report, a study for which XYZ College was selected as one of 10 exemplar institutions. There are four central dimensions of liberal education outlined in the Carnegie Foundation Report (Colby et al, 2011, 60): (1) Analytical Thinking: The ability to abstract from particular experience in order to produce formal knowledge that is general in nature and independent of context. (2) Multiple Framing: The ability to work intellectually with fundamentally different, and sometimes mutually incompatible, analytical perspectives. (3) Reflective Exploration of Meaning: The self-reflective exploration of meaning, value, and commitment. What difference does the learning have on how students see themselves and how they engage with the world. (4) Practical Reasoning: The capacity to draw upon knowledge and skills to engage concretely with the world; an ability to go beyond reflection to decide the best course of action in a particular situation. These four central dimensions of liberal education serve as the foundation for the assessment rubric that was recently developed for the assessment of business majors at XYZ College. By linking the four dimensions with concrete skills expected of graduating students, this assessment process is helping ensure the department’s and the college’s mission of providing a meaningful, integrated undergraduate business education within the broader context of a liberal arts college. It was determined that the most appropriate forum to initially implement the assessment would be in the senior capstone seminar required of all majors. Several of these capstone seminars specifically address CMS issues, including seminars with titles such as Crisis Management, Fraud & White-Collar Crime, and Leadership for the 21st Century, and include a variety of perspectives on the course content including philosophical, social, political, economic, and environmental viewpoints. The instructors select a relevant case study, which is used to implement the assessment. The implementation of the assessment tool is still in the early stages; the first semester of results will be available in Spring 2013. Some challenges we are already anticipating relate to consistency across courses and instructors, since the seminar topics are extremely varied and instructors therefore need discretion to select a case that is most suitable to their own course. Another issue we anticipate is how to interpret the results of the assessment as they relate to the outcomes of interest—namely, student learning. While these are challenges that we will continually revisit and address as the assessment tool evolves, we hope that the assessment tool will become a valuable supplement to student teacher evaluations and senior exit interviews in maintaining the highest quality teaching. Furthermore, as we are able to accumulate more data, the assessment will be useful in evaluating improvements to teaching and student learning over time.
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Bogdan Costea, Norman Crump, Kostas Amiridis, Lancaster World crisis and conceptual silence in management education: reflections on the Carnegie Report Abstract This speculative essay offers an interpretation of the ways in which a particular world-historical narrative underlies the content of mainstream management and business curricula. Through a dialogue with the Carnegie Report of 2011, we argue that management education contains a strong programme regarding the “time ahead” despite the common-place accusation of being ahistorical, detached from the broader social and political themes and crises of our times. Contrary to the Report’s findings, we suggest that this particular historical narrative emerging both from the classical technical disciplines, but also from newer themes established as core axes of interpretation of the world, advances a temporalisation of history based upon the key concept of perfectibility. The theme of perfectibility functions as the basis for understanding the past, the present and the future as the endless circularity and improved repetition of a global managerial and business framework through which historical time is appropriated as “the time of business” itself.
SESSION 3 Friday 12th July, 1.30 – 3.30pm H6
Sam Dallyn, Swansea, Carl Cederström, Cardiff, Mike Marinetto, Cardiff Radical Critique in Management Education: Critically Recasting Student Experience Abstract The recent Carnegie Foundation report opens the way to a broader range of perspectives and debates in management education, the introduction of the humanities does seem to open a wider space for questioning and critique in the business school. At the same time the report remains caught within a rationale of management education as principally focused on shaping more rounded and ultimately more effective managers. In this paper we take a more radical perspective in which the aim is to critically recast the everyday experience of students to raise questions and problems that are systemic within contemporary capitalism. We explore ways of doing this through what Giroux (1988) calls a ‘critical pedagogy of the popular’. Such an approach is also based on breaking down what we see as the rigid and rather artificial boundaries, not only between management studies and other disciplines like the humanities, but between academia and journalism. This reconfiguration of boundaries, in a pedagogic context, depends on rethinking the distinction between the content and process/style (or strategy) of education. Giroux argues that radical pedagogy is not only about providing the ‘correct critical analysis for students. It also depends upon developing a compatible radical educational process or style (1981: 67). Towards this, popular culture (Graffe, 2004), sound and the moving image are integral to this approach in developing a radical educational style, whilst, at the same time, recasting student experience. Our claim is that by thinking more creatively about the medium of communication critical management educators can forge a much more creative and important relationship with students. Thus while we support the call for greater interdisciplinarity, arguably this is something that those that engage in critical management education have long been aware of. What is paid less attention to however, is how as lecturers we can critically rethink the lecture medium through popular culture and the moving image. We aim to draw on effective examples of this in our teaching and the positive impact this has had amongst students.
Anita Mangan, Keele, Mihaela Kelemen, Keele, Sue Moffat, New Vic Theatre Dramatizing theory in practice: On using experiential drama to enhance student learning Abstract The relationship between Critical Management Studies (CMS) and business schools has long been a topic of debate (Jones and O'Doherty 2005, Tatli 2012, Ford et al. 2010, Currie, Knights et al. 2010, Fournier and Grey 2000). The question of engagement is a common cause for concern, covering themes such as making a difference (should business schools become more critical?), caution about becoming part of the system (is CMS being co-opted as another way of ‘selling’ management education?), fears about commodification of the
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individual (should CMS academics resist the commodification of the academic career?) and inclusivity (does CMS reproduce structures of hierarchy and oppression)? While these questions concern the academy, individual scholars and broader society, they do not always consider engagement with students and how CMS is presented in the classroom. The literature on teaching critical management education is relatively small and introducing critical perspectives to business students can be a challenging task (Prichard 2009). Students struggle with unfamiliar terminology, multiple theoretical perspectives and the lack of a clear-cut, ‘right’ answer. Moreover, students often resist the idea of a critical approach because it undermines their assumption that management education involves learning a set of prescriptive management tools and practices. This paper reports on a project that uses experiential drama techniques to help students on a postgraduate taught programme to engage with critical approaches to business topics. It was devised in response to student feedback about the internationalisation of the classroom and our own concerns about the difficulties we were experiencing when trying to teach organisational power and politics to graduate students who had little work experience and who were unfamiliar with the UK university system. The internationalisation of the classroom creates a new set of learning and teaching challenges (Crose 2011, Sun and Richardson 2012, Turner 2006) and there has been a growing call for programmes to move beyond the traditional approaches and to adapt to the needs of international students (Kelly and Moogan 2012, Valiente 2008). Our response was to create a series of drama workshops in collaboration with a local theatre and it had three aims. The first was to increase socialisation opportunities between international and home students. Secondly, the project aimed to provide students with an opportunity to learn about key CMS theories through a series of practical and experiential drama exercises. Finally, it aimed to create an ethical culture and ethos amongst the students which they would carry forward with them into their future endeavours. Students were brought to the local theatre for a series of half-day and full-day workshops, led by an experienced theatre director and based on specific theme such as power and control, organisational culture and ethical leadership. Key CMS readings were set for each workshop and the director used these readings to create a series of exercises, games and problems for the students. At certain points during the workshop, students were asked to reflect on the exercises and to relate them to their academic learning and practical experiences. Students responded very positively to the workshops (‘I wish class was always like this’, ‘it’s very different to what I expected, but I don’t know what I expected! But it’s good’) and the paper reports on their narrative accounts of their experiences. We suggest that while it is impossible to measure the success of the project in terms of quantifiable results (such as better grades), the project nevertheless had interesting outcomes. The home/EU and international students developed a better understanding of each other, were less ghettoised in the classroom, more enthusiastic about their learning and more confident in speaking to academic staff. As teachers, we also benefited from the workshops as it gave us an opportunity to get to know students better, learn about their histories and see them as skilled individuals rather than an amorphous mass (‘the students’). It also prompted us to reconsider our traditional teaching strategies, identifying good practices and rethinking other material. In conclusion, the paper demonstrates the value of an interdisciplinary approach to learning and teaching and, in particular, shows how the liberal arts can help teachers and students cope with the challenges associated with internationalisation by introducing non-traditional teaching techniques. However, we also caution against overoptimism; by its nature, non-traditional means that it is precarious and difficult to fit it within a highly routinised, modularised, inflexible and cost-sensitive teaching environment.
Andrew Armitage, Anglia A Pedagogy for Critical Citizenship Abstract Focus, aims and objectives This paper challenges the notion that contemporary management has not adopted what might be termed a “critical stance” towards critical citizenship pedagogy. It will be argued that it is trapped within the modernist target setting culture and that the current malaise of management thinking is a consequence of an elitist education system. It will suggest there is a need for the critical analysis as to how power operates through management education practices, and the forms of subordination subsumed in its pedagogical processes. In responding to these concerns, this paper will advance a response informed by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy that espouses emancipatory educational practices underpinned by the dialogical process, these being central to reflective and reflexive learning environments for critical citizenship education. Argument Adult education and citizenship education it can be argued is in need of a crucial turn within the higher education system. Whilst there have been moves to introduce the notions of ethics and Corporate Social
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Responsibility (CSR) into all areas of the university education, for example, engineering, business studies, and journalism (see, Jones et al, 2010), the concept of the critical citizen has been foreshadowed on the one hand by the wider societal rhetoric and discourse that is enacted out in the public gaze between the media, financial, industrial corporations and their interests, and those of governmental responses on the other hand. Whilst this discourse is welcome, those whose lives are directly affected by corporate and governmental interests have been left without a voice. This evidenced by the growing concerns and criticisms as to how higher education curriculum is delivered (see, for example, French and Grey, 1996; Reynolds, 1999a and 1999b; Holman, 2000; Cunliffe, 2002; Hagen, Miller and Johnson, 2003; Jones et al, 2010; Usher et al, 1997), which has occurred against the backcloth of contemporary organisational environments that are underpinned by managerialist practices. Despite these tensions, Robbins (2008) has noted that democratic ideals and human rights are still worth the struggle even though their influence is obscured by the current market driven political landscape, and is something Gramsci (1971) advocated by noting that the working class needs to develop its own intellectuals to challenge conservative ideologues so they can transform the structural conditions that reproduce social inequality that capitalism entails. As Gramsci’s (1971:10) states ‘the mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist of verbal eloquence but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organizer, permanent persuader, and not just a simple orator’. Others have identified that the challenge of higher education is one that requires the adoption of a “critical attitude” to challenge modernist practices and orthodoxy (Marsick and O’Neil, 1999;; Reynolds and Vince, 2004;; Fenwick, 2005;; Anderson and Thorpe, 2007) and to uphold individual values and emancipatory practices in the workplace (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996; Brookfield, 2005). As Usher et al (1997:39) have noted there has been a focus whereby ‘critical pedagogy has begun to move beyond a predominately school orientation to take account of the broader educational contexts and intermeshing of the political, the cultural and the educational addressed by Freirain pedagogy’. This is also advocated by Fieldhouse (1992:1) who has argued that a community education attempts to combine a specific social purpose of liberal adult education and a critical structural analysis of the radicals that is aimed at ‘providing individuals with knowledge which they can use collectively to change society if they so wish, and particularly equipping members of the working class with the intellectual tools to play a full role in a democratic society or to challenge the inequalities and injustices of society in order to bring about radical social change’. However, it has been argued that the higher education system is part of the problem and debate concerning its relevancy and the dysfunctional relationship between its research outputs, and curriculum design where there has been a preponderance for business schools to “churn out” irrelevant research that has not translated into curriculum design and teaching delivery outputs (O’Toole. 2005). This stands in contrast with a UNESCO (2004) report concerning the function of a university’s contribution to research and teaching as being one where they are places of research and learning for sustainable development and should emphasis experiential, inquiry based problem-solving, interdisciplinary systems approaches, and critical thinking, and where curricula need to be developed, including content, materials, and tools such as case studies and the identification of best practices. Furthermore, Hyslop-Margison and Thayer (2009) when arguing the case for education for democratic participation claim there is growing political alienation caused by the lack of genuine choice available to citizens within neo-liberal market economies, stating that ‘a program for citizenship and democratic education must be embedded within a transformative framework that view democratic citizenship and society as fluid, dynamic and flexible in character’ (Hyslop-Margison and Thayer, 2009:97). Contribution to the stream This paper contributes to the theme of the “Management education and the liberal arts: crisis as opportunity” stream by responding to the concerns, and challenges as to how “liberal learning” and the “humanities” can be mobilised in management and business studies. It will show, using classroom examples, how students can be enabled to recognise their central place in a critical pedagogy for citizenship education. It will draw from the transformative pedagogy of Paulo Freire to place it within the context of the economic, cultural, social, political, ecological, and ethical issues and crisis that confronts higher educators and students in today’s higher education institutions. It will therefore consider the following central tenants essential to understanding the forgoing issues, namely: defining the territory of critical citizenship management education; the beginnings of the critical turn for a critical citizenship education, and will conclude that critical pedagogy, dialogue, and the reflexive turn are central to the pursuit of individual liberty and freedom in the education process requiring educators to have a heightened awareness of reflective and reflexive pedagogical practices, which can only emerge if learning environments are infused with the dialogical process, which supports human freedom, and an ethics of respect.
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Roohollah Honarvar, LSE Parchments of Pyramids: Liberating MIS Education from its Roots in the Corporate World Abstract In 2002, 40 prominent IS scholars commonly insisted that, among other things, “every business student” should be able to “[d]escribe the various types of IS in support of operational, managerial and executive-level processes” (Ives et al. 2002: 471). In doing so they reiterated the importance of a simple model that has appeared in many Management Information Systems (MIS) textbooks since almost 40 years ago. According to this model, various pieces of information technology can be classified according to the managerial level at which they are most useful. From this perspective, different kinds of information systems (like expert system, decision support systems, transaction processing systems, etc.) support decision making at certain levels of organizations and not others. It is argued (often implicitly) that by tying the uses of IT to the decision-making levels of organization, businesses can make best use of their technological resources. As innocent and intuitive this classification may appear and despite its almost ubiquitous presence in MIS textbooks, its conceptual and intellectual roots have remained obscure. For instance, the various levels of organizations mentioned above (often depicted as a three level pyramid) are often attributed to Robert Anthony’s classic Planning and Control Systems (1965). Yet there is neither any pyramidal model nor any discussion of organizational levels in that text. In this paper, I try to provide a genealogy of this model, highlighting its roots in the emerging field of management accounting and control systems in the 1960s and 70s and the scholarly understanding of business corporations of that time. I will further show that, over time, not only this model has lost its connections to its intellectual and historical origins (its ‘conditions of formation’);; it has endured despite contrary empirical evidence and lacking relevance to the contemporary uses of IT by organizations. Using a combination of Foucauldian constructivist ideas with neo-institutional perspective that is aimed at providing a better understanding of the mechanisms of diffusion of rationalized patterns and models (e.g. Miller and O’Leary, 1987, Hasselbladh and Kallinikos, 2000), I argue that this representation and classification IT and managerial levels has become a discourse that maintains itself by objectifying certain taken-for-granted assumptions about the contemporary order of the business world in which corporations have a dominant position and making them durable and communicable outside its original context. This in turn has stifled the potential for truly revolutionizing the business world, at least as imagined and understood by management students. Beyond tracing the history of “the pyramid” and reviewing the literature that contradicts and challenges this model, I will substantiate my claims about this discourse by first showing how popular this model has been in MIS textbooks. Then I will provide a close reading and template analysis of the way in which this model is presented in one of the best-selling MIS textbooks. Thereby I’ll try to demonstrate the ways in which principles of liberal education can help students scrutinize and criticize these and similar models in management education to arrive at a more enlightened and ultimately emancipating understanding.
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STREAM 22: CRITICAL ACCOUNTING STREAM Prem Sikka, University of Essex Emmanouil Dedoulis, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece Sonja Gallhofer, Newcastle University, UK Theresa Hammond, San Francisco State University, USA Susan Newberry, University of Sydney, Australia
PLENARY SESSION th
Wednesday 10 July, 2 – 4pm E1
Yuval Millo, University of Leicester, UK Jérémy Morales, ESCP Europe, France Leonard Seabrooke, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Hugh Willmott, University of Cardiff, Wales Prem Sikka, University of Essex, UK (Chairperson) Accounting for the Financial Crisis Abstract The banking crash has unleashed the deepest economic crisis for nearly a century. It started in the financial sector but has rapidly spread to other sectors of the economy. Various explanations of the crisis have pointed to the very nature of capitalism, inherent inequalities, financial innovations, the role of credit, failures of accounting/auditing, uncontrolled speculation, poor regulation, weak state, the finance curse and tax avoidance, just to name a few. In neoliberal traditions, the state has responded by implementing austerity programs. This has not facilitated economic growth or equitable distribution of income/wealth, but has eroded employment and the living standards of ordinary people and has created possibilities of serious social unrest. Perhaps, the crisis has created further opportunities for capital to discipline labour and possibilities of new social settlements. This interactive panel session will facilitate discussion of the crisis and consider how the academic community can respond through interdisciplinary research, education, social interventions and public policy proposals.
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GLOBALIZATION th
Wednesday 10 July, 4.30 – 6.30pm (Chairperson: Emmanouil Dedoulis, Athens University of Economics and Business) E1
Jérémy Morales, ESCP Europe, France Yves Gendron, Université Laval, Canada Henri Guénin-Paracini, Université Laval, Canada State privatization and the unrelenting expansion of neoliberalism: The case of the Greek financial crisis Abstract Existing literature has identified two waves of reforms within the neoliberal agenda of state privatization, deregulation and new public management. The present study examines what we call the third wave of neoliberal reforms of governmentality, in which members of central governments and public servants increasingly come to think and behave like business entrepreneurs. It addresses the matter in the specific context of crises theoretically capable of undermining the legitimacy of neoliberalism. Specifically, our purpose is to better understand the manufacturing of consent to the neoliberal agenda of state privatization. We study the falsification of Greek public accounts as revealed in 2010, relying on empirical material such as journalistic statements and reports from international institutions. Our analysis indicates that, although the Greek crisis provided an opportunity to question key aspects of contemporary state management, including the practice by governments of creative finance, the main problematizing trajectories articulated in both the media and political arenas did not destabilize but consolidated neoliberalism. We especially illustrate how discursive activity favors the emergence of a collective interpretation of crises that perpetuates the hold of neoliberalism over the social and political realms. In the discussion, we reflect on the consequences that this has for democratic processes.
Michele Chwastiak, University of New Mexico The Business of Rendition Abstract In 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) set up an “extraordinary rendition” program in which supposed al Qaeda agents were secretly kidnapped and rendered to countries known for using torture to extract intelligence, or to CIA controlled black sites where “enhanced interrogation techniques” were employed. The CIA outsourced some of the rendition flights and flight planning to private companies. This paper examines the mechanisms that allowed private industry to participate in kidnapping and torture with moral indifference. The research demonstrates that the CIA’s use of executive business jets for rendition, the separation of the means from the end, the alienation of labor, the corporate form of business, profit and accounting all contributed to “extraordinary rendition” becoming just another business opportunity.
Owolabi M. Bakre, Queen Mary College University of London Crony Capitalism, Money Laundering and the Complicity of the Accounting Profession in Nigeria Abstract The statutory provisions and regulations that govern companies and professional accountancy bodies at the nation state and global levels require accountants and auditors to detect and report actual or suspected cases of corruption such as money laundering to the relevant public bodies or regulators. This paper extends the literature on the implication of accountants and auditors in global money laundering mostly conducted in the developed world to the context of a developing nation, namely Nigeria. By illuminating crony capitalism and globalisation, it provides evidence of the reliance of accountants on corruption and globalisation in devising
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schemes that enable Nigerian public officials and multinationals to effect illicit financial outflows from Nigeria. Accountants may have also become the ‘vehicle’ for laundering into private bank accounts the illicit funds as well as the proceeds of criminal activities perpetrated abroad by Nigerians. Although the Nigerian state may have been ineffective at tackling money laundering in the country, powerful states have also been complicit. Given that money laundering erodes the accountability that is essential for good governance and threatens global security and stability, measures to combat money laundering in Nigeria and globally are suggested.
Laura Dósa, Formerly University of Miskolc Gizella Dragonya, Heriot-Watt University Sonja Gallhofer, Newcastle University Jim Haslam, Heriot-Watt University Akira Yonekura, Heriot-Watt University Mobilising financial accounting in the transition to ‘post-communism’: A focus upon Hungary in the early 1990s Abstract Over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty first, on the face of it there has been a significant expansion, in the global context, in the influence of the Anglo-American variant of Western capitalistic financial accounting practice. This reflects a range of factors, notably: the character of the phenomenon of globalisation or the particular globalistic re-ordering of the world witnessed more evidently in this period; the promotion in this context by the International Financial Institutions (such as the World Bank) of accounting standards that have international recognition; the quite dramatic rise in influence of that nongovernmental organisation now known as the International Accounting Standards Board - the latter, significantly, entailing the substantive co-operation in the Board’s project of the international stock exchanges, increased collaboration with the powerful Financial Accounting Standards Board of the United States and the support of national and regional governmental and quasi-governmental organisations and blocs (including the European Union). A dimension of this global expansion has been evident, in the post Cold War context, in the ‘post-communist’ societies that have undergone transition. For instance, the Anglo-American variant of Western capitalistic financial accounting practices has ostensibly come to be transplanted to those societies of Central and Eastern Europe that have undergone transition towards post-communism. The mobilisation of financial accounting practices consistent with international standards has been often seen as an element in the process of ‘reform’ in this context.
ACCOUNTABILITIES Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am (Chairperson: Owolabi M. Bakre, Queen Mary College University of London) E1
Graham Bowrey – University of Wollongong Estimates Hearings: An exercise in compromising accountability? Abstract Purpose – The processes used in the public sector to discharge Parliament’s financial accountability are generally taken-for-granted and often unchallenged. This paper will explore and challenge one current parliamentary financial accountability process with the aim to provide a critique on its contribution in discharging Parliament’s financial accountability.
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Design/methodology/approach – The research data in this study is an extract from a recent Estimates Hearing which was based on exploring the reasons behind a net $1.4 billion error in the 2011-12 Budget Result of the Australian state government of New South Wales. The analysis of the data is based on the application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) supported by examining the data viewed through a Benthamite lens with specific focus on the use of language. Practical implications – This paper raises some questions in relation to the actual contribution of a current public sector financial accountability process and identifies how the process may be improved. The key finding is that Estimates Hearings, as an accountability process, are compromised by participating individuals directing the discourse to either produce or resist the dominance of others. There is also a distinct lack of independence within the committee further compromising the possibility of discharging public sector financial accountability. Originality/value – The primary contribution of this research paper is to the literature on public sector financial accountability. This paper also makes a contribution to the literature on qualitative research methodology through the combined application of CDA and a Benthamite lens.
Glen Lehman, University of South Australia Interpretation, coping & accountability in social accounting Abstract Many accountants and accounting theorists believe that objective accounts of the external world are possible. This paper critiques such arguments via an examination of the ethical assumptions underpinning social and environmental accounting. In the early 1990s, David Solomons and Tony Tinker debated the idea that accounting was a fair, just and neutral means to represent reality. On the one hand, Tinker argued that accounting reports are simply artificial constructions and are not objective. On other hand, Solomons argued that accounting was an unbiased and neutral technology. This debate has been given renewed impetus in the accounting work of John McKernan who introduced Donald Davidson’s argument that language, signs and words have a causal relationship to the world. Davidson offered a principle of charity to justify the argument that our best representations of reality provide an accurate account of the world. While these are important arguments for reforming accounting theory they do not provide a means to escape the subject and object dichotomy that shapes modern secular communities. Davidson and McKernan’s theory of language cannot access the world and open people to the real – their theory suffers similar procedural problems that bedevil Habermasian accountants. A robust and pluralistic realism can develop the environmental and social accounting project using ideas from Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor. They associate a robust realism with a theory of language which involves (a) focusing on the commonalities between people and nature, (b) exposing problems with the principle of charity, and (c) why current beliefs are not the only way to justify other beliefs.
Prem Sikka, University of Essex Using freedom of information laws to frustrate accountability: two case studies of UK banking frauds Abstract Accountability is considered to be central to the functioning of a democratic and informed society. A large volume of literature theorises accountability and explains how it should be and could be deepened. There is a general view that the availability of state held information can enhance possibilities of citizen participation and democratic governance, and check unethical and corrupt behaviour by state and corporate elites. The state held documents can arguably enable citizens to construct a richer account of corporate frauds, accounting/auditing scandals and regulatory failures and call policymakers to account. The neoliberal state has managed the tensions between the public demands for information and the tendency to protect elites from public scrutiny by regularising the flow of information via freedom of information laws. Such laws hold out the possibility of
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greater information, but also give state officials plenty of discretion to frustrate unwelcome requests. The issues are explored through two case studies relating to banking frauds in the UK. The cases highlight the dynamics of calling the state to account through the freedom of information laws and show that the state apparatus goes to considerable lengths to shield elites from public scrutiny.
Stewart Smyth, Queen’s University, Belfast Rediscovering democratic accountability: the history of an awful idea Abstract Accountability is a politically saturated term that has gained much utilisation over the past thirty years. It is central to the neoliberal restructuring of public services, both rhetorically and in practice. Yet, for many accountability is an expression of holding those in power to account. Thus, accountability as a concept contains a duality of managerialist reforms and democratic control. The neoliberal age has seen the managerialist reform side of this duality to the fore, with democratic forms of accountability under attack. Among academics and practitioners this has led to questioning whether a renewal of democratic accountability is possible and if so how.This paper addresses these questions by looking at the history of accountability and in particular searching for an explanation of how democratic accountability relations were generated in the first place. This is achieved by firstly outlining the academic work on the history of accountability stretching back through the Middle Ages to ancient Athens. Secondly, an analysis of the struggle for accountable government, in 19th century Britain, is developed that illustrates the role of working people in pursuing such accountability. Thus, at its core accountability is shown to be contested by competing social forces with working people and the labour movement playing a central role in the establishment of democratic, accountable government. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of this history and analysis for studies of accountability in modern democratic societies.
PUBLIC/PRIVATE DEBATES Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm (Chairperson: Graham Bowrey – University of Wollongong) E1
Noel Hyndman, Queen's University, Belfast Mariannunziata Liguori, Queen's University, Belfast Public Sector Reforms: Changing Contours on an NPM Landscape Abstract Previous studies suggest that, over the last decades, public-sector accounting has moved from Public Administration (PA) to New Public Management (NPM) ideas, and more recently, towards a New Public Governance (NPG) approach. These systems are presented as mutually exclusive and competing. Through an extensive document analysis, this paper explores whether convincing movement towards NPG ideas can be identified at the level of political debate and to what extent the ideas embedded within PA, NPM and NPG systems show themselves in these discussions. The study focuses on accounting, budgeting and performance measurement changes in the UK central government starting from the 1990s. The findings show little evidence that NPM is a transitory state in the evolution from a regime of traditional PA to NPG, a claim made by some commentators. Furthermore, the UK political debate continues to predominantly utilise NPM arguments, with the three systems viewed as containing complementary, rather than competing, schemes. This has resulted in layering, rather than the replacement of ideas.
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Anne Stafford, Manchester Business School Pamela Stapleton, Manchester Business School School Business: the Academies Programme Abstract Internationally there is growing private involvement in the delivery of state-funded education which raises concerns about public accountability of taxpayers’ money. English schools are part of this process of change, which is driven by central government and is intended to reduce the power of Local Government (LG) over education. This paper focuses on the recent Academies programme which forms part of this agenda for change. While its objective has varied over time, essentially it fragments the organisation and funding of and control over state-funded schools. As the potentially significant impacts on education may not be clear to stakeholders, we take a political economy perspective, drawing on a blend of agency and stakeholder theory to examine these changes and their impact on public accountability. The purpose of this paper is (i) to identify the scale of the programme and the changes it brings to the organisation of education and (ii) to investigate the resulting impacts on public accountability for revenue expenditure on schools. The research methods include documentary analysis of information in the public domain or available through Freedom of Information requests. In particular we have used information made available in speeches and by follow up discussions with participants at the Academies Show, a promotional conference for the programme. The paper shows that as schools have become businesses, monitoring, governance and accountability processes have changed. The role of key individuals has become substantially redefined as head teachers become accounting officers directly responsible to parliament and school governors become non-executive directors. The loss of control over revenue spending in schools by LG means that the traditionally close and personalised monitoring of schools has disappeared. Possible outcomes include loss of public accountability, a downgrading of governance expertise, schools with serious deficits, as has already become evident in the health sector where hospitals gained similar autonomy, or even scandal. But most significantly these reforms pave the way for more private sector involvement in education.
Kate Hinds, Birkbeck College, London University Kate Mackenzie Davey, Birkbeck College, London University From Accounting to Learning in the third sector: The Barriers for Funders Abstract Traditionally, the funding relationship has been characterized by funders calling agencies to account for the efficiency with which they manage funds. More recently, charitable foundations have called for improvements to the quality of evidence coming from their portfolios and an increase in their use of evidence before funding (e.g. NESTA 2012). The commitment to evidence informed decision making reflects the broader appeal of the production of information to bring about the rational management of social problems (Tsoukas 1997). It also signals a move towards more transparent decision making for these foundations, reflecting the enlightened values of rationality and seeming to step away from the political and religious values of their founders. Using material from the websites of a small group of charitable funders, we examine the move from the traditional role of funders in their relations with their grant holders, that of accounting for expenditure, to one of a greater engagement in supporting learning from projects. We will discuss the barriers that they face in making this change by contrasting the production of accounts with that of knowledge.
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Andrea Fried, Linköping University, Sweden Ronny Gey, Leipzig University, Germany Margarete Krinner, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany Re-thinking implementation processes in management control – resistance as dynamic of multiple social relations Abstract Our paper shall therefore light up the aspect that the enactment of management control systems and accompanying resistance is a process which is embedded in multiple social relations. It emphasizes that resistance is not necessarily a result of individual insufficiencies (Fried 2010). In this context, our paper will contribute to the call for papers by the above mentioned convenors and intents to deliver insights to management accounting and social change processes. It will describe how management control systems are implicated in the making of organizations, how the environment of organizations is thereby shaped and which implications does this have for the ‘guided enactment’ of management control systems.
PROFESSIONALIZATION Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm (Chairperson: Sarah Lauwo, University of Essex) E1
Orthodoxia Kyriacou, Middlesex University Business School Emmanouil Dedoulis, Athens University of Economics and Business Gendered Professionalism and Electronic Space: Exploring the Greek Accounting Institute Abstract The paper draws upon the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis to relate the content of the local accounting institute’s digital space to the broader structures and the gendered accounting discourses deployed by accountants. The processes of constructing and redesigning electronic space and the selection of the images appearing on it are analyzed as essential mechanisms which not only reflect “realities” but also contribute to the reproduction of diachronically established power relations, gender inequalities and gendered hierarchies. The exploration reveals the importance of the dominant professional male elite who by occupying key organizational posts they exclusively manage professional electronic space, exercise gendered based exclusionary practices and disseminate certain images which facilitate their dominance.
Kathryn Haynes, Newcastle University Alan Murray, Winchester Business School ‘The Future Women Want’ - Gender Equality and Sustainable Development: Towards an Agenda for Accounting Research Abstract For at least the last thirty years accounting researchers have recognised the challenges that both sustainable development and gender equality have presented to accounting research. Yet, despite the volume of research conducted in these areas, and the critique of social and environmental accounting offered by some feminist theorists, few attempts have been made to synthesise these areas of research despite issues of social justice, equity and empowerment pervading each. This paper aims to address these issues in a number of ways: Firstly the paper will critically evaluate the role of accounting research in challenging inequality and unsustainability. We argue for an approach which links gender equality and sustainable development in the interests of social justice, and places the human central to the social side of sustainability. Secondly, the paper explores conceptual and theoretical linkages between gender equality and sustainable development and explores women’s empowerment as part of the process of sustainable development. In order to address this we draw
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insights from eco-feminist theory to bring more radical concepts of equality to the sustainable development agenda in accounting. Thirdly, we evaluate progress on linking gender equality and sustainable development in practice, examining the tensions inherent in this agenda, by drawing from participant observation and documentary analysis of the actions and outcomes of the Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. In addressing these three areas we consider the role of accounting in contributing to a more egalitarian and sustainable world, and draw out implications for accounting research.
Olivia Kyriakidou, Athens University of Economics and Business Emmanouil Dedoulis, Athens University of Economics and Business Gender Imbalances in the Accounting Profession Abstract The situation of women in the accounting profession has attracted a great deal of interest. Liberal professions, such as accounting, have been traditionally viewed as exemplar cases of gender stratification (Crompton & Sanderson, 1990; Macdonald, 1995; Witz, 1992). It is increasingly claimed however, that, in the context of the accounting profession a relentless process of feminization may be signaling the progressive removal of genderbased barriers and inequalities (Anderson-Gough et al., 2005). Women are 49.4% of all auditors, accountants, and investment professionals in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2006) and 61.3% of all accountants and auditors in the United States (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). Moreover, in a 2011 study, women were half of newly hired accounting graduates at CPA firms, and 40% of all CPAs (AICPA, 2011). A parallel trend seems to be occurring also in the Greek accounting context. In this sense, the feminization of the accounting profession argument conveys a strong impression that glass ceilings are becoming a memory. At first glance, this certainly looks like a success story. However, a radically different picture begins to emerge when we take into consideration a series of other indicators and especially as we consider the work, career trajectories and rewards of women accountants. Despite their recent progress, women still constitute considerably less than a quarter of all partners (21%) at firms, although they are 45% of all accounting employees at accounting firms (AICPA, 2011). Moreover, female accountants are more likely to be in part-time work, to work outside the leading firms and to be relegated to the less prestigious areas of practice (Coutts & Roberts, 1995). This situation is reflected in the relevant remuneration rates, which display an extremely significant gender gap. The Catalyst 2012 report indicates that female accountants can expect to earn 24 percent less than their male counterparts. This disadvantage increases as we climb up the professional hierarchy. Women are clearly confined to the lower reaches of the profession. Gender-based discrimination and exclusionary dynamics are still everyday experiences for the women who work in the accounting profession in most parts of the world. Indeed some commentators (Roberts & Coutts, 1992) have concluded that female accountants are fulfilling a (frequently transient) proletarian role.
Simon Parry Newcastle University Business School Neoliberal Economics and Small Business Accounting Research: A Critical Evaluation of Agendas and Methodologies Abstract This paper examines the development of small business accounting research over the last 20 years within the context of the neoliberal debate on government policy. The paper explores how the agenda driving small business research differs from that of mainstream accounting research. Whereas the latter tends to be concerned with new technical developments and innovation (Baldvinsdottir, Mitchell, et al. 2010), small business accounting research can be seen as typically seeking practical contribution to small business growth in the form of policy development and business support (Parry 2010). Published research is critically examined within the context of the contemporary neoliberal economic agenda
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which has produced a hegemonic discourse of entrepreneurship as a significant constituent of economic contribution (Costa and Saraiva 2012). Successive governments in Europe, the US and other major world economies have turned to small businesses as the providers of economic growth (Cunningham 2011), employment (Varum and Rocha 2013) and innovation (González-Loureiro and Pita-Castelo 2012). The author finds that this research agenda, driven largely by the interests of venture capitalists, banks, major accounting firms and local authorities (Gibb 2000; Blackburn and Kovalainen, 2009) has resulted in a narrow focus and a restricted use of methodologies. A dominant feature of small business accounting studies is their normative nature, (Collis and Jarvis, 2002) and their predominant reliance on wide scale surveys (Deakins et al, 2002). The methodologies adopted are weak as a means of examining the complexities of owner-manager behaviour (Jarvis et al, 2000). A further consequence is that small business accounting research is under-theorised in comparison to its larger organisation counterpart (Perren et al, 2001). This in turn leads to a tendency amongst small business researchers to drawing uncritically upon mainstream management theory (Jarvis et al, 2000). The appropriateness of this is questionable. The author argues that there is both an economic and an epistemological rationale for more research which focuses on the broader social and political context of accounting within small businesses, rather than a narrow focus on quick fixes for growth. When alternative methodologies have been adopted, the results have indicated that there is still poor knowledge and understanding of the financial and business performance management strategies of small business owner-managers, and still scope for further qualitative studies (Jarvis et al, 2000; Curran et al 1997). The question of appropriate methodology for future research is raised. Two factors suggest that the predominantly quantitative, survey-based and normative approach taken by most previous studies has severe limitations. Firstly, this approach blinds the researcher to the way accounting actually enters into, and impacts on, the world of the small business. Secondly, the often tacit nature of accounting in such businesses makes access to the subject matter very difficult using a quantitative, survey-based methodology. This paper contributes to current debates on agendas and methodologies in both small business research (Blackburn and Kovalainen 2009) and accounting research (Lukka 2010; Parker 2012) by critiquing current small business accounting research paradigms within the context of contemporary neoliberal economic policy.
ACCOUNTING FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY th
Friday 12 July, 9 – 11am (Chairperson: Orthodoxia Kyriacou, Middlesex University Business School) E1
Sam Dallyn, Swansea University Interrogating the limits of Corporate Social Reporting: The Case of Tax Avoidance Abstract In the last couple of years in the UK there has been an unprecedented increase in the attention paid to the issue of corporate tax avoidance. This culminated at a parliamentary level with the interrogation at the Public Accounts Committee hearings of the representatives of three multinationals all engaged in sophisticated tax ‘planning’, Google, Starbucks and Amazon. The critique made by politicians at these hearings and later by the Prime Minister has principally been a moral one, the accusation has been one of immorality rather than illegality, and similarly often critics of multinational corporate tax avoidance have pitched their critique on moral grounds. However, my argument in this paper is actually that tax avoidance reveals something very significant about the limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics more generally. The reasons why tax compliance cannot be encompassed within a CSR remit are as follows: first, it is associated with a direct and substantial economic cost; second, the practice is systemic; third, it is something that is only visible directly as an economic cost, rather than a direct social benefit a company can be associated with; and fourth, it is an activity in which free riding – when an actor can benefit from a public good that they do not have to contribute to - is entrenched. Thus corporate tax avoidance and the contestations surrounding it
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actually reveal the limitations around business ethics in important ways. My claim is that the only way the systemic and entrenched behaviour can be changed is through political action at different levels and ultimately through legislation forcing transparency, which in turn raises the prospect of reputational risk. This alludes to the importance of politics and contestation around emerging issues in shaping CSR and social and environmental reporting (SER), something commonly neglected in the SER accounting literature, such as stakeholder and legitimacy perspectives.
Thomas Thijssens, Maastricht University Managing CSR reporting: The various ways to publish exemplary reports Abstract This study explores how companies manage their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting process. This internal focus is motivated by the mixed evidence from research on the relationship between CSR reporting and external company factors. Using a qualitative research design I examine the internal factors that are associated with CSR reporting of six companies with exemplary CSR reports. From semi-structured interviews it is demonstrated that the constellations of structures, systems and processes with which CSR reporting is managed, varies across companies. Two important factors to which this heterogeneity can be attributed are the level of formalisation of the reporting process and the integration of CSR into everyday management. Most strikingly my findings indicate that the heterogeneous management practices lead to homogeneous outcomes. These results add to prior research raising doubts about the idea that CSR reporting in general is motivated by accountability, and consequently about the usefulness of CSR reporting awards and benchmark schemes as a stimulus for improving accountability.
Sarah Lauwo, University of Essex Silences in Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting and the Potential of Alternative Forms of Reporting: A Case Study of the Mining Industry in Tanzania Abstract An increasing number of transnational corporations are providing socio-economic and environmental information as a way of justifying their commitment and social obligations to the society. Drawing on themes within sociological theories, the study raises questions on the potential of the contemporary CSR reporting in giving visibility to voices of marginalised social groups within a developing country context, namely Tanzania. It argues that CSR as an aspect of social accounting disclosure has often been used as a language to legitimise the power of the privileged group in the capitalist society. The study calls for alternative reporting with potential to create visibility to the voices of the marginalised social groups about pervasive social unrest and dislocation, employee grievances and disputes, pollution and environmental degradation and other social and environmental problems which prevail in the Tanzanian mining sector but have arguably remained invisible within corporate disclosures.
Helen Oakes, Keele University John Francis McKernan, University of Glasgow Rational Reconstruction, Self-Reflection and Disclosure in Accounting: A Synthesis of Habermas and Heidegger Abstract This paper defends Habermas’ reconstructive theory against recent criticisms in the accounting literature of his procedural model, arguing that Habermas creates a communicative rationality that has potentially fruitful implications for critical accounting rather than reinforcing an inappropriate instrumental rationality. We suggest that he identifies and transforms some important aspects of conventional rationalism. However, we acknowledge that his communicative rationality fails to achieve the balance of hermeneutical reflection and
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“objective” linguistic structuralism that he seems to have intended. It is argued that Heidegger’s theory can help to redress this imbalance. The paper therefore focuses on supplementing Habermas’ theory with themes from Heidegger. We discuss first-order and second-order disclosure concentrating on second-order disclosure where a moment of interpretive insight can open up a myriad of possibilities for accounting change. Moods and emotions are discussed as catalysts for disclosure in accounting. Art, recognition of one’s own mortality and phenomenological time are treated as aspects of disclosure with implications for accounting. A model for the reconstruction of accounting is presented summarising key themes from the synthesis of Habermas and Heidegger.
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STREAM 23: THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR AND NEO-LIBERALISM Daniel King Christina Schwabenland Frances Tomlinson Richard Hull
ISSUES OF INTERNAL ORGANISING INCLUDING VOLUNTEERING
Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm F5
Ursula Murray, Birkbeck University of London To what extent is the voluntary sector colonised by neo liberal thinking? Abstract The mainstream debates and leadership of the voluntary sector have shown little appetite to challenge the 2010 Coalition Government’s flow of legislation now impacting on every public service and intended to dismantle significant parts of the welfare state. In this legislation the voluntary sector is consistently coupled with the private sector as an assumed alternative ‘ qualified provider’. Much of the commentary in the sector and related media focuses on whether the voluntary sector has received its fair share of these public service contracts now being awarded as the governments outsourcing programme intensifies. In some sub groupings of the voluntary sector, survival of organisations appears to be taking precedence over development. Any distinction between public/ not for profit and private sector understood as different moral spheres, appears to have been sidelined as organisations seek to face both ways and enter into hybrid partnerships to survive. However a discourse about the independence of the sector and its key role in civil society is still widely articulated alongside this growth of sub contracting to global corporates and wider partnering with the private sector to bridge the cuts gap which has increasingly become an accepted norm – rather than the contradiction it might once have been understood as. The paper will seek to map the different forms of sub contracting to or partnering with the private sector by voluntary organisations focusing on activity within key subsets of organisations within the wider voluntary sector. It will then consider the range of ideological stances taken towards such public service contracting across the broader voluntary sector. Utilising public statements and scrutinising web sites , a selection of key voluntary sector structures will then be located on a spectrum from neo liberal to social left (Powell, 2007). The paper will then explore how far such positions represent a ‘dilemmatic space ‘ (Honig, 1996 quoted in Hoggett et al , 2009) for organisations and can be understood more as a ‘strategic compliance’ (Cummins, 2002 ) in uncertain times or as an unstable ‘assemblage’ (Newman and Clarke, 2009) in which working ‘the spaces of power’ (Newman , 2012) remains an option. The paper will also draw on the work of Billis ( 2010), Crouch (2011), Kendall, (2010 ) Hoggett ( 2006, 2102), (Hoggett et al, 2009 ) Milbourne ( 2013 ), Murray ( 2012 a and b ) , Rochester ( 2009 ) and Whitfield (2012 ) .
Anna Pfeffer, Lund University Because YOU matter! On the idea of recognition in voluntary work Abstract
In many European countries voluntary work has been increasingly institutionalized and promoted since the mid 1990s. In Germany for example, where the Family Ministry has adopted a ‘National Engagement Strategy’ to
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stimulate voluntary engagement, minister Kristina Schröder stated: We need the engagement of the citizens […]. Their work creates solidarity in a way that the state could never do. This merits our entire support and recognition! (Schröder 2010, emphasis added) In line with such calls for recognition, the German President Joachim Gauck invited 4000 volunteers to his residence as ‘honorary guests’ in September 2012. Opening his speech with the words ‘today […] I applause for you’, Gauck (2012) thanked the engaged citizens, and made clear to his audience that ‘it is not about me. It is about you!’ (emphasis added). The extensive public promotion and recognition of voluntary work, sketched in the above examples, can be related to a neo-liberal restructuring of society. With this development, volunteering has become central in taking over tasks formerly performed by the social welfare state. We can witness how various societal actors (e.g. politicians, supranational institutions, youth exchange organizations, media representatives, etc.) increasingly call upon individuals to engage voluntarily to contribute to a greater societal good. The idea that volunteers should be made seen and be recognized is central to these campaigns. It has, arguably, turned into a powerful political discourse. In line with this, many voluntary organizations increasingly adopt recognition as a central managerial mechanism. Against this general background, the paper sets out to explore the forms in which recognition plays out in organizational practice. More specifically, I want to investigate what acts of recognition in a voluntary organization consist of (e.g. public honouring, issuing voluntary certificates) and how these acts are then experienced by individual volunteers. The paper departs from Honneth’s (1995) normative conceptualization of recognition where he argues that individuals and social groups engage in a moral ‘struggle’ to be recognized. Such struggle, according to Honneth, assists individuals to create healthy self-relations and enhances the moral development of society. This argument and especially the possibilities for individuals to develop or strengthen ‘self-confidence’ and ‘self-esteem’ in a voluntary work context will be investigated. Empirically, the paper draws upon an interview study of five German Community Foundations as well as a three-month ethnographic study in one of these organizations. Community Foundations are a specific type of non-profit organization with the self-declared aim to improve people’s quality of life in a clearly distinct geographic area. In all of the studied organizations recognition and continuous acknowledgement of the individual volunteers were argued to be central to manage people who do not receive monetary rewards. This argument echoes frequently in the voluntary sector literature (e.g. Kreutzer & Jäger 2011). Simultaneously, however, participants reported how volunteer’s permanent desire for recognition, sometimes even ‘before they have done anything’ (John, managing director of a foundation) became dysfunctional to the local community that the organization aims to support. But also the highly formalized forms of recognition (e.g. voluntary passports, large recognition events of local politicians, recognition guidelines) were cynically and ironically discussed. Based on the insights of my study, I aim to critically discuss the ambivalent social and political dynamics produced by the idea of recognition in the context of voluntary work. For instance, the normative character often ascribed to recognition in theory (Taylor 1994; Honneth 1995) and practice (see examples above) contradicts the instrumental harnessing of individuals’ need to be recognized for managerial or political purposes. Author’s engagement with intangible normative forms of control within the field of Critical Management Studies (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott 2002) provides a promising avenue for the critical discussion of individual’s subjection, and opens up for seeing the voluntary sector as essentially political beyond its often assumed ideal-typical social order as more humane or authentic (Villadsen 2009). Moreover, by discussing recognition as a reciprocal act (i.e. recognition cannot simply be ‘given’;; it also needs to be ‘received’ as such, and further be ‘returned’), I account for the complexity and, perhaps, the impossibility of mutual recognition (Bedorf 2010, Ricoeur 2005). By exploring recognition as a prominent neo-liberal political discourse as well as a managerial practice in voluntary organizations, the paper addresses the CMS conference theme on ‘The boundaries between the Voluntary Sector and Neo-liberalism’ in two ways. First, it does so by discussing how voluntary organizations increasingly tie into logics of the neoliberal state (i.e. that volunteers should be extensively recognized) in order to increase voluntary engagement. Second, by focusing on individual experiences of volunteers of being (mis)recognized, the paper hopes to contribute to a better understanding of how actors of the voluntary sector understand, embrace, and resist the ways they are ‘managed’. References:
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Alvesson, M. & Willmott, H. 2002. 'Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual.' The Journal of Management Studies, 39:5, 619-44. Bedorf, Thomas. 2010. Verkennende Anerkennung. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Gauck, J. 2012. ‘Bundespräsident Gauck zur Eröffnung des Bürgerfestes für ehrenamtlich engagierte Bürgerinnen und Bürger’, http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2012/09/120908Buergerfest.pdf?__blob=publicationFile (accessed January 16, 2013) Honneth, Axel. 1995. The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kreutzer, K. & Jäger, U. 2011. 'Volunteering Versus Managerialism: Conflict Over Organizational Identity in Voluntary Associations.' Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 40:4, 634-61. Ricoeur, Paul. 2005. The course of recognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Schröder, K. 2010. 'Kabinett beschließt Nationale Engagementstrategie und "Aktionsplan CSR".' Bundesminsterium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, http://www.bmfsfj.de/BMFSFJ/aktuelles,did=161502.html (accessed September 22, 2011) Taylor, Charles. 1994. ‚Politics of recognition’. In Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann, 25–74. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Villadsen, K. 2009. 'The 'Human' Touch.' Public Management Review, 11:2, 217-34.
Christina Schwabenland, University of Bedfordshire Business School The contribution of voluntary organisations to women’s emancipation: help or hindrance? Abstract This paper will report on a literature review that investigates current debates on the role of voluntary organisations in helping to achieve women’s emancipation. Although women’s issues have long been central to much voluntary associational activity there are still some very critical questions to be asked as to whether, or to what extent this activity challenges the existing structures that maintain women in disadvantaged positions. The context for this study is a project currently underway led by the Affinity Group for Gender (AGG), a working group established by the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) specifically to advocate, research and strengthen the contributions of civil society organisations (CSOs) to the emancipation of women. The AGG was approached last year to see if we would be interested in editing a book exploring these connections between CSOs and women’s emancipation. The book aims to present and analyze current fieldwork from different parts of the globe where CSOs are working to promote women’s emancipation and I am a member of the editorial board. Voluntary organisations have provided women with a mechanism to challenge oppression locally, nationally and internationally for over a hundred years, and the successes that women have achieved continue to be inspirational. However, alongside these successes are more problematic developments. For example, women, and organisations run by and for women, may also be the bearers of cultural traditions which perpetuate oppressive practices. And the experiences of women working within voluntary organisations are not always greatly different from those working in other, less avowedly women friendly environments And we also know that sometimes organisations may find themselves drawn into colluding and reproducing the structures that maintain women in positions of marginality and systemic disadvantage. In the voluntary sector, there is multiplicity of agencies that deal with issues of gender – in the field of development, in other political areas (e.g. human rights, reproductive rights) as well as in ‘civil society‘. We are aware of at least four distinct strands: 1) organisations whose main purpose is the emancipation of women; 2) organisations run by, and for women; 3) research into the experiences of women within voluntary organisations, and 4) contributions by voluntary organisations and their researchers to our theoretical understanding of the issues and causes of women’s oppression and emancipation. These four strands are often overlapping but can also be conflicting (as, for example, issues concerning the potential exploitation of interns and volunteers by and within voluntary organisations or incidents of bullying and harrassment.
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In working on the proposal for this book I have started to explore the literature that examines these issues with a more critical lense but my initial attempts suggest that this is a somewhat under-researched area. Drawing on the distinction between liberal and radical feminism (Calas and Smircich 2006, Simpson and Lewis 2005, Gherardi 2003) in which liberal feminism seeks to achieve women’s equal representation within the existing structures of society while radical feminism seeks to challenge and reform those structures, my initial research suggests that the majority on work on the dialectical relationship between voluntary sector organizing and women’s emancipation tends to treat these issues from the liberal perspective rather than the radical. For this paper I intend to undertake a more systematic review of the articles published in the main voluntary sector and critical management journals to investigate this more thoroughly References Calas, M. and Smircich, L. (2006) From the ‘women’s point of view ten years on’ Towards a feminist organization studies , in Clegg, SR., Hardy, C., Lawrence, T.B. and Nord, W.R. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies London: Sage: 284-346 Gherardi, S. (2003) Feminist Theory and Organization Theory; A dialogue on new bases, in Tsoukas, H. and Knudsen, C. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory Oxford: OUP 210-236 Simpson, R. and Lewis, P. (2005) ‘An Investigation of Silence and a Scrutiny of Transparency: Re-examining Gender in Organizational Literature and through Concepts of Voice and Visibility’ Human Relations 58/10: 1253-1275
Laura Mitchell, University of Keele Leisure volunteers or exploited workers? The role of ‘monsters’ in UK live-action roleplay game organisation Abstract Overview In UK live-action roleplaying (LARP), a niche leisure occupation akin to historical re-enactment, the use of the term ‘monster’ describes volunteers with various levels of involvement in event organising and production. This terminology highlights the relationship between these organisational outsiders and their exploitation or consumption by the organisation in order to produce its main ‘product’;; the live-action roleplay event. According to Thanem (2011), monsters can be understood as disrupters of boundaries. They are the ‘Other’ against which order may be defined and simultaneously, the deviations from the order, creating the potential for a new and different (potentially horrifying) world (see Botting 2003). Monsters offer possibilities, but they also endanger the present systems. This paper describes the role of ‘monster’ volunteers drawing on (auto)ethnographic research of UK LARP. The activity is understood here to constitute ‘serious leisure’ (Stebbins 1996), in that leisure participants often make an ongoing commitment to pursuing the activity and may in turn develop related careers. The various roles of ‘monsters’ are considered as unpaid workers, leisure volunteers, hobbyists and amateurs. The paper then asks whether ‘monsters’ should be understood as volunteers at all, or whether the increasing engagement between organization and community subculture constitutes a different form of ‘alternative organization’ (Reedy & Learmouth 2009). Whether this alleviates the monstrousness of the volunteers, or constitutes coercion of volunteers to produce the value of the event is subsequently discussed. UK LARP as ‘serious leisure’ Live action roleplaying is a leisure pursuit based upon the acting out of an improvised narrative, in the context of a particular setting or genre. Players sign up to a particular ‘event’ and pay a participation fee to the organisers. They then assemble details of their character and role, including props and costume appropriate to the setting. Unlike re-enactment, LARP is not a spectator sport, but instead offers various attractions through narrative challenges and crises orchestrated by the organising team and achieved through the work of volunteer crew or monsters. LARP events in the UK are often organised on a small scale by not-for-profit groups including societies and clubs. However, a small number of organisations operate ‘festival’ scale LARP events on a for-profit basis, supported by a large cohort of unpaid volunteers. Hunt (2004) has described living history re-enactment as ‘serious leisure’ (see Stebbins 1992, 1996), and having much in common with that activity LARP can similarly be classified as a substantial, fulfilling and skilled pursuit. Although not directly leading into an associated professional field, LARP does offer development into careers in event management, numerous crafts, acting, writing and game development. As in Hunt’s (2004) study of re-enactors, LARPers often describe the motivation to participate in terms of comradeship and camaraderie, though without the spectator element matters of authenticity to the genre are often collaboratively determined.
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Monsters in UK LARP The community of players and organisers is closely tied to the involvement of volunteers in running LARP events, as volunteers may be recruited to the game as an introduction to the community. Volunteers may help with anything from digging holes, to acting out the roles of ‘bad guys’, with more experienced community volunteers often refereeing game regulations or providing first aid assistance. Volunteers are rewarded in for their time and involvement, either through in-game benefits, or out of game considerations such as free food, indoor accommodations and the like. Monsters who are committed to volunteering for a whole event or season do not pay a participation fee, and often enjoy significant community status. To be more specific in the use of the term, although volunteering to monster, or ‘going monstering’ may refer to undertaking any assistant backstage task to facilitate the game on behalf of the organisers, in the majority of cases of ‘casual’ volunteering (Stebbins 1992) it refers to performing a costumed acting role according to a specified ‘monster brief’. A brief comprises a rough guideline (often written by an experienced volunteer) from which the ‘monster’ may improvise an appropriate script of dialogue or behaviour. These performances are instrumental to the structure and progress of the narrative of the event. Increasingly, core organising tasks are also reliant on unpaid volunteers such as administration and logistics tasks. In this sense, volunteers are increasingly ‘monstrous’ as they expand the boundaries of the organisation beyond employees to blur the boundaries between provider and consumer. In threatening this boundary, ‘monsters’ as casual volunteers also present a highly dangerous chimera;; paying players who are invited to participate in the ‘backstage’ business of event organisation and delivery. As such the ‘customer’ is exposed to the magician’s ‘box of tricks’ in such a way that they become responsible for the mechanical delivery of their own fiction. Monsters as exploited labour Large UK festival systems present volunteering as a way of developing skills and knowledge necessary to the game and also as a civic obligation. As the economics of ‘austerity’ have reduced the pool of paying players, there has been an increase in low-cost incentives for volunteers and an increase of regulation on the monstering obligation with the introduction of many ‘play one day, monster one day’ entry tickets. This introduction of a coercive element, along with the economic benefits accruing to the organization from the unpaid effort of volunteers, suggests that UK LARP organisations can barely be described as ‘alternative’ at all. However, the intrinsic rewards and incentives offered to ‘monsters’, as well as their key involvement in the game hints at a deeper community mode of organising which is comparably aware of the fictitious nature of the organisational boundaries. The paper concludes that the increased community involvement of ‘monsters’ in some organisations over others points to the success of such a ‘monstrous’ model. References Botting, F. (2003). Metaphors and monsters. Journal for Cultural Research, 7(4), 339–365. Hunt, S. J. (2004). Acting the part: “living history” as a serious leisure pursuit. Leisure Studies, 23(4), 387–403. doi:10.1080/0261436042000231664 Stebbins, R.A. (1996). Volunteering: A serious leisure perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Quarterly, 25,211–224. Reedy, P. & Learmonth, M. 2009. Other possibilities? The contribution to management education of alternative organizations. Management Learning 40(3): 241-258. Thanem, T. (2011). The Monstrous Organization. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
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EMANCIPATION AND EQUALITY
Wednesday 10 July, 4.30 – 6.30pm F5
Jim Lusted University of Northampton Neo-liberalising equality and diversity in the voluntary sector: Evidence from English Grass roots football Abstract In recent years, grassroots sports in the UK have witnessed significant changes, moving from relatively autonomous voluntary organisations to becoming key deliverers of government policies. This is particularly the case among National Governing Bodies of sport like The Football Association who have enjoyed substantial increases in public funding in order to pursue activities that engage with political objectives such as crime reduction, health promotion, social inclusion and equality. In return for this funding, sport organisations have been pressured to professionalise and formalise their activities. This includes forming and implementing a number of policies and standards associated with equality and diversity, such as the UK Equality Standard that was formed in 2004. These initiatives reflect a ‘business’ or neoliberal approach to social equality (Noon 2007, Kantola & Squires 2010), which proposes that tackling inequalities can complement the strategic aims of an
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organisation, contributing to increased productivity, efficiency, and meeting set targets, all with the potential for some kind of financial gain. It also emphasises the individual rather than structural sources of social inequalities, and emphasises the principle of meritocracy. This paper explores some of the early consequences of adopting this kind of approach specifically to race equality in sport, with particular reference to the policies formed by The English Football Association aimed at the grass-roots level of the game. Using data collected from a number of semi-structured interviews with a range of local stakeholders, and drawing on relevant equality policy documents, the paper considers the ways in which the voluntary sector is increasingly be coerced into applying neo-liberal principles into their organisational cultures and policies (Andrews & Silk 2012). The limitations of this neoliberal approach to equality are then considered; race equality interventions appear to be designed to contribute to the broader strategic aims of the organisation rather than being underpinned by any moral commitment to anti-racism. Analysing such activities through the neo-liberal lens can help us understand the changing relationship between the voluntary sector (in this case grassroots sport) and the neo-liberal political economy, and help to make more sense of the political philosophy that underpins contemporary equality policies in the UK. References Andrews, D. & Silk, M. (2012) Sport and Neoliberalism: Politics, Consumption and Culture Temple University Press, PA Squires, J. & Kantola, J. (2010) ‘The New Politics of Equality’, in C Hay (Ed.), New Directions in Political Science: Responding to the Challenges of an Interdependent World Basingstoke: Palgrave Noon, M. (2007) The fatal flaws of diversity and the business case for ethnic minorities. Work, Employment & Society. 21 (4), 773-784.
Francis Tomlinson, London Metropolitan Business School and Christina Schwabenland, University of Bedfordshire Business School Cementing a shared identity for voluntary and community organisations through an equality and human rights framework Abstract According to the stream call for papers: ‘the [voluntary] sector holds a nebulous position, contested, malleable and often ill-defined. Many arguments are made for the distinctiveness of the third sector, although how its defining features are identified is often less clear’. Our paper takes up this theme in relation to the UK voluntary and community sector (VCS), where developments such as increased involvement in public services provision and the recasting of organisations as ‘social enterprises’ contribute to the blurring of boundaries and a potential weakening of a sense of common identity. Claims for the continuing distinctiveness of the sector rest largely on the idea of a shared values base in which notions of social justice occupy a central position; the area of management practice with which these values are most inextricably connected is, arguably, that of equality and diversity. In line with their historical, humanitarian mission, understandings of equality and diversity issues in voluntary organisations extend well beyond employment matters to encompass a range of stakeholder interests including those of users, members, volunteers and trustees. This suggests therefore not only that voluntary organisations may offer exemplary leadership in the field of equality and diversity, but also that their practice represents an area through which they may collectively mark out and strengthen their distinctiveness. Our paper draws on the current stage of an on-going study of the UK voluntary sector, the aim of which is to uncover how diversity and equality connects with (or disconnects from) the social justice mission and values of VCS organisations, and how far it is understood and enacted in emancipatory terms. We are presently involved in researching a specific initiative within the sector, the development and piloting of a ‘Framework for Equality and Human Rights’ intended to assist voluntary and community sector organisations ‘to improve their effectiveness by building relevant equality and human rights ideas into their work’(briefing pack for piloting organisations). Our research has so far involved us in interviewing members of the original steering group, observing development seminars and feedback sessions, and interviewing representatives of organisations who volunteered to pilot the framework. The rationale for the framework was that it would strengthen the work of organisations in the field and counteract complacency – the belief that: ‘because we’re all working towards some social ends [we] are really enlightened, I personally just think it is absolutely not true’ (representative, piloting organisation). The idea had emerged from within an informal network of equality and diversity practitioners who told us that their source of inspiration had been the public sector, which was subject to stronger legislation, and in which a range of ‘tools’, including equality impact assessments, equality frameworks and equality schemes had been developed. The practitioners believed that these tools had spurred
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public sector organisations into more effective action and they sought to emulate this experience within the VCS. However rather than apply any existing ‘off-the-shelf’ model from the public sector, they agreed that they needed to produce their own. This reinforced the idea that the VCS was different and distinctive, but it also raised the question of whether it would be possible to construct a single framework that would be found to be relevant and useful across all the diverse organisations that make up the increasingly fragmented VCS. Although the idea of difference amongst organisations was largely related to their relative size, participants applied a range of other labels to contrast organisations – including ‘grassroots’, ‘social enterprise’, ‘small environmental charity’, and ‘public sector provider’. This organisational diversity served to differentiate the VCS from the public sector, and to align it more closely to the private sector. However the framework that emerged from the design and consultation process was not recognised as having any particular commonality with private sector practice. Instead it incorporated sections that covered campaigning and advocacy, volunteering, finance and fundraising, and providing inclusive services – activities not usually associated with more conventional, managerialist understandings of diversity and equality. Moreover the title ‘Equalities and Human Rights Framework for the VCS’ indicated that it encompassed a strong emphasis on human rights – an agenda that was thought to be largely missing from private sector organisations. This focus is of particular interest because it runs counter to the largely negative representation of Human Rights legislation currently found in right-wing UK political and media discourses. Our paper will present and discuss the relative positioning of equality and human rights –which the participants considered to be more ‘legalistic’, ‘holistic’, ‘stronger’ or ‘tougher’ when it came to accomplishing greater inclusion and equality. It will discuss also their expectations of the Framework and their reactions to it, focusing on areas of apparent tension and controversy. For example there were contrasts in how they envisaged using it – whether as a means primarily to reassure themselves that they were ‘doing the right thing’, or as a means to capture the interest of others both inside and outside the organisation. And whilst they agreed that it shouldn’t be ‘rigid’, or ‘prescriptive’, there was less consensus concerning how far it should include ‘measureable outcomes’ and whether it should be a ‘detailed’ and ‘concrete’ tool for ‘benchmarking’, or a ‘flexible’ and ‘open-ended’ tool for ‘reflection and development’. We will discuss what these debates reveal about the capacity of equality and human rights discourses to cement a sense of shared identity within the UKVCS. This sense of identity will be explored in the context of austerity measures and the economic downturn, considering not only the implications for the internal resources of organisations, but also for their missions on behalf of the most disadvantaged and stigmatised groups in society.
Jane Gibbon, Newcastle University Business School Different views: considering the tensions within a voluntary sector funding model Abstract Some voluntary sector organisations have a history of being dependent upon the government or philanthropic funds as their main source of finance. Recently there has been a severe reduction in available sources of funding sources which has led to the development of alternative approaches to funding and raising finance through alternative sources or markets within the sector. The paper examines one particular model of funding, the Social Impact Bond (SIB), currently being implemented, developed and supported by the UK government. The model, whilst advocating social improvement, is supported by a neo-liberal understanding of finance that itself has issues around measurement and returns. The UK voluntary sector faces tensions surrounding a changed economic reality and the demands of funders that both raise unresolved concerns that need to be exposed. The paper uses dialogue and discussion as a method to open up and examine the multiple voices and unresolved issues within SIB as an approach to funding voluntary sector organisations. Whilst the SIB model is viewed by some as a solution to a funding crisis, the complex social issues that are being addressed are in danger of becoming the problems that are driven and measured by outcome due to the overriding pressure of returns, whether defined as financial or social. The SIB model on the surface provides a credible example of how an innovative financial instrument can claim to address social issues by providing stable sources of finance. Yet the complexity of the issues and the model itself provide a compelling example of the fragility of financial innovations where the resultant outcomes, and possible failure, could drive the metrics of outcomes measurement and fail as a consequence of the rationalistic frame from which it was developed. Other examples of outcomes driven measurement within the voluntary sector are the payment by results system in England.
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Daniel King, Nottingham Trent University and Christopher Land, University of Essex Organizing Otherwise – can alternative organizations provide an alternative? Abstract A defining feature of CMS is that alternative ways of organizing are not only desirable but possible (Alvesson & Willmott, 1996;; Parker, 2002;; Parker et al., 2007). Indeed, CMS’ critique of ‘mainstream’ management is predicated on the possibility that alternatives can exist (Huault et al., forthcoming; Wolfram Cox et al., 2009; Reedy & Learmonth, 2009). However whilst non-hierarchical organizational structures, more autonomous work patterns and democratic-decision making are regularly cited as ambitions for emancipatory forms of management practice (Alvesson & Willmott, 1996), little has been said about how these principles might be realised, the concrete organizational practices that might ground them and the implications for research seeking to foster these innovations (Wolfram Cox et al., 2009). The Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) (Kleinman, 1996) and New Social Movements (Benford, 1997; Rao et al., 2000), have long been at the forefront of developing alternative, non-hierarchical organizational forms (Polletta & Jasper, 2001;; Rao et al., 2000). As Reedy and Learmonth have recently argued “exposure to alternative organizations will have raised the possibility that the world could be different and, crucially, will have provided examples of how it could be different” (2009: 254 italics in original). In this sense, some social movement and voluntary organizations embody a kind of ‘prefigurative politics’ in which the substantive values that these organizations stand for are reflexively enacted in their concrete organizational practices (Maeckelbergh, 2009). In contrast to a potentially infinite deferral of the ‘good organization’ into a utopian future, these organizations enact their political values in their everyday organizational practices here and now. Despite this potential to inform critical and emancipatory organizational theorising, CMS has paid relatively little attention to alternative organizations (Reedy & Learmonth, 2009; Parker et al., 2007; Fournier, 2006) and there has been precious little empirical research on their organizational practices (see Crossley, 2003; Hull et al., 2011; Tomlinson & Schwabenland, 2010; Spicer & Bӧ hm, 2007; Zald & Lounsbury, 2010 for notable exceptions). A particular gap here is action oriented research into the kinds of challenges that organizations face when seeking to implement politically radical, innovative organizational practices. Where CMS can perhaps offer something to these organizations is in documenting and analysing the broader power relations at work in such processes, engaging in research somewhere between a ‘critical friend’ and an action researcher. This paper addresses some of the methodological and conceptual challenges of undertaking this kind of research, reporting on a case study of a small scale VCO, World Education (WE), who are transforming themselves (back) into a non-hierarchical organization. It adopts Participatory Action Research (Kindon et al., 2010) by developing the research questions in conjunction with the organization’s members (Barros, 2010), though as we note, this engagement was itself not total, pointing to a necessary partisanship on the part of the researchers. WE are regional charity, “helping teachers, youth workers and community educators develop the thinking skills that we all need to make sense of a complex and rapidly changing world”. Built around Freirian pedagogical approach (Freire, 1970), in common with many community organizations (Ledwith, 2005; Newman et al., 2004), they are committed, in terms of their delivery to non-hierarchical and participatory practice. Their interest is to align their internal methods of organizing with the values and principles that underlie their practice. This research is still in the the early stages of the intervention, however the following questions have already been raised through this, demanding both methodological and theoretical consideration: j) What are the institutional forces and logics shaping the organizations’ environment and ways of organizing? How do conflicting logics create tensions within the organization and between different groups of members with distinct extra-organizational affiliations, for example, to charities, anarchist groups, or educational background? k) Can an emancipatory intervention by critical management researchers avoid taking sides in conflict over organizational change? How should we understand the tensions between co-optation by organizational groups and our desire for a democratic, participative framework for change? How should we relate to our own presuppositions about what constitutes ethical organizational practice? l) What, if any, practical intervention in practice can CMS scholars make to help support organizations which to undertake a transformation in practice? In particular consideration would be beneficial of practical and accessible material that could be of use to such organizations, without becoming, what Alvesson and Willmott (1996) call blue-prints: models that function like solutions in search of an organizational problem. References Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (1996). Making Sense of Management; A critical introduction. London: Sage.
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Barros, M. (2010). 'Emancipatory Management: The Contradiction Between Practice and Discourse', Journal of Management Inquiry 19(2): 166-84. Benford, R. D. (1997). 'An Insider's Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective*', Sociological Inquiry 67(4): 409-30. Crossley, N. (2003). 'Even Newer Social Movements? Anti-corporate protests, capitalist crises and the remoralization of society', Organization 10(2): 287-305. Fournier, V. (2006). 'Breaking from the Weight of the Eternal Present: Teaching Organizational Difference', Management Learning 37(3): 295 - 311. Freire, P. (1970). The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Vol. Penguin): Harmondsworth. Huault, I., Perret, V., & Spicer, A. (forthcoming). 'Beyond macro- and micro-emancipation: rethinking emancipation in organization studies', Organization. Hull, R., Gibbon, J., Branzei, C., & Haugh, H. (Eds.). (2011). The Third Sector: Dialogues in Critical Management Studies Volume 1 (Vol. 1). Bingley, UK: Emerald Books. Kindon, S., Pain, R., & Kesby, M. (Eds.). (2010). Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation and Place. London: Routledge. Kleinman, S. (1996). Opposing ambitions; Gender and Identity in an Alternative Organization. London: The University of Chicago Press. Ledwith, M. (2005). Community Development: A Critical Approach. Bristol: Policy Press. Maeckelbergh, M. (2009). The Will of the Many: How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy. London: Pluto Press. Newman, J., Barnes, M., Sullivan, H., & Knops, A. (2004). 'Public Participation and Collaborative Governance', Journal of Social Policy 33(2): 203-23. Parker, M. (2002). Against Management; Organization in the age of managerialism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Parker, M., Fournier, V., & Reedy, P. (Eds.). (2007). The Dictionary of Alternatives; Utopianism and Otganization. London: Zed Books. Polletta, F., & Jasper, J. M. (2001). 'Collective identity and social movements', Annual review of Sociology: 283-305. Rao, H., Morrill, C., & Zald, M. N. (2000). 'Power plays: How Social Movements and Collective Action Create New Organizational Forms', Research in Organizational Behavior 22: 237-81. Reedy, P., & Learmonth, M. (2009). 'Other Possibilities? The Contribution to Management Education of Alternative Organizations', Management Learning 40(3): 241-58. Spicer, A., & Böhm, S. (2007). 'Moving Management: Theorizing struggles against the hegemony of management', Organization Studies 28(11): 1667-98. Tomlinson, F., & Schwabenland, C. (2010). 'Reconciling competing discourses of diversity? The UK nonprofit sector between social justice and the business case', Organization 17(1): 101-21. Wolfram Cox, J., Voronov, M., LeTrent-Jones, T. G., & Weir, D. (Eds.). (2009). Critical Management Studies At Work; Negotiating Tensions between Theory and Practice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Zald, M. N., & Lounsbury, M. (2010). 'The Wizards of Oz: Towards an Institutional Approach to Elites, Expertise and Command Posts', Organization Studies 31(7): 963-96.
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SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT - IMPACT ON DISTINCTIVENESS Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am F5
Simon Teasdale, University of Birmingham and Pascal Dey, University of St Gallen Exploring the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Micro-Resistance: The Tactical Mimicry of Social Enterprise by English Third Sector Organizations Abstract Focus, aims and objectives In the English third sector, the policy discourse of social enterprise has raised serious concerns. For some critical commentators, encouraging voluntary organizations to adhere to market principles and behave more like mainstream businesses can be understood as a (somewhat perverse) neoliberal response to the problems caused by neoliberalism (Amin et al., 2002; Blackburn & Ram, 2006). Early empirical studies revealed how practitioners resist ‘social enterprise’ and the ideological assumptions associated with the term, notably as they pertain to managerialism (Parkinson & Howorth, 2008). Since the early work of Parkinson and Howorth (2008) it would appear that increasing numbers of voluntary organizations in England have come to identify as social enterprises. However at closer inspection many of these organizations seem to exhibit little more than surface level identification, with many not even engaging in ‘trading’ (Teasdale et al. 2013). This raises some important questions as to the interpellative power of discourse: for instance, “to what extent does the discourse of social enterprise regulate the identity and practice of voluntary organizations in determinate ways?”, and conversely, “what are the possibilities of resistance for third sector organizations?” Here, we are not so much interested in offering a final answer to these questions, for this will necessarily lead to the conclusion that power and resistance are inseparable, standing in a agonistic relationship of ‘permanent provocation’ (Foucault, 1982). Our purpose rather is to advance the theorizing by foregrounding forms of resistance where provocation and struggles are not an issue. We do so by placing performative, temporal and spatial aspects of identification at the heart of the debate on micro-resistance. Concretely, we contend that identification with prevailing norms can nevertheless qualify as resistance in that the enactment of compliance with power’s invocation in one space might open up new opportunities for individual and collective action at another moment and in another space. Our research To illustrate this double operation of identification (compliance-resistance), we draw upon a case study from Real Times, a longitudinal in-depth study of English third sector organizations (see Macmillan et al. 2010). Concretely, we highlight instances where Anna, a third sector practitioner exhibits surface level compliance with the governmental discourse of social enterprise. Anna, a self-professed social entrepreneur, claims her organization (Beech) is a social enterprise and regularly speaks on the social enterprise ‘self-congratulation circuit’ to help develop the emergent field. These processes of identification with government discourse might initially be seen as conserving the status quo. However, studying Beech from a temporal and spatial perspective, identification took on a new meaning. That is, Anna’s acts of identification turned out to be performative imitations of the policy ‘ideal type’ stipulation of social enterprise with the aim of opening up new opportunities for individual and collective action elsewhere, in other spaces. In claiming to run a social enterprise and through her working of the social enterprise self congratulation circuit, new funding opportunities arise for Anna. Somewhat perversely the awards presented to Beech for being a ‘sustainable social enterprise’ (i.e. non-grant dependent) lead to funding bodies keen to be associated with this new phenomena providing unrestricted grant income. It is this grant funding which is used (indirectly) to pursue Beech’s more radical (or indeed traditional third sector) agenda around providing a space for people with mental health problems to participate in what is ostensibly a ‘work integration’social enterprise. Contribution to the theme Our paper specifically addresses whether voluntary organizations are able to work in harmony with the sector’s values while coping with the new economic reality. Drawing on de Certeau’s (1984) work of micro-resistance, we coin the term ‘tactical mimicry’ to conceptualize processes whereby individuals enact organizational identities which at surface level comply line with official stipulations, norms or rules in order to expand opportunities of individual and collective action in other spaces. In concluding, we argue that research at the intersection of power and micro-resistance should refrain from judging the latter exclusively in terms of whether it changes “the sociosymbolic network in which we and our way of life make sense” (Contu, 2008, p. 374). Research based on embedded methodologies which capture spatial and temporal dimensions can better develop understanding of how compliance and identification in one space, though basically leaving intact the
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constellation of power relations, become a precondition for more radical opportunities in another. References Amin, A., Cameron, A and Hudson, R. (2002) Placing the social economy. London, Routledge. Blackburn, R and Ram, M. (2006) Fix or fixation? The contributions and limitations of entrepreneurship and small firms to combating social exclusion, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 18(1): 73-89. Contu, A. (2008) Decaf resistance: On misbehaviour, cynicism, and desire in liberal workplaces, Management Communication Quarterly, 21(3): 364-379. De Certau (1984) The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, University of California Press. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject of power. In H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (eds.), Michel Foucault, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Macmillan, R., Arvidson, M., Edwards, S., Soteri-Proctor, A., Taylor, R and Teasdale, S. (2010) First impressions: Introducing the ‘Real Times’ third sector case studies. Birmingham: Third Sector Research Centre Working Paper 67. Parkinson, C and Howorth, C. (2008) The language of social entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 20: 285-309. Teasdale, S., Lyon, F and Baldock, R. (2013 forthcoming) A methodological critique of the social enterprise growth myth, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 4(1)
Mihaela Kelemen, Anita Mangan (Keele University) & Sue Moffat (New Vic Theatre) Grassroots Stories of Volunteering: Towards a Typology of Volunteering Abstract Volunteering has been heralded by the Coalition Government as a key ingredient of the Big Society, a viewpoint which has informed for example the development of the National Citizen Service programme. One of the programme’s core aims is the development of a more "engaged society" through enabling people to "serve their local community" and become "engaged in social action to tackle problems in their own communities"2. Thus social action and volunteering are portrayed as key to developing a strong civil society in which we all help and care for each other. Vivid in people’s memory remains the London Olympics 2012, an event which has highlighted the crucial role played by volunteers, inscribing their hard work and dedication into the conscience of the public via a myriad success stories reported by the media. Despite such success stories, critics point to the fact that volunteering remains a minority activity (see Mycock and Tonge, 2011). It has been calculated, for example, that only 39 per cent of adults took part in some form of volunteering in 2011 (The European Volunteering Year), the lowest level since 2001, according to the Government’s annual Citizenship Survey (Whitehead, 2011). In a similar vein, it has been suggested that governmental and institutional discourses of volunteering do not necessarily account for grass roots experiences of volunteering. Rather they are premised on the assumption that there is an unlimited reservoir of goodwill in communities and people can be encouraged to volunteer more. Such a view not only neglects evidence of clear differences in people's engagement with and support for volunteering, but also the degree to which people's participation in volunteering may be conditioned by constraints related to other activities, such as work and personal caring commitments. They also take for granted that volunteering is good for society and for the individual alike, fostering 'outcomes' such as social cohesion, community engagement and welfare provision for the former and responsibility, civic awareness, social capital and self-confidence for the latter. There is also a sense that volunteering is being promoted as a means to encourage a rebalancing of society away from the state and as a way of reducing the cost of welfare service provision and public spending (Seddon, 2007; Rosol, 2012). Such governmental discourses, we argue, fail to do justice to the diverse forms of volunteering and the motives, experiences and affective relations involved in volunteering. An AHRC project undertaken by Keele University and New Vic Borderlines (at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme) revealed some of this experiential diversity and emerging counter-discourses of volunteering, enacting them in a documentary drama entitled ‘A little act of kindness’ (see image below). Our volunteer participants came from: Ford Green Hall, Etruria Industrial Museum, New Vic Theatre, Community Payback, Community Champions, Staffordshire Buddies, Victim Support and New Vic Borderlines. We interviewed 25 volunteers and invited them to participate in a documentary drama. Nine volunteers accepted the invitation. Using the audio-narratives, movement, music and poetry, the documentary 2
http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/04/~/media/Files/Downloadable %20Files/NCSpolicypaper.ashx). 253
drama told the stories of volunteers from Ford Green Hall, the Etruria Industrial Museum and the New Vic Borderlines. The oldest building in North Staffordshire, Ford Green Hall, was threatened with closure but saved by its volunteers who brought the building back to life. The Etruria Industrial Museum’s story focused on the ‘princess’ (the engine of the last steam powered potters’ mill in Britain). The Etruria engine room volunteers restored the engine to working order, only to see their work under threat because the City Council has closed the museum and nobody could see the engine any longer. The New Vic volunteering story explored how volunteering could turn one’s life around by giving ‘voluntolds’ (people who are sentenced to volunteering because they committed an offence) a second chance in life. The stories collected and/or enacted in the drama performance suggest three broad categories of volunteering experiences: altruistic, instrumental and forced. Altruistic volunteering is most closely linked to contributing to the public good. Instrumental volunteering is motivated by self-interest, where the volunteer expects to experience some personal gain (not necessarily of a tangible nature). The final category of ‘forced’ volunteering relates to the recent trend whereby jobseekers are expected to volunteer their labour in order to gain work experience or to those people who have committed offences and are punished through volunteering work. Colloquially, a volunteer in this category is often referred to as a ‘voluntold’ because he or she is told to volunteer (rather than choosing to do so). In the paper we elaborate these categories and illustrate them with qualitative material from our interviews and the drama performance. We argue that it important for these experiences to be recounted and heard by other communities, policy makers and government officials who decide the trajectory of volunteering in Britain. References MYCOCK, A. and TONGE, J., 2011. A big idea for the Big Society? The advent of National Citizen Service. Political Quarterly, 82(1), pp. 55-66. ROSOL, M., 2012. Community Volunteering as Neoliberal Strategy? Green Space Production in Berlin. Antipode, 44(1), pp. 239-257. SEDDON, N., 2007. Who Cares? How state funding and political activism change charity. London: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society. WHITEHEAD, T. (2011), Volunteering at ten year low in blow to Big Society, The Telegraph, 23rd September.
Sarah Langer, Chemnitz University of Technology Managing conflicting logics: Organizational and individual responses to inherent contradictions in nonprofit organizations Abstract „We are not loved, and it would be bad if we were“ (Member of the Counseling Project for Victims of Far-right Motivated and Racist Violence) Problem Voluntary organizations1 are acknowledged as an alternative to conventional organizational models. They are often attributed by critical scholars as being a resilient practice to the contemporary homogenizing challenges of neoliberal regulation. As they are portrayed as reservoirs of innovative and unconventional organizational concepts and ideas, they may serve as objects of projection for hopes of an emancipative change in contemporary capitalist society. Contrarily, as they progressively transform into professional organizations, voluntary organizations gain social relevance in the function of delivering social services in various spheres of society. Their organizational distinctiveness is based on a complex placement between various societal areas. Furthermore, in contrast to public and for-profit organizations, nonprofit organizations are attributed to possess a specific scope of action beyond profit maximizing and bureaucratic regulation due to their non-state, selfgoverning and non-profit oriented characteristic. However, scholars have questioned the ascribed autonomy of voluntary organizations in various contexts. A considerable debate explored the phenomena with differentiating concepts ranging from ‘marketization’ (i.e. Salamon, 1993) to ‘commercialization’ (i.e. Weisbrod 1998;; Tuckman 1998, Young 1998) and ‘managerialism’ (i.e. Roberts et al. 2005) to ‘professionalization’ (i.e. Hwang & Powell 2006, O’Reilly 2011, Markowitz & Tice 2002). Although scholars have theoretically discussed the increasing expectations for nonprofit organizations to be more businesslike, there has been little empirical examination of how nonprofit practitioners themselves
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experience the conflicted organizational situation (Sanders & McClellan, 2012). Focus and objectives of the paper Practitioners in nonprofit organizations find themselves in a paradoxical situation between meeting external expectations in providing effective and conforming services and simultaneously pursuing their distinct organizational mission. Hence, the aim of the paper is to investigate the tensions that accompany the increasing professionalization of nonprofit organizations in light of their efforts to achieve compositional and structural autonomy. The inherent organizational contradictions of nonprofit organizations are therefore not conceptualized as being a problem to be solved, but rather as shaping individual and organizational practice. The paper thus aims to examine this question at the organizational level with a focus on the perspective of nonprofit practitioners and their working situation. As they constantly need to reconcile the inherent contradictions between external demands for being businesslike and the pursuit of a social mission, the study focuses attention on nonprofit organizations as contradictory workplaces. A tension centered focus seeks insight into the ways that organizational members reconcile these contradictory logics through organizational practice and structure. Research evidence base The paper will draw on findings from a case study of a political nonprofit organization involved in social work addressing far-right and racist discrimination in eastern Germany. The case of the Counseling Project for Victims of Far-right Motivated and Racist Violence is examined to describe situational conflicting demands in order to explore individual and organizational responses to the contradictory working situation. The selection of the Counseling Project for Victims of Far-right Motivated and Racist Violence for an organizational analysis is based on the following two specific characteristics: Firstly, the organization underwent a revealing organizational process of professionalization. Specifically, it transformed from a loose association of voluntary members’ self-organization in response to the social need of supporting respective victims into a professional nonprofit organization with salaried staff principally based on governmental funding. Secondly, the Counseling Project for Victims of Far-right Motivated and Racist Violence is embedded in a paradoxical field of conflict between external demands for businesslike operations and necessary organizational autonomy as the basis of their supportive mission on behalf of the victims. The research is based on a qualitative organizational analysis conducted in spring 2012 with data being gathered from two sources. Firstly, expert interviews were conducted with practitioners of two regionally different projects, and secondly, relevant documents were submitted by the practitioners themselves. Furthermore, I used the technique of qualitative content analysis to explore (1) the specific challenges to the organisational practice, (2) the tension-filled areas of conflicting logics and finally (3) the corresponding organisational as well as individual responses that were reported by interviewees. Contribution to the theme The findings contribute to the understanding of the ambiguities of self-organization within nonprofit organizations under the influence of contemporary neoliberal regulation. The case study revealed very diverse responses to the tension-filled work life of practitioners ranging from a strictly organized team structure and constant efforts to retain the trust of multiple ‘stakeholders’ all the while conforming and necessarily adjusting to governmental funding regulations. Moreover, the case study reveals the development of diverse strategies as a manipulative response to recurrent fund cuttings and the feared alienation of their essentially autonomous organizational mission. The paper diverges from a functional investigation of nonprofit organizations’ ability to produce alternatives to the contemporary capitalist organizing of society. Instead, the critical exploration of the contradictory nonprofit work situation for practitioners raises the question about negotiating inherent tensions as practical matter for organizational members in their daily work life. A reflection upon the findings further invites discussion about the role of critical scholars when researching nonprofit organizations. Instead of exploring how we can learn from and enhance alternative practices, I would suggest the question of how critical scholars may offer a possibility for nonprofit organizations to foster a reflexive process, thus reflecting their self-organized work life and its potential alienation of the actual organizational mission. 1 Instead of using the term ‚voluntary organization‘, I will rather refer to ‚nonprofit organizations‘ as defined by Salamon as formal, nongovernmental, self-governing, not-for-profit oriented and voluntary organizations (Salamon, 2010). References Hwang, H., & Powell, W. W. (2006). The Rationalization of Charity: The Manifestation of Professionalization in the Nonprofit Sector. Stanford. Markowitz, L., & Tice, K. W. (2002). Paradoxes of Professionalization – Parallel Dilemmas in Women's Organizations in the Americas. Gender & Society, 16(6), S. 941-958. O’Reilly, K. (2011). “We Are Not Contractors”: Professionalizing the Interactive Service Work of NGOs in
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Rajasthan, India. Economic Geography, 87(2), S. 207-226. Salamon, L. M. (1993). The Marketization of Welfare: Changing Nonprofit and For-Profit Roles in the American Welfare State. Social Service Review, 67(1), S. 16-39. Sanders, M. L., & McClellan, J. G. (2012). Being business-like while pursuing a social mission: Acknowledging the inherent tensions in US nonprofit organizing. Organization 0(0), S. 1-22. Tuckman, H. P. (1998). Competition, Commercialization, and the Evolution of Nonprofit Organizational Structures. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Special Issue: The Commercialism Dilemma of the Nonprofit Sector, 17(2), S. 175-194. Weisbrod, B. A. (1998). To Profit or Not to Profit: The Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, D. R. (1998). Commercialism in Nonprofit Social Service Associations: Its Character, Significance, and Rationale. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Special Issue: The Commercialism Dilemma of the Nonprofit Sector, 17((2)), S. 278-297.
Paul Conville, University of Leicester and Mariana Bogdonova, City University London The conceptual machinery of institutional change: Shifting ‘third sector’ boundaries in the UK and Bulgaria Abstract In his seminal work on sociology and religion, Weber (1958) details how early capitalist entrepreneurs sought to legitimise their activities by describing them and in terms of concepts that were standardly used to praise an ideal of religious life, such as ‘dedication to their calling’ and ‘arduous, painstaking lives’. That is they exploited an ‘affinity’ between the Protestant ideal of “individual service and devotion to God” and the commercial belief in the “importance of duty, service and devotion to one’s work”. Political historians have subsequently argued that the normative vocabulary of an era can be seen as providing the building blocks, the discursive materials, with which ‘innovating ideologists’ can legitimise a questionable practice (Skinner 2002). In this paper we draw specifically on the notion that ‘innovating ideologists’ deploy rhetorical devices, drawing on the normative vocabulary of their context, in order to usher in change that help justify and institutionalise their values, intentions and activities. We believe these insights are relevant to understanding the dynamics of change in voluntary sector (VS) boundaries. The paper is in part a response to a call for looking at boundary work within and around the voluntary sector as a line of enquiry exploring how boundaries are established, maintained, and traversed (McMillan 2012). This complements ongoing discussions on the growing divisions in the VS between organisations that deliver public services based on contractual relations and those that rely on donations and volunteers (Ainsworth 2013). Both issues pertain to the conference theme on addressing the distinctiveness of the VS and the definition of boundaries by the sector and by its counterparts. Our underlying assumption is that the institutional context defines how the sector transforms, and is transformed1, from being a funding-based organisation to a service-delivering one. We argue that the contested redefinition of the VS of both the UK and Bulgaria are in many respects a function of the levels of conceptual bending that could be tolerated. Following Hardy and Phillips’ (2004) relationship between discourse and text, the research looks at and compares discourse work of agents in the VS of both the UK and Bulgaria. Adopting a broadly Institutionalist theoretical framework (Seo and Creed 2002), but using analytical methods associated with Critical Discourse Analysis (van Dijk 1993; Phillips and Hardy 2002), we investigate the kinds of concepts and rhetorical strategies that have been mobilized in order legitimise distinctively different kinds of practices within the two VSs. The data comprises a number of texts as spaces of institutional agency where competing VS agents act out their positions on sector definition. Initially, we differentiate academic ‘Texts’, VS expert ‘texts’, and VS organisation ‘texts’ and look at these three types in six stages as follows. First, we look at academic Texts on social enterprise in the UK where the redefinition of the VS has involved the construction of the concept of ‘social enterprise’. This concept has been used as a conduit for describing activities, such as the necessary pursuit of profit and the scope for sizeable private gain that in another era would have been regarding as alien to the VS. Second, we compare concepts and rhetorical strategies identified here to those found in VS practitioners and VSOs’ texts part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership project. This was a social enterprise-oriented project framed as a KTP activity (academic institution), aiming to provide preconsultancy support through VS practitioners to VSOs looking to conduct social enterprise work (data from 2006). Third, we look at academic Texts on VS development in Bulgaria, where in contrast, we find that there is no
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direct conceptual equivalent of ‘social enterprise’. Instead, concepts including ‘civil society’, ‘grass-roots’, and ‘participation’ take precedence over ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘enterprise’ with respect to the development of a sector acting in as an agency of transition towards free market economy and democracy. We then introduce text-based findings from case work on VSOs in Bulgaria (2008-2009 fieldwork on cross-organisational partnerships and organisational learning). Despite the missing social enterprise discourse in the texts, equivalent changes were nevertheless seen to be taking place in organisational practice. In addition, ‘sustainability’ took precedence as a concept with respect to organisational strategy for change. Next, we elaborate this organisational-level analysis by extending it into an historical context of sector-related institutional development in both countries. The explanation for the observed differences is cast in terms of the different constitutions and discursive legacies of the two national VSs. In the UK, the concepts of ‘enterprise’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ were very strong from the late 1980s and reinforced by government committed to the development of an "enterprise culture" (Gibb 1987; Deakin 1995). The entrepreneur in the UK has become the goddess of current UK political ideology and at this juncture, the VS comes to the fore as a legitimising terrain for these policy goals. Social enterprise soon emerges as a rhetorical device with which to legitimise a political project. We find that the necessity of legitimation and even the prominence of innovating ideologists (i.e. the spokespersons of new fangled ideas and practices) were not as prominent within the Bulgarian VS. In Bulgaria rhetorical and ideological devices pertaining to ‘transition’ have meant the sector has largely been presented with a set of circumstance requiring compliance, as literature on post-communist transition also suggests (PopEleches 2007; Temmes 2000). This has recently been exacerbated by the withdrawal of international funding and the necessary move towards developing sustainable practice for VSOs, namely, establishing contractual relations with the public sector at home guided by the European Commission architecture. The mechanism and role of ‘embedding’ in international and national VS and cross-sector networks is developed further. Finally, comparative analysis suggests that the (re)definition of the sector takes place through two complementary processes: agents doing conceptual bending, and the process of embedding in international and home-based networks. We speculate that ‘social enterprise’ underpinned by the innovating ideologist is a mechanism of boundary shifting for UK and ‘sustainability’ underpinned by transition rhetoric is a mirror mechanism of boundary shifting in Bulgaria. 1 In light of the “paradox of embedded agency” in institutional theory (Seo and Creed 2002) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Ainsworth, D. (2013) “Division might be emerging between charities delivering public services and others, report says” Third Sector Online, 18 January 2013 online http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Management/article/1167358/Division-emerging-charities-delivering-publicservices-others-report-says/ Deakin, N. (1995) “The perils of partnership: the voluntary sector and the state, 1945-1992” in Davis-Smith, J., Rochester, C. and Hedley, R. (Eds) An Introduction to the Voluntary Sector, London: Routledge. van Dijk, T. (1993) “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis” Discourse & Society 4: 249-283. Gibb, A. (1987)"Enterprise Culture - Its Meaning and Implications for Education and Training", Journal of European Industrial Training 11(2): 2-38. Hardy, C. and Phillips, N. (2004) “Discourse and Power” in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse, London: SAGE: 299-316. McMillan, R. (2012) “Distinction’ in the third sector” Third Sector Research Centre, Working Paper 89, October 2012 online http://www.tsrc.ac.uk/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=JBrzt%2FnpagQ%3D&tabid=500 Phillips, N. and Hardy, C. (2002) Discourse analysis: investigating processes of social construction, London: SAGE. Pop-Eleches, G. (2007) “Between historical legacies and the promise of Western Integration: Democratic Conditionality after Communism” East European Politics and Societies 21: 142-161. Seo, M. and Creed, D. (2002) “Institutional Contradictions, Praxis, and Institutional Change: A Dialectical Perspective” The Academy of Management Review 27(2): 222- 247. Skinner, Q. (2002) Visions of Politics: Volume 1: Regarding Method, Cambridge. CMS 2013: Stream 26: The boundaries between the VS and Neo-liberalism Theme 1 TITLE: The conceptual machinery of institutional change: Shifting ‘third sector’ boundaries in the UK and Bulgaria Temmes, M. (2000) “State Transformation and Transition Theory”, International Review of Administrative Sciences 66: 258-268. Weber, M. (1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT - RESISTANCE Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm F5
Ronald McQuaid, Edinburgh Napier University, Matthew Dutton, Edinburgh Napier University, Dr Valerie Egdell, Edinburgh Napier University, Stephen Osborne, Edinburgh University, Elric Honoré, Edinburgh University The opportunities and challenges of the changing public services landscape for the third sector in Scotland: a longitudinal study Abstract Aims and objectives: Drawing on qualitative longitudinal data from a study examining the opportunities and challenges facing third sector organisations in Scotland in the delivery of public services, this paper will explore the third sector’s capacity for resistance and resilience in a significantly changing political, policy and financial climate (specifically: localism, personalistation/self-directed support, tendering and funding cuts). This paper will demonstrate that as a result of this uncertain and changing environment the third sector is in a state of flux and the ways in which organisations deliver public services in future will be fundamentally altered. However, through their responses to this challenging external environment, third sector organisations have also demonstrated much foresight and adaptability in understanding how they must change their internal practices to react to these changes. This paper will explore a range of different strategies organisations have employed to do this (e.g. strategy review, diversifying funding, restructuring), arguing that amongst the challenges presented by the political, policy and financial climate, third sector organisations have also realised an opportunity to reevaluate their purpose and role, develop a stronger strategic focus and increase their resilience and resistance, essential in order that the third sector can continue its key role in the delivery of public services. Research evidence underpinning the paper: This paper draws on the first three years of a research project examining 'The Changing Public Services Landscape in Scotland: Opportunities and Challenges'. The research was undertaken on behalf of the Scottish Government by Edinburgh Napier University and Edinburgh University. The methodology involved qualitative research within 20 third sector organisations based in Scotland. These third sector organisations were providers of public services (including health and social care; employability; regeneration; learning and equalities) and included a mix of national, regional and local providers. There were two key components to the methodology: in-depth case studies with eight third sector organisations; and three focus groups involving twelve additional third sector organisations. Contribution to the stream: The paper will explore the third sector’s capacity for resistance and resilience in a significantly changing political, policy and financial climate (specifically: localism, personalistation/self-directed support, tendering and funding cuts). It will be argued that while the political, policy and financial climate may be extremely challenging, it is also presenting an opportunity for third sector organisation to increase their resilience and resistance by re-evaluating their purpose, role and strategic focus.
Yuna Fontoura, Ana Guedes, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), Brazil Essex Sustainability Institute, Essex Business School, UK International Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations on Biosafety: a critical approach Abstract Keeping in mind the challenges humanity faces as a consequence of global environmental changes and the voluntary sector’s capacity for resistance and its ability to produce alternatives, we emphasize in this paper the growing role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in particular international environmental NGOs (IENGOs), in the definition of socio-environmental agendas, particularly, biosafety. A topic widely debated during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio-92, biosafety has now taken on a strategic character with respect to global environmental governance by being directly related to the environmental protection and to human health, in addition to the potential adverse effects that have occurred
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due to the release of Genetically Modified Organisms – GMO (or transgenics), resulting from modern biotechnology (Arts and Mack, 2003; Andree, 2005; Benthien, 2010; Gupta and Falkner, 2006; FAO, 2010). According to Banerjee (2003: 165): “The debate over biotechnology is a pertinent example of how broader scientific, political, and economic discourses, structured by colonial formations that frame North–South relations, can produce discursive effects at the organizational level. The loss of biodiversity owing to industrial agriculture involving heavy chemical inputs is recognized as a global environmental problem”. In a recent study, Kourula and Laasonen (2010) analyzed the NGOs within management literature. The authors identified 88 studies through the analysis of abstracts from 11 journals published from 1998 to 2007. The study demonstrated a growing interest in the role of NGOs in International Business (IB) and International Management (IM). However, the political behavior of these actors has also been neglected by mainstream literature in these fields. On the other hand, studies in International Relations (IR) consider this neglected aspect, viewing such organizations as relevant political actors within the international context, which can be identified in studies in this field focused on global environmental issues (Betsill and Corell, 2001a, 2001b; Boström and Hallström, 2010; Martens, 2006; Ronit, 2001). In agreement with Faria and Guedes (2010), the negligence of these political issues and other actors in IB and IM is directly related to the process of globalization with a neoliberal slant, captained by large North American corporations in recent decades. Both fields enable viable conditions in the “domestication” of local practices and cultures by way of the transference of their theories, with the justification that large private corporations should expand themselves as much as possible, dealing with the diversity between the countries in which they end up operating (at times “unexpected”, due to the ethnocentric vision of their management model) (IbarraColado, Faria and Guedes, 2010). This becomes evident in dominant IB and IM literature which holds multinational corporations as its main object of study. On one hand, the dominant view in IM argues that the field is a strategic and organizational response to the differences between countries (culture, costs, patterns, regulations, prices and other factors). On the other hand, IB, in spite of considering the interaction between private corporations and International Organizations (IO), is focused on international aspects of the main areas of management, such as finance, marketing and strategy (Contractor, 2000), there is also negligence toward political, social and economic aspects of business in developing countries (Guedes, 2010). Considering the growing importance of the role of IENGOs in the context of global environmental change, and the growing number of studies aimed at this type of organization in management, mainly within the international context (Kourula and Laasonen, 2010; Teegen, 2003; Winston, 2002), we pose the question: how are IENGOs in biosafety analyzed in the fields of IM and IB and how this understanding could contribute to the voluntary sector theory at CMS? Building on the view of Ibarra-Colado (2008) in which CMS should encompass transdisciplinarity, understood as a body of knowledge that would “transcend” disciplinary boundaries, and relying on Cooper’s critique of functionalist organization theory (Cooper, 1986) that boundaries separate different spaces and constitute marginal livable borderlands, we argue that the contribution of this study is its focus on IENGOs in relation with biosafety and moreover their political role, neglected by the mainstream IB and IM fields. Biosafety is also a recent topic (less than twenty years as a global framework), with exponential economic growth (Arts & Mack, 2003; Andree, 2005; Gupta & Falkner, 2006), without a consensus about its potential impacts for human beings or the environment, and with repercussions for multiple actors with divergent positions (Lacey, 1998, 2000, 2006; Shiva, 2001, 2005; Herdt, 2005; Benthien, 2010; Monsanto, 2012; Dupont, 2012; Syngenta, 2012). Furthermore, this study contributes to highlighting the voluntary sector capacity for resistance, its ability to produce alternatives roles in the global environmental governance, interwoven with state and the market. Likewise, we defend that this study is also relevant because biosafety is directly related to the current critical ways that capitalism works and its contradictions, especially regarding the transformation of a “natural” good, the seed, into a “product”. Such as Reedy and Learmonth (2009), we are not suggesting that business schools are monolithic blocs of neo-liberal extremists. Our aim is to call attention that IENGOS might help them to develop a counter dominant capitalistic values within business and management studies. In response, we structured this article into three topics. First, we conduct a review of IM and IB literature focused on IENGOs, through the identification of the dominant scope of research of such organizations in each of these fields. Then, we analyze the political role of IENGOs within biosafety. Finally, we highlight the main outcomes that result from the theoretical approach developed through this study and how they can contribute to the study of the voluntary sector at CMS. References: Andrée, P. (2005). The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and Shifts in the Discourse of Precaution. Global Environmental Politics, 5(4): 25-46.
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Arts, B., & Mack, S. (2003). Environmental NGOs and the Bio-safety Protocol: a case study on political influence. European Environment - The Journal of European Environmental Policy, 13(1): 19-33. Banerjee, S. B. (2003). Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature. Organization Studies, 24: 143. Betsill, M., & Corell, E. (2001a). NGO Influence in International Environmental Negotiations: A Framework for Analysis. Global Environmental Politics, 1(4): 65-85. Betsill, M., & Corell, E. (2001b). A Comparative Look at NGO Influence in International Environmental Negotiations: Desertification and Climate Change. Global Environmental Politics, 1(4): 86-107. Boström, M., & Hallström, K. (2010). NGO Power in Global Social and Environmental Standard-Setting. Global Environmental Politics, 10(4): 36-59. Contractor, F. (2000). The raisons d’être for international management as a field of study. Journal of International Management, 6: 3-10. Cooper, R. (1986). ‘Organization/Disorganization’, Social Science Information, 25(2): 299–335. Dupont. (2012). Land Management Supports Safe, Productive Sites and Pastures. Available at: http://www2.dupont.com/Prod_Agriculture/en-us/content/land-vegetation-management.html, [accessed: 10/5/12]. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). (2010). Organização das Nações Unidas para Agricultura e Alimentação 2010. Available at: http://www.fao.org/ag/agn/agns/meetings_consultations_2006_en.asp, [accessed: 11/24/10]. Faria, A., & Guedes, A. (2010). Introduction: What is International Management? In A., Faria, & A. Guedes (Eds.), International Management and International Relations: a critical perspective from Latin America. New York: Routledge. Guedes, A. (2010). International Political Economy, Management and Governance. In A., Faria, & A. Guedes (Eds.), International Management and International Relations: a critical perspective from Latin America. New York: Routledge. Gupta, A., & Falkner, R. (2006). The Influence of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety: Comparing Mexico, China and South Africa. Global Environmental Politics, 6(4): 23-55.
Rob Stevens and Richard J White, Sheffield Hallam University, Faculty of Development and Society New local management realities: contesting the importance of Social Enterprise and Informal Voluntarism at a time of Neo-Liberal crisis Abstract 1. The focus, aims and objectives of the paper The paper critically explores the underlying rationale of the UK governments 'big society and localism' local management agenda and how that has dovetailed with a wider public service reform drive since 2010. In particular the paper seeks to tease out the practical local manifestations of this approach and impacts of the agenda for the voluntary sector. To these ends the paper considers how social enterprise and more informal forms of volunteering (IV Sector) activities have fared as a result, and how they should be better enable in future strategies of resilience and resistance and the local and community level. It also contends that the government’s current approach over-emphasises a hollowed out voluntarism redolent of the 19th century rather than an emancipatory Big Society. Focus on Social Enterprise In the UK governments of all parties have in recent times championed the notion of social enterprise as a way of increasing the entrepreneurial capacity of individuals and neighbourhoods: of assistance here in understanding this recent orthodoxy are concepts such as ‘Entrepreneurial Social Infrastructure’ (1993, 1997). At the same time the notion of mutual aid has gained traction in the literature as a reflection on a growing
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alternative and heterodox organisational form in local economies. In the context of the UK governments aggressive 'roll-back neoliberalism' and 'austerity localism' this paper examines social enterprise and mutual aid- and their potential place within the panoply of local responses to being situated within a post democratic city at a time of state fiscal and economic retrenchment. Focus on: IV Sector Volunteering (mutual aid and community self help): "Bottom-up and community-led activities which so often bubble along under the radar are receiving new public recognition. This is in part because we are on the threshold of political change and deep economic restraint…‟ (Oppenheim et al., 2010: 2). One on level such a change should be welcomed, not least as it has the potential to encourages new and more inclusive, autonomous empowering, and pluralistic bottom-up strategies of self-help and community self-help to emerge to either complement or act as an alternative to The Market (I sector) and The State (II Sector). Expanding on recent interventions from CMS (e.g. Williams 2008, Williams and Nadin 2012) the paper however is keen to explore the oft overlooked boundaries between formal acts of volunteering (Third Sector) and informal acts of volunteering (IV Sector) in this context. The paper concludes by arguing that: • Formal Social Enterprise organisations and stakeholder's usually require significant state or charitable (which often comes directly or indirectly from the state) support and ‘capacity-building’ activities. • Attention needs to be paid to the hierarchical ways in which government treat the informal modes of volunteering as somehow inferior to formal volunteering. This hierarchical approach needs to be rejected and replaced with a 'spectrum of types' that works with the varied cultures of participation (Williams, 2000). • People and communities can be both enterprising and supportive, but reductions in economic democracy, state support and ever sharper turns in the locally focussed impact of capitalism reduce the potential for such emancipatory action. Nonetheless examples do exist of collaborative, mutually supportive and enterprising places. • Attention needs to be paid to the problematic issue of volunteerism and under-capacity CSH being imposed on local communities; being deployed simply to replace central and local funding/ services that have been withdrawn without community consent. • Greater thought (in theory and practice) must be made towards the questions of harnessing wider participatory culture of informal volunteering. Without a necessary conceptual shift toward embracing informal volunteerism, it is argued, coupled with a more accurate understanding of the geographical variation in the nature of community engagement, then any response from "the voluntary sector" that are designed to harness resistance and resilience strategies at the community level will be dangerously partial and incomplete. 2. The research evidence base underpinning the paper The empirical analysis regarding social enterprise draws on research conducted in two UK cities, Bristol and Sheffield. Sheffield's community enterprise infrastructure, which has arguably not fared well in the face of government cutbacks in the name of the Big Society. Bristol on the other hand appears to have exhibited more resilience and an ability for creative and imaginative solutions to recent government policies i.e. the fiscal retrenchment and 'roll-back neo-liberalism' of last 3 years The evidence base that underpins the arguments concerning informal volunteering is largely drawn from the mixed methodological approach used in the Household Work Practice Studies (Williams, 2008). In particular the findings focus on first hand primary research conducted within 100 household households in two contrasting socio-economic communities in Leicester, UK. 3. How the paper will contribute to the theme The paper contributes directly to engaging with and developing the central themes of the Session. From a conceptual perspective in addition to drawing on empirical analysis to highlight the changing boundaries between neo-liberalism and the voluntary sector at a time of economic crises in the formal sector, and austerity measures, the paper also calls into question the complex boundaries between formal and informal modes of volunteering, and the disproportionate attention that is played to the former at the expense of the latter- and the formers over-reliance on the latter as a means to enact fundamental ideological socio-economic change. In this way, hopefully, this emphasis will develop new critical edges to those discussions that focus on the changing nature of the third sector: for example "what work is the third sector carrying out now on behalf of the state and the market". If, as we argue, volunteering should not be (implicitly) reduced to Third Sector organisations. then what implications does this have in terms of creating more appropriate strategies of resilience and resistance to emerge from the voluntary sector at a time of neo-liberal crisis?
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References Flora, C.B. and J.L. Flora. (1993) “Entrepreneurial Social Infrastructure: A Necessary Ingredient.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 529:48-58 Flora, C.B. and J.L. Flora (1997) “Entrepreneurial Social Infrastructure and Locally-Initiated Economic Development,” Sociological Quarterly 38,4 (Fall):623-645 Oppenheim, C., Cox, E. and Platt, R. (2010) Regeneration through co-operation: Creating a framework for communities to act together. Manchester: Co-operatives UK. Williams (2008) Developing a culture of volunteering: beyond the third sector approach, Journal of Voluntary Sector Research, 26. Williams, CC and Nadin 2012: Work beyond employment: representations of informal economic activities, Work Employment and Society, 26: 1. pp.1-10.
Linda Milbourne, Birkbeck College London and Mike Cushman, London School of Economics Compliance, Transformation or Resistance in the New Austerity? Identifying the space for independent action by English voluntary organisations under the Coalition Government Abstract This paper considers implications for the English voluntary sector of recent shifts in the terms of engagement with the state following rapid political and policy changes under the UK Coalition government. We explore how ideas of what constitutes the voluntary sector are being reconstructed; and how such conceptions are rooted in ideology. The paper examines how, through processes of governmentality and isomorphism, ideology, as instantiated in policy, contributes to constructing the voluntary sector’s conception of itself;; its beliefs about appropriate organisational arrangements; and its understanding of the limits of legitimate activities and aspirations. These changes modify the sector’s ability to maintain its privileged role enjoyed under New Labour as an autonomous and influential participant able to act simultaneously within and against the state. The paper concludes with a discussion of the extent to which accommodating changes is necessary to organisational survival and what spaces exist for independent voluntary sector activity and resistance. Changing roles and emphasis for voluntary organisations (VOs) As governments across Europe counter economic crisis by constricting welfare services and resources, the emphasis on non-state provision, both for-profit and non-profit, and community based solutions to growing social problems increases. Over several decades, a neo-liberal economic approach has pervaded political thought in the UK and elsewhere, privileging markets and New Public Management arrangements in public services (Newman and Clarke, 2009). Accordingly, outsourcing public services to non-state providers has steadily expanded. Under New Labour’s Third Way ideology, this produced considerable growth and development among VOs but under the Coalition, this has reversed, with preference given to corporate contractors. While, increased reliance on the voluntary sector depended on its adoption of managerial behaviours and practices, a continuing role in service delivery may depend less on being an agent of government (Cairns et al, 2006) than being willing to deliver services under harsh terms of sub-contracting. This, however, implies complicity in the longer term privatisation of public services. As contracts are rolled out, the Coalition commitment to a crucial, continuing role for VOs in service delivery is proving hollow (Marsden, 2011), exacerbating the exclusion of many VOs with inadequate financial reserves to manage the risks of payment by results. Paradoxically, the failures of private contractors like A4e, ATOS and G4S emphasise the risks but have done little to curb government enthusiasm for corporate contractors. Open Public Services, Localism and Big Society rhetoric has highlighted roles for the voluntary sector, including in community planning and organising, and providing infrastructure for volunteers and voluntary activities. While some VOs have engaged enthusiastically in local community plans, concern has emerged about inequalities: especially the limited community support and over-stretched resources in poorer areas (Slocock, 2012). It is also apparent that the line between services and voluntary or community action is deliberately blurred, with greater emphasis on people doing things for themselves and for free, as closures in facilities from local libraries to youth centres claim attention. All this maps a threefold role for VOs beyond service delivery: to help provide a welfare safety-net net; to contribute expertise to community organising; and to support a small infrastructure for organising volunteers. These roles are not new but further domesticate community action, deflecting it from oppositional campaigns.
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Increasing fragmentation is also visible among VOs adopting different roles and approaches, casting doubt on the ongoing value of Alcock’s (2010) case for ‘strategic unity’ in the sector, and suggesting that new understandings and multiple narratives of the sector are needed. Preferred government terminology drifted from voluntary sector to voluntary and community sector to third sector under New Labour, to civil society under the Coalition. Civil society is a broader concept and includes informal groupings and associational activities often regarded as outside the organised voluntary sector (Aiken, 2010). The boundaries of the officially recognised voluntary sector and civil society have been carefully policed. Trade unions, while possessing all the formal attributes of a voluntary organisation, were never fully part of the New Labour project and Conservative and Liberal hostility to unions has not diminished under the Coalition. Equally while, for example, Occupy London is a quintessential civil society movement, no iteration of the Big Society appeared large enough to include it. The reach of the sector therefore reflects shifting cultures of arrangements and perceptions of boundaries, frequently defined by political interests. Over three decades governmental faith in markets as rational and efficient allocators of resources has grown steadily but has co-existed more recently with growing evidence of serious market failures, such as in banking and food supply chains. Emphasis on community and civil society can be seen as an attempt to deflect attention from such failures and from the marketisation of welfare (Ellison, 2011). Framing the debates: governmentality and isomorphism The paper frames its debates with reference to the influence of state and governmental powers and dominant organisational cultures on shifts in voluntary sector values and arrangements. New public management (and new voluntary sector management) prescribes routines for control of the sector's activities; but domination of its cultures and expectations of arrangements are more deeply embedded through processes of governmentality (Rose, 1999). While it is assumed that neo-liberalism enables a retreat of state power; more fluid arrangements, networks and communications flow from powerful agencies, ensuring that actors internalise the values and virtues of certain approaches, while apparently acting independently. By opening up public services, and through explicit policy to ‘nudge’ social behaviours, the state is strengthening its centralised control and extending its governable terrain, not only to formally organised VOs, as New Labour achieved, but also to wider civil society. The public message, however, is the reverse. The process of conformity to dominant arrangements in the surrounding organisational environment has also been analysed as coercive isomorphism (Di Maggio and Powell, 1983) where legitimacy is only granted to organisations displaying approved characteristics. Markets, managerialism and excessive monitoring demands have been integral to these isomorphic pressures (Harris, 2010), producing enforced modifications to the activities, aspirations and self-definition of the voluntary sector. However, where VOs previously engaged directly in contracts with the state, under the Coalition, VOs are being relegated to the role of sub-contractors to corporate prime contractors possessing little experience of the service fields (Bennett, 2011). The new political discourse emphasises a need for VS entrepreneurialism, also identifying previous over reliance on state resources as a weakness among many VOs (OCS, 2010). Entrepreneurialism is implied as a remedy for survival, displacing earlier rhetoric valuing community expertise. Thus a new culture of organisational values and arrangements is growing which may exclude dissenting VOs. Constructing a different future? Little prepared VOs for the rapidity of change or the extent of financial losses, or for the reversal in how the sector’s contributions to public services would be regarded. Service providers, however, only represent a fraction of VOs, and VOs only one element of civil society; and the rationale underpinning localism and community empowerment offered specific roles for VOs. Rather than the professionalised and target-driven approach, within which VOs were expected to operate under New Labour, the ambiguity of Big Society inaccurately suggested more power locally to define activities, drawing on community skills and assets. There is a collective level at which analysis and sense-making across the voluntary sector is important in constructing a stronger narrative for the present: a narrative or narratives to take account of the sector’s diversity and increasing fragmentation. There are significant freedoms, as well as hardships, in decoupling from government funding regimes, which may enable alliances with others with shared interests – necessary for changes to address growing social inequalities. This means that re-defining voluntary sector identity and strengthening bonds within the sector may be less significant than building other bridges. The common political and campaigning interests that VOs share locally with public sector workers, trade unions and informal movements may be important parts of building new identities within and across sectors and are issues which the paper considers in concluding sections. Aiken, M. (2010) 'Taking the Long View: Conceptualising the Challenges Facing UK Third Sector Organizations in the Social Welfare Field' in Third Sector Organizations in Turbulent Times, Evers, A. and A. Zimmer (eds) Nomos, Baden Baden, pp. 295-315. Alcock, P. (2010) 'A Strategic Unity: Defining the Third Sector in the UK', Voluntary Sector Review, 1 (1), pp. 5-24.
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Bennett, H. (2011) 'Exploring Social and Market Legitimacy in the UK Welfare to Work Industry: A Case Study of a Third Sector Provider', Paper presented to 7th International Critical Management Studies Conference, July 11-13 (Naples). Cairns, B., M. Harris and R. Hutchinson (2006) ''Servants of the Community or Agents of Government? The Role of Community-Based Organisations and Their Contribution to Public Services Delivery and Civil Renewal'' IVAR London. Di Maggio, P. and W. Powell (1983) 'The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organisational Fields', American Sociological Review, 48, pp. 147-160. Ellison, N. (2011) 'The Conservative Party and the 'Big Society'' in Social Policy Review 23, Holden, C., M. Kilkey and G. Ramia (eds) Policy Press, Bristol, pp. 45-62. Harris, M. (2010) 'Third Sector Organizations in a Contradictory Policy Environment' in Hybrid Organizations and the Third Sector Billis, D. (ed.) Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 25-45. Marsden, S. (2011) Pushed to the Edge, London: Locality Newman, J. and J. Clarke (2009) Publics, Politics and Power, London: Sage OCS (2010) Supporting a Stronger Civil Society: An Office for Civil Society Consultation on Improving Support for Frontline Civil Society Organisations, London: Cabinet Office, Office for Civil Society Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom, Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Slocock, C. (2012) The Big Society Audit 2012, London: Civil Exchange
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STREAM 24: RE-CONNECTING ‘BIG’ AND ‘SMALL’ ISSUES: CMS BETWEEN CLASS AND IDENTITY POLITICS Alison Pullen, Carl Rhodes, Torkild Thanem, Louise Wallenberg
SESSION ONE Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm F5
Janet Johansson School of Business, Stockholm University “Sweat is weakness leaving the body”: An exploration of embodied executive elitism In Sweden, top managers and CEOs are becoming increasingly active in sports and athletic engagements. Newspapers and business press articles depict the emergence of the corporate “Elite Sportsmen”, suggesting that a new category of elitism is emerging amongst people between 30-50 years of age who hold prominent positions in their work organizations3. In academic works, healthy leaders are being described as the key effect to change and success, with managerial metaphors such as “vitality”, “competitiveness”, “purposeful” etc. Managerial values are implied in the top managers’ efforts on training and maintaining their bodies. It seems that there are emerging consolidated social concepts that come along with this phenomenon: for example, “being healthy can help you become a better leader”, “managers ought to be healthy” and “healthy leaders are talented in self-observation and self-analysis” (Bhagat, et al., 2007). The “healthy leaders” are described as the institutional agents of health concepts at work and enjoy the privilege to “frame and define the reality of others” (Smircich & Morgan, 1982) not only at work but also in the realm of health and lifestyle (Quick, Macik-Frey & Cooper, 2007). Manager’s work is most commonly being understood as a work of mind. The bodies of leaders have been mostly absent in organization studies and particular in management and leadership studies (Dale & Burrell, 2000; Hassard, Holliday, & Willmott, 2000; Sinclair, 2005). Sinclair (2005) argues that disembodied leadership theories, conceal the forging of authoritative norms about bodies in hierarchical organizations. Bodies are “maps of power and identity” (Haraway, 1990: 222). Well-trained, disciplined bodies are acknowledged as successful bodies which are orchestrated to enhance personal value (Turner, 1984: 112). Furthermore, according to Schutz, biological mortal bodies “co-constitute and embody ‘finite provinces of meaning’” (1962 in Monaghan: 126). For Schutz (1962), social actors’ embodied process is the route where the mortal body incorporates social meanings. People (re)configure “corporeal descriptions, typifications, drives and experiences” (in Monaghan, 2006: 126). Body and self are inseparable;; the work of body implicates the making of self. Pyke (1996) suggests that micro-level practices may systematically contribute to social norms that sustain, reproduce and perpetuate existing social inequalities. Viewing individuals as meaning creating actors in social processes, this study aims to reveal how managers make conscious efforts in bodily work that defines the meaning of health at workplaces. This article thus sets out to explore the manner in which athletic top managers produce and reproduce managerial meanings in the work of bodies. And how the new body norm attributes to give the rise to some “body” and exclude the others. Drawing on Goffman’s (1959, 1963 in Charmaz & Rosenfeld, 2006) dramaturgical notion of selfpresenting technique, this work anchors the analytical unit in one CEO’s reflexive, embodied self-making process, examines how the “front stage” self-image is being managed, controlled, maintained and modified through the gaze of others. This study is based on interviews and observations on one company owner/CEO, referred to as Adonis, who receives much public attention for his athletic lifestyle. By illustrating his practices and talk, the study reveals how Adonis intends to infuse workplace health discourse with athleticism. HIs 3
Johansson, A. (2012). Provocerande med chef som hårdtränar. (Bosses who work out hard provoke). Dagens Nyheter, November 21, 2012, p. 16
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athletic lifestyle embodies managerial values and is utilized to increase status and self-worth through diligent bodily work. The empirical material collected through narrative and participant observation is then processed through interpretive commentaries Adonis’s leadership philosophy is grounded in the belief that bodily health and fitness are essential to success in life and at work and essential for good leadership. He spends several hours every day exercising, competes in events and actively looks for opportunity to talk about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and sports for himself and for management in general. This belief guides his actions when struggling with personal problems as well as when dealing with issues at work. His business philosophy is so strongly influenced by his passion for a healthy lifestyle that even during board meetings he spends considerable time talking about his sport activities. The ideas and values expressed through his actions and talk fit quite well with a managerial notion of health. In addition, his case is fascinating because, for him, a healthy lifestyle is not only an instrument to increase work performance. It also seems to be the basic principle underlying all his activities. Body and bodily aspects are constantly being emphasized and related to his role as a leader. Being almost fanatically athletical, Adonis articulates most of his bodily work with expressions relating to selfcontrol, individual achievements, success and business efficiency, etc. His body and embodied experiences are mobilized to enact and enable leadership ideologies. Ideal body perfection is being produced and presented through Adonis athletic endeavors. This body ideal is incorporated with managerial values such as “elite power”, “efficiency”, “productivity”, “sustainability” and “competitiveness”. Promoting the personal passion in sports and athletic lifestyles, presenting his embodied self-image as an ideal “norm” corporate leader, controlling and repressing the feelings and senses of illness and fragility, Adonis intends to “turn” the company as a “healthy organization”, eliminate unhealthy, unfit, abnormal lifestyle and body forms. With this study, I aim to highlight the embodied leadership study in the formation and reproduction of workplace managerial imperatives. Led by the idea of becoming the role model in all domains of others’ lives through diligent bodily work, the leader instills a managerial ideal of body perfection into managerialism. I argue that bodily aspects lay at the core of leadership articulations. The body of the manager is configured to carry leadership meanings, yet the body is simultaneously the expression and demonstration of the status of power and the demonstration of new aesthetics of leadership. Hence the object and subject of body, “are emergent from one another” (Waskul & van der Riet, 2002: 510). Bibliography Bhagat, R., Steverson , P., & James , C. (2007). International and Cultural Variations in Employee. Journal of Management Studies , 44(2), 0022-2380. Callahan, D. (1973). The WHO definition of "health". The Hastings Center Studies, 1(3), 77-87. Dale, K., & Burrell, G. (2000). What shape are we in? Organization theory and the organized body. i J. Hassard, R. Holliday, & H. Willmott (Red.), Body and Organization (ss. 15-30). London: SAGE. Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press. Haraway, D. (1990). A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980's . i L. Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism (ss. 190-233). New York: Routledge. Hassard, J., Holliday, R., & Willmott, H. (Red.). (2000). Body and organization. London, SAGE. Monaghan, L. F. (2006). Corporeal Indeterminacy: The Value of Embodied, Interpretive Sociology. i D. Waskul, & P. Vannini (Red.), Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body (ss. 123-40). Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Pyke, K. D. (1996). Class-based masculinities: the interdependence of gender, class, andinterpersonal power. Gender and Society, 10, 527–549. Quick, J., Macik-Frey, M., & Cooper, C. (2007). Managerial Dimensions of organizational health: the healthy leader at work. Journal of Management Studies, 44(2), 189-205. Schutz, A. (1962). Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality. The Hugue: Martinus Nijhoff. Sinclair, A. (2005a). Body and Management Pedagogy. Gender, Work & Organization(12), 89-104. Smircich, L., & Morgan, G. (1982). Leadership: the management of meaning. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 18, 257-273. Waskul, D., & van der Riet, P. (2002). The abject embodiment of cancer patients: Dignity, selfhood, and the grotesque body. Symbolic Interaction, 25(4), 487-513. Waskul, D., & Vannini, P. (Red.). (2006). Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
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Marjana Johansson, University of Essex and Maria Karepova, University of East London Performing counselling work in post-socialist Russia: embodied constructions of professional expertise Therapeutic services such as counselling, psychotherapy and life coaching have been on the rise in the last decade reflecting the tendency of a pre-occupation with the self partially brought on by the breakdown of traditional social patterns. This paper explores this trend in the context of post-socialist transformations in Russia, investigating how counselling work is performed in this socio-economic context and how professional expertise is constructed in this highly feminized, in a Russian context relatively new, profession. In doing so, the paper brings together literature on the construction of professionalism and intersectionality. The breakdown of the Soviet Union left the country in a state of anomie: the downward shift in living conditions, restructuring of the labour market, and the redefinitions of social and cultural norms resulted in people reporting feelings of uncertainty, fear, and lack of confidence in the future (Eremicheva, 1997). According to Bauman (1997) such uncertainty leads to a reliance on identity experts who can reassure individuals of their possibilities of conducting a coherent and meaningful existence. It was therefore no surprise that the aftermath of the collapse saw a dramatic increase of demand in the newly developing services of psychological counselling and psychotherapy. Prohibited under the Communist regime (Vasilieva, 2000) the profession boomed in the early 1990s and the number of practising psychological counsellors increased from 2,000 in 1993 (O’Neil, 1993) to over 64,000 in the early 2000s (Yurevich, 2006). The salaries of counsellors are generally above the national average wage (Balachova et al, 2001), however, earning an acceptable living remains challenging (Karepova, 2010). Interestingly, this profession is highly feminized in Russia: around 70% of counsellors are women (Mileshkina, 2007; Griffin and Karepova, 2011) - a characteristic crucial to our exploration of the construction of professional expertise. Research on the construction of professionalism tends to agree that although there are general assumptions about certain characteristics of professionals (e.g qualifications and education) its meaning is fluid and changeable. Brown (1976: 511) argues that ‘professionalism per se has no intrinsic meaning other than that which is ascribed to it for the purpose of influencing or controlling the conduct’ of professionals (see also Fournier, 1999). While some characteristics are extrinsically ascribed, others are implicitly drawn upon to construct the legitimate professional subject. They include wider social processes of gender, class and race that imperceptibly but forcefully shape the construction of a legitimate, trustworthy professional In this paper we address the question: how are gendered, classed and racialised processes embedded, reproduced, and potentially disrupted, in counselling work through the embodied professional performance of the counsellors’ expertise? The majority of studies on the construction of professionalism tend to rely on the professionalization framework to make sense of the constructed meanings of professional expertise (e.g. Aldridge and Evetts, 2003; Chua and Clegg, 1990; Cant and Sharma, 1995; Casey and Allen, 2004; Cavanagh, 2003; Champy, 2006; Sherman, 2010). However, in this paper we adopt a different approach by drawing on the concept of intersectionality to examine the lived experience of female counsellors in contemporary Russia. In feminist theory intersectionality is by now an established area of inquiry which seeks to address the complexity and interconnectedness of identities and social divisions (e.g. Anthias, 1998; Crenshaw, 1994; Davis, 2008) by making visible the dynamics of multiple social positionings, and how they are constituted through power relations (Phoenix and Pattynama, 2006). While originally focusing on marginalised subject positions, intersectionality has more recently been evoked as a general framework for understanding how power operates in social relations (see e.g. Levine-Rasky, 2011). The usefulness of an intersectional approach for our study is twofold: it brings to the fore the effects of gendered, classed and racialised dynamics and as such provides a way of accounting for the embodied aspects that give rise to particular subject positions. Second, an intersectional framework is helpful for taking into account how power operates on macro and micro levels; how the individual lived experience is situated within broader social processes. In other words, it helps us ‘reconnect big and small issues’. Methodologically, we draw on 26 in-depth interviews with female counsellors in two Russiaan cities (Moscow and Vladivostok). Interviews have been used in intersectional research to analyze the relationality and situatedness of categories of difference (Ludvig, 2006; Essers et al., 2010). Subjectivity is understood as ‘the way people make sense of their relation to the world’ (Ludvig, 2006: 249) by narrating life experiences as shaped by themselves and others. The interviews were carried out in Russian by one of the authors, transcribed verbatim, and translated into English. The participants were Russian, white, and aged between 28
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and 64. All had tertiary education in counselling psychology, psychotherapy or other related disciplines and experience of private counselling practice ranging from 2,5 to over 20 years. In the analysis, we focus on how the participants’ experience of performing their work are informed and shaped by their understanding and interpretation of professionalism and how the latter are embedded within broader structural conditions of the labour market. The contributions of the paper are both conceptual and empirical. Empirically, we explore a professional context which is rarely scrutinized in the literature but which plays a significant role in the contemporary economy. Conceptually, in contrast to extant research on professionalism, the paper addresses the construction of professional expertise within a female-dominated field through the lens of intersectionality, which we argue allows us to explore hitherto under-researched, embodied aspects of the construction of professionalism. Moreover, it also enables us to account for how the micro-level professional practice of counselling is carried out within a broader framework of concurrent social transformation, as is the case of Russia. Last but not least, we aim to contribute to discussing the analytical potential of the concept of intersectionality and its viability for understanding the power dynamics of contemporary work and employment conditions. Bibliography Aldridge, M. and Evetts, J. (2003) Rethinking the concept of professionalism: the case of journalism, British Journal of Sociology, 54(4), 547–64. Anthias, F. (1998) Rethinking social divisions: some notes towards a theoretical framework. Sociological Review, 46, 3, 506-535. Balachova, T. N., Sheldon, L., Isurina, G.L. and Wasserman, L.I. (2001) Medical psychology in Russia, Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 8(1): 61-68. Bauman, Z. (1997) Postmodernism and its discontents. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brown, J. (1987) The deprofessionalization of soviet physicians: a reconsideration, International Journal of Health Services, 17(1): 65-76. Cavanagh, S.L. (2003) The gender of professionalism and occupational closure: the management of tenurerelated disputes by the ‘Federation of Women Teachers’ associations of Ontario 1918-1949, Gender and Education, 15(1): 39-57. Champy, F. (2006) Professional discourses under the pressure of economic values : the case of French architects, landscape designers and industrial designers, Current Sociology, 54(4): 649–61. Chua, W.F. and Clegg, S. (1990) Professional closure: the case of British nursing, Theory and Society 19(2): 135-72. Crenshaw, K. (1994) Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In Albertson Fineman, M. and Mykitiuk, R. (eds) The Public Nature of Private Violence, pp. 93-118. New York: Routledge. Davis, K. (2008) Intersectionality as buzzword. A sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9,1, 67-85. Eremicheva, G. (1996) Articulating a catastrophic sense of life, in A. Rotkirch and E.Haavio-Mannila, eds. Women’s Voices in Russia Today, pp.153-163. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Essers, C., Benschop, Y. and Dooreward, H. (2010) Female ethnicity: understanding Muslim immigrant businesswomen in The Netherlands. Gender, Work and Organization, 17, 3, 320-339. Fournier, V. (1999) The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism, Social Review 47(2): 280– 307. Griffin, G. and Karepova, M. (2011) Psychological counselling in post-Soviet Russia: gendered perceptions in a feminizing profession, European Journal of Women's Studies, 18: 279-294. Karepova, M. (2010) Psychological Counselling in Russia: The Making of a Feminised Profession. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of York. Levine-Rasky, C. (2011) Intersectionality theory applied to whiteness and middle-classness. Social Identities, 17, 2, 239-253. Ludvig, A. (2006) Differences between women? Intersecting voices in a female narrative. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13, 3, 245-258. Mileshkina, Y. (2007) The study of professional activity of psychologists as a first step towards the creating of professional standards (In Russian), Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, 6: 210–15. O’Neil, J.M. (1993) A counselling psychologist in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar: “James in Wonderland”, The Counselling Psychologist, 21: 643-652. Phoenix, A. and Pattynama, P. (2006) Editorial: Intersectionality. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13, 3, 187-192. Sherman, R. (2010) ‘Time is our commodity’ gender and the struggle for occupational legitimacy among
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personal concierges, Work and Occupations, 37, 81-114. Vasilieva, N. (2000) Psychoanalysis in Russia: the past, the present, and the future, American Imago 57(1): 524. Yurevich, A.V. (2006) Sotsial’naya Relevantnost’ i Sotsial’naya Nisha Psihologii, (Social Relevance and the Niche of Psychology in Society), Psihologicheskyi Zhurnal, 27(4): 5-14.
Torkild Thanem, Stockholm University Speaking out - From the margins to the middle: outcast lives in CMS From the margins to the middle: Outcast lives in CMS Over the years, CMS has come to develop an uneasy relationship to the study of marginalized groups in social and organizational life. While CMS, before and after we came to know it as such, has been a significant force in investigating the exploitation, oppression, resistance and identity practices of workers, women, immigrants and queers, appeals have recently been made to shift attention to the privileged elites who stand behind the exploitation and the oppression. Without wanting to trade in one focus for the other, I will in this talk seek to discuss some of the challenges and benefits of studying outcast lives in CMS: How might CMS go about studying outcast lives without romanticizing and exploiting their conditions and claiming to speak on behalf of others? Where is the power in outcast lives? And what might studies of outcast lives say about the privileged elites that cast them out?
Craig Prichard, School of Management, Massey University Blood on the gatepost; the conflict between family and corporate capitalism in New Zealand Agriculture In the pre-dawn dark on July 8 2010 a New Zealand farm manager, Scott Guy, was killed by a shotgun blast to his throat as he opened the gate at the end of his driveway. Nine months later police charged Ewan Macdonald, Guy’s brother-in- law and fellow manager on the same family farm, with the murder. Macdonald‘s month-long trial in mid-2012 transfixed New Zealand. It revealed an intense, competitive and rivalrous struggle between the two men over the family farm that they jointly managed with the majority owners, Bryan and Joanne Guy (Guy’s father and mother and Macdonald’s father-in-law and mother- inlaw)4. During the trial Bryan Guy told the court that Macdonald and Scott Guy ‘both wanted to be the boss;; I wanted to be the boss. That was the problem’. While Macdonald was ultimately acquitted of the murder charge, he confessed, during the police investigation, to a string of related crimes including smashing walls and painting obscene graffiti over the new house built for Scott Guy and his new wife, and razing to the ground a house that Guy and his wife had had moved off the property. Popular opinion on the trial paints Macdonald as a ‘blimmin psycho’ 5. The trial’s prosecutor however pointed to a more compelling explanation. He told the court that Scott Guy's murder was the result of an ‘intense, personal hatred’ that Macdonald developed out of fear that he would be forced off the Feilding farm he comanaged with Guy - should Guy inherit it. Guy, the eldest son, had told the family at a meeting a year before his death that he would inherit the family farm from his father. While the crown prosecutor’s explanation is important, it necessarily individualizes a conflict that has a much wider set of coordinates. In this paper we argue that Macdonald’s fear, hatred and violence is as an overdetermined moment of conflict between the symbolic, power and class processes at the core of two forms of capitalisms that vie for control of New Zealand agriculture. Particularly this moment is overdetermined by competing identities, relations, patterns of signification and flows of surplus labour found in corporate and family capitalist formations. We would further argue, given the importance of New Zealand’s dairy industry to the global economy (New Zealand dairy farmers provide a full third of the world’s exported dairy products), that the personal experiences of this family bears out, exemplifies and illustrates the struggles and conflicts of global agricultural restructuring. 4
Bryan Guy told the court during the trial that Macdonald and Guy junior: ‘both wanted to be the boss; I wanted to be the boss. That was the problem’. 5 See for example media commentator Bryan Edward’s comments on the case (http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz/2012/08/why-the-jury-in-the-scott-guy-murder-trial-should-have-beenprivy-to-all-the-facts-about-ewen-macdonald/) accessed February 7, 2012.
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In this regard, it would be tempting to regard the killing of Scott Guy, the eldest son who assumed that he would inherit the family farm from his father, as a signifier of the symbolic death of feudal family farming in New Zealand. That would be a mistake. The family continues to be the industry’s dominant structuring institution and the much expanded forms of capitalist agriculture retain family control and ownership. It is estimated that the assets of about ¾ of New Zealand 50,000 farming units are held in family trusts and a recent ANZ Bank survey of 750 farmers found that 91 per cent regarded the farm as a family business with 71 per cent looking to pass this on to the next generation. In other words, despite decades of predictions that the traditional family farm, with its feudal-like ownership, work and succession practices, would be replaced by the corporate farmer - employed to control animals and workers and returns profits to finance capital - this has not been the case. The feudal farming master who combines ownership and control and distributes value inter-generationally has proven highly resilient. That said, the tension between these two masters (the ‘father’ and the ‘corporation’) creates a series of contradiction and conflicts of which have led to family workplace violence. Using the transcript from the Scott Guy murder trial as its core empirical resource, together with various secondary sources of economic data, this paper offers an Institutional Marxian Class Analysis (Cullenberg, 1994; Resnick and Woolf, 1987; 2003; Prichard, 2007) of the conflict between the corporate and family capitalist masters in New Zealand Agriculture. References Cullenberg S. (1994) ‘Overdetermination, Totality, and Institutions: A Genealogy of a Marxist Institutionalist Economics’, Journal of Economic Issues, 33(4):801-815. Prichard, C. (2007) ‘Responding to Class Theft: Theoretical and Empirical Links to Critical Management Studies’, Rethinking Marxism, 19(3): 409- 421 Resnick, S. and R. Wolff. 1987. Knowledge and Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Resnick, S. and R. Wolff. (2003) ‘The diversity of class analyses: A critique of Erik Olin Wright and beyond’. Critical Sociology 29 (1)
SESSION TWO Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am F5
Louise Wallenberg, Centre for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University A valuable body: exchangeability and exploitation in the fashion industry With the continuous economic growth and increasing representational power of the fashion industry, there seems to be no end to the global demand for fashion models. As in previous decades, fashion models continue to give face to the global transmission and dominance of a feminine ideal which is white, skinny and prepubescent. And as before, this exchange economy involves an intricate network of model agents, model agencies and advertising agencies, fashion magazines, fashion photographers and fashion brands. However, the days where the catwalk was dominated by a limited number of celebrity supermodels seems to be gone. Instead, the fashion industry increasingly sources its models from poor backgrounds in post-communist and other emerging economies. Lured into contracts without guaranteed pay, models are, on a large scale, trafficked out of their local communities and into the allegedly glamorous fashion capitals of the world where they become deeply vulnerable and dependent on unscrupulous agents and operators. Departing from a historical account of the fashion model’s use value and exchange value, I discuss how the contemporary fashion model body is an object of economic and sexual exploitation enabled through institutionalised networks of trafficking.
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Alison Pullen, Swansea University and Carl Rhodes, University of Leicester A Joyous Ethics of the Material Body in Organizations There is a common sense view that the body is part of nature, unencumbered and uninfluenced by society and its organization. This is a view that is rapidly eroding, not least due to the take up of feminist interventions and through empirical insights from cognitive and neuroscience. Within organization studies the body has been theorized, especially following Foucault, in terms of how power disciplines bodies through organizational patterns, procedures and practices. Power structures thus inform, control and suppress the practices of particular bodies, most especially through classification and the constrains posited by subjective identity positions. While this work has been pivotal in bringing the body back into the study of organizational life it bodes the risk of rendering the body as an epistemological, political and discursive category such that identity is determined by classification as imprinted on the mind. Such discourse performs a top down appreciation of the body as if one’s body can be rendered as dependent on the big issues of power and politics. With this paper we consider the body in organizations from the starting point of the actual material body. We suggest that theorizing corporeality can account not just for discursive understanding of the body in social and organizational contexts, but also to register the body as sensate and powerful. We attend to this through the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza makes clear that the possibilities and potentials of any person can only be realized through embodied interaction with others such that we each have an embodied self whose capacities are inextricably located in relation to collectives. Organizations thus become understood as bodies in affective relations with one another. We develop this by considering an embodied ethics that rails against human bondage, especially that which arises from discursive classification. Such an ethics counters discursive determination by attesting to the power to be free and to direct one’s affects to enhance one’s power. This is an ethics of embodied, joyous (and in Spinoza’s terms, noble) love for others. For organizations such an ethics radically rethinks the spacio-temporal dimension of bodies, where the body – the joyous body - becomes a site for identity politics.
Maria Simosi University of the Aegean Maria Daskalaki Kingston University Lucia Garcia London School of Economics "The (Un)employment Relationship Uncovered: Social Contract and Identity in a period of financial crisis" During the last couple of decades, there is an abundance of research focusing on the employment relationship between employees and their work organizations. One of the dominant frameworks for examining employeeorganization relationship (EOR) has been the psychological contract (Blau, 1964). Globalization, rapid technological development, frequent organizational changes (e.g. downsizing, restructuring, out-sourcing) have eroded the sense of job security and thus engendered a renewed interest in the examination of the concept of psychological contract as a framework for the exploration of the tacit understandings of employees’ exchange relationship within the context of changing employment relations (Sennett, 2000; Kallenberg, 2009; ILO, 2012). The decreasing level of job security and trust in management and corporate values have resulted in the collapse of the idea of the so-called ‘old psychological contract’ (i.e. increased commitment in return to job security);; instead, a ‘new psychological contract’ discourse has emerged during the last decade according to which lost job security gave way to increased training and development opportunities (Conway and Briner, 2005). However, the current financial crisis institutes a new ‘version’ of the employment relationship which is inclusive of the notion of precariousness, a prevalent feature of the changing work conditions and societal attitudes (Standing, 2011). This latest reformulation of the EOR triggered by the global financial crisis is followed by increasingly deteriorating work conditions, limited employee negotiating power and other factors that this paper seeks to explore as contributing factors to a context that requires the re-examination of the concept of the psychological contract and particularly, the processes of its violent transformation. An important gap identified through the review of pertinent research is lack of the examination of the role of
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the social context in shaping the psychological contract. While earlier theoretical work on psychological contract (e.g. Schein, 1965) has acknowledged the role of external factors pre-ceding the current employment relationship (such as traditions, norms, individual’s own past experiences), later research attributed less emphasis on these factors, focusing on the individual relationship between the employer and the employee (Conway and Briner, 2005). For instance, Guest and Conway (1997) make reference to contextual aspects such as expectations of job security, employee’s experience of redundancy as well as chances of alternative employment as ‘causes’ of psychological contract yet still defining them under an employee-employer analytical framework. Interestingly, however extra-organizational factors (i.e. happening outside the employing organization) directly shape the content of employees’ psychological contract;; these factors are pre-employment expectations formed by previous history of employment relationships, employment experiences of family members and friends, the cultural context as well the broader economic, political and legal changes concerning employment relationships (Conway and Briner (2005). Following this line of thought, a growing body of empirical work has mainly examined individualism-collectivism as one cultural dimension or factor affecting the formation and revision of EOR relationship (e.g. Thomas, Au and Ravlin, 2003). Thus, while the relevance of socio-cultural context for the psychological contract has been theoretically acknowledged, there is limited empirical work in this area, an oversight that, due to recent socio-economic conditions of the crisis and rising unemployment, calls for immediate attendance. These conditions we will propose have been radically transforming social and economic relations in the affected labour markets and hence directly affect the formation and transformation of the social contract that is, the taken-for-granted realities and assumptions of societal groups (Rousseau, 1995). The ‘new’ psychological contract’ has developed as a consequence of changes in economic and social contexts (Smithson and Lewis, 2000); here we proposed that yet again other socio-economic conditions challenge the ‘new psychological contract’ embedding it within a wider context of chaotic and uncertain EOR. One of the changes therefore that we are focusing on this paper is the increased level of unemployment that came about as a radical transformation in the labour market explored and transformed radically the context in which the employment relationship is currently negotiated. A large number of people who are potentially going to form one of the actors in the process of re-building the psychological contract has recently been exposed to adverse employment relations, suffered dismissal and after that became embedded in a context of socio-economic instability and disbelief. The relationships in society that are characterized by specific moral understandings (macro-social contract) and the communities (including organizations) arranged based on shared ‘normative ground rules’ for determining the extant local social contract (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994) are both under threat. Respect for local values expected from organizations (micro social contract) is granted irrelevant as neoliberal ideology, in the face of global financial institutions, indicates social expectations and dictates cultural transformations under which the new ‘new psychological contract’ will emerge. This paper aims to examine assumptions regarding employment relationships held by Greek and Spanish unemployed young people which reflect the changing conditions in the labour market, the impact that this transformation has had into their definition of work identities and eventually the impact that this may have in the process of formation of future psychological contracts. Building upon earlier work by Vallas and Prener (2012), we support that shifts in work expectations are likely to have changed the way individuals perceive themselves as employees (identity) and their future role in the formation of their psychological contract. This piece of research diverts from the dominant paradigm of conducting research on psychological contract using pre-structured standardized measures. Instead we employ a qualitative approach, reporting on the way unemployed individuals themselves redefine the employment relationship and re-conceptualize the psychological contract in the context of high rates of unemployment. Through that, we explore and interpret how the affected individuals and communities in crisis stricken countries experience these transformations on their everyday lives, their thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions and re-organisation initiatives, accessing the stories they tell about ‘their own, embodied crisis’. This, we hope, offers a voice to the marginalized, often voiceless majorities who despite the fact that they constitute the communities that are currently being challenged, reshaped and transformed, remain rather underrepresented in the academic accounts of the crisis. Thus, the narratives of 15 unemployed Greeks and Spaniards were collected twice in a period of six months in order to capture the process of transformation of individual expectations, as well as the changing notions of work and career as experienced by individuals during the period of their unemployment. Adopting a processbased view of the phenomenon under study, we propose that the experience of prolonged unemployment and socio-cultural isolation not only affect the ways that the new social and psychological contract are negotiated but also the processes through which individuals construct precarious personal and work identities. References Blau, P. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New York: Wiley. Conway, N. & Briner, R. (2005). Understanding Psychological Contracts at Work. Oxford: Oxford University
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Press. Donaldson, T. & Dunfee, T. (1994). Toward a Unified Conception of Business Ethics: Integrative Social Contracts Theory, Academy of Management Review 19, 252–284. Guest, D. & Conway, N. (1997). Employee motivation and the psychological contract. Issues in Employment Management, No.21, Wimbledon: IPD. International Labour Organization. (2012) World of work report: Better jobs for a better economy. Geneva: International Labour Office. Kalleberg, A.L. (2009) Precarious work, insecure workers: Employment relations in transition. American Sociological Review, 74(1): 1-22. Rousseau, D. (1995). Psychological contracts in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schein, E. (1965). Organizational Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Sennett, R. (2000) The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. London: W.W. Norton. Standing, G. (2011) The Precariat: The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury. Smithson, J. & Lewis, S. (2000). Is job insecurity changing the psychological contract? Personnel Review, 29 (6), 680-702. Thomas, D., Au, K. & Ravlin, E. (2003). Cultural variation and the psychological contract. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24 (5), 451-71. Vallas, S. and Prener, C. (2012). Dualism, Job Polarization, and the Social Construction of Precarious Work. Work and Occupations, 39 (4), 331-53.
Gordon Fletcher, Salford Business School, Salford Univeristy and Anne Greenhill, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester Repetition in contemporary capitalism: a critique of digital technologies This paper explores the intersecting cycles of repetitive events that can be identified within contemporary capitalism. Observation of the cyclic nature of capitalism has been made previously in a variety of contexts and can ultimately be referenced back to the recognition of the significance of the dialectic. Other scholars of early note such as Malinowski also identified cycles of regular activity that assisted in the maintenance of social order. In this example the cycle itself could be physically traced on a map of the Trobriand Islands. Elsewhere examples of these cycles of activities can be identified in the analysis of national politics and the shift between periods of increasing or decreasing social conservatism. Most significant of all within the context of capitalism are the cycles of economic activity that shift through cycles of boom and bust without necessarily being connected to any specific or physical surplus or shortage. The repetitive nature of labour and particularly syntactic labour - is also well-identified within discussions of class and in elaborating the distinctions between them. The broadest interpretation that could be made would label repetitive action as a defining element of labour (as well as formalised religious practice) in contrast to unstructured and individualised leisure. Critiques of these cycles, both politically and academically, have largely focus on breaking the inevitability of their repetition and rethinking their necessity as a social and economic process. We argue that the popularising of digital technologies and their presence in all aspects of everyday life is a further new presentation of a dense interlocking series of cycles of actions and activities that is built around the repetition of many multiple ‘small’ events. Together we claim these as significant developments in contemporary capitalism that have the combined effect of obsfucating labour and commodifying the dérive (the individual and unstructured appreciation of the usually urban environment). Digital technologies actively encourage the repetition of events that contribute to the perpetuation of the dominant order of social and economic relations and shape everyday life in a manner that benefits institutional and organisational power rather than the individual. These events are often ‘small’ and conducted within the framework of being ‘leisure’ or ‘personal’ activities. We offer three short vignettes to elaborate on the repetition of these events at different levels of everyday life. We then set out the relationships between these ‘small’ events and their overall relationship to cycles of action that perpetuate dominant social, economic and political relations. The practices of digital photography is indicative. The embedding of photography capabilities into mobile phones as well as a range of purpose-built photography devices enables anyone to photograph anything anywhere. Geotagging and sharing capabilities also enable the image to be locationally pinpointed and
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distributed as an integral aspect of the image making process. The event - the photographing of a person and/or a place - is repeated continuously by different people in the same location at all times of the day and night. This results in the same image being shared repeatedly with little variation and only marginally distinguished by the distribution network into which it is inserted. The secondary event - the revealing of the image publicly - although mundane in itself creates value for the mechanism - usually a social media network - that enables the distribution. The result is the commodification of this seemingly random act of leisure. We also present the popularising of casual gaming and the (re)invention of cloud computing as the other two vignettes. In the context of casual gaming repetitive syntactic labour becomes the underpinning basis for leisure activities. Players are encouraged to continuously repeat actions and through the process of ‘levelling’ the combination of actions are further embedded in cycles of activities and can possibly proceed indefinitely. Economic value is continuously being found within these actions but it is not realised by the individual ‘players’. Cloud computing reveals a cycle of activity in which ‘users’ of technology are encouraged to use a centralised storage platform that seamlessly integrates with their current activities. A network structure that represents a return to the dumb client network structure of the 1970s and 1980s. The advantage for the ‘user’ is continuous access to previously stored files. The structure of cloud computing raises ‘big’ issues of security and access. However, the ‘small’ issues are where more direct benefits are realised through, for example, the customised targeting of advertising. The research evidence base underpinning the paper This paper draws significantly on the work of academics labelled as being situationist in their thinking including deBord and Plant as well as later commentaries such as those of Wark. We also draw upon scholars generally linked to these broad set of work including de Certeau and Lefebvre which contributes to the theorisation of repetition and the significance of everyday life. The relationship to this work is direct. Situationist thought in its varied manifestations is broadly anti-capitalist but ultimately these thinkers also recognised capitalism’s power and influence and its capability to overwhelm the resistance that situationist actions and thought represented. How the paper will contribute to the theme This paper contributes to the call for this theme by identifying the unnoticed technological dimensions and their interplay between ‘big’ and ‘small’ issues. We particularly emphasise the manner in which popular digital technologies, that are willingly embraced on a popular level, are themselves mechanisms and avenues for comprehensive exploitation. Our focus is upon the everyday life and lived experience of these technologies and the manner in which forms of exploitation do not discriminate on the basis of clearly defined social categorisations. Note: that even the lack of access to this technology by an information underclass is still a dimension of this exploitation, furthermore it is capable of immuring all. In this manner technology is the ‘big’ issue but through a lack of systematic application it presents itself individually and in multiple ways to manifest as a ‘small’ issue not of exploitation but of personal and lifestyle choice.
SESSION THREE Friday 12th July, 1.30 – 3.30pm F5
James Latham, Robert Jones, Amanda Muhleisen and Michela Betta, Swinburne University of Technology. Melbourne, Australia In Search of Simplicity in a Complex World The aim of this paper is to show that through the manipulation of knowledge, occupational groups are deconstructed and then reconstructed into a ‘simpler’ form that allows neo liberal capitalism to exploit the continuing expansion of its limits. Our objectives include: a) To further develop the understanding of ‘simple’ vs ‘simpler’ knowledge. b) To illustrate how the process of making ‘simpler’ strips life of its complexity and intrinsic value. In this paper we address a combination of two issues of interest identified in this stream - the identification of analytical tools for the scrutiny of oppressive and exploitative borderlands in organization. We do this
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through the application of discourse analysis methods. In particular, we focus on a specific perspective of knowledge based on Einstein’s idea that ‘everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler’. By redefining the terms ‘simple’ and ‘simpler’ in terms of knowing and ignorance we argue that the adoption of ‘simpler’ knowledge provides the framework for the substitution of formal rational principles in place of complexity. Our research has found that the unrelenting pursuit of making knowledge ‘simpler’ rather than more ‘simple’ has left minority occupational groups exposed to the devaluation of status, economic reward and intrinsic high quality of life experiences (Fox 1980). While this approach may be seen as being novel, the ideas are not new. We draw on the work of E.P. Thompson (1963, 1980) to develop the argument that complexity, creativity and intrinsic value in occupations has been continuously eroded and that formal economic rational occupations have been developed and put in their place. In turn these rational occupations focus on the exploitation of individuals and groups, and especially marginalized groups, such as; migrants, women and children. Based on the assumption that discourse is constructed and is in a continuous state of flux (Chia 2003, 1998) we have adapted Kerwin (1993)’s version of ignorance mapping to show how simplified knowledge, which is in flux, is stalled and converted into ‘simpler’ knowledge, through processes of elision and exclusion. This ‘simpler’ knowledge is subsequently used as the basis for the development of organization processes based on formal rationality, which, in turn, engages in the implementation of ‘means end’ systems. This often results in deskilled occupations with ever decreasing intrinsic and economic rewards for workers. We illustrate this process using the example of the Business School now prevalent in contemporary university institutions. We acknowledge that there is a relatively large literature on business schools and much of it is of a critical nature (Ghoshal, 2005; Grey, 2009; Cunliffe, Foray and Knights, 2002; Reynolds 1999; Boultin and Lucas 2008) but little has been written around knowledge and ignorance in business schools. Through the analysis of discourse texts taken from a hypothetical business school (we cannot reveal the source of the texts so we have made it hypothetical) we show that the application of making ‘simpler’ processes, not only, reduces the knowledge, in terms of content, and quality of business and management degree courses, but also directly affects the content and status of academics employed in these business schools. The delivery of ‘simpler’ knowledge to students, and the deskilling of the academic in business and management schools produce a limited or narrower understanding of the world of work, which in turn, perpetuates a cycle of ignorance that continues to oppress the masses (Freire 1993) We therefore, contend that making knowledge processes ‘simpler’ not only contributes to the global exploitation of societies, but also the relentless deskilling of occupations. References Boulton, G. and Lucas, C. (2008). “What are Universities For?” League of European Research Universities. Chia, R. (2003a). Organization Theory as a Postmodern Science. in H. Tsoukas and C. Knudson (eds). “The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory: Meta-theoretical perspectives.” Oxford, Oxford University Press. Cunliffe, A. F., J. and D Knights (2002). “Considering Management Education: Insights from Critical management Studies.” Journal of Management Education 26(5): 489-495. Fox, A. (1980). The Meaning of Work. in G. Esland, G. Salaman (eds). “The Politics of Work and Occupations.” Milton Keynes, Open University Press. Freire, P. (1993). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” London, Penguin Books. Ghoshal, S. (2005). “Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Journal & Education 4(1): 75-91. Grey, C. (2009). “A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about Studying Organizations (2nd ed).” California, Sage. Kerwin, A. (1993). “None Too Solid: Medical Ignorance.” Knowledge, Creation, Diffussion, Utilization V15(2): 165-185. Reynolds, M. (1999). “Critical Reflection and Management Education: Rehabilitating Less Hierarchical Approaches.” Journal of Management Education 23(5): 537-553. Thompson, E. P. (1980). “The Making of the English Working Class.” London, Penguin.
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Anne Koski. School of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Tampere, Finland Reclassifying the Finnish ICT Experts in the Big Picture: “From the tribe of the chosen to waiting for the other shoe to drop” The Finnish mobile handset manufacturer Nokia announced in February 2011 a strategic alliance with software company Microsoft. The object of the companies is to develop a new blockbuster smartphone using Windows operating system. By the move, Nokia strives to re-establish its former market leadership in cheaper mobile phones and challenge Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market. Introduction of iPhone by Apple in 2007 launched an ongoing transformation in the smartphone industry. In this emotional turn mobile phones have become less artifacts or technical devices and increasingly continuously updated experiences expected capable of exciting the sense of adventure, emotional resonance and even love in users. Behind the emotional turn can be found ideas of emotional design, where the performance, emotional and experience features of a product are seen as source of differentiation between the products and possible source of the strategic advance between companies (Norman 2004; Desmet etc. 2007). Since February 2011 Nokia has given several profit warnings and made massive downsizings in 2011 and 2012. The paper is based on the results of research interviews during 2012-2013 of over twenty former and present employees of Nokia. According to the interviewees, the creation of experiential products and applications capable of “wowing” the customers seems to expose ICT-experts in to certain kind of disciplinary “biopower” (Foucault 1980 & 1995). Constant innovation, experimenting and problem solving requires from employees ability to exceed rationality and put their intuition, imagination, personal preconscious, affective and bodily instincts to work. That is, emotional labor seems to have intimate bodily bases which need to be explored further (Hochschild 1983). The interviewees feel they don´t get needed results without putting 110 percent of themselves at stake. Innovation needs ability to promote and defend your ideas in the organization. Institutional influence in the multi task teams is not possible without self-reflective and deliberate training of different bodily and performative skills which are felt to belong to different professional roles and needed in getting recognition among colleagues (Goffman 1959; Mauss 1979; Adkins & Lury 1999; Hodgson 2005). Interviewees are proud of their Nokia years and most of the downsized workers have no hard feelings for the corporation. Some of the interviewees admit that they feel more alive at work than in their personal life. Work seems to provide more excitement, challenge, and personal boost than family life ( Liu 2004; Gregg 2011). This could suggest that ICT-experts have difficulties in keeping production apart from life (Negri & Hardt 2000). Most of the interviewees had never faced unemployment before. The quotation in the title above indicates how one of the former Nokia experts defines her situation. Does it account ICT-workers at large? Does the expertise save ICT-experts from unemployment and poverty or are they becoming ordinary workers, even part of the so called ploretariat? Are we witnessing a classic example of “biopower” in case of ICT-work or is there self-reflectivity among the experts which could indicate of felt antagonism between production and life? Are massive downsizings opening a public space for collective political deliberation or mobilization of the highly educated experts which would seriously question the neo-liberal economic regime?
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STREAM 25: FINANCIALIZATION Angus Cameron, David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Yuval Millo
HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING AND FINANCIALISATION Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm E6
Kathleen Riach Mirror Mirror on the Wall (Street)? Automated trading and the illusions of financial identities Abstract Whilst social studies of finance have established the market as a symbolic, material and social actor in shaping economic forces (Mackenzie 2009; Buenza and Stark 2004) and the lives of traders as shaped and shaping the market (Zalloom 2008, Ho 2009), less emphasis has been placed on how particular types of trading are used to construct the identities of those working in the financial services. Drawing on data spanning 2 years from an in-depth study of those currently or previously employed in the financial services, this paper uses the example of employee’s relationship to algorithmic trading as a means of developing a theory of ‘market mirroring’. Exploring the data from an object relations perspective (specifically Winnicott 1967, 1969, 1971) it proposes the market resembles Winnicott’s mother-figure and functions as a form of ‘mirror’, appearing to provide the individual with a sense of continuity, repetition and patterns through which they feel they can realise their own potentiality. However, as revealed in the data analysis, this misrecognition of the mirror as being a ‘healthy’ mirror means that traders and programmers relationship with automated trading becomes trapped into the simultaneous desire for destruction and recognition without a transitional space through which the individual recognises his or her self as an independent, autonomous being. At an experiential level, it means the continuance of an illusional bind between individual and market which thwarts the development of selfhood beyond market-based values. This not only results in a denial of failure relating to particular trading strategies, even in the face on significant performance indicator, but also a lack of flexibility and restricted conditions of possibility for selfhood in a turbulent and ever changing job market. In light of the findings, it is suggested how the introduction of transitional objects into financial services may not only help to decouple the self from the market, but bring about the recontextualisation of the market into a broader landscape of consequence and responsibility. The paper then closes by situating the work within psychoanalytic understandings of the economy (Stein 2011, Tuckett and Taffler 2008), reflecting on what object relations may bring to social studies of finance broadly and how the concept of market mirroring may serve to explain some of the more systemic concerns and enduring challenges faced in the current financial crisis. References Buenza D and Stark D (2004) Tools of the trade: The socio-technology of arbitrage in a Wall Street trading room. Industrial and Corporate Change 13(2): 369-400. Ho K (2009) Liquidated. London: Duke University Press. Tuckett D and Taffler R (2008) Phantastic objects and the financial market's sense of reality: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Understanding of Stock Market Instability. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 89: 389-482. Mackenzie D (2009) Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stein M (2011) A culture of mania: a psychoanalytic view of the incubation of the 2008 credit crisis. Organization (18)2: 2173-2186. Winnicott D W (1967). Mirror-role of the mother and family in child development. In P. Lomas (Ed) The
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Predicament of the Family: A Psycho-Analytical Symposium (pp. 26-33). London: Hogarth. Winnicott D W (1969). The use of an object. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 50:711-716 Zaloom C (2008) Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Yuval Millo and Daniel Beunza Mechanizing Equality: How regulators and economists shaped the US automated financial exchanges Abstract
Market automation is one of the most noticeable trends in financial markets in the last three decades. Automation in financial markets is often seen as resulting from cost incentives: automated financial markets are believed to provide low transaction costs and fast execution times. This explanation also produces a puzzle: if cost and speed are the main incentives then how do we account for the fact that several of the largest and most influential financial exchanges introduced automated order matching only recently and even then, only partially? In this paper we develop a more comprehensive analytical framework for explaining markets automation than currently employed in the literature. In particular, we examine the role of regulators in bringing about market technology, the political dimensions of this process and its impact on the emergence and resulting structure of financial exchanges. We suggest that this process can be regarded as public experiments (Collins, 1988; Shapin 1992; Collins and Evans, 2007) that test, ultimately, whether or not the changes supported by economic theory bring about markets that embody more faithfully a set of ideological and theorydriven principles. We contribute to literature in economic sociology and social studies of finance by showing empirically that economic theory, which ‘operates’ in markets, is mediated by technology and regulatory worldviews
Inigo Wilkins and Bogdan Dragos Destructive Destruction? An ecological/evolutionary perspective on High Frequency Trading Abstract This paper is an account of the concepts of information/noise and high/low entropy as they apply to an analysis of high-frequency trading (HFT) according to ‘heterodox economics’. This account will highlight the evolutionary path that has led to the present microstructure of financial markets and allow for a diagnosis of the contemporary financial ecology. Recurring themes in the relevant literature are examined, and are complemented by ecological and evolutionary economics, thermodynamic theory, STS and sociology of finance. Drawing from bio / ecological economics allows us to understand the economy as comprising physical and biological processes which are no longer restricted to the exchange of goods between human individuals or groups. Following Georgescu–Roegen, thermodynamic theory is called upon in order to understand to what extent economic exchange is a transformation of available energy (information) into bounded energy (noise). Balancing economic, computational and thermodynamic perspectives, financial institutions may be defined as dissipative structures coping in an entropic/noisy environment by reducing both energetic and information gradients. In other words, the aim is to emphasize the growing importance of energetic and informational exchange as a tool of economic analysis, which allows for a theory that extends political economy to the biological, socio-technical and ecological domains. HFT is a subset of algorithmic trading which works at very low time horizons (100 milliseconds) and requires massive information processing capacities. Following recent developments such as flash crashes and various technical break-downs, it is crucial to unpack the black-box of algorithmic high-frequency trading in order to understand its potential impact on wider social, economic and ecological systems. HFT strategies are the present culmination of a tendency towards efficiency of information throughput that inevitably ends up offsetting huge volumes of noise to the wider financial ecology. The question is not so much on the good or bad intentions of HFT, but its impact on the resilience and robustness of the overall system. Within this context, HFT is entangled in a financial arms race, which far from beating entropy simply redistributes it more unequally than ever. The final aim is to understand financialization as the result of the complete integration of financial microstructure with the wider economic, social and ecological systems. Moreover, this is relevant for thinking the limits of financialization as HFT is a perfect example of how ‘’there is no free lunch’’. As soon as one sub-system becomes very successful, this can only come at the expense of the neighbouring sub-systems.
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Emilio Marti Exploited investors? A critical analysis of the public discourse around high frequency trading Abstract Societies are just recovering from the biggest economic crisis since almost a century. This crisis started in financial markets, specifically in the market for subprime loans. As a consequence of this crisis, millions of people lost their jobs and global poverty has risen (Munir, 2011). Given the fact that financial institutions were at the heart of this crisis, it is striking to see how little financial regulation has been enacted since then (Engelen et al., 2011; Froud, Moran, Nilsson, & Williams, 2010; Stiglitz, 2012). Why are the people putting up with this? Why is it “so difficult to bring finance under democratic control” (Engelen, et al., 2011, p. 14)? To address such questions, research has traditionally focused on the strength of different political actors. In this context it certainly matters that elites could engage in regulatory capture (Johnson & Kwak, 2010) while popular movements such as “Occupy Wall Street” had limited influence on politics. Recently, however, organizational researchers started to complement this focus on actors by a focus on discourse (Fairclough, 2003). They investigate the “stories” (Engelen, et al., 2011, p. 12) which helped regulators frame “the purpose, intent, and tone of policies towards finance.” They analyze the “discourse [which] underpinned key legal and (de)regulatory changes“ (Thompson & Harley, 2012, p. 1372). And they document how the “logos of shareholder rhetoric created allies and sympathizers in important regulatory and judicial positions in society” (Green, Babb, & Alpaslan, 2008, p. 61). Their main finding is that a discourse which Thompson and Harley (2012) name “shareholder value discourse” helped unify elites in their effort to enforce a (de)regulatory agenda (Engelen, et al., 2011). What this burgeoning stream of research has not addressed, however, is whether this shareholder value discourse is also predominant when the public discusses financial regulation. In this paper I therefore move from the elite discourse to the public discourse by raising the following question: does the public embrace the shareholder value discourse when discussing financial regulation or does it develop a counter-discourse? This question is relevant for clarifying the role that the public can play in strengthening democratic control over financial markets. Finding that the public embraces the shareholder value discourse would testify to the claim that the “public […] is confused and passive in developing its own agenda” (Crouch, 2004, p. 22). By contrast, finding that the public develops a counter-discourse would indicate that the public can have an impact on the “bureaucratic power of public administration” (Habermas, 1997, p. 135). Extant research has not analyzed the public discourse simply because, until recently, there has been no such discourse. Engelen, et al. (2011, p. 5) note that “many topics, like derivatives before 2007, are not publicly discussed because they are thought boring, arcane, taboo, or unthinkable.” The financial crisis has changed this. The public started to become interested in financial regulation and an active regulatory debate arose around high frequency trading (HFT). HFT is the use of algorithms to trade in a fully automated way on financial markets (Hendershott, Jones, & Menkveld, 2011; MacKenzie, 2011). Today, HFT accounts for up to 70% of transactions in financial markets (The Economist, 2012). A debate about whether and how to regulate HFT arose after the so-called “flash crash” of May 6, 2010, when HFT was involved in an unprecedented plunge of the leading US stock indexes (CFTC & SEC, 2010). Since then, leading newspapers from the US (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post) and GB (Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian) have written around 300 articles on HFT and readers of these newspapers have posted around 4’000 comments on HFT on the websites of these newspapers. In this paper I do a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003;; Vaara & Tienari, 2002) of these reader’s comments. In my analysis, I identify themes through systematic coding and cluster these in two discourses: shareholder value discourse and societal discourse. In the shareholder value discourse, people take on the “subject position” (Phillips & Hardy, 1997) of an investor and analyze whether HFT helps them to realize their property rights. By contrast, the societal discourse focuses “upon more general societal reflection concerning the consequences” of HFT for “different stakeholders or interest groups” (Vaara & Tienari, 2002, p. 291). Each of these discourses offers arguments for and against HFT. My analysis so far suggests that the shareholder value discourse outweighs the societal discourse. Even the critics of HFT engage primarily in the former discourse. Their strongest claim against HFT is not that HFT threatens societal goals, but that HFT exploits the “ordinary
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investor” and they make this claim from the subject position of a real or potential investor. By contrast, my analysis also suggests that the theme of a financial transaction tax – which is part of the societal discourse – gained substantial traction in reader’s comments between 2009 and 2012. This paper contributes to two debates. First, it identifies a further context in which the “ideology of finance capital” (Barley, 2008, p. 169) seems relevant. Most people do not have enough assets to lose substantially from HFT as investors. Meanwhile, most people can lose as employees and citizens if HFT transforms the economy against their interests (Lazonick & O’Sullivan, 2000;; Williams, 2000). The shareholder value discourse around thus frames the regulatory questions around HFT in a way that benefits those people with substantial assets. This must be seen as ideological if we define ideologies as “representations of aspects of the world which […] contribute to […] domination and exploitation” (Fairclough, 2003, p. 9). Second, the paper contributes to the debate about how future financial regulation should look like. Complex regulation for a complex financial system is welcomed by the financial sector because it impedes democratic control (Engelen, et al., 2011). By contrast, regulation which is simple and strict might open up room for political deliberation, as the discursive success of the idea of a financial transaction tax shows.
FINANCIALISATION ANDCULTURE Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm E6
Michael Castelle The Transaction Abstraction: A Prerequisite for Financialization Abstract Although it is not often appreciated in these terms, the last decade's expansion of economic sociology into understanding the rise and relevance of finance can be seen, in part, as a radical recasting of the sociology of technology. While that field once emphasized the “social construction” implicated in the use and manufacture of artifacts, these new works consider financialization processes (and, indeed, much human activity) as intrinsically technological, where social interaction is frequently contextualized by scopic interfaces and entextualized diagrams (Knorr Cetina and Preda 2007);; where market institutions are taken as “socio-cognitive prostheses” (Çaliskan and Callon 2009);; and—most fruitfully—where formal abstractions can be “performative” and even “counterperformative” (MacKenzie 2006). The latter author in particular has been quite explicit in his call to "open up the black boxes of finance" (MacKenzie 2005), and his subsequent collaborations in this regard have demonstrated a radical cross-disciplinary understanding and interrogation of what, for most, is a highly technical and inaccessible field. In this paper, I propose to open up a black box within these black boxes, which rarely goes unmentioned but has heretofore been left unexplored—namely, the formal abstraction of transaction (Gray and Reuter 1992): a set of computational techniques (specifically, the methods of two-phase commit, granular locking, serializability theory, and write-ahead logging) which not only implement the “material mediation” (PardoGuerra 2010) of market value, but also represent a firm technological condition of possibility for the extrema of contemporary financialization—in particular, the decades-long exponential growth in transaction volume of financial exchanges, as well as the correspondingly extensive proliferation of derivatives (and thus the heightened centrality of their corresponding markets and institutions). While the growth of the on-line transaction processing (“OLTP”) market is well-documented in industry periodicals throughout the 1980s and 1990s, its theoretical preconditions have been heretofore restricted to the developers of such systems and database researchers, even though a "close reading" of these techniques can provide much insight into the history of financialization and other socioeconomic phenomena, as successive database technologies bring the economic “transaction cost” of symbolically mediated exchange ever closer to zero. While the support for reliable concurrent transactions first developed as ad hoc techniques within so-called “transaction monitor” mainframe applications such as American Airlines' SABRE and IBM's CICS (CampbellKelly 2003), the formal theories underlying contemporary transaction processing—whose technical effects are often summarized in the “ACID” acronym (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability) (Reuter and Haerder, 1982)—emerged explicitly alongside the research in the nascent field of relational databases in the
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1970s and 1980s, as researchers at IBM San Jose, Berkeley, as well as other commercial ventures (e.g. Oracle) raced to make E.F. Codd's relational model (Codd, 1970) a stable, commercially-viable reality. Faced with the task of producing a large, high-availability data store with hundreds or thousands of simultaneous, networked clients, many of these researchers—most prolifically, Jim Gray of IBM's System R group—published groundbreaking papers on techniques of concurrency control (Gray, 1980) and of recovery from potential failure at multiple system layers (Gray et. al., 1981)—not merely at the disk, memory or filesystem level, but up to the level of conceptual consistency of the data store itself (as in a standard debit-credit transaction). These systems would have obvious and immediate appeal to financial institutions, which were more than familiar with the late-1960s “paperwork crunch”—a historic apotheosis of physically-mediated financial activity, which saw over 100 brokerage firms depart the NYSE due to an inability to complete their back-office volume of transactions (Welles, 1975). The result was what Tandem Computers, a manufacturer of transaction processing systems founded in Silicon Valley in 1974, called “NonStop Computing”—the use, by large organizations, of fault-tolerant networked systems designed to have a “mean time between failure” measured in years (Bartlett et. al. 1986). Writing in 1977—and recalling Callon's later remarks on “socio-technical prostheses”—Jim Gray (who later moved from IBM to Tandem) remarked, in the introduction to an encompassing synthesis of his field of research: “Most large institutions have now heavily invested in a data base system... The life of many institutions is critically dependent on such systems, [and] when the system is down the corporation has amnesia.” (Gray, 1978) The extent of the success of Gray and his colleagues is clear: by 1987, Tandem's computers were used by nearly 30 stock and futures exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and NASDAQ (Sims 1987); during Black Monday's unprecedented volume, the NYSE's securities trading system (running on 200 Tandem TNX and TXP computers hosted by the Securities Industry Automation Corporation) kept running, even as the human-readable ticker tape lagged by over two hours (Miller 1987). The extent of subsequent development—which can thus be seen as an elaborate scaffolding upon the electronic marketmaking and trading execution made possible by OLTP systems—has been dramatically recounted in recent papers on high-frequency automated trading (MacKenzie, Buenza, Millo, and Pardo-Guerra 2012). In conclusion, this paper is intended as a historicizing intervention to the financialization discourse. It relies primarily on library research and quantitative interpretations of textual data (such as an attempt to reconstruct the maximum transaction rate for different exchanges over time), but it is also informed by present-day informal observation in Chicago of user-group meetings and miniconferences on the use of “Big Data” technologies in finance (where the use of the distributed data-processing framework Hadoop for data merging, online analysis, fraud detection, and archival has become common). Additionally, pending IRB approval, I intend to bridge the gap between past and present via a limited number of informal interviews with participants in the implementations of these systems. My proposal suggests that if we are to understand the limits of financialization, it must be first understood how exactly the underlying technologies came to be so concurrent, fault-tolerant and scalable—and thus could be thought of by both inside and outside observers as being seemingly “limitless”.
Pauline Gleadle and Matthieu Montalban The sustainability of product-less loss-making firms under financialization: the case of UK versus French biotech Abstract In this paper we address the apparent conundrum of how, under capitalism, a firm which is both product-less and loss-making can survive as long as 15 years in many cases. Indeed, this is the situation that many biotech firms find themselves in, as they struggle to continue in existence, engaged in innovative activities connected with drug and/or diagnostic tools development. Moreover, in a financialized economy, we could expect that pressure to extract shareholder value would force such firms to stop their business. Our focus is on the UK and France, given that under the Varieties of Capitalism literature (Hall & Soskice, 2001) and its subsequent development, we would expect quite distinctive accommodations between firms and national institutional arrangements. Specifically, we cite the UK as a prime example of a strongly financialized Liberal Market Economy (LME) and France as either a Coordinated Market Economy (CME) or within later developments in the literature, an example of State-led or State enhanced capitalism. First, we explain why speculative valuation on stock markets can permit the quotation and development of profit-less companies, by referring to “financial conventions” from Keynes (1936) and Orlean (1999), Lazonick’s approach (2009) of the different phases of stock markets (innovation speculation and manipulation) and the role of narratives underlined by Froud and al. (2006) and Andersson et al. (2010). Then, we adopt
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Lazonick’s (2007a, 2007b) framework of the social conditions of innovative enterprise and the five functions of stock markets. The functions encompass creation, control, combination, compensation and cash. We construct two exploratory case studies (Yin,1984) of French biotech firms engaged in the development of drugs and/or diagnostics tests so as to arrive at a representative business model (Lazonick, 2007a, 2007b, Haslam et al, 2013) of the bio-pharma industry in that country. This is contrasted with findings as to the equivalent industry business model in the UK, drawing on recent work by Haslam and colleagues. The two French case studies are based upon Nicox, a firm researching in the areas of ophthalmology and anti-inflammatory drugs and Exonhit which specialises in personalised medicine by developing drugs and diagnostic tools for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We show that the two French companies, like their UK counterparts, use the stock market for creation purposes (i.e. launching an IPO), attracting researchers through stock options but also to acquire complementary businesses. The case study evidence presented highlights the strong similarity between UK and French companies in a financialized economy. However we suggest that a crucial difference between the industry in the two countries concerns the role of the state as a source of funding, which partly explains the continued survival of the two French companies. We show that the business models of French and UK firms are very similar, arguably because of the specificities of biotech sectoral system of innovation (Malerba, 2002; McKelvey and Orsenigo, 2003). Therefore, we argue that the difference in the respective national system of innovation and the supportive role of government in finance does not necessary lead to differences in business models, but it can nonetheless, imply differences in their sustainability. References Andersson, T, Gleadle, P, Haslam, C & Tsitsianis, N(2010), ‘Bio-pharma: a financialized business model,’ Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 21, 631-641.
Radman Selmic Performativity, Orientalism and Greek Crisis Abstract Aim of the paper is to discuss how economics (re)produces both economies (Callon, 1998) and identities in a context of the Greek economic crisis. While agents of neoliberal networks such as hedge funds, banks and credit rate agencies still declaratively draw their theoretical power from the discredited neo-classical pillars of market equilibrium and its predictability, in reality they continue to operate performatively and reign from a plane of immanency. I aim at analysing the actors in the global financial market from a perspective of intensive culture (Lash, 2010) and performativity (Callon, 1998, 2007; MacKenzie 2007, 2009), and showing how they do not represent but (re)create reality. I am also exploring the idea that neoliberalism produces “countable identities” (Mennicken and Miller, 2012;; Foucault, 2008) and relate that idea to Orientalization of the Greek identity through financial figures and reports. In contrast to the neo-classical economics, Michel Callon (1998) proposes a performative approach to economic reality. According to Callon, “economics is not a form of knowledge that depicts an already existing state of affairs but a set of instruments and practices that contribute to the construction of economic settings, actors, and institutions” (MacKenzie, 2004: 35). Callon actually implements Deleuzian theoretical legacy, and devaluates any idea of transcendent and objective economic representation. According to the Actor-Network theory, whose main proponents are Michel Callon and Donald Mackenzie, different economic actors including economists, institutional agencies, but also technical and economic settings, influence each other and (re)produce economic reality. By using the platform of performativity, I am exploring three paradigmatic cases in which the Greek crisis has been created, fuelled or exacerbated from the global financial centres, rather than just simply attributing the crisis to the mismanagement of the undoubtedly corrupted Greek political and financial elites. In all three cases, specific sociotechnical agancement were assembled which directly influenced economic reality. Firstly, I am discussing sophisticated instruments designed by Goldman Sachs by which Greek government starting from 2001 for fee of 300 million dollars managed to hide real proportion of Greek indebtedness (Mahmud, 2010). These instruments disguised loans as currency trades. When the details were discovered, both the EU and USA financial authorities launched official investigations. As Mahmud points out, “calls for crackdown on derivatives increased as an August 2009 confidential Goldman Sachs report surfaced that had advised its clients to “buy CDS of developed countries,” months before the Greek debt became a big story in financial markets” (Mahmud, 2010:17). Secondly, credit rating agencies were constantly pushing Greek economy towards the zones already described in their own outlooks or analysis. The whole financial market including in particular sovereign bond market, was always reacting on the reports as if they were apodictic prediction of the future. As Paudin (2011) emphasis, “speculation in the bond markets – often triggered by the coercive tactics of CRA (Kerwer 2005:
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461) – escalates the onslaught against vulnerable governments, such as Greece or Portugal, while averting attention away from the actual composition of those ratings. As panic spreads, markets are too rattled to probe the accuracy of these downgrades. Moreover, as I posit, ratings have performative effects that normalise adherence to their conclusions” (Paudin, 2011:9) Thirdly, the IMF and its leading economist Olivier Blanchard, publicly confessed in December 2012 that an algorithm they used in order to calculate how deep and fast can austerity cuts go in case of Greek economy, was actually wrong. “Blanchard and Leigh deduced that IMF forecasters have been using a uniform multiplier of 0.5, when in fact the circumstances of the European economy made the multiplier as much as 1.5, meaning that a $1 government spending cut would cost $1.50 in lost output” (Schneider, 2013). Finally, I would like to discuss Orientalisation of Greece and its crisis, and elucidate how is the theory of the “Ottoman causes” related to the cases mentioned before. When, for example, Luxemburg Prime Minister and President of Eurogroup (*), Jean-Claude Juncker (2012), among many others, emphasised that the crisis has occurred due to the Greek Ottoman legacy, he just repeated a broadly circulating standpoint among politicians and economic experts. Moreover, when such statements are, for example, put in context in the Morgan Stanley’s prediction (2012) regarding the future of Greece and the Eurozone, among myriad other financial projections, then we actually witness how (biased) accounting numbers related to working hours or indebtedness per capita or productivity are constructing not only entities but also identities. As Mennicken and Miller point out, “Foucault’s analyses of neoliberal power, of disciplinary mechanisms, and of governmental ratio-nalities are immensely helpful here, for they encourage us to draw out the inherently political” (Mennicken and Miller, 2012). In his seminal books “Security, Territory, Population” (2007) and “The Birth of Biopolitics” (2010), Michael Foucault unmasks production of neoliberal subject simultaneously in economy and politics, by different technics ranging from accountancy to market hypostasis, from permanent disciplining to governmentality. How is possible that the explanation of the economic crisis referring to the Ottoman legacy has risen to prominence and become broadly and uncritically adopted by different actors? The explanation unfortunately discovers tenacious layers of Orientalism still firmly embedded in the Western elite, although, for example, Pauline Grosjean (2011) clearly points out in her study that “there is no association between former Ottoman rule, income, small and medium sized enterprise development or entrepreneurship….Islamic religion and trust in the financial system play no role in explaining such long-term persistence.” (Grosjean, 2011) If we take into account one of Foucault’s crucial notions “dispositif”, than we can see why the explanation of the Ottoman roots serves its purpose for western elites – it abolishes western elites for participating in creating, fuelling and exacerbating the crisis, puts a finger to Oriental “lazy and corrupted” roots and its immanent mismanagement of society, and finally provides platform for disciplining of the Greek people and society through tough austerity measures.
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FINANCIALISATION
Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am E6
Stefan Leins Establishing market authority: the construction of stock market forecasts among financial analysts Abstract Forecasting the development of stock prices is a central activity in contemporary finance. The production of future scenarios on how stock prices might develop enables financial market participants to bet on the rise or fall of stock prices. In theory as well as in practice, however, there is large skepticism whether it is possible to predict the future of stock market developments at all. For neoliberal economists, the market is informationally efficient, future stock prices thus underlie a “random walk”. For Neo-institutional and Keynesian economists, the amount of uncertainty faced by the analysts makes stock market forecasting impossible. On a practical level, financial analysts experience that they indeed often fail to predict stock market developments. Still, most financial institutions spend significant amounts of money to hire experts that predict stock market developments. Drawing on 24 months of fieldwork in a financial analysis department of a Swiss bank, I elaborate on how financial analysts cope with the tension between their own doubts about whether it is possible to predict market developments and their task to do so. Based on ethnographic data, I show that financial analysts combine a large variety of calculative and social processes in order to overcome this tension. These processes are located
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on two different levels: On a first level, analysts apply processes of decoding. Processes of decoding help financial analysts to decode and scale information in order to create a strategic perspective on how a stock price might develop in future. After having constructed such a strategic perspective, analysts apply processes of sophistication in order to make the strategic perspective look like expert knowledge. Describing these processes, I aim to show that financial analysts transform information into persuasive stock market forecasts, which are later on used to claim market authority. The findings presented in this paper are based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork among buy-side financial analysts of an internationally operating Swiss bank. The data derives from participant observation, informal talks, as well as from active participation in the forecast production process. This approach draws on former research in the field of the Social Studies of Finance and the Anthropology of Finance. Focusing not only on actors, but also on sociotechnical processes and arrangements, it further develops a way of seeing financial markets as a field in which the “social” emerges from the interaction between actors, technology and ideology. The importance of financial analysis for financial market participants can be understood as a part of a broader financialization. First, financial analysis helps to promote investments in the stock market by continuously creating and re-creating future scenarios investors want to benefit from. Constantly highlighting and promoting financial opportunities, financial analysts animate asset managers and bank clients to actively participate in financial markets. Second, through the practices of valuating companies and estimating the future performance of their stocks, financial analysts become powerful players in the process of financialization. They define how companies are valuated and create a “market consensus”. During the process of valuation and forecasting, a number of considerations are stressed, while others are ignored. As a result, the financial analysts’ activities represent a problematic approach that defines how companies or trends are financialized. Third, financial analysts have a critical role in actively shaping future financial markets. Once a stock market forecast is established, it influences the financial market participants’ decisions on which stocks to buy or to sell. This materializes in the way financial markets as a whole develop. Hence, in order to understand financialization, studying the role of financial analysts and the construction and promotion of stock market forecasts is of central interest.
James W. Williams Feeding Finance: A Critical Account of the Shifting Relationships between Finance, Food, and Farming Abstract Whether in the form of commodity index funds, farmland investment funds, or commodities trading by agrifood companies, there is evidence of an increasingly close relationship between finance, food, and agriculture. While these developments have received some critical attention of late, existing accounts of the “financialization of food” are limited to the extent that they view finance as a largely external and artificial force with emphasis placed on the unnaturalness of its relationship with agriculture (e.g. “unnatural coupling”) and its distortive effects on agricultural markets (e.g. “excessive speculation”). Recognizing that finance and agriculture in fact have a long history, this paper offers a much more nuanced account of the place of financialization in the agricultural sector. Specifically, it examines how the emerging view of agriculture as an investment opportunity has served to re-configure the terrain of agricultural interests and logics while creating new knowledge demands and thus agricultural visibilities including: new ways of valuing farmland; the growing significance and politicization of key indicators such as planting intentions, crop reports, and grain reserves;; and the greater salience of futures markets as determinants of ‘price’ and drivers of agricultural policy. These dynamics will be illustrated in reference to a specific case study: the role of finance and processes of financialization in the recent demise of the Canadian Wheat Board as a state marketing agency. Through this discussion, the paper will offer valuable insights into not only the re-working of agriculture as a particular type of financial space (e.g. ‘ag space’), but also the nature and limits of financialization itself as a way of engaging with the world beyond urban financial centres.
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Mahmoud Ezzamel, Jonathan Murphy, Jeroen Veldman, Hugh Willmott The politics of corporate citizenship Abstract Over recent decades we have seen a growing role of financial disciplines and specialists in the valuation of the corporate form. Consistent with the neo-liberal emphasis upon markets (Krippner, 2012), the corporation is conceived increasingly as a `collection of assets earning different rates of return’ (Fligstein, 1993: 15). This move in valuation is based on the presentation of the corporate form as a construct, with little ‘reality’ outside its legal and economic representation as a reduced ‘market agent’. This construction sanctions arm’s-length approaches to corporate governance, the maximisation of ‘short-run rates of return’ (ibid.), and the use of material incentives (e.g. stock options and performance measurement systems), to co-opt top management in the redistribution of social wealth (Ireland, 2005). Opposed to this narrow notion of ‘value’, we note growing pressure from governments and citizens on corporations to demonstrate greater `citizenship’. This is associated with the increased involvement of corporations in the administration of services that were formerly undertaken by governments. Such `soft regulation’ includes the provision of education and healthcare (Matten and Crane 2005; Scherer and Palazzo, 2011) that has increasingly (re)-politicized the role of corporations. An effect of (re-)politicization is an undermining of the liberal cognitive and pragmatic foundations that previously provided corporate legitimacy, and so raises questions about the relation of the purely financial depiction of the corporate form to processes of governance and their relation to constituencies inside and outside the corporation. It simultaneously begs questions about domination and (political) hegemony in terms of the processes whereby the corporate form acts as a citizen (Edward and Willmott, 2008; Murphy, 2011). In these modes of valuation, we find that dominant understandings of ‘finance’ are implicated in the production and defence of a very specific view of the history of the corporate form and its current mode of existence. By illuminating the extent to which the demands of a post-liberal conception of `corporate citizenship’ may be corrosive of, reconciled with, or possibly harnessed to, an extant neo-liberal framework of corporate governance, our aim is to explore how, and to what extent, the 'citizenship' increasingly extolled by corporations might be harnessed to facilitate a reintegration of the `responsibility’ of 'corporations’ as `citizens', rather than a further augmentation of the wealth of elites, including the rapid expansion of private equity funds that privately and unaccountably own a large proportion of worldwide assets (Froud and Williams, 2007; Kaplan and Strömberg 2009; Maslakovic, 2012). References Edward, P. & Willmott, H. 2008, "Corporate citizenship: rise or demise of a myth?", Academy of Management Review, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 771-773. Fligstein, N. 1993, The transformation of corporate control, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA. Froud, J. & Williams, K. 2007, "Private equity and the culture of value extraction", New Political Economy, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 405-420. Ireland, P. 2005, "Shareholder Primacy and the Distribution of Wealth", The Modern Law Review, vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 49-81. Kaplan, S.N. & Stromberg, P. 2009, "Leveraged Buyouts and Private Equity", Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 121-146. Krippner, G.R. 2012, Capitalizing on crisis: The political origins of the rise of finance, Harvard University Press. Maslakovic, M. 2012, Private Equity, The City UK, London. Matten, D. & Crane, A. 2005, "Corporate Citizenship: Toward an extended theoretical conceptualization", Academy of Management review, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 166-179. Murphy, J. "The Rise of the Global Managers" in The New Development Management, eds. S. Dar & B. Cooke, Zed books, London, pp. 18-40. Scherer, A.G. & Palazzo, G. 2011, "The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World: A Review of a New Perspective on CSR and its Implications for the Firm, Governance, and Democracy", Journal of Management Studies, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 899-931.
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David Harvie and Geoff Lightfoot Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié ne font que se creuser un tombeau(Those who make revolutions half way only dig their own graves) Abstract Creative destructive, deconstructive events always seem replete with emancipatory possibilities. Paris 1968, for example, is seen as integral to the development of a series of social movements, particularly through the fomenting of critical re-examination of what might be meant by individual liberty. Within the social sciences and humanities, the shaken state’s appointment of Michel Foucault to the head of a new experimental Parisian university perhaps accelerated his growing impact on social theory, with further reconstructive repercussions throughout the academy that are still felt today. Yet the legacy of 1968 is one that proved amenable to reconstruction in other ways. The vision of individual freedoms and hostility to the state provided rich pickings for what would come to be called neo-liberalism, while counterculture readily transformed into consumer culture. However, we do not want to merely dwell on the proto-revolution in Paris – our concern in this paper is also the near simultaneous (but much more successful) revolution in finance. Those radicals, suited not Situationists, both within the academy and on Wall Street, were able to almost entirely purge the old guard and impose a new hegemony. One that still stands today for the study of finance, despite the all-too-visible failure of the models on which the discipline rested. And while the Occupy Movement may have garnered much sympathy and media interest, it seems a long way from imposing change upon a financial system that only lackadaisically maintains an attachment to the sites occupied. This paper explores the promulgation of ideas in Paris and the Academy of Finance, examining how some were able to resist deconstruction and reconstruction while others were sieved of cruel anti-establishmentism and their subversion subverted before concluding with a discussion of the possibilities of a counter-revolution in finance.
FINANCIALISATION SESSION FOUR
Friday 12th July, 1.30 – 3.30pm E6
Dimitris Papadopoulos School of Management, University of Leicester
[email protected] Autonomy in embodied capitalism: Cultures of valuation, social study of finance and science fiction Abstract The ascent of neoliberal financialisation since the 1980s brought with it a culture of valuation that spread well beyond financial markets and came to pervade everyday life, society and ecology. At the same time, and as a response to the social conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s, the value production shifts from the immediate sphere of labour to the extended lifeworld of working people, their networks of existence and the expropriation of the commons. While value production becomes embodied in people, things and in social life, the culture of valuation is deployed to measure, order and regulate this process. The paper examines the conflicts that emerge through the friction between value production and the prevalent cultures of valuation and fabulates about virtual meanings of politics and autonomy in these conditions.
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Angus Cameron ULSM Where has all the money gone? Abstract As the dust began to settle following the banking crisis of late 2008, the question, ‘Where has all the money gone?’ appeared in much of the press. If, as everyone was claiming, $x billion or trillion had been ‘wiped’ from the value of the economy, it seemed pertinent to ask not only where that money had gone but where it had been in the first place. The question was routinely dismissed by economists, bankers and other commentators because, of course, the money had never ‘existed’ in the first place. It was, rather, the nominal difference between the market value before and after the ‘correction’. Technically correct, this did not seem to answer the question adequately causing a few brave souls to ask the follow-up question: what is money (now) anyway? This generally went unanswered. Two years later, once the ‘Flash Crash’ of May 6th 2010 had ‘wiped’ and then fortuitously ‘restored’ $billions from the Dow Jones in the space of an hour or so, the question not only of where the money started from, went and came back to, and, for that matter what actually came back, seemed more urgent than ever. These questions, again were either dismissed or left unanswered. This paper considers the strange spatialities of money and value routinely alluded to in the narratives surrounding these large scale shifts in markets, but never adequately explained. Drawing on both historical and contemporaneous accounts of market and money spaces, and from a very broad range of sources, the paper argues that the relationships between money, value, territory and spatiality are now stretched to the degree that the conventional language used to describe the spatialities of money no longer captures its nature. The disconnect this produces between what money is (or might be) and the language we use to describe it, not only produces troubling questions in the public mind, but significant problems in the regulation and management of money and markets.
Angus Cameron, David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Yuval Millo Closing Comments
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STREAM 26: ‘BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS’: REFLECTIONS ON POWER, POLITICS, IDENTITY AND MANAGERIALISM AT WORK IN ACADEMIA Elisabeth Berg, Caroline Clarke, David Knights, Maria Vandenbrink
SESSION 1 Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm E2
Elisabeth Berg, John Chandler and Jim Barry Managerialism in the guise of the New Public Management in Higher Education in England and Sweden Abstract This paper examines the implications of the turn to managerialism in higher education in England and Sweden, after the introduction of extensive management reforms in a number of OECD countries from the late 1970s on (Pollitt and Bouchaert 2011). We consider the implications of performativity, leadership and gender, and their interconnections. The paper begins with an assessment of the academic literature on higher education in Sweden and England, countries that have been seen as forerunners of the reforms, but characterized by EspingAnderson (1990) as social-democratic and liberal respectively. We are sensitive to the perception that although there are many contexts, together they have a non-negligible role in shaping the subject positions and social relations of those who live in them. With this position, arguing that the different contexts provide opportunities and constraints (Alcoff 1988), we consider performativity, leadership and gender in the public sector under the influence of New Public Management (meso level, see Hood 1995, Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011), shaped at the macro level by neoliberalism (Harvey 2005) with its associated heightening of competition, self-serving instrumentality, uncertainty and risk, operationalized in public organizations through performative regimes. Given the links between the macro and meso level, with the New Public Management acting as the glue that seeks to bind them together (Clark, 2004), we consider their influence in embedding reforms through their interactive design and performative effects in the academic workplace (the micro level, where the interviews took place, Alcoff 1988). Interviews were with female academics conducted ten years apart in 2001 and 201113 show that some have been keen to work with the new regimes and have adapted to the changes in the last decade, while others are antagonistic or ambivalent, feeling limited by the neo-bureaucratic processes for monitoring and control, and finding their aspirations and ambitions derailed as they find themselvesprofessional cul-de-sacs. It is therefore argued that neo-liberalism and the New Public Management, which have affected organizational everyday life, are associated with what is in effect masculinist (Ford 2005) forms of rationality, leadership and performative regimes that increase individual winners and losers and divert attention from the collective issues as equality and routines of daily working life in academia. Although the implementation of tnew reforms is supposed to take 5 to 10 years (Forsell, 1994), our research shows that change continues to put pressure on academics in middle-ranking positions, even after 20 -30 years of reform implementation. But while the female academics interviewed in 2001 often expressed negative opinions about the changes later interviews from both Sweden and England showed that the people involved are still trying to find ways of accommodating to the changes, while accepting the pressure that the reforms have created - including conflict with research and their everyday responsibilities. As early as 2001 interviewees spoke of coercion in their career and that they see themselves more as teachers and administrators, rather than as a researchers. They also seemed ready to maintain or reduce the levels of responsibility they had, rather than pursue career "advancement" to secure professorial or senior managerial
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identities. By 2011 -2012 research was on its way to becoming an important part of their work in maintaining a research profile and research identity. Time for research was, however, still reported to be very limited, with the other responsibilities affecting it – something that was perceived to affect more women academics than men.
Marcela Mandiola, Nicolás Ríos, Pablo Salinas, Alejandro Varas The (im)possible identities of an educational movement: narratives from the borders Abstract Words: education, identity, managerialism, resistance, social movement. “For my liking, this year’s mobilizations were triggered off by the realization of the inequalities that are ever-present in Chile, of the constant segregation and that “meritocracy” is a tale that was sold to the majority of Chileans. Add to that the self-indulgent governments that keep their eyes on the numbers that reflect educational coverage yet fail to really look and see if said numbers have helped in the development of their peoples. For example, it is said that 7 out of every 10 young person is the first generation to attend to higher education, which is supposedly an achievement…but half of these young people do not complete their studies (due to debts), whilst the other half (also carrying debts) do not find work in what they studied and must then take on a 20 year debt. Just add to that the fact that a university career on average costs 400 Euros per month and that the minimum wage is 250 Euros..." (The words of Giorgio Jackson, spokesperson for the CONFECH; Diario El País, 2011, October 10). During 2011 and 2012, Chile developed a social movement that was nation-wide in nature, principally student-based, that on one hand was looking to manifest its discontent with the managerialistic logic that gives shape to higher-education policies, and on the other hand, it proposed structural transformations to the neoliberal capitalist model that gives it context. The mentioned discontent, together with the desire to propose new ways, fundamentally clashed head-on with a history of reforms and political landmarks that have installed a number of control mechanisms at the very centre of our society, that is to say, education. Two laws in particular have marked the way and thus also marked the way in which to educate (us) in Chile, these laws are the Law of Grants, 1980, (Ley de Subvenciones) and the Constitutional Organic Law for Teaching, 1990, (Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza); the first of the aforementioned laws initially opening the door for the privatization of education; the second, excluding the role of the State as a benefactor in the mentioned arena and placing it merely in a subsidiary role (Insunza, 2009; Assaél, et al, 2011). The movement in question also developed a number of forms of protesting (strikes, marches, occupation of premises or “tomas”, hunger strikes, banging on pots and pans or “cacerolazos”, among others) by which the movement gained more and more strength all within a scenario of growing violence and police repression culminating in the death of a student at the hands of Chilean Police (Carabineros de Chile). The Broad Social Pact for Education (Gran Acuerdo Social por la Educación), initially made up of the Confederation of Chilean University Students (CONFECH), National Coordination of Secondary Students (Coordinadora Nacional de Estudiantes Secundarios - CONES) and the Teachers Federation, later to be joined by Unions, trade and citizenry associations; thus founding the Front for Education (Frente por la Educación). Its objective: to generate alternative proposals to those of the government that can achieve “progress towards a COMPREHENSIVE EDUCATIONAL REFORM” (El Ciudadano, 2011, July 31). The student movement of 2011-12, is considered as being one of the biggest mobilizations since the return to democracy in 1990. As a scholar and university students during 2011, the authors of this work were also part of the movement itself. In particular, one of us was a teacher at one of the Schools that played an active and radical participation within said movement, while the remaining three were students that were assistant teachers during that time. The particularity of our professional/student positions, understood as being precarious and fragile articulations that this managerialistic mode of education (Slaughter and Leslie, 1987; Grey, 2002) produces and reproduces, has in turn invited us to develop the reflections here-on-in presented. The social movement of 201112 put forth the demand for free education as an empty signifier (Laclau, 2007), whilst at the same time it criticised the notion of profits as a barrier of antagonism (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985), given that it constrains the educational practice whilst placing students in the role of indebted subjects. Teaching, on the other hand, is restricted to producing and delivering content and then answering for that thus commercializing this work given that it is through this that educational institutions build their competiveness (Willmott, 1995). The social movement of 2011-12 put both scholars and academia in a difficult situation, on the edge or in hybrid positions,
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right in the middle of ideological re-vindication and the neoliberal logic present in the academia. Explicitly participating in the protests meant biting the hand that feeds you. It is precisely that (im)possibility of participating and the subjective tensions that this implies which we wish to analyse in this piece of work. To that end, we will sustain our work on studies of New Public Management (Chandler, Barry y Clark, 2002; Ranson, 2008; Wittmann, 2008, Sisto, 2011), on the precariousness of teaching (Apple, 1989; Birgin, 2000; Hypolito, Pizzi & Vieira, 2009) and on theoretical inspirations found in the works of Laclau and Mouffe so as to reflect on the tensions and antagonisms that these subject positions experience in a conflict that at the same time are of our concern and paralyse us. From that, we reflect on the (im)possibilities for resistance and the barriers that a strongly commercialised education system puts up in order to avoid its own dismantling: by biting the hand that feeds you not only are you left without any food but you also run the risk of losing the subjective position that allows you to resist. Bite but don’t be eaten.
Richard Winter Managing Academic Scholarship Differently: Perspective Taking in Business Schools Abstract Focus and Aims This paper calls into question narrow, unitary perspectives of academic scholarship (i.e., scholarship as a valuefree, economic process) and proposes broader, multiple perspectives for understanding and managing scholarship (i.e., scholarship as a value-laden, social process of perspective taking) in business schools. In proposing multiple perspectives of academic scholarship, the paper aims to: 1. 2. 3.
Generate conversation around issues of academic identity, motivation and performance in business school environments dominated by corporate values and narrow publication metrics (Adler & Harzing, 2009; Clarke, Knights, & Jarvis, 2012; Macdonald & Kam, 2007); Raise awareness of scholarship as an active process of perspective taking (Parker, Atkins, & Axtell, 2008); and Encourage academics in scholarship management roles to: a) consider matching their styles of managing to the different research identity attachments (and motivations) of academics in business schools (Clarke et al., 2012), and b) enact “weak” and “strong” types of social-psychological scholarship relationships with other business academics and stakeholders inside/outside the business school (Klein, Molly, & Brinsfield, 2012).
Managing academic scholarship differently is predicated on the central argument scholarship within publicly funded business schools is not just an economic commodity purchased by the highest bidding consumer or commercial manager (Grey, 2001) – it represents a key sensitising idea framing the nature of academic work (Boyer, 1990) and identity in business schools (Clarke et al., 2012) – and makes a substantive difference to people’s lives in the community (McArthur, 2011). Importantly, academic scholarship is not just a yardstick by which research output is measured (Starkey & Madan, 2001) but a dynamic process that “contributes not only to the stock of human knowledge but also to the intellectual climate of a college or university” (Boyer, 1990, p. 17). Business academics give meaning to their research by choosing to focus on certain economic, social and moral questions that resonate with them and a broad group of stakeholders inside and outside their institution (Starkey & Tiratsoo, 2007). Conceptualising academic scholarship differently in terms of a continuum of economic-social perspectives draws attention to the kinds of value systems and working environments that may, in a normative sense, act as a virtuous force for “scholarship that matters” (Hughes et al., 2011), and/or as a pernicious force for game playing and dysfunctional behaviour (Adler & Harzing, 2009). Managing scholarship that matters is assumed to be a more psychologically engaging and productive activity when business academics articulate broader perspectives of scholarship rather than “close down” all conversation to meeting some narrow research target or publication metric (Adler & Harzing, 2009; Parker et al., 2008). This is not to say economic values, market-based logic or research assessment scores do not have a place in managing business academics and their research outcomes. Nor does it discount the reality that “research and publication have become the primary means by which most professors achieve academic status” (Boyer, 1990, p. xii). Clearly, the rise of “academic capitalism” (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2009) characterised by corporatist modes of organising in a globalised market for higher education has radically changed universities (Parker, 2011) and business schools (Starkey & Tiratsoo, 2007), and as a consequence, academic work and the meaning of scholarship (Rolfe, 2012). But this does not imply corporatist modes of organising and narrow conceptions of scholarship should be the sole basis for managing academic scholarship, or for managing the business school for that matter.
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Research Evidence Academic scholarship in all its forms is considered to be seriously compromised in UK and Australian business schools when academics are managed on the sole basis of “ideology, discourse and axioms originating in the private sector” (Kolsaker, 2008, p. 514) and research scholarship is translated and evaluated only in terms of the quantity of research outputs (Garcia & Hardy, 2007; Harley, 2002; Rolfe, 2012; Starkey & Tiratsoo, 2007). This statement is premised on the finding some business school academics find New Public Management (NPM) reforms, and their attendant corporate values and profit-making ideals, somewhat alien to their own identities as professionals and discipline scholars (Knights & Clarke, 2012; Ryan, Guthrie, & Neumann, 2008; Winter & O’Donohue, 2012). For those academic scholars with strong professional identities (Nixon, 1997), NPM and its managerialist intrusions of obsessive quantification of research output is something to be complied with at a “superficial or cosmetic level” (Teelken, 2012, p. 8), but not embraced and accepted as meaningful scholarship as it is perceived to compromise critical thinking, the open exploration of ideas, and knowledge that contributes to a wider (non-academic) community (Hussey & Smith, 2010; McArthur, 2011; Rolfe, 2012). Privileging NPM principles and practices has according to some business academics contributed to a more competitive and aggressive work environment characterised by game playing (Adler & Harzing, 2009), less engagement in interdisciplinary research (Ryan & Neumann, 2011), and obscure research that lacks meaning and substance (Clarke et al., 2012; Knights & Clarke, 2012). Contribution to the Theme The paper makes explicit the “pressures of NPM in the academic workplace” and “power and identity at work in academe” by drawing attention to how different values conceptions of the academic researcher (scholar) have resulted in academic identity tensions in UK and Australian public universities – role strains that affect academic morale, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and research effectiveness (Clarke et al., 2012; Garcia & Hardy, 2007; Harley, 2002; Knights & Clarke, 2012; Ryan & Neumann, 2011; Ryan et al., 2008; Winter, 2009; Winter & O’Donohue, 2012). Proposing different perspectives of managing academic scholarship anchored in a range of economic and social value positions is seen as a liberating ideal and effective countervailing measure to combat the “publish or perish” mantra in higher education. Academic scholars are seen not merely reacting to events and situations outside of their control but as intentional social actors shaping their social worlds to fit their own intentions and identity images as values-based researchers (Kenny, Whittle, & Willmott, 2011; Rolfe, 2012).
Kelly, Noonan and Vidolov Research Culture by Design? Power, politics and identity in the building of an Irish - STI research capability Abstract This paper examines an ambitious, and on-going, government-driven effort to establish a‘world-class’ research base in Science, Technology & Innovation (STI) in the Irish context. The initiative involved the establishment of a new government agency, called Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), which was endowed with a very significant budget and mandated to dramatically improve Ireland’s basic research capability in two areas. These areas (ICT and Biotechnology) were deemed of strategic importance to the country’s future industrial competitiveness. Nearly 13 years on from its establishment in 2000, SFI is popularly regarded as a significant success story (Indecon, 2008). According to this narrative, it has put Ireland on the map and has built credibility amongst international observers and multinational enterprises, through a major injection of research funding in the targeted areas: “Overall Ireland is ranked 20th globally – up from 36th in 2003 – in terms of our research capability… These high standings are largely a result of excellent research carried out by various SFI-funded teams. Such global rankings are seen as a key element in the attraction of Ireland for these sectors as a location for foreign direct investment” (Sean Sherlock, Minister for Research and Innovation, 2013) In this paper, we subject the claims made for SFI’s success to more critical scrutiny, by attempting to open up the black box of policy development and implementation (Yanow 2003; Hajer and Wagenaar 2003). Specifically, we draw on detailed testimony from a number of key insiders to examine the formation and enactment of this historic and highprofile policy initiative. Interestingly, these testimonies reveal deep-seated problems with the policy-in-practice (as opposed to policy-on-paper), which have remained obscure to public attention and which challenge important aspects of the popular narrative.
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The objective of the paper, then, is to examine some of the consequences of a new public management (Willmott 1995; Prichard and Willmott 1997; Thomas and Davies 2005;Knights 2012) approach to the reconfiguration of the organisational field of academic research in Ireland, through a detailed analysis of the SFI initiative. We reflect on how the policy was shaped by prevailing political/managerial discourses that were not sufficiently sensitive to the difficulties of cultivating the complex infrastructure of social relations that underpins a mature and sustainable scientific research capability. Outline of argument Some key components of the SFI policy initiative included: • a very significant injection of research funding in the areas of ICT and Biotechnology, which dwarfed previous State investments in Irish research. • the centralisation, within SFI, of authority for the allocation of research funding, thus removing significant discretion from universities with regard to identification of research priorities; • the appointment of a senior figure from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) as the executive Director of the SFI organisation;; the targeting of a small number of ‘world-class’ researchers from abroad to come and direct exceptionally well-funded research projects in Ireland; and, an emphasis on publication as a key yardstick of research output. Although there can be little doubt that these policies have had a significant impact on the configuration of the organisational field of Irish academic research (Ó Riain 2010), our on-going fieldwork2 suggests that the overall project has been beset by significant problems and shortcomings, which have received little critical attention to date. Specifically, we argue that SFI was the product of a managerialist discourse (Ó Riain 2010; Hedley 2010) that, by neglecting important particularities of the context in question and emphasising generalised technocratic solutions, framed the challenge of developing an STI research capability in an overly simplistic manner. The initiative might be seen as an example of an heroic ‘grand gesture’, which bore the distinctive hallmarks of the buoyant and optimistic ‘Celtic Tiger’ culture that prevailed at the time (Ó Riain 2004; Ó Riain 2009). This discourse, which was constitutive of an emergent and historicallyspecific form of Irish subjectivity, emphasised the importance of ambition (‘thinking big’), entrepreneurship, and the possibility of centrally-managed radical transformation and growth. SFI was driven by the idea of centrally-governed ‘big science’ - a product of prevailing neoliberal and managerialist discourses. Market-driven demands for self-sustaining research centres were combined with an emphasis on programmes that demanded that researchers and universities compete to satisfy centrally-defined policy goals and targets. The reliance on standardised technocratic solutions that privileged the importance of generalised input/output performance measures and centralised planning, however, resulted in a consequential insensitivity to the particularities of the Irish context. In particular, we point to the significance of the preexisting institutionalised practices that constituted the Irish academic field (understood as a specific infrastructure of social relations), and associated academic subjectivities, and we emphasise the importance of a more grounded, nurturing and engaged approach to cultivating change. We argue that the high-profile and politically symbolic nature of the initiative resulted in an obsession with 1 Between 2001 and 2006 SFI made awards totalling !468 million (SFI, 2007). 2 Our research in this area has been on-going for about a year now. It has involved a detailed historical review of the industrial and innovation policy discourses in the Irish context, with a specific focus on the emergence of SFI. Our extensive document analysis has, more recently, been supplemented with a series of private interviews with some key figures in the Irish research and policy landscape. These have included academics, members of policy advisory bodies, benefactors of SFI funding (PIs), and industrial researchcollaborators. 3 public relations (“ministerial moments”), at the expense of more mundane and sustained forms of care and support for the scientists who were funded.3 We conclude by offering an alternative ‘infrastructural’ (e.g. Ciborra, Braa et al 2000) framing of the problem at hand, which draws attention to the limits of control and emphasises the sensitive cultivation of new sociomaterial practices through on-going dialogical processes.
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SESSION 2 Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm E2
Marco Berti Between Scylla and Charybdis: the competing rhetoric of rigour and relevance in management education and the emergence of pedagogic practices in a business school Abstract The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the debate on rigour and relevance in business education, with the intent of: Showing how most of the discussionon the issue is inhibited by the use of simplistic and a-critical definitions of both what is relevant knowledge for business schools stakeholders and of what constitutes rigorous research in Management and Organizational Sciences Proposing that a pluralistic view of relevance, aligned with a Critical Management Studies perspective, is needed in order to capture the multiplicity of interests in the field (Knights, 2008; Kieser and Leiner, 2009 and 2011) Highlighting that, while a positivist paradigm dominates the mainstream notion of rigour in MOS other models of research, founded on interpretive, critical and phronetic approaches belong in business schools (Flyvbjerg, 2001). Challenging the notion that the rigour-relevance contraposition is merely an epistemological dispute,by introducing the problem of organizational integration, by considering power and political issues (Clegg and Ross Smith, 2003) , and by examining the ‘wicked problem’ of interdisciplinarity (Knights and Willmott, 1997; Antonacopoulou, 2010). Arguing that – as a consequence –rigour and relevance are mostly rhetorical constructs that hide the political nature of decisions and practices developed to cope with a bundle of interconnected problems: bridging disciplinary divides; balancing teaching and learning needs; responding to ideological, institutional and market pressures;; rationalising and justifying the “order” that emerges from power relations (Augier and March, 2007; Thompson and Purdy, 2009; . The paper reflects on the problems faced by members (in particular faculty members, but also business schools administrators and students) when forced to navigate the treacherous streets between two rhetorically constructed ‘monsters’, scientific rigour and managerial relevance. The paper proposes that what is needed is the ability to build a network between multiple notions of relevance and multiple notions of rigour, employing a phronetic perspective as an integrating tool. RESEARCH EVIDENCE BASE While the greater part of the paper is theoretically informed, and based on an extensive critical literature review of the contemporary discourse on rigour and relevance in business education, the need for empirically based studies on business schools practices is explicitly addressed. In particular, ethnographic research aimed at investigating the emergence of actual teaching and learning practices is very rare and, in order to fill this gap in literature,the paper will present the methodology and some preliminary findings of an in depth qualitative case study research project currently being conducted in an Australian university based business school. The data collection phase of the research is scheduled to start in February 2013 and to continue until December 2013, and it will be conducted using a range of techniques, ranging from participant observation in meetings and lectures, to in-depth interviews with academic faculty members, administrators and students. CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEME This paper explicitly engages the issue of power, politics and identity in academia, trying to provide a fresh look at a much-debated issue. It aims specifically to de-naturalise an otherwise calcified debate, that of scientific rigour as opposed to practical relevance, in business research and education, looking at it from a Critical Management Study perspective. By developing a political and critically informed understanding of the factors that are driving pedagogic decisions and behaviour in business schools we can both come to a better understanding of how power and identity shape work practices in academe, and we can reach a more nuanced understanding of issues such as balancing teaching and research, and the role of external agencies in shaping academic decisions (publishing
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industry, accreditation and ranking bodies, corporate sponsors etc.). Finally, the specific context of the study, that of business education allows investigation of the role of academia in shaping that discourse and the ideology of managerialism that, in turn, has become a major influence in academic work.
Emma Jeanes, Bernadette Loacker, Martyna Śliwa Power and inequality in researcher collaboration: Reflections from the field Abstract The notion of ‘researcher collaboration’ typically refers to the relationship between the researcher and their participants, case site, or funding organisation (Engstrom, 1984; Katz and Martin, 1997). Less commonly discussed, though no less important for the process and outcome of research, is the relationship between researchers. Given the recent ‘reflexive turn’ in research methodology – and critical management research in particular (Alvesson et al., 2008; Linstead, 1994) – it is perhaps surprising that more attention hasn’t been paid to the role of inter-researcher relations in framing, shaping and producing research (Wray-Bliss, 2003). It is also curious since so much of our research is focused on the working relationships of others, particularly where there is hierarchy. In failing to evaluate our own, often hierarchical (Rogers-Dillon, 2005), relationships we fail to be critical or reflexive about, and in, our research. A surprising number of us, as will be demonstrated in our paper, have experienced unequal or challenging working relationships as well as fulfilling ones, suggesting that understanding these relationships is important. This is also becoming a question of increasing relevance as institutional pressures require, or at the very least ask, researchers to collaborate more frequently, and often in situations that we might not otherwise choose. Against this background, our paper sets out to address the relationship between researchers in collaborative projects. Focus and aims The inspiration for our paper came from a shared concern for the precarious and often unspoken nature (in the formal or written sense) of issues related to researcher collaboration, a desire to explore some of these issues, and in doing so reflect on how relationships could be made more rewarding, democratic, non-exploitative and free(r) from conflicts. The authors are critical management (CM) researchers, collaborating with and enquiring of – in the main – fellow CM researchers, who might reasonably be anticipated to draw upon their inclusive politics of equality (evident in their writing) in the research process itself. Clearly the issue of researcher relationships isn’t an exclusively ‘critical’ concern, but the imperative for ethical relations is crucial for CM scholars if they wish to succeed (at least partially) in their emancipatory agenda both in terms of process and outcome. To this end our paper aims to give voice to researchers, highlighting the precarious and, at times, unequal nature of collaboration. It then seeks to explore the nature of these relations and reflect on why such relationships may arise and what might be done to improve relations. In doing so, it aspires to encourage more extensive researcher reflexivity. Research evidence base Our discussion will be based on an empirical study consisting of fifteen interviews we conducted with scholars who were selected on the basis of their seniority, gender, and experience (including experience of collaboration). The interviews drew on an internationally diverse cohort of participants. They were developed on the basis of the literature and our own knowledge of the subject matter. Each interview lasted between 1 and 1.5 hours. The interviews were not designed to be representative but allowed for in-depth exploration of the issues. Theoretical saturation (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) was considered achieved when the participants’ accounts, supplemented by the researchers’ own knowledge of the field – in terms of their own experience and the accounts of the experiences of others, and their prior research in this field – resulted in consistent themes emerging. Structure of the paper The final paper will be structured as follows: after a review of the literature, we will provide an account of our research methods and subsequently explore issues related to researcher collaboration that have emerged from our empirical research. In the analysis, we’ll reflect on the understandings of collaboration, with whom researchers collaborate, the intentions and reasons for collaboration, and experiences of and challenges in collaboration. We will also offer additional reflections on the nature, value and process of collaboration. In the
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concluding discussion, we will outline the main insights from our research, particularly addressing the issue of (non)equality within collaborative relationships and a call for more reflexivity. Contribution to the CMS theme: ‘Biting the hand that feeds’: Reflections on Power, Politics, Identity and Managerialism at Work in Academia
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In focusing on power and inequality in collaborative relationships between researchers, our paper is closely aligned with the theme’s interest in ‘critical perspectives on power, politics, inequality and identity in academic settings’. In the analysis, we point to a number of phenomena which the theme’s Call for Papers has identified as characterising contemporary academe, especially increased managerialism, performance measurement pressures and inequalities amongst staff. In addition, several of the specific topics listed by the theme’s Convenors – in particular, ‘work intensification in the university’, ‘publish or perish in higher education’, ‘the discourse of ‘excellence’, ‘the politics of career or career politics in universities’, ‘power and identity at work in academe’ – are addressed in the paper.
Caroline Clarke and David Knights Careering through Academia: ‘Managing’ Professional Identities and Ethical Subjectivities in UK Business Schools Abstract Attention has begun to be paid within the literature on academics recently to the ways in which their work is increasingly becoming routinised around a number of audit, managerial and performative controls and regimes of governmentality (Reed, 2003/10; Clarke et al, 2012). The introduction of New Public Management has subjected academics to demands in demonstrating their excellence in many, if not all, areas of their activities. These changes in governance in the UK have been both managerial and collegial in the sense that the controls were partly engineered to wrest academia from its elitist traditions ‘clothed in the ideological garb of collegiality, community and exclusivity’ (Reed, 2003: 181) so as to meet the democratic demands of wider participation and greater efficiency. However, the intervention in assessing research has endorsed the collegial norms and values of academics to publish scholarly work as well, depending on the academic community to evaluate them through journal peer review and research assessment panels composed of respected scholars. Drawing on primary empirical research, this paper evaluates the responses of business school academics in the UK to the new regimes of governance. It concludes that there is some resentment regarding the intensification of time and space around their activities and the pressure not just to publish but also in the most prestigiously ranked journals as currently listed in newly developed league tables. This is seen as a threat to their professional autonomy (as well as to the contribution of scholarly knowledge). However, this resentment rarely results in outright resistance as academics adapt to the new regime and seek to discipline themselves in new ways in pursuit of successful careers. While there are increasing pressures of the time and space on our academics as a result of the proliferation of audit, accountability and performativity, this only serves to reinforce individualised instrumental ideologies of career in place of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
Norman Jackson and Pippa Carter Journal reviewers, peers or persecutors? A case study of the abuse of peer power Abstract One of the most unattractive and unwelcome, although, presumably, entirely deliberate, consequences of NPM in academia is the way it institutionalises, and legitimates, a 'divide and rule' strategy among those ('the managed') who used to define themselves as professional colleagues. Indeed, NPM incites and rewards behaviour that is profoundly unprofessional. One arena where this has become particularly notable is the conduct of research, the processes available for the production and assessment of knowledge claims. In the not so distant past undertaking research within universities was, to some extent, a matter of choice. Successful careers could be built on the other key activities of administration and teaching. Research was understood as something more suited to some rather than others, either by aptitude or desire. Over the past three decades of the neo-liberal ascendency, research has become just another human activity reduced to process and measurement (see, for example, Willmott 1995). A publications track record has become a trade-able commodity. Volume and location have replaced quality as the rationale of 'excellence'. Not to publish is no longer an option. What has remained relatively constant in this seismic shift has been the idea of peer review. However, whereas once the consequences of inept, malicious, or otherwise inadequate peer review were mainly
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disappointment and annoyance to the author, peer review now has serious consequences for careers. The problems with peer review are well documented, particularly in the ‘hard’ sciences, and one argument for its retention as the least worst option is that it acts against the exercise of power and that, ultimately, truth will out by demonstration. In the social sciences this certainty is lacking, suggesting that a system designed for the natural sciences may not be applicable to the social sciences where a more invidious exercise of power is possible. Peer review is an unusual process in contemporary society, if only because of its quaint reliance on trust in a world where trust has been replaced by surveillance and accountability. The underlying, and rather naive, assumption is that the reviewers are knowledgeable, impartial and trustworthy, (see, for example, British Academy 2007), and yet experience tells us that this is not necessarily the case. Peer review is built upon an idealised, altruistic notion of human behaviour. 'Peer' (ety. L. equal) connotes a relationship of equals, of collegiality, whereas in practice, in this context, it denotes an asymmetrical and absolute relationship of power. To be sure the potency of this power can be mediated by editorial intervention but, presumably, only in the most egregious cases. The assumptions underlying peer review are, minimally , 1) that the reviewer will read carefully, at least to the point of comprehension, the paper on offer; 2) that the reviewer will address the content of the paper; and 3) that the reviewer will judge rationally the quality of the paper. Yet none of these things can be guaranteed, or are, necessarily, even likely. There is also a requirement that the reviewer is relevantly knowledgeable, but this is in no sense established to be the case. We have to rely on the judgement of editors who may be short of reviewers (see, for example, Whiteley 2011). The reality of the reviewing process, as opposed to its idealisation, is that papers can get reviewed by ‘peers’ who have little knowledge of the subject and who may have little understanding of what constitutes a review. Reviewers can choose to ignore the content of the paper, can use judgement criteria irrelevant to the argument, indulge in censorious or abusive comment and reject a paper of merit on a whim. Most significantly, reviewers can indulge themselves in comments under the cloak of anonymity that in other circumstances would be actionable. In other words, peer review is a locus of hidden and unaccountable power. There is nothing in the peer review process that guarantees, or even necessarily facilitates, enhancing our understanding of the world. It can act against the search for wisdom and truth whilst exercising a negative and unaccountable effect on peoples’ career. We intend in our paper, by means of case study material, to illustrate the potential pernicious effects of peer review by focussing on examples of blatant subversion of the peer review process and to address the question of whether the production of knowledge would be better served by removing this arbitrary power relationship and replacing it with a more open and accountable process for the assessment of new knowledge claims. Would this reconceptualising of research validation shift the focus from quantity to quality, loosen the grip of journal editors and reviewers? Has the process of peer review, designed for a gentler age, outlived its usefulness? Or is peer review, with all its potential weaknesses, still the best hope for assessment of knowledge claims? Can it be protected from the depredations of NPM? And, if so, how?
SESSION THREE Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am E2
Jonathan Gosling, Anne O’Brien and Richard Bolden Burning the ship for fuel: how university corporatism consumes without renewing Academic leadership moving from scholarly to organizational values Abstract This paper considers findings from a recent research project in which we asked ‘who do academics look to for leadership in relation to their academic work?’ In particular, we were interested in questions such as: how do staff within UK universities conceive of ‘academic leadership’? What is the impact of these conceptions on leadership-related attitudes and behaviours? Is the anything that distinguishes leadership of academic work from the administration of universities? Whilst a moderate amount is known about ‘managerial’ leadership in HE, thorough studies of formal leaders such as Deans, Pro-VCs and VCs/Principals (e.g. Breakwell and Tytherleigh, 2008, Smith et al., 2007, Kennie and Woodfield, 2008) less is known about informal ‘academic’ leadership within schools and departments and, in particular how this may be changing in the face of rising managerialism, and how it interfaces with formal and informal roles (Bryman, 2007, Macfarlane, 2011, Rayner et al., 2010). The current research addresses this gap through an in-depth study of academics in UK universities.
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The empirical evidence is based on 40 interviews, 3 listening posts and a survey of over 300 academics in more than 15 UK universities, conducted with the support of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (Bolden at al, 2013). Three main findings, consistent across the sector, are relevant for this conference stream: 1) Asked where they find some expected outputs of leadership (structure, inspiration, representation, mentoring and influence), academics significantly cite ‘informal leaders’ over those in formal managerial roles. This is in spite of the fact that one might expect ‘structure’, for example, to be provided by the formal hierarchy, and is consistent across gender and academic disciplines. 2) When asked about who influences academic work, many people refer to scholarly influences, often long-dead. This suggests that leadership, if defined, as influencing ‘direction’ may be hard to improve. 3) Asked who provides academic leadership, most people referred to ‘colleagues’, to former colleagues, and to their PhD supervisor. This and other data suggests that leadership is associated with a shared identity; it is about the on-going process of becoming and performing ‘an academic’. 4) Identification with one’s employing institution is directly correlated with identification as a successful researcher. Branding may have little or no positive effect if it is not matched by thriving research. This is consistent across all types university in the UK. 5) Corporate priorities derail academic ones; threatening a split between corporate goals and objectives on one hand, and academic purpose on the other. 6) Academics recognize the potential for ‘citizenship’ of academia, but the procedural and structural means for expressing this kind of membership are disappearing. The paper will discuss the implications of these findings, and will contribute to the Stream with critiques of: Leadership development, which has generally done the wrong things with the wrong people. Institutional leadership which has focused on alignment, while failing to articulate meaningful direction while undermining commitment. Notions of academic work that emphasize material artifacts such as ‘publications’ at the expense of the identification processes that are realized in doing research. Self-leadership and academic autonomy, undermined by the dominance of corporate goals, by administrative overload of Heads of Departments, and also by academics’ collusion in individualized employment arrangements. The tension between normative and instrumental values. Corporate branding and the dynamics of identification. The central argument will be that in recent years, workload allocation models, research output monitoring, student feedback surveys, and even peer review, have increasingly become the means through which universities monitor, recognize and reward academic work. In so doing, however, such mechanisms gradually strip away the power and influence of scholars to enable as well as regulate their fields. The standardization and automation of processes becomes framed as an administrative or managerial responsibility, often farmed out to staff in ‘non-academic’ roles, rather than the leadership responsibility of a senior academic such as head of department. Responsibility for monitoring and supporting careers shifts from formal, “up close” academic relationships to individualized self-reporting through organizational systems. Whilst it may be considered that such an approach would fit well with the desire for autonomy expressed by academics themselves, it depersonalizes and fragments the leader-follower relationship. The academic leadership role, as representative of the intellectual character of the community and guardian of academic values, is replaced by a managerial leadership role, designed to ensure alignment to organizational norms and processes. These two factors – the dissolution of the head of department as an intellectual representative of a community of scholars and the universalization of monitoring and assessment criteria - mean that the kind of identity-based leadership experienced in (some) PhD supervision is systematically excluded from later academic life. The role of power is reduced to regulation/evaluation functions, with little potential for enabling and facilitating. We suggest that these issues have a strong resonance with this conference stream.
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Thomas Sewerin, Christine Blomqvist Competing logics in the emergence of leadership roles in universities Abstract Focus, aims and objectives In this study we are interested in how formal leaders in universities (head of departments, deans,vice chancellors), represent and reflect upon experiences of dealing with severe conflicts and difficult coworkers/colleagues. Stories about this kind of events provide a window to leaders´ ethical reflection and particularly the competing logics that they refer to when they articulate what is at stake in these situations. In contrast to studies that start with a macro analysis of neo---‐liberal modes of governance, we apply a micro--‐perspective on critical situations in which value---‐conflicts is activated (or repressed). Studies of ethical reflection and decision making in this way, give insights in how the role of leaders is formed within a context where competing logics (of new public management vs academic professionalism.) function as resources in establishing authority or mobilizing resistance or other possible tactics. The aim of this study is to explore how formal leaders in universities deal with the competing logics of of new public management and academic professionalism in ethical reflection concerning severe conflicts. Background: Universities are complex organizations and conflicts are part of their dynamics. Leaders in formal positions are often faced with difficult choices on how to deal with coworkers in research or in teaching environments who may be in conflict with each other or highly talented researchers that treat colleagues or students in ways that may have far---‐reaching consequences on both individual and organizational levels. The process of making sense out of these difficult situations and come up with decisions or actions that can be helpful, involve ethical reflection and decision making which includes identifying the risks for those involved and respecting the rights of others, having an awareness of obligations that come with a specific social position and in relation to relevant norm systems, and finally recognizing one´s responsibility (Thiel et al., 2012). Bolden et al. (2012) discuss two major influences on leaders in universities. On one hand, there is academic leadership that is based on academic values and identities (representing a professional orientation) and directed towards encouraging self---‐leadership among coworkers with the purpose of reproducing core values. On the other hand, there is a focus on managing tasks and processes in order to achieve goals and objectives often formulated as part of strategies that emanate not from academic values, but in analyses of competitiveness in the market place. With increasing focus on competition for scarce resources and attempts to attract students in a global market for higher education, academic leadership tends to become marginalized. Research evidence and empirical material In this paper we present material from an ongoing project. We use illustrative material from six persons in formal leadership positions department heads who have been involved in three different conflict resolution processes of this kind. The focal point of our interview was what’s stake when leadership is confronted by departmental conflicts or research group dysfunction?’ This question worked as a lens through which it was possible to get a close hand look at how these episodes reflect the formation of leadership roles at the university today. Contribution to the theme This paper contributes to the theme by providing specific examples of how leadership roles emerge as a product of ethical reflection involving competing logics of new public management and academic professionalism.
Rowland Curtis Against the Ascetic Ideal: On the Ethico-Politics of Academic Life Abstract “Max Weber posed the question: If one wants to behave rationally and regulate one’s action according to true principles, what part of one’s self should one renounce? What is the ascetic price of reason? To what kind of asceticism should one submit? I posed the opposite question: How have certain kinds of interdictions required the price of certain kinds of knowledge about oneself? What must one know about oneself in order to be willing to renounce anything?” Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self
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Among existing CMS literatures on the contemporary academic workplace, a recurring theme has been the distinct lack of effective academic resistance to changes in UK universities, broadly characterised as a ‘new managerialism’ or the ‘New Public Management’ (see e.g. Deem et al 2007;; Harley & Lee 1997;; Willmott 2005; Worthington & Hodgson 2005). Such literatures, meanwhile, have tended to approach such questions of the ‘managerialization’ or ‘McDonaldization’ (Parker & Jary 1995;; see also Lorenz 2012) of the university by contradistinction to variously conceived notions of the indigenous cultures of academic professionalism that are understood to have been ‘colonised’ or undermined by such managerial changes (e.g. Anderson 2008;; Fairclough 1993;; Prichard & Willmott 1997), and lamented as part of what has been described as a ‘decline of donnish dominion’ over recent decades (Halsey 1992). What has arguably been notably under-explored here has been the ethico-political (see below) characteristics of such ‘indigenous’ academic cultures, and what might be their significance for the apparent lack of resistance to such managerialist changes. It is in this regard that the paper will present the case that an under-explored ascetic ideal can be seen to persist in contemporary academic life, and that sits in tension with the potential for academics to engage in a materialist politics of the academic institution. In so doing, we also consider the potential here for the (re)composition of what we might call a collective ‘academic body’, by contrast to what are argued to be the individualising tendencies of prevailing managerial cultures. We explore these ideas specifically through a re-reading of Max Weber’s (1948 [1918]) lectures on the scientific and political vocations (see also Owen & Strong 2004), interrogated here through the prism of Michel Foucault’s ‘ethico-political’ writings (Foucault 1988, 1983, 1996, 2005;; see also Hunter 1990). Weber is shown here to have offered an ascetic ideal of the modern scientific vocation, involving an idealist separation of domains of the ‘epistemic’ and the ‘political’, and as part of a liberal political solution to a set of interrelated questions concerning power, knowledge and value (cf. Habermas 1987; cf. Hindess 1995). We retrace Weber’s steps here back to the Nietzschean problematics with which Weber engaged (see Eden 1983; Hennis 1988; Owen 1991), allowing us to recover a more radical and open ended questioning of the academic vocation – and one that would be simultaneously a reckoning with the question of the contemporary ‘university in ruins’ in its relationships to both market and state (Readings 1996; cf. Henkel 1997). It is ultimately through a relationship to Foucault’s own post-Nietzschean writings that the paper will be able to contribute to the stream’s major themes by showing show how a heightened sensitivity to these under-explored ethico-political dimensions of contemporary academic life might provide for more effective political responses to cultures of neoliberal managerialism, both in the academy and beyond.
Matthew Waring, Rebecca Boden, Maria Ash But what do they all do? The corporate university and the expansion of HR Abstract The corporatisation that has taken place across the UK HE sector over the last 20 or 30 years has been well documented (Boden and Epstein 2006; Deem et al 2007; Marginson 2000; Scott 1995). As the global HE sector has become an increasingly significant contributor to national economies (Epstein 2007; van der Wende 2003), neoliberal governments have sought to encourage universities to become more efficient, more competitive, more performance led and, in short, to become more business-like in their affairs (Marginson 2007, Scott 2000). Universities have responded accordingly, leading to a huge expansion in their management functions in a process of managerialisation that for some critics (Dearlove 1997; Willmott 1995; Wilson 1991) threatens to challenge the essential purpose of a university. That is, a collegial institution that exists to advance knowledge through teaching and research and where learning is seen as a social good rather than a commodity to be bought by student/customers in an education marketplace. As a consequence of such corporatisation the number of non-academic staff – administrators, support-staff and managers – employed by universities has increased dramatically. Neoliberal discourse holds that this is an entirely necessary development that enables universities to be run more 'professionally' in an ever more competitive, marketised sector. Employing professionals to ‘manage’ the university, it is argued, frees up academics to concentrate on the more productive elements of their work: teaching, research and, increasingly, entrepreneurship (Nedeva 2008). Thus, such an approach is presented as an entirely rational, and indeed virtuous, response in the modern context that not only leads to more operationally effective universities, but also provides the degree of freedom and autonomy to carry out their work, long cherished by many academics. This argument is highly contestable (Boden and Epstein 2011). This paper explores the validity of such neoliberal claims by focusing on one particular area of managerial growth – HRM and, more specifically, the staffing of HR departments. For as universities have become more
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corporate, there has been a perceived need to gain greater control over the biopower resources of the organisation. As a consequence, universities have been turning to HRM as a management technology designed specifically for this purpose (Legge 2005). A central element of HRM is the notion that enhanced organisational performance is contingent upon improving the performance of individuals (Guest 1997). Power is thus devolved to line managers to direct and manage the individual performance of their staff, aligning their thoughts and actions with organisational goals and motivating them to peak performance by setting quantifiable targets in line with corporate objectives and monitoring individuals' progress via surveillance techniques such as appraisal. By shining a spotlight on individual performance - a Panoptic Gaze (Townley 1993) - a highly individualised workforce can be moulded to work towards managerially determined organisational objectives. The HR function has developed into a very powerful piece of the managerial jigsaw in modern universities in the UK and HR directors have become increasingly influential, largely as a consequence of the government’s Rewarding and Developing Staff policy (Hefce 2001). The development of HR strategies forms a major part of the work of the university and the associated policies reach out into its furthest corners. Consequently, the number of HR personnel has grown significantly with HR officers and advisors offering guidance and support to those who must implement their policies. In short, HR personnel are increasingly coming to manage those who manage staff in departments and schools. It is now quite common for individual departments to have their own dedicated HR person, with some even sitting on departmental management teams, often alongside a business support manager. HR departments have now started to extend their reach even further, with some now assuming responsibility for such areas as learning and teaching and many developing sub-sections such as occupational health or training and development – all of which have their own management structures. For this study, data was gathered by means of Freedom of Information requests about the numbers of people employed in HR departments in all UK universities and the associated costs over the last five years. Applying industry standard metrics designed to calculate optimum ratios of HR personnel to staff to interrogate the data, our analysis shows a significant increase in spending that has led to a considerable degree of apparent overstaffing in universities’ HR departments. We also collected data on job titles, which again reveal a shift towards a greater role for HR departments in managing, as opposed to servicing, academic units. This paper uses detailed empirical data to explore this largely concealed, and very expensive, phenomenon, giving rise to a number of questions that the paper seeks to address in the context of the conference stream. The paper starts by setting out and critically examining the policy context in which HR has been expanded as a function in UK universities. This is related to the ongoing neoliberal transformation of higher education. The data are then presented and analysed. In the third section we use this data to explore how and why this demonstrable change has occurred and consider the likely consequences for academic freedom and the future direction of universities and their knowledge-creating activities. This is followed by some conclusions.
SESSION 4 Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm E2
Alexandra Bristow, Olivier Ratle and Sarah Robinson Early-Career Academics as Institutional Entrepreneurs: The Dark Matter of Institutional Work? Abstract This paper explores the role that early-career academics (ECAs) play in today’s academia, which is increasingly characterised by neoliberal-managerialist governmentality and the ubiquitous micro-management of academic performance (Deem and Brehony 2005; Jary and Parker 1998; Shore and Wright 2000a, 2000b, 2001; Strathern 2000; Willmott 1995). A growing body of work has focused on these changes in relation to academic work, knowledge and identity (e.g. Anderson 2008; Clarke et al. 2012; Dominelli and Hoogvelt 1996; Harley and Lee 1997; Hayes and Wynyard 2002; Henkel 2000; Parker and Jary 1995; Trowler 2001; Willmott 2011). However, the bulk of this literature has taken a generalist approach or focused on more established academics, and little is known about ECAs’ experiences (Archer 2008a, 2008b; Smith 2010). This tendency to pass over the more junior faculty in the analysis of academia could prove short-sighted, as it is prone to produce accounts shy of paying sufficient attention to what is not only the current underbelly of academic hierarchies but also the future-in-the-making of the academic profession. This paper aims to make theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature that seeks to rectify this issue.
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The study: the research evidence base underpinning the paper ECAs are a tricky group to define (Bazeley 2003; Laudel and Gläser 2008), yet there is some consensus that they share some unique characteristics, and several specific features have been proposed in the literature. One such feature relating specifically to current ECAs is that, as recent entrants into the profession, they have, allegedly, never known the ‘Golden Age’ of the pre-neo-liberal/pre-managerialist academia, which raises the question as to whether they make more willing neoliberal subjects than their nostalgic ‘older’ counterparts (Anderson 2006; Archer 2008b). This line of reasoning evokes the imagery of ECAs as ‘blank sheets’ upon which the ‘new higher education’ (NHE) (Jary and Parker 1998) can be cleanly and easily inscribed. A second feature refers to ECAs as marginal/marginalised academics that ‘constitute the most vulnerable group in the science system and are therefore the first to suffer from the stress that has befallen this system’ (Laudel and Gläser 2008: 388). The ideal trajectory of the ECA is constituted by the overcoming of this marginal status and the movement towards the core of scholarly communities (ibid) (the less ideal one is the mere survival or nonsurvival on the margins (Bristow 2012)). This involves proof of socialisation into the community norms, and ECAs are thus typically seen as having little leeway in resisting the ‘rationalised myths’ of the NHE, falling fast prey to, for instance, the pressures to ‘mainstreamise’ their research agendas for a better chance in the journal lists, citations and funding ‘games’ (Harley and Lee 1997). These views of ECAs suggest an image of helplessness, vulnerability and submissive consumption of academic managerialism. Without wishing to deny the certain resonances of the above images of ECAs, we nevertheless want to question the extent of passivity and submissiveness implied in them. We do so by asking whether instead, and to what extent, ECAs might be thought of as institutional entrepreneurs in the managerialist HE. In posing this question, we seek to explore the active – constructive, transformative but also reformative, disruptive and destructive – sides of ECAs’ work (Hardy and Maguire 2009; Lawrence and Suddaby 2006). For the purposes of this paper we define ECAs as academics in their first full-time faculty position and still under probation. This exploratory study draws on interviews with six such ECAs currently employed in a cross section of UK Business schools. We use qualitative open interviewing to explore our participants experiences of times where their preconceptions of academic life and/or their role within the system were challenged. Using a ‘critical incidents' approach (Flanagan 1954) we encourage participants to focus on some of these challenges, contractions and conflicts and to describe how these were negotiated or reconciled. Contribution: How the paper will contribute to the theme Contemporary HE is not homogenously managerialist but is rife with contradictions and conflicting institutions. We suggest that ECAs are likely to be aware of these conflicts and tensions and can use them to critique the prevailing rationalised myths, propose alternatives and mobilise other actors to challenge and disrupt the dominant arrangements, like peripheral actors in other conflicted fields. In doing so, they may draw on a variety of different personal histories and experiences, and ‘boundary bridging’ (Greenwood and Suddaby 2006) of different communities that can expose them to different ways of thinking (Clemens and Cook 1999; Seo and Creed 2002). In addition to this theoretical contribution, our study makes an empirical contribution in capturing these lived experiences of how, for example, moving between departmental/faculty settings and conference circuits as well as the day-to-day oscillation between research, teaching and administrative spheres, could provide resources for ECA institutional entrepreneurship.
Johanna Hofbauer, Katharina Kreissl, Birgit Sauer, Angelika Striedinger Gender Equality in the Entrepreneurial University Abstract With an incisive reform in 2002, Austrian universities have undergone radical structural changes, passing from state control to so--called autonomy, implementing new contract models for employees and strengthening administrative and managerial control. At one fell swoop, the formerly stagnant university landscape became a model student of managerialism in Europe. Particularly the introduction of new public management (NPM) to the core of university structures has shaped both, processes of knowledge production and academic careers, for over a decade now. Simultaneously, these new forms of governance provide a set of formal measures to reach more gender equality at universities that have significantly altered gender politics and the perception of women’s advancement. This paper will take a closer look at the paradigm shift toward the Entrepreneurial University and its implication for gender equality in Austrian universities. On the one hand we focus on the political discourse and its governmental implications. The paper will present a discourse/frame analysis on gender equality frameworks adopted in official documents, regulations and representations of key policy players (e.g. Ministry of Education,
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Association of University Presidents, etc.). On the other hand we are interested in the implementation of these policies, including possible difficulties and inconsistencies. For this purpose the paper will draw on results of three focus group discussions with equal opportunity officers at Austrian universities across the country. By contrasting the officers interpretative patterns of gender equality with political requirements, we expect to gain more insight on the complex interaction of Power, Politics, Identity and Managerialism in the Entrepreneurial University. We will concentrate on questions such as: How has the NPM--paradigm affected the notion of gender equality and which specific gender policies does it entail? What are the normative concepts of the NPM--based gender approach? How is NPM--governance perceived, implemented and reinterpreted by the equal opportunity officers? Is the incorporation of quantitative performance indicators viewed as opportunity or risk for equality in academic careers?
Nina Toren Facing Obstacles of Gender, Ethnicity and Class in Academia Abstract This study examines the position and experience of a particular group of faculty women in academia in Israel. In general, women comprise a minority of the total faculty in higher education. The sample studied here comprises a minority within this minority including women of a particular ethnic origin namely, Oriental (Mizrachi), while the majority of faculty women (and men) are of Western (Ashkenazi) origin. According to their perceptions and experiences they suffer from exclusion and discrimination as compared to their “white” sisters (and brothers) in terms of recruitment, support, and promotion. Because of the intersection of their gender, ethnic origin and low socioeconomic status and thus, marginal identity, they confront limited resources of social, material and cultural capital as compared to the majority of the academic staff. In addition, general ethnic stereotypes ascribed to people of Mizrachi origin by the Ashkenazi social hegemony impair their academic accomplishments and their feeling of “really belonging” to the academic milieu. The research methods applied are mainly qualitative, namely respondents’ narratives as told by them provide the source of data that are interpreted and analyzed. Narrative content analysis shows that these women do not experience and perceive their situation in the same way. Rather, their stories fall into three types: the “romantic” (overcoming the hurdles), the “normative” (accepting the canonical structure and culture of the academic system), and the “critical" (rejecting current inequality) and attempting to change higher education’s structure and policies. Each narrative type is illustrated by an empirical example drawn from the stories told by participants in open interviews. The data reveal that various types of narratives are related to the different scientific-fields in which women work. The findings are relevant to scientific communities and academic institutions that are becoming increasingly diversified in respect to gender, ethnic origin and social, cultural and national backgrounds of their members.
Liudvika Leisyte and Bengü Hosch-Dayican New Public Management and the gendered division of labour in academia Abstract European higher education institutions have undergone significant transformation in the past two decades partly due to the overarching New Public Management inspired reforms (Amaral et al. 2009, Leisyte, 2007; Braun and Merrien, 1999). Universities have changed from being a ‘loosely coupled’ (Weick 1976) organizations towards ‘corporate’ organizations (Krücken and Meier, 2006). Among other things they have modified their organizational structures, which entails also changing division of labour. As a result of these reforms a gradual shift away from the classical Humboldtian model of teaching and research unity within the professional role of an academic toward structurally differentiated academic roles has been observed (Leisyte et al. 2009; Henkel, 2000; Leisyte & Dee 2012). Facing the challenge of increasing performance and efficiency demands, higher education institutions in several countries have begun to introduce performance monitoring, differentiated career paths within academics especially in the form of research-only or teaching-only positions (De Weert 2009), a ‘splintering of the academic roles’ has occurred (Shuster and Finkelstein, 2006). Also in contexts, where this structural differentiation officially does not yet exist, academics report an increased competition between teaching and research time, leading to intense conflicts in their work portfolios and possible structural and social differentiation of academic labour (Leisyte, 2013). We argue that the increasing division of academic labour may lead to the emergence of or, respectively, the strengthening of already existing inequalities. Gender inequality, for example, is highly likely to be fuelled by
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this kind of development. Female academics already form a disadvantaged group in academia since they are underrepresented in senior academic positions (see e.g. Eveline 2005; Grummell et al. 2009; Van den Brink 2010). The shifting teaching-research nexus is likely to introduce a constraint for career progression for female academics as they tend to be more involved in teaching than in research or leadership than their male counterparts (Berg et al. 2003; Barry et al. 2012). As research output is often valued more than teaching experience in recruitment and promotion procedures6, the disproportionate division between teaching and research roles in academia can have serious implications for career progression possibilities and produce a gendered segregation of academic roles. The purpose of this paper is to understand the ‘splintering’ of academic roles for female academics and the implications of this change for their career opportunities. We therefore aim to answer the following research questions: 1. How have the changes in the New Public Management affect the division of academic labour in universities? 2. What academic role differentiation can be found in the Dutch higher education system? 3. How do female academic roles shift in the context of managerial Dutch university? 4. How does this shift influence their career perspectives? We do so by concentrating on the Dutch academic system in general and one case study university in particular. We find the Dutch system especially relevant to answer our research questions as it is currently one of the lowest performers in Europe when it comes to the percentage of female academics in the professor positions (EC. 2012) and at the same time, this is the European university system highly influenced by New Public Management reforms (Leisyte et al. 2009). The study uses survey and interview data. The survey was carried out among female academics of the university (n=512, response rate 25%) in 2012. Further, 10 in-depth interviews were carried out with the mid and top level female academics in the case study university. Studies on gender inequality in Dutch universities focus on gender balance at top positions and academic leadership. Few of them have systematically addressed the role of organizational bottlenecks, such as, the imbalance of work roles which create an inequality of opportunities to reach top career levels. Our study has showed that in the Dutch higher education system the New Public Management has affected the division of labour towards structural differentiation pointing towards the ‘splintering’ of academic roles of teaching and research. Further, we found that the effects of this differentiation are different for different career levels. Using the model of cumulative impact on female academic career progression (Barret and Barrett 2011: 151) we show that female academics at mid-career level in the case study university are the most disadvantaged by the division of work in the managerial university. They do more teaching and less research compared to the group of female respondents as a whole. With respect to career perspectives we find that the time spent on teaching is negatively correlated with perceived career progression perspectives by female academics. This relationship is partly stronger for mid-career groups, indicating that female academics at these career levels are more affected by the imbalance between teaching and research duties. Moreover, assistant and associate professors who spend more time on teaching per week appear to be less convinced about gender equality in recruitment and promotion. These findings strongly support the argument that neo-liberal reforms such as New Public Management support the gendered division of labour among academic staff as well as diminish career progression opportunities for female academics. This paper will inform the discussion in the stream 29 ‘Biting the hand that feeds’: Reflections on Power, Politics, Identity and Managerialism at Work in Academia – as it will directly discuss the influence of managerialism on the divison of roles of teaching and research and the implications of this division for academic careers of female academics in the context of neo-liberal reforms of Dutch universities.
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Success in research remains one of the most important criteria required for promotion to higher-ranked academic positions. A high amount of research outputs and grants seem to conform better with contemporary notions of performance, while teaching has fewer measurable outputs (Blackmore & Sachs 2007).
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SESSION 5 Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm E2
Jason Foster and Albert Mills Construction Work: Evolving Discourses of the ‘Worker’ in Management Textbooks, 1920s to 2000s. Theory and textbooks on management Abstract The teaching of the human elements of organization – human relations, human resources, etc. – is an important component of modern business school curriculum. Regardless of the term used, at its core it involves the management of ‘workers’. The notion of the worker, therefore, becomes a central concept in management and business education. When business educators teach about the employment relationship, they not only teach practical nuts and bolts, but through their language also construct conceptions of the “worker” they impart to students, who in turn take those conceptions into organizations. Those imparted discourses are embedded in certain ideological assumptions about work, organization and society which privilege certain interests and marginalize others (Stambaugh & Trank, 2010). An under-studied area is an examination of how discourses produced and reproduced in business schools serve dominant interests and ideologies. More specifically, how do discourses found in management textbooks support a managerialist ideology of organization? Managerialism proscribes certain power relations as legitimate, elevates the role and status of manager, entrenches organization hierarchy, emphasizes the importance of efficiency and productivity and generally heralds the inherent superiority of private enterprise (Grant & Mills, 2006). Textbooks are an important vehicle for the reproduction of managerialist ideology in universities (Mir, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to explore and critically evaluate how the concept of ‘worker’ is produced in management textbooks. In other words, it seeks to reveal hitherto under-analyzed discourses regarding workers and the employment relationship. Further, it seeks to track the evolution of these discourses over time, linking the evolving construction of the worker to shifts in the political, economic and social context in which the textbooks were created. The analysis reveals the underlying power relations at play in the text, as well as their consequences for management education and the proliferation of managerialism on university campuses. Using the theory and method of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010), the authors analyze introductory management textbooks from the 1920s to the 2000s to reveal how textbook authors construct and frame workers. We then reflect upon how those discourses support and reproduce key elements of managerialism, which has clear consequences for how organizations are structured and managed. The paper reveals that discourses of the worker have evolved over the nine decades under study in a manner that reflect shifting political and economic contexts. Across the decades, the discourses serve to elevate the role of manager, maintain rigid separation between management and worker functions and embed employment relations within an efficient, productive, private enterprise-centric sense of organization. Given the importance of textbooks in ideological reproduction, the paper contributes to the sub-theme by surfacing mechanisms through which managerialism is perpetuated in organizations of all forms, including the public sector. By imbuing what it means to be a “worker” with a narrow range of characteristics confined by ideals of efficiency and hierarchical power relations, management textbooks contribute to the narrowing of possibilities for organization generally. Textbooks universalize a set of assumptions about workers that are used to justify measures in universities and other locations to control and manager workers. Managerialism’s spread to universities is seen as the importation of private sector ideology into academic setting. The paper suggests that the process of reproducing and spreading that private ideology takes place partly within the walls of academia itself, as evidenced by its textbooks.
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David Jones Biting the league table that feeds: Reflections on managerialism at work within U.K. university sustainability agendas Abstract Given the pivotal role of higher education in society and the potential for mutual learning (Scholz et al., 2000) higher education has unique potential to catalyze and/or accelerate a societal transition toward ecological sustainability (e.g. Cortese, 2003). However, as Selby and Kagawa (2010) point out, most proponents of ecological sustainability within universities seem to have found a space where they feel they can more or less shrug off the need for such meaningful critical reflection. In this untroubled state, there has been a preoccupation with the instrumental and pragmatic task of embedding sustainability in institutions and systems through developing and establishing benchmarks, indicators and checklists; devising skills taxonomies; refining auditing and monitoring tools; drawing up performance league tables; and other potential mechanisms for targeting, standardization, measurement and control (see, for instance, People & Planet 2009; Rode 2006; Roorda 2004; Stibbe 2009; Tilbury and Janousek 2007;; Tilbury et al. 2007). The approach is one of ‘roll up your sleeves and start implementing!’ (Jickling and Wals 2008, p.6). As Andrew Smith, the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (Hefce) head of estates and sustainable development points out, ‘We’ve got a load of plans and strategies, but what we really need now is delivery’ (People & Planet, 2011). The aim of this paper is to explore the institutional impact of the ever popular sustainability performance league tables on current university agendas. It focuses on a critique of one such league table, the UK’s ‘Green League Table’ compiled by the student campaigning NGO, ‘People & Planet’. In 2007, ‘People and Planet’ ran its first ‘Green League’ for universities, assessing their environment-sustainability performance across a range of indicators, and then categorizing them as universities categorize student degrees – First, Upper Second, Lower Second, and so on. Such a critical focus on league tables could be particularly illuminating as Dobson, Quilley & Young (2010, p.11) point out, ‘University managers are very sensitive to league tables;; rightly or wrongly they believe that it makes a real difference to an institution’s prospects whether it is near the top or near the bottom’. This paper offers the proposition that such league tables could be acting as an institutional hegemonic mechanism for social legitimacy through the desire by universities to show that environmental issues are effectively under control (Boiral, 2009). Seen through a different lens, could the relationship between the student and university in a sustainability context have been diminished through such league tables, to one where the main preoccupation is for a few managerial, university technocrats to satisfy the student as a customer, in contrast to embracing the complexity and pluralistic citizenship voice of students amongst the many other silent actors. As the People & Planet group annually audits the relative espoused sustainability performance of UK universities, around their own set of indicators, the resultant league tables are readily accessible for such comparative and critical narrative analysis over this six year period. Initially, in order to identify a connecting narrative language within these league tables, this paper endeavors to identify pertinent root metaphors that have emerged over time to frame and shape sustainability discourse for universities. As Starkey and Crane (2003) argue, a major issue in terms of language within narratives is our use of metaphor (Cornelissen, 2005; Milne et al, 2006; Cornelissen & Kafouros, 2008; Andriessen & Gubbins, 2009; Oswick et al., 2002, 2004; Oswick & Grant, 1996). It aligns with postmodern approaches around the idea of incredulity towards any form of narrative closure—and hence an opening for research which investigates linguistic constructions such as metaphor that on the one hand orient interpretation in a particular direction, while on the other suggesting broader and more permissive interpretation than might be the case without their use. Therefore, the power of such metaphors is justified by the depth of this permissive interpretation and the way it unmasks espoused and legitimizing managerial eco- narratives and rhetoric towards a deeper level of meaning (Fairhurst, 2011). It is proposed that these narratives and underlying root metaphors can serve as a form of deception to mislead critics of a university's environmental record by merely embracing the narrative as a rhetorical device, rather than as a reflection of or an impetus to proactive, reflexive action. These narratives may also cloak managers' ambivalence and uncertainty about how to cope with what they perceive as an increasingly important but highly complex issue. In the context of this CMS theme, it is argued that this managerial focus on sustainability league table position, contributes to the broader social and political conflicts and inequities of universities as discussed most recently by Acker et al. (2012), Hirshfield and Joseph (2012) and Van den Brink & Benschop (2012).
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Moreover, concurring with Clarke et al. (2012), this paper also asks the question of, to what extent academics are complicit in focusing on short-term, top-down, technology focused carbon management plans, targets and performance;; drawing on the immediacy and ‘common-sense’, doomsday imperative of the climate change agenda rather than embracing the wider inherent social, environmental and economic transitional conflicts and longer term, systemic trans-disciplinary challenges of sustainability.
Amanda Lee Location independent working in academia: Enabling employees or supporting managerial power? Abstract Focus, aims and objectives Using an on-going in-depth ethnographic study of a UK higher education institution (HEI), this paper considers whether the practice of location-independent working (LIW) enables academic employees or supports managerial power. In this case, LIW refers to a formalised contractual arrangement whereby academics forego a dedicated office space on campus and work via hot desks, or remotely off campus. Although LIW initiatives are often promoted as a tool to encourage flexibility, they may also be necessitated by drives to improve efficiency. In this sense, they could be construed as a managerialist intervention. On the other hand, academics could be opting for a formalised LIW contract in an attempt to escape, or resist, the managerialist landscape. Whether either or both, the influence of, and possible effects or tensions created by managerialism and new public management (NPM), cannot be ignored. The overall aim of this paper is:To consider to what extent the practice of location independent working enables employees and/or supports managerial power. The objectives are:To consider the impact of managerialism and NPM on the academic profession, focussing on LIW as a specific example. To explore employee responses to managerialism such as acquiescence and compliance, or resistance and subversion. Literature and underpinning research evidence The pervasiveness of managerialism and NPM within academia has been argued by some to affect the nature of the academic profession itself and the ways in which academics view, and thus adapt, their professional roles and identities (Parker and Jary 1995; Pritchard and Wilmott 1997; Trowler 1998; Chandler, Barry and Clark 2002; Dearlove 2002; Bryson 2004; Archer 2008; Winter 2009). Deem and Brehony (2005) suggest new managerialism appears to assist academic managers in their attempts to bind relationships of power and authority, thus marking a shift away from “easy administration and collegiality to the assertion of the need for management and governance.” (Dearlove 2002: 257). Some argue the ideology of new managerialism satisfies both the interests of management and the agencies instigating change, thus legitimising and extending the “right to manage” (Clarke, Gerwitz and McLaughlin 2000: 9). Winter (2009) argues that managerialist attempts to bring academics into line on corporate goals and values has led to divisions as a result of tensions between ‘administrative’, ‘professional’ and ‘managerial’ identities. Winter concludes that corporate reforms taking place in higher education have consequences for managers and academics, not least of which is how to achieve administrative efficiency in the face of a potentially demoralised workforce. As is explored in this paper, one way in which academics may seek to escape these constraints is to opt for an LIW contract. Various forms of resistance have been posited as possible outcomes of academic responses to imposed managerialism. Fleming and Spicer (2003) suggest one of the ways in which workers resist managerialism is through cynicism, but argue this is used as a way to dis-identify with the organisation. On the surface, cynical employees may appear as autonomous and compliant individuals, in other words resistance is hidden and informal (Prasad and Prasad 2000). Anderson (2008) explored the means employed by academics to "resist, ameliorate or neutralise managerial change and related practice" (2008: 252). Whilst Trowler (1998) contends it is in the nature of academics to analyse, reflect and respond, if the situation calls for it. This, Anderson (2008)
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argues, makes academics as an occupational group, more likely to resist management interference which they perceive as a threat to their academic and professional integrity. Method and preliminary findings An on-going ethnographic study of a UK HEI forms the basis of the research design. As an academic (albeit non-LIW), I am embedded in the context and culture of my research, with firsthand experience of managerialist interventions. Since the beginning of this research project I have kept a detailed journal which has encouraged me to record and reflect upon my own, and others, observations of the practice of LIW and its consequences. This has enabled a richness and depth to my study. Credibility and rigour is further enhanced by the use of personal reflective diaries of both LIW and non-LIW academics, triangulated with in-depth semi-structured interviews. From the evidence collated so far, with LIW there is evidence of increased surveillance and individual accountability. Initial observations have highlighted that although LIW academics are given a laptop and smart phone (resources not offered to non-LIW academics), they are expected to record all appointments in an open electronic diary and be explicit about the days they are working on and off campus. As yet, there is no such requirement for non-LIW academics, who often work remotely on an informal basis. However, crossdepartment collaboration has been observed as an unexpected benefit of LIW. Whilst departments are organised in geographic silos, hot desk offices are across departments, facilitating cross-departmental communication. Nevertheless, LIW academics have reported feeling isolated and detached from their own department. Academic responses to managerialism have been observed. For example, a recent unpopular attempt to reengineer a department within the business school was met with a tranche of non-LIW academics completing (although not submitting) LIW applications as a way of highlighting their disapproval. This action was openly discussed within the department and could therefore be surmised as an example of overt resistance. However, there was also a certain feeling of defeatism, with staff commenting they did not really believe their actions would make any difference as senior management would just go ahead with what they wanted to do anyway. In the end, the changes did not take place and no additional requests for LIW were submitted. Contribution The inclusion of the stream ‘Biting the hand that feeds’, acknowledges the far reaching consequences of managerialism for those working in academic environments. I argue my research is highly relevant as it is being conducted against a backdrop of increasing managerialism within UK higher education institutions. By the time of the conference I aim to present my early findings. As such, the paper makes both conceptually and empirically informed contributions to extant knowledge in this area.
Ralph Stablein Revising the NPM Narrative Abstract The focus of this paper is on bringing multiple perspectives to bear on our understanding of the development of the university, especially the business school. While largely accepting the basic NPM narrative as a description and motor of these developments, I seek to explore the sufficiency of the narrative as a full explanation of our current situation. Thus, the objective of this paper is to contextualize the new public management argument as the cause of these changes in academic institutions and academic work. As a result of this examination, I argue that we need to revise the NPM narrative, which overemphasizes the ideological commitments of decisionmakers and under emphasises organizational and economic realities associated with the emergence of mass higher education. Kuhn (1970) articulates an approach to science that an organisational scholar can resonate with. His notions of paradigm, especially his emphasis on the community of scholars – their social structure, their socialization, and thus the material base of discipline, which depends on the resources that a community can muster to hire staff, build labs and control journals. Disciplines require the resources and institutional arrangements to support the community of scholars to undertake the puzzle solving of normal science or to position itself for success in periods of crisis. In this tradition, the university is relatively autonomous. The world outside the walls of the ivory tower is largely invisible. In these accounts, there is an unspoken but well understood, dependence on others for the resources to fund the disciplinary enterprise. Reciprocity requires a return. Historically the bargain has been undefined but service to the wider community justifies resource allocations. The university provides professional and vocational training, technical innovation, and the legitimacy of association with long-standing,
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almost sacred values. Just as Kuhn was developing his ideas in the 1950s, the phenomenon he described and theorized was disappearing. The short reign of the elite, research university was being replaced by mass education to at least the undergraduate level. Following World War II, the G.I. Bill in the United States filled the university with otherwise-unoccupied men who knew how to use guns, men who were unsuited to university education by class or experience (Augier & March, 2011). Everywhere higher education has become mass education. The chronology and the rate of growth varies from country to country but the reality is ubiquitous (Amdam, 2007). The perceived and/or real value of university education for individual career success and society’s economic, social, and cultural advancement expanded enrolments and state support. The fundamental effect of this shift to mass participation was to increase scale, requiring more staff, more buildings, and a larger, increasingly unsustainable, share of government spending. Change was inevitable, but a particular style of change was pursued - Thatcherism, Reaganomics and Rogernomics were in the ascendancy. The reaction to pressure on government spending was to emphasize the pay for service component of the University. Students would pay because university education provided a private benefit. The government would pay because the University met the government’s research needs. The reciprocity bargain between university and society was renegotiated. Increasingly complex accountability regimes administered by the state (Larner & Le Heron, 2005), accreditation agencies, and media (Wedlin, 2006) were introduced. In New Zealand, the Education Amendment Act 1990 established the VC as the CEO, explicitly introducing the new public management to the university. The increased external accountability of the VC yielded pressure for greater internal accountability and changes in the traditional organization and practices of the University. Centralised, larger units replaced small, discipline-centred groups led by a professor. Collegial bodies became less important, hierarchical decision-making more important. One of the key developments that the NPM argument does not easily account for is changes in academic publication. The shift in academic publishing is not from the state to the commercial sector via privatization. Rather, it is largely a shift to commodification of academic labour by commercial publishers, even though the state continues to pay the academics. The concentration of the publishing industry beginning in the late 1950s precedes the dominance of NPM (Greco, 2011). The shift from a publication system dominated by professional associations and university presses to a commercial system does not fit with the NPM script. A more direct explanation would revolve around the expansion of the capitalist mode of production into the academic communication sphere. The impact of recent requirements for open access publication by governments on commercial publishers is unclear (Beverungen, Böhm, & Land, 2012), but these policies are not easily reconciled with a neo-liberal approach. The research evidence base underpinning the paper includes a review of the existing literature, a variety of primary and secondary documents, and the auto ethnographic experience of the author. The paper contributes to the theme by documenting the new public management argument in the case of the New Zealand universities, providing support for the assertion in the call that this phenomenon is global. Further, it contributes to a more nuanced approach to these changes, which can inform our attempts to understand, and perhaps modify, the ongoing development of higher education and our roles within it.
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STREAM 27: WHY ‘ADVOCACY ETHNOGRAPHY’ MATTERS IN CMS Frank Worthington and David Weir. Sussex University Stream Discussant: Mathew Brannan, Keele University
SESSION ONE Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm D6
David Vickers1 & Stephen Fox2 Institute for Research in Organisations Work & Employment, University of Central Lancashire 2 Queen Mary, University of London Inside Out – Self-ethnography and the story of Burnsland Abstract 1
In this paper we explore a study of managers conducted by one of the authors at a chemicals production site acquired for $1 Billion by a large American multi-national chemical company from a large UK multi-national (Vickers, 2005). We examine how his self-ethnographic research was conducted given that he was also the Human Resources Manager at Burnsland. In our story we portray the researcher in the third person (Andy Dalton – the HR manager) – this is a device used to decentre the researcher and create distance between insider experiences and outsider analysis/writing. We explore what can be learned from this study about the nature and experience of doing and writing self-ethnography. In particular we will consider the challenges in the field and the writing of such self-ethnographic accounts. We also consider what can be learned from our study to inform future self-ethnographic studies. Alvesson (2003) is credited with the term self-ethnography which he defines as “a process of creating knowledge through trying to interpret the acts, words and materials used by oneself and one’s fellow organisational members from a certain distance.”(Alvesson, 2009: p162). Whilst self-ethnography builds on ethnographic traditions and methods there are distinct differences. Most notably these differences are related to the levels of insider-participation and outsider-observation at various stages of the research process. Ethnographic or participant observer studies traditionally involve the researcher as observer and participant to varying degrees. Lindemann (1924: p183) from the Chicago School is credited with the term ‘participant observation’. He differentiated between an ‘objective observer’ and a ‘participant observer’ who researches a culture internally. Burgess (1995) building on Junkers’ (1960) classic definitions suggests that the complete participant operates covertly and conceals the intention to observe whereas the complete observer stands back and basically ‘eaves drops’ on the social setting. In the case of self-ethnography these definitions are not fully appropriate as situations are not always this clear cut. Self-ethnographers are immersed as participants but are also observers who often have wide ranging access. They tend to be ‘insiders’ enabling them to have a clearer understanding of the research setting and suitable nuances. As insiders they may also have wide access to or awareness of key processes. As insiders, selfethnographers are able to observe at the same time as participating in events. However, when selfethnographers come to write up their research notes and papers they become ‘outsiders’ and find themselves as observers who previously participated in the events they are now recounting. By operating as an ‘outsider’ in this writing process, their accounts are more focused on the analysis of the social and cultural phenomenon rather than introspective personalised accounts. As such the author is often decentred in accounts. As Alvesson (2003: 188) points out “self-ethnography is not for the mainstream, organisational (wo)man, eager to conform to workplace norms and to be very loyal.” Ethnography tends to involve outsiders “breaking into” a setting
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(Alvesson, 2009: p162) with the intention of creating knowledge through understanding cultures, people and practices. Self-ethnography on the other hand involves insiders who may “give a better feeling for what goes on…deeper and more profound knowledge of a setting.” (Alvesson, 2009: p163). There are few ethnographic accounts of managers and those there are we would argue are self-ethnographies. The most notable study of management using this method is still regarded by many to be that carried out by Dalton (1959). Dalton considered management behaviour whilst he was working in ‘Milo’, a large chemical company. Dalton’s work demonstrates a very wide-ranging access. Dalton (1959, p.248) was an insider “a staff member at Milo” and his work demonstrate a wide-ranging access within his workplace and social gatherings outside of work. Watson’s (1994) study of managers in ZTC Ryland is a contemporary ethnographic study, which benefitted from wide ranging access to the workplace and provided an excellent commentary on the method and its application. These accounts and the self-ethnographic story we tell in this paper allows the contradictions of work, organization and management to be highlighted
Andrew Armitage, Anglia University, UK Advocacy Ethnography and the Silence of the Organisation: The use of Autoethnographic Verse to Explore Working Life Abstract Organisations can be seen as a theatre where politics and dramas are played out between those who oppress, and those who are subjected to oppression and domination. This paper is therefore a response to Coles and Oresick (1995) who assert in their anthology The Poetry of Work, ‘Why has poetry traditionally ignored the working life?’ Auto-ethnographic verse will be used as a means to reveal and explore through memory and metaphor the silent and unspoken stories of organisational life. Poetry is a process of cognitive and emotional insight, and can be likened to the process of discovery where the writer discovers through the reflexive turn new insights through the linguistic negotiation their experiences, thoughts and feelings through a selfreferential use of language that creates a new understanding of their situated reality, thoughts or feelings expressed in the text. Examples of organisational poetry are presented to show how it can be used to unlock personal experiences and relationships within the context of working life. It will be argued that if stories are to represent reality as lived by those who report them, then poetry provides an alternative method of enquiry to inform contemporary management practices. ‘Maybe all poetry, insofar as it moves us and connects with us, is a revealing of something that the writer doesn’t actually want to say, but desperately needs to communicate. To be delivered of. Perhaps it’s the need to keep it hidden that makes it poetic – makes it poetry. The writer doesn’t actually put it into words, so it leaks out obliquely, smuggled through analogies (metaphors). We think we're writing something to amuse, but were’ actually saying something we desperately need to share’ Ted Hughes (1995)
Sinéad Ruan, Rowan University, New Jersey, USA Advocating for the Self-employed Professional: The case of coaching Abstract This paper is based on my recent dissertation qualitative research, which examines the microprocesses of identity construction among self-employed professionals, grounded specifically in the emerging field of personal coaching, broadly defined (i.e. business, executive, life, health and wellness, etc.). I was fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Institute of Coaching to in order to carry out some of my fieldwork, and now that I've defended, I am in the process of preparing a final report for them, as per my grant agreement. I view this as an opportunity to act as an advocate on behalf of my informants; through this forum, I can present some of the coaches’ concerns, challenges and needs with regard to their new profession. However, I’m not sure about how this feedback will be received by the Institute; that is, how this may affect, firstly, my own professional credibility and future funding opportunities as a management scholar at the start of her career, and secondly (and most concerning to me), whether anything I report will lead to actual change for the benefit of the coaches—the reason I chose to carry out this project in the first place. In this paper, using my first hand experience as a case study, I wish to explore these issues, with which I am currently grappling, and many others have surely struggled with before me. For my dissertation research on self-employed professionals, I spent four years “in the field” (based in the United States), immersing myself in the nascent profession of personal coaching. I consider coaching an
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exemplar of a “new economy” career, since it is organized primarily by self-employment; working for oneself is the foundation for new career models referred to in the “new careers” literature as “protean”, “boundaryless”, and “portfolio”. Entering the field, I intended to study the content of the coaches’ work, but my interests quickly shifted to reflect theirs, which was overwhelming the context in which they performed that work. While I have always strongly identified with the concerns of workers, I did not see my role on this project initially as that of an advocate for the research participants. With time, however, it became clear that my informants were confronted with unfamiliar work territory as they transitioned to “being their own bosses”. Coaches, as a sample of a growing class of white-collar workers (self-employed professionals), must often function in isolation, their work relationships now defined mainly by commercial interests (i.e. working with clients), rather than by social interaction or creative pursuit, as may have been the case in the past. This alone has proved to be a very difficult adjustment for those who got into coaching precisely because they thought of themselves as “people persons”. Adding to this, I discovered that coaches have few sources of institutional or professional support, as they contend with creating a new professional identity within a yet-to-be established field. I eventually came to realize that the difficult working conditions experienced by the coaches I studied are characteristic of other white collar self-employed individuals, and further, that this the practice of organizing work through contractual arrangements is increasing (at least, in the United States). In practical terms, this means the pool of available candidates for project-based or short term work is growing, increasing competition for jobs and in turn, driving down pay levels. I find this trend quite troubling, and recognize its role in perpetuating a vicious cycle. Self-employed workers are both isolated and fragmented, which prohibits meaningful collective and organized action, and at the same time, they are constantly reminded through the individualistic ideals of the “new careers” rhetoric, that they alone are responsible for their own success. The questions I wish to address in this paper, then, include the following: How can I, as a researcher, make a meaningful contribution to both the literature on careers and work, and the practices of the coaching profession? How can I best realize and enact my role as an advocate for my coach informants? For other selfemployed professionals, who find they have few outlets or forums to voice their concerns? How can we, as scholars, advocate on behalf of workers’ interests and rights, particularly in the context of the reorganization of work, which further isolates individuals, thereby disrupting the potential for collective action? The intended contribution of the proposed paper is two-fold. First, I hope to raise and discuss some of the practical issues that qualitative management researchers confront in performing their role as an advocate—specifically in my case, delivering feedback to funders with the intent of activating real change on behalf of the informants, and balancing this with personal and professional goals. Second, I wish to address concerns about changes in the “new world of work”—namely, the increasing fragmentation of labor markets via new career models based on self employment—which may heighten our potential, as scholars and researchers, to act as advocates for the interests and needs of those who we study.
Roger Mendonca Liverpool John Moores University and Aileen Lawless Liverpool John Moores University Reflections on using at-home ethnography – handle with care! Abstract The aim of this paper is to discuss the challenges and opportunities that face a first-time researcher attempting to conduct an at-home ethnography. By making these explicit, the intention is to explore how both the student and their supervisor can make the experience as pain-free, productive and enjoyable as possible. It is hoped that this might encourage other first-time researchers to consider undertaking at-home ethnography. The first named author is both a senior manager in a public sector organisation and a first year doctoral student attempting to conduct an at-home ethnography for his first piece of research. The other author is his supervisor, attempting to successfully guide the student through the pitfalls and challenges inherent in the approach. At the heart of the paper is a simple question - why would anyone choose to take on the challenges of an at-home ethnography for their first major piece of research? Challenges considered within the paper will include ethical considerations such as how a researcher who is also a senior member of an organisation manages the power dynamic their role in the hierarchy creates; how existing relationships with colleagues are maintained, how pre-conceptions about other members of the organisation can be put to one side, and how the researcher manages the conscious, or sub-conscious, pressure to screen out findings that might place the organisation, colleagues or themselves in what may be perceived as a poor light (Alvesson, 2003). Also considered will be practical issues such as how the researcher can collect data at the same time as undertaking their day job, especially in areas of the business where they would not normally be granted access because of their position – i.e. the ‘water-cooler’ conversations, and how findings can be presented that may challenge prevailing notions of leadership and management within the organisation
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without falling foul of internal politics. The paper will explores how to make the most of the unique opportunities that arise as a result of undertaking an at-home ethnography from a senior position within an organisation. Chief amongst these include access to people and documentation, the ‘inside’ knowledge of which the researcher is already aware. Alongside this, there are many potential practical benefits for the student as a researcher – such as the opportunity to develop their ability to be reflexive about their work.
SESSION TWO Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm D6
Karolina Mikołajewska Center for Research on Organizations and Workplaces, and Kozminski University / Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw. Joanna Wawrzyniak, PhD. Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw Sweet past and bitter present: biographical narratives of a privatized Polish chocolate factory Abstract It has been almost 25 years since state socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe. Already a few years after introduction of radical transformation program, Poland was seen by most commentators as a success story. Privatization of state-owned enterprises was one of the crucial elements in entering global market economy. Ownership change and introduction of foreign companies to Poland have contributed to the alteration of institutional order of the Polish economy, as well as to the changing patterns of everyday life of the employees, now shaped to a great extent by the standards of corporative business. This paper is an attempt to pursue the goal of microhistory – that is, to interpret stories rooted in local knowledge of specific groups: in this case the employees of various posts, from a security guard to the director of the company, who experienced the transformation of socialism to capitalism in the chocolate factory E.Wedel and whose life stories would have probably otherwise been left out of the dominant macro success story of the Polish transition. The factory was among first after 1989 to be sold to a foreign investor – and its employees among first in Poland to meet and negotiate a new organizational order with the representatives of Western capital. The paper shows how they describe the transformation from socialism to capitalism from their perspectives; and specifically how they make organizational past (prior to 1939, related to the WWII, as well as referring to the socialist period) relevant to the post-1989 change and their own life stories. At the same time, the paper is an epistemological defence of biographical methods in critical management studies.
Frank Worthington, University of Liverpool Management School Critical Management Education: learning to make a difference Abstract This paper is concerned mainly but not exclusively with the growing interest in critical management pedagogy. Although much has been written about the aims purpose and experience of teaching management from a critical standpoint, there is currently very little empirical evidence of how and to what extent CMS/CME translates into practice. In this paper I address this issue by analysing final year University of Liverpool Management School student perceptions of the potential influence CMS/CME is likely to have on current management practice, and how and to what extent as career managers in organization they themselves would be likely to promote a CMS informed agenda for change. Although CMS has clearly become an important area of research for a growing number of management scholars, and is increasingly being taught in many universities, it is still remains a somewhat marginal activity both within and beyond the academy. This paper sheds light on how and to what extent CME/CMS is in a position to influence students entering or returning to the world of work. The research data is drawn from two sources. Firstly, assessed student coursework and class discussion from a final year ULMS BA Management Degree module entitled ‘Critical Perspectives in Management’, taught annually by the author since 2002, which requires students to consider the conditions of possibility of putting critical management activism into practice in everyday workplace situations. Secondly, data drawn from ‘focus group’ and one-to-one interviews with former students considers whether or not, from the students’ perspective, the emancipatory CMS ideals and values students were taught during the module are likely to have any lasting influence on them in their chosen careers.
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Wenjin Dai, Jonathan Gosling, Annie Pye Centre for Leadership Studies Exeter Business School Glimpses of Workers Abstract Suddenly a girl in the CEO Office shouted ‘Boss is coming!’ Like a stone thrown into a peaceful lake which brought ripple effects, the office was suddenly awake! A girl rushed into tea area but so nervous that she almost knocked over some mugs. She was embarrassed and shouted to her phone: ‘Where is the boss’s tea? He wants coffee or tea? Make them both? Gosh he has come up now?!’… [Field note] It was a very common scene in the Shanghai office of OMG (pseudonym), the Chinese head office of a Japanese multinational corporation (MNC) with more than 20 subsidiaries manufacturing various IT and electronic products in China. One of the authors worked as an intern in their Corporate Culture Department for 3 months, communicating OMG corporate philosophy. Besides articulating claims to be a sustainable organisation with a focus on serving society, the corporate philosophy was identified as an important tool to justify common purpose and structural inequality (Parker, 2002), and to make employees ‘happier’ or ‘feel better’. So this paper will contribute to the CMS Stream an account of an MNC department that is explicitly charged with advocating a corporate philosophy. It is therefore an ethnography of ‘advocacy’ in an MNC context;; the research project itself was motivated by an inquiry to understand how ‘corporate sustainability’ is embodied in specific relations of production. This in turn expresses an ideological conviction that such understanding might emancipate the researcher (and her subjects) from idealisation embedded within bewitching notions of sustainability. This ethnographic account offers a rare opportunity to see (1) the multi-layered complexity of Corporate Sustainability not only as a continuing ordering and organising process, but also the revelation of (2) the social relations and constructed meanings with an element of ‘micro-politics’ (Forester, 2003) in a hierarchical organisation mixed with Japanese and Chinese culture. (3) During interviewing, 17 drawings were also produced as rich pictures (Wyborn & Cleland, 2010) from employees across the organisation. The combined visual methods in the field work offered opportunities for the managers to create more reflective accounts (Pink, 2007). Moreover, (4) this paper will have empirical implications for ethical considerations in ethnographic research, in terms of the translation challenges in both language and culture sense, which are arguably a delicate and subtle process especially where the ethnography admits to an ‘advocacy’ position. Very limited ethnographic research can be found in existing English literature in the context of a non-western, especially Chinese modern organisation (Chan, 2009), hence the current study is particularly unusual in studying a Japanese MNC in China. The timing is significant: just as the fieldwork was concluding, tensions between China and Japan erupted over a disputed group of islands. Yet the common cultural heritage was evident in (inter alia) the many Confucian and Daoist essences embedded in OMG’s corporate philosophy. And while it is well known that China now overtook Japan as the world's second-biggest economy (BBCNews, 2011), Japanese firms such as OMG continue to extract value from commodity-production processes in Chinese factories, supplying components to Apple, amongst others. The paper will explore several juxtapositions exposed by dynamics of ‘advocacy’. Two indicative examples are presented here. Firstly, the ethnographer is confronted with personal reflections to organising processes in this ‘factory-like’ environment: I noticed the office arrangement the first time I walked in OMG. It was an open plan office - in the end of rows of desks, a person sits towards others - department managers generally. It looked like a living organisation chart, where the hierarchy visually represented by the ordering of sitting. Managers were able to watch every move of their subordinates while they were working. It was like working in a factory: workers were working under the supervision. I felt uncomfortable. [Field note] As a typical Japanese company, OMG afforded prominent status to managers. Even in an administrative office, where they differentiated themselves more by conception than execution (Braverman, 1974), the contrast was continuously reinforced between managers and subordinates, or ‘workers’. ‘Human resource’ was explicitly seen as one kind of the resources to be used in the process of production (Burawoy, 1985). Numerous other field-notes could be cited to illustrate the experience of objectification and commoditisation of labour in this department, and the distorted communication between managers and the managed (Alvesson & Willmott, 1996). Yet the research also witnessed some Chinese people who for various reasons identified with Japan, or as ‘Japan-philes’. Therefore it could be seen as a location for specific kinds of identity-work (Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008), aspects of which were revealed in the drawings produced by participants.
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Secondly, the ethnography itself revealed challenges in the translation of ethical, ideological or moral positions by the researcher, especially when it emerged that she was perceived to be one of the managers. The air was suddenly frozen when we got to the water area. A group of young male workers stopped talking immediately, without expression, indifferent, quiet, and cold. The admin girl from factory didn’t step into the room with me. I walked in to empty my cup. But there was a young male worker with dyed brown hair standing by the sink, facing us without looking at us. I felt awkward, standing right next to him for 10 seconds. Finally the admin girl broke the silence, asked him to let me empty the cup. As soon as I finished, the boy came back quickly and stepped on my right foot. He went back to the old pose, smoking, indifferent, still not looking at us. When I came out, my dear colleague gave me a funny look implying how smelly and disgusting there. [Field note] This was just one of several powerful moments during the fieldwork, from the negotiation of access onwards. Through ‘glimpses of workers’, social and political relationships will be revealed from the perspective of advocacy ethnography. We critique of the ideal of neutrality on the grounds that as we travel from our research desk to the field, from office to factories, ethical considerations arise in response to specific legal and political contexts. A more reflexive approach should be taken considering the possible effects the research might bring to the participants.
Ismael Al-Amoudi From ethnography to advocacy An organizational theorist’s micro contribution to the Occupy movement Abstract This paper reflects on the kind of contributions that a scholar affiliated to a business school can bring to social movements qua activist. It is based on my 10 months’ participation as activist to the Occupy Geneva movement (thereafter OGVA) that spread in Geneva in October 2011. It is broadly inspired by Gramsci’s reflections on the revolutionary role of intellectuals and echoes Munir’s critique of business school professors as Big Business’s cheerleaders (Munir 2011). The questions I tackle are slightly oblique, though complementary, to the more obvious questions raised at EGOS 2013’s stream on Marxist organization studies. Indeed, this short paper does not study capitalism’s spread around the globe nor its formidable cultural effects. And neither does it offer a sophisticated Marxist discussion of non-Marxist authors, themes or methods. Yet, it is profoundly inspired by Marx’s philosophy of practice – and the role assigned to political intellectuals by Gramsci (2012/1971). It seeks to bridge practical reflection and reflexive practice by asking: what can organisational theorists do in practical terms to contribute to those movements, such as Indignados and Occupy, that seek to denounce and reform the excesses of contemporary capitalism? Through which practices, and associated knowledge, can a management academic contribute qua activist? The argument is structured in five short sections. The first offers a methodological preamble that locates the research’s methods and objects of study. The second presents the Indignados and Occupy movements. The third focuses on Occupy Geneva (thereafter OGVA) to which I participated. It provides a short chronology of the main events that spanned from the movement’s birth to its camp’s dismantlement to its Facebook reincarnation. The fourth section details my own contribution qua activist. It reflects on the skills and knowledge that protest movements such as Occupy and Indignados need. In particular, it argues that much of the knowledge on which I and other activists relied is not exclusive to academia but is shared among a wide number of professions, typically those viewed by Gramsci as the dominant class’s organic intellectuals. The fifth and last section discusses whether and under what conditions protest movements such as OGVA may recruit potential contributors drawn from the ranks of traditional intellectuals and defectors from bourgeoisie’s organic intellectuals.
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STREAM 28: DECOLONIALIZING MANAGEMENT STUDIES: FROM CMS TO DMS? Rafael Alcadipani, FGV-EAESP, Sao Paulo Bill Cooke, Lancaster Alex Faria, FGV-EBAPE Anindita Banerjee, Lancaster
DECOLONIZING THE TRANSFER OF MANAGEMENT KNOWLEDGE Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm D5
Denise Barros, Unigranrio, Brazil; Alessandra da Costa, PUC-Rio, Brazil; Sergio Wanderley, Ebape/FGV, Brazil Advancing Africa? Collective Memory and Management Studies from a Decolonial Perspective Abstract In spite of the decay of the Euro-American world based order, of which management knowledge production and dissemination is one of the main pillars, we have been witnessing an attempt to maintain its hegemony through a reinforcement of the export of management knowledge produced at the center. From a decolonial perspective (Mignolo, 2011), we argue that this movement represents an example of how epistemic coloniality (Ibarra-Colado, 2006) operates to impose itself to the detriment of memories and knowledges produced elsewhere. In the words of Mignolo (2011), this is an example of how the colonial matrix of power is orchestrated to impose not only a coloniality of knowledge, but also a coloniality of being. The coloniality of being has ranked the races and justified intervention in the colonies (Maldonado-Torres, 2007), and we argue that this is the same way the export of the Academy Of Management to Africa is now being legitimized. Coloniality is the darker and inseparable side of Western modernity (Mignolo, 2011), and we argue that the strategic construction of a specific memory performs an important role in the imposition of a coloniality of being that neglects other memories and corresponding knowledge. Increasing importance is being given to studies that deal with the subject of 'memory' in the social sciences (Ricouer, 2004). Such attention is also being increasingly observed in organizational studies (Rowlinson et. al. 2010). These studies can assume different perspectives, such as: (a) social memory studies (Halbwachs, 1992; Olick, 1999) which assume that collective memory is a phenomenon of the social engagement of individual memories; (b) organizational memory studies, which identify expressions of organizational memory in an organization`s respective information systems (Walsh and Ungson, 1991) and organizational learning (Holan and Phillips, 2004); and (c) communicative memory studies, which contribute to the management of internal and external organizational communication (Assmann, 2011). There is an issue that is present in all these perspectives: Collective memory can be strategically manipulated by institutions, power groups and even by ‘scientific history’ so as to legitimize processes of domination of one social group over another (Pollak, 1989). In organizational studies, this strategic use can be identified, according to Rowlinson et al (2010) and Durepos et al. (2008), when, for example corporations appropriate various forms of social and collective memory to remember, reminisce, celebrate and legitimize their own past. This is also the case of the collective memories of groups that have been historically oppressed and prevented from building their own memories. In this sense, today there are groups that seek to compensate for what Delacroix et al (2012, p.359) call a "historical uprooting of the social". They move towards questioning collective memories that reflect a past constructed by the dominant history, and to reveal memories that have
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been covered up by the universalizing project of European modernity that has been imposed since colonial times (Dussel, 1993). In Latin America, for example, this movement provides us with re-readings of the memory and history of authoritarian political regimes of the 1970s, made possible by testimonies of political exiles who returned to their countries as a result of the processes of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s. Other important examples of this movement include studies of marginalized indigenous or African populations (Silva, 2011). In the case of Africa and Asia, decolonized in the 1950s and 1960s, this process also occurs through the claim of a new national history and the recovery of memories and traditions prior to European settlement. It is along these lines that our research has sought to problematize the relationship between collective memory and management within a context of epistemic globality. To this end, we chose, as the object of our research, the 2013 AOM Africa Conference. From a decolonial perspective and from another locus of enunciation (Mignolo, 2011), we should ask why not use “African categories” to investigate management knowledge produced elsewhere? After all, after the economic crisis of 2008 at the center, the center should have sought to import concepts from elsewhere, built upon different kinds of memories, instead of maintaining its relentless efforts to keep its own hegemony through a process of re-westernization (Mignolo, 2011). This ongoing research analyzes public documents from the event’s official website showing how global epistemic coloniality (Ibarra-Colado, 2006;; Mignolo, 2011) constructs a memory of convenient ‘tradition’ of US management hegemony as an essential condition for the development of the region. After all, as the president of the African Academy of Management states: "Management knowledge can make a significant contribution to the productivity and prosperity of a nation" (AFAM, 2013).
Ana Celano, Ebape/FGV, Brazil; Alessandra da Costa, PUC-Rio, Brazil; Sergio Wanderley, Ebape/FGV, Brazil The role played by emerging countries in international masters programs: the issue of production and consumption of management knowledge Abstract The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impacts of globalization on management education, especially those related to the internationalization process of the IMPM (International Masters Program in Practice Management) in emerging countries (such as Brazil, India and China) as its current academic partners. Its main contribution results from a critical view of the role of management education within the global agenda not only in terms of the consumption and production of mainstream knowledge but also of local knowledge. The empirical evidence presented here is grounded on preliminary findings from data collected, through 18 semistructured interviews carried out during the IMPM module held in Brazil (in October, 2012). At the end, we propose a research agenda to understand how and why international programmes of management education have shifted their focus to emerging countries and the process of knowledge consumption and production within the scope of this new context. Historically, the ‘developed’ West acted in a colonizing fashion in relation to other parts of the world so as to impose its will on them, even to the extent of claiming this to be part of a “civilizing” process, and therefore beneficial to these ‘less’ developed regions. In this way, colonialist European movements sought to ‘civilize’ many regions around the world under the pretext that these regions, and consequently their inhabitants, were uncivilized (ESCOBAR, 1995; ZADJA, 2005). After the end of the colonial period, however, the same colonialist logic was adopted by the United States (US) in their quest to develop and modernize the nations of the so-called ‘Third World’ (MIGNOLO, 2000). Furthermore, just like the developmentalist ideology, management took a crucial role in this context, since it was thanks to it, ultimately, that this process occurred. Cooke (2004) pointed out that this relationship, and the implications of the fact that management originated in the First World is imposed on the Third World, was built upon a foundation of management as understood solely by the First World. He emphasizes, therefore, the fact that the field of management and organizational studies was associated with a specific source of journals, text and article production where the schools of business and administration themselves, through their academics and students, were blind to anything existing outside the realm of the First World. Thus, the American management style was put into practice by means of discourse and practices related to development. This American management style was propagated across different regions of the world as being the right and proper model of management, even receiving recognition from the business schools and universities in the US who became the mainstream in this particular area of knowledge (ALCADIPANI, 2010; JACK et al., 2008). The mains consequence was that organizational and management knowledge has on one-dimensional characteristics, and was transformed into a field and a practice subject to an American epistemic colonial
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influence (ALCADIPANI; ROSA, 2011; IBARRA-COLADO, 2006). Consequently, management, as a body of knowledge and as a set of practices, has been disseminated globally as a phenomenon of Anglo-Saxon influence that also models and affects management-related knowledge produced in the ‘South’, thereby reinforcing the concept put forward by Santos (2006: 397) of globalized localisms/localized globalisms, or what “constitute the hegemonic type of globalization, also called neoliberal, top-down globalization or globalization from above”. One should also note that knowledge originating in the ‘South’ is widely categorized and put through a filter by the ‘North’, making it clear that it should be considered as knowledge coming from outside. In this case, one may wonder to what extent this indigenous knowledge might ever be acknowledged or actually made use of (SANTOS, 2012). On the other hand, academics from the South have made great efforts to state the contributions made by this original knowledge in both the past and the present, and have invariably given emphasis to arguments that have also been used to depreciate and marginalize this knowledge produced by the ‘other’, thereby taking on the role, in a somewhat naive way, of the victim (JAGUARIBE, 1979). Thus, terms such as indigenous knowledge end up offering or suggesting a certain romanticism, which in turn encourages idealization and confirms a degree of discrimination (TSUI, 2004) and thereby enables the implementation of l globalized localisms/localized globalisms (SANTOS, 2006). According to Santos (2011), capitalism and its supporting institutions have lost much of their dynamism and no longer rule the global economy. New powers are emerging and imposing important changes which, although still far from being substantial or sufficient to change the global system completely, do, nevertheless, represent a transition to a new world order. Continental and emerging powers, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China and on-going processes involving regional integration will play an increasingly important role in organizing this new global system, one which should adopt a political philosophy that supports and leads to the development, in a plural, democratic and egalitarian way, of the global civilization. We are therefore questioning if a program that deals with international education in management, such as the IMPM, which claims to be outside the mainstream of management education, can indeed change the understanding of its participants. Grounded on the preliminary data collected, we describe how this process takes place and whether there is any perception of a shift in the American hegemony and on the role played by emerging countries in the production and consumption of knowledge in the management field.
Zehra Sayed, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden Understanding International Knowledge Transfer Through Postcolonial Perspective Case Study of Thompson Reuters in India Abstract
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Research gap and Purpose: Numerous studies attest to the difficulties associated with knowledge transfer between organizational units. As firms expand into new markets with cultures and institutions distinctly differing from those of the home markets, the challenges are even greater (Foss & Pedersen, 2004; Kostova, 1999; Kostova & Roth, 2002). Within the mainstream literature, knowledge transfer is generally understood to be a linear - although complex – process; the success of knowledge transfer is commonly attributed to the characteristics of knowledge, the characteristics of sender and receiver, and the relationship between sender and receiver (Eisenhardt & Santos, 2002; van Wijk, 2008; Michailova, 2012). While some studies focus on just one of these determinants, other studies attempt to combine different factors and examine their joint effect on the success of knowledge transfer (Minbaeva, 2007; Szulanski, 1996). Although a great deal of academic inquiry has been directed towards understanding the knowledge transfer process within transnational organizations, our understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking in many respects (Michailova, 2012). In particular, the process through which the knowledge receiver internalizes new knowledge (Kostova, 2009) have empirically been left largely unexplored. Although recipient characteristics are at the center stage of knowledge transfer literature, with absorptive capacity and motivation taking the lead, the voice of the recipient is by and large absent. This is perhaps not surprising considering most studies employ quantitative analysis to study recipient characteristics. More importantly, though, as emphasized by postcolonial scholars, most business/organization scholarship imports western epistemologies and ontology to define “otherness”, with the result that the “other [i.e. the knowledge recipient] is translated through these resources and transduced into something locatable within them - into a sameness that erases their differences [;] their cultures are erased, smoothed over, homogenized or ignored (Westwood & Jack, 2007). In other words, much of the literature on knowledge transfer is characterized by a lack of understanding of and even disregard for the situation of the knowledge receiver. Therefore, this paper examines how knowledge recipients internalize new knowledge. More specifically, it focuses on how local employees working in subsidiaries of a transnational media firm devise strategies to
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combine local practices with headquarters’ demands to standardize work processes. Thus, this study creates a platform for the study of knowledge recipients’ perspectives on the process of knowledge transfer. The aim of the paper is not to comment on the validity of existing theories of knowledge adoption (or resistance or rejection of new practices). Rather, it aims to let recipients tell their stories, based on which the many facets of adoption and resistance can be explored in ways that more positivistic methodologies provide little room for. In this respect, the present study is part of a critical corpus of work that has significantly altered the terrain of international management research by providing a platform for post-colonial and third world realities. Since the management/organization movement originated in the west, and since theoretical paradigms tend to incline toward a Euro-American perspective, there is legitimate apprehension about organizational peculiarities of the non-west getting conflated with the mainstream, and losing their own essential characteristics. There is an assumption in most “modern” discourse that western derived epistemology, methodologies, theories and methods are applicable across the world regardless of context. Work by postcolonial scholars, on the other hand, has shown western science to be but one particular historically situated form of knowledge and has revealed how western thoughts and practices were universalized (and institutionalized) in the colonial era and established as a norm or standard that others should adopt, emulate, and be measured against. Method and scope of empirical study: The paper reports a case study of Thompson Reuter’s operations in India and empirically explores the dynamics of knowledge transfer from the perspective of the receiver. Interviews were conducted with 29 employees at the Mumbai and Bangalore branches of Reuters in India. The analysis focuses on how new knowledge is perceived, interpreted, and how it influences practices. The study will make use of postcolonial tools of analysis to interpret the stories provided by study participants. By employing a postcolonial lens, the study accesses not only a sophisticated conceptual vocabulary, but also an ethically powerful critique of mainstream knowledge structures and their concomitant cultural, social, and organizational effects. Preliminary Findings: The study shows that process of knowledge transfer and, especially, knowledge internalization is significantly more complex than acknowledge by much of the literature. Preliminary finding show that the knowledge recipients go through various phases as internalization of new knowledge take place. These phases include conscious and unconscious resistance, negotiation, adaptation and adoption of new knowledge. A lack of understand of these dynamics may have given rise to faulty claims of low absorptive capacity among non-western knowledge recipients and may have contributed to the development of simplistic and overly rationalistic methods of knowledge transfer in practice. Consequently, when studying knowledge transfer, future research should more closely consider how knowledge is actually internalized by intended knowledge recipients.
Nicole Spohr, FGV EAESP, Brazil; Rafael Alcadipani ,FGV EAESP, Brazil Decolonizing International Business Abstract Although the area known as International Business (IB) is growing in Brazil and in the world, research in this field has been dominated by functionalist approaches which tend to ignore issues of power. Furthermore, the operations of multinational companies in particular, and international business in general, are far from unproblematic. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to suggest a critical approach as a way of conducting research in the area of International Business in Brazil. Thus, we (re)tell the story of the origins of the field, showing its resistance to the adoption of critical and/or reflexive approaches, while seeking to denaturalize the area of IB to propose decolonization as an alternative for this field.
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THE HEGEMONY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON: LANGUAGE AND PRACTICES Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm D5
Dr. Nivedita Kothiyal, Institute of Rural Management, Anand, India; Arun Kumar, Lancaster University, U.K. Re(-)claiming Language: Decolonializing Management Studies Abstract In response to the call for ‘Decolonializing management studies: from CMS to DMS?,’ this paper discusses the relationship between language and colonization within and through management studies. In doing so, the paper develops three key sets of argument in the context of postcolonial societies like India. The first two relate to the need for re-claiming the language question, more centrally within management studies, including discussing other sites and ways in which it colonizes;; and the third relates to reclaiming language, as if it were one’s own, towards decolonializing management studies. Re-claiming Language: The first argument interrogates the role of language in affecting colonization. Within critical postcolonial management studies, there is increasing recognition of the ‘exclusionary logic’ of language and ‘impact of colonial languages on independent thinking’ in colonial societies7. This is tied with and into the wider questions relating to ‘language politics,’ and associated policies, in multilingual societies such as India. It has worked to ensure a continued and hegemonic hold of English, more so as the only language for higher technical education in the country, including management studies. 8 As a consequence, Anglo-Saxon management theories and concepts are taught at management institutes/business schools in India, predominantly in English - the colonial language of past; but also the language of post-independence Indian elites, marked by their social and economic mobility which are increasingly linked into the neoliberalist and globalist circuits of power and wealth. This dual conquest of the past, and related future aspiration has silenced any contestations from ‘other’ existing local knowledge system(s) and critical vocabularies in the vernacular. It has also steam-rolled challenges, or any potential challenges, posed by local language(s): either through translation or through multi-lingual research and knowledge production, in favour of knowledge that could possibly have been more relevant to contemporary local realities. Therefore, the paper argues that language, both as part of Anglo-Saxon hegemony within management, and as part of wider peculiarities of language politics in India, presents a significant site of colonization; and by extension - any decolonizing project has to start by placing the question of language within management studies more centrally, by emphatically re-claiming this point. The second line of argument interrogates how language of management makes further conquests, especially when management encounters ‘development’ in ‘developing’ countries such as India. In educational sites/spaces, for example, the ‘management of development’, both as a discourse and practice, is often articulated as the only possible means by which the ‘traditional’ (and) ‘underdeveloped’ might attain modernity. Moreover, in an act of recursive colonization, the language used within such international management training programmes organised in educational institutions in India then becomes the vehicle for further uncontested transmission of western management theories, concepts, tools and techniques, to remote geographies and cultures. This leads to further colonization of development in complex societies such as India, through the hegemonic and homogenized use of the language of management. Reclaiming Language: Finally, the paper argues that the project of decolonialization of management studies has to start from within the site(s) of ongoing colonization. Therefore management studies, and further even critical management 7
J. Murphy and J. Zhu. Neo-colonialism in the Academy?: Anglo American Domination in the Management Journals. Organization, 19(6), 2012. 8 It is worth mentioning here that higher education in India is offered in a number of vernacular languages. However it is significant to note that elite institutions continue to limit their education delivery in English. And also that education in the vernacular is more common within the social sciences (particularly sociology, political science and anthropology) and the humanities (including literar y studies, cultural studies and fine arts). But again, the technical education, especially within large urban centres has been restricted solely to English, which has worked to create a significant linguistic divide in quality of access to higher education in India. In its own limited way, the National Translation Mission attempts to, though very narrowly, provide digital translations of seminal texts in key disciplines to higher education institutes, but it fails to deal more significantly with questions of language, and the potential it offers in working with alternate conceptual vocabularies across languages and disciplines.
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studies, present a key site within which this alternate set of concerns relating to language and (de)-colonisation needs to be articulated. This is particularly true for India, where despite a substantive scholarship on postcolonialism in general, and subaltern studies and critical cultural studies in particular, management studies have stayed cocooned within mainstream management orthodoxies. Following from this, the paper argues that reclaiming language, as a strategic choice, presents interesting possibilities in decolonializing management. The paper will make use of anecdotal evidence, drawn from the authors’ own experiences, in making its point, and suggest ways and possibilities of decolonializing management studies, both by re-claiming and reclaiming language.
Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sidney; Tapiwa Seremani, EM-Lyon Business School, France “Mind your Language:” Postcolonialism and the problem with its labeling Abstract The classic 1977 British comedy television series Mind your language centered on an English teacher attempting to teach English and highlighted how slight changes in expression could alter the meaning of an entire sentence. Quite often the characters would mistakenly say one thing, whilst in actual fact meaning another. Similarly, in this paper we question some of the terminology that has been used in “Postcolonial studies” and highlight how the label of this research agenda may be inappropriate. We provide an overview of the theory and some of the important contributions that have shaped the field. We go on to challenge the terminology often embraced by postcolonial theory and the organization studies adoption of this nomenclature. The terminology is deeply embedded in the very power relations that postcolonial theory attempts to subvert. We also question postcolonial theory’s reliance on western languages. Language, as the keystone of knowledge systems, cannot but be entangled in power relations; hence, the use of specific language and terminology manifests power relationships. That the role of language in colonial encounters was a major source of domination disturbed writers such as Fanon andThiong’o. Fanon’s (1970, 2008) and Thiong’o’s (1986) arguments question scholarly traditions in which it seems knowledge from the periphery is only given value when presented in the language of the core. Language plays a central role in the formulation of self-perception and the lenses with which individuals view the world. We thus question the current role of language in postcolonial studies. The reliance on western languages by post-colonial theory scholars is paradoxical considering that they are attempting to highlight the existence of “other cores” to the metropolitan centers and are asserting the multi-polarity of the world. Knowledge does not only become knowledge when presented in English, French or Spanish. The continued reliance of postcolonial theory scholars on “western” languages makes them continue to propagate western views of the world. Of course, there is a double bind. If the language of the hegemon is not assented to it will never be the case, except for the most specialist of language scholars, that the ideas of the subaltern will ever penetrate the dominant assumptions. However, if the language of the hegemon is adopted then ideas that are not formed within its dominant rationalities will have to pass the test of review by those versed in these rationalities for whom the notion of knowledge other than that capable of being posed in their own language is equally inscrutable. Epistemology lies at the heart of knowledge and acts as the foundation upon which knowledge and understandings of the world are built. Building on this notion we question the reliance of postcolonial theory on western epistemology. Western dualistic knowledge systems make it possible to depict the world in a binary manner, composed of simple polarities such as “east” and “west”, “western” and “non western other” that are presented as opposites. Despite the apparent differences on the surface, postcolonial theory actually has its grounding in western epistemological traditions. Postcolonial theory’s foundations in western knowledge systems are evident in the dualistic nature of a discourse that makes reference to the “colonized” versus the “colonizer”, “non-western other” versus “western”. For the purpose of resistance, the binary depictions made by postcolonial theory would suffice but to become more than merely an antithesis, reliance on binary depictions is not enough. Postcolonial theory needs to draw more from non-western epistemological traditions that have been marginalized by those of the dominant west. The antithetical pairs that characterize postcolonial theory restrict postcolonial theory to being, exactly, an antithesis to western discourse with little potential for being much more. Postcolonial theory needs to move away from western epistemological traditions upon which it currently relies to enable it to project “truly” non-western perspectives. We put forward the idea of reclaiming lost epistemologies as being among the most fertile in terms of the overall decolonization project and in terms of deepening, broadening and reasserting Postcolonial theory. To illustrate our argument we adopted a different epistemology. Despite the fact that in the west Ubuntu is commonly associated with a computer operating system, Ubuntu is in actual fact an epistemological tradition from Sub Saharan Africa, which is prevalent, especially in southern Africa. We adopt an Ubuntu lens to
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illustrate how the way we study organizations and management would change when the epistemological grounding also changes. Fanon (1970) sees decolonization as a violent phenomenon in which two forces meet that are opposed to each other by their very nature. Whilst Fanon (1970) is predominantly concerned with the physical form of violence, with Bourdieu (1991) we can evoke the “symbolic violence” that is required to break the colonial shackles that continue to bind scholars today. A certain degree of such “violence” is necessary if dominant views of the world are to be dislodged and room created for previously marginal views. Such violence is characterized by the rejection of dependence on western knowledge systems, epistemologies and languages, the very same tools that have been used to construct a skewed view of the world. In its current form postcolonial theory can only exist as a counter thesis to western views of the world and has no intrinsic value independent of the existence of western views. This is a restriction placed on the theory by its reliance on western knowledge systems. Our provocative conclusion is that postcolonial theory should liquidate itself in order that the voices of the repressed may be heard.
Bill Cooke, Lancaster University, U.K. Management, Modernization, and Manifest Destiny Abstract Management -World History: We need to frame management critically, with an ontological statement of what it is; and from that to derive its historical geo-political practices and status. Management: The Calculative Ideology Famously, Grey and Fournier (2000) argued critters seek to de-naturalize management , and second, to reveal its social performativity - under the guise of pragmatic reason it sustains power-embedded social relations as “common-sense”. I would go further, and identify four levels of management’s calculative-ness. Modernization (Twice): Development and Management The history of the Americas in the Cold War is still being written, and that of American colonialism and managerialism is only just begun. Few, very few, critters (notably Prasad and Prasad) have begun to reveal the extent to which managerialism emanates from modern colonial encounters, and the desire to establish simple calculativeness across those encounters’ spaces, times and cultures. Building on this we must now reveal cultural-political ideology of the United States as the City on the Hill. Managerialism and Manifest Destiny The very limited scholarship on this argument that there is, is however compelling. Thus Pushkala Prasad demonstrates how managerialist discourses embody the USA’s Myth of the Frontier, commending and commanding territorial expansion, the economic exploitation of the hitherto unconquered terrains, and the suborning of resistant indigenes who dare resist it. Conclusion: One True Management History ? Of course, I accept that there can be so single epistemology of the past. But at the same time, I argue that the one I offer here is a benchmark by which all others must be judged. Which reveals the lacunae in alternative accounts of the relation between past, present and future in/of management.
Joy Panoho, Massey University, New Zealand Decolonising governance – a voice from the periphery Abstract This paper attempts to offer a postcolonial examination of contemporary public sector health governance in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) and is based on an empirical study of directorial experience. The juxtaposition of legislative changes to health governance and provision, rapidly developing indigenous scholarship and, emergent postcolonial challenge within management studies provide fertile ground from which to develop theoretical insight. However, this fertile but, as yet, uncultivated ground requires careful navigation. In Aotearoa scholarly relationships between the indigenous and the postcolonial are, at best tentative. In responding to the critique of postcolonialisms as a generic and a Western generated set of theories care is taken to privilege indigenous epistemology and methodologies. In this paper the importance of ‘locating’ specific histories and specific
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colonial circumstances is therefore given due consideration. Attempts to address or at least articulate the contested space between the indigenous and the postcolonial are made. This theoretical synthesis is then is applied to management studies, in this case to governance theory. Governance theory and practice remains firmly entrenched in the Western economic and legal framework. A decolonisation challenge to management studies presents a formidable task. Save for some examination of neo colonial forces in relation to stakeholder theory, to corporate social responsibility, and some examination of public sector management in relation to the popularised Harvard Project governance theory is unchallenged. Intra-board process, an important governance dimension, is yet to be addressed for a postcolonial perspective. Despite scholarly and regulatory challenge to what is viewed as director homophily and corporate elitism boards of directors continue to resist heterogeneity. While there have been sociological contributions to governance theory that make a case for board heterogeneity these sociological contributions are yet to offer insight into postcolonial relationships. Instead such approaches evoke diversity discourses. Diversity discourses however are yet to constructively engage with colonial discourses. In the empirical study that is detailed in this paper legislatively instituted board diversity incorporates an account of indigenous legal challenge and resistance. As is characteristic of colonised countries indigenous peoples experience phenomenal cultural and material loss culminating in marginalisation. Despite colonial devastation Māori, the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa/NZ, move forward with ever increasing presence and voice in every institutional sector in this country in an attempt to reclaim and restore Māori wellbeing. While disparities in health continue to demonstrate colonial devastation, health is one such sector where increasing Māori empowerment is evident. The relatively recent legal provision for Māori representation at a District Health Board level offers direct regional Māori governance input. However, as with other sectors, inevitable neo-colonial vestiges constrain Māori autonomy. Rapidly developing indigenous scholarship opens up previously unavailable paths for indigenous researchers with which to increasingly empower Māori. However, the opportunity to do this within management studies, particularly within the governance field, remains limited. Governance and health governance theory, firmly grounded in Western rationality, has yet to benefit from indigenous challenge. Postcolonial theorists articulate and contest Western dominance in management studies and offer emergent challenge to governance theory. In the desire to know more about director activity and efficacy, current governance theoretical debate in management studies calls for primary or first order data where directors themselves reflect on their governance experiences. This study provides primary or first order Māori-centric data on intra board process. Māori research constructs guide the research process methodologically and analytically. Semi structured interview data generating a thematic analysis reveals Māori not only experience the Western hypothesised governance complexities and demands but also considerable additional complexity and demand. The assistance of a postcolonial lens brings into sharp focus the nature of these additional complexities and demands and attributes them to a deficit in Pākehā bicultural knowledge and accommodation. The neo-colonial hierarchal construction of Māori as the ‘Other’ evokes multiple dysfunctional mechanisms such as tokenism, stereotyping, institutional racism, political correctness, and evokes the ‘burden of representation’. Mechanisms such as these impede intra board activity, representing significant governance process loss. In addition the lack of accommodation of Māori cultural governance aspirations also represent governance process loss. The articulation of dysfunctional colonial mechanisms that manifest at the DHB board table is a first step in a reconstruction of a different intraboard functioning. This, in conjunction with due regard to Māori cultural governance contributions and aspirations, suggests transformational possibility.
CHALLENGING GLOBALISMS Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am D5
Mariana Paludi, Saint Mary's University, Canada; Jean Helms Mills, Saint Mary's University, Canada Telling the story of Argentina´s first Gender Equity Programme: tensions between local issues and global designs Abstract The purpose of this paper is to pursue a de-colonial sensemaking analysis of a Gender Equity programme implemented in Argentina. The motivation of this paper relays in the authors experience back in 2009 when participated in an initiative from the government of Argentina and the World Bank named Argentinean Gender
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Equity Model (Modelo de Equidad de Genero para Argentina, ‘MEGA’) to promote gender equity in the private sector. As a trainer she had to teach human resources and work-life balance practices from a gender perspective in twelve multinationals and medium business organizations. The absent of literature addressing gender in organization from an Argentine perspective favored the use of a mainstream literature on human resources mostly conceived in the U.S., (e.g. Recruiting and Retaining women (Harrington, 2000) or Women and Men in U.S. Corporate Leadership: Same Workplace, Different Realities? (Catalyst, 2004)). This resulted to be problematic when during the meetings with the different companies men and women contested the examples given regarding work-life balance programs and gender equity policies from U.S multinationals such as Johnson and Johnson’ Balancing Work and family program, or Avon’s Managing Diversity program (Catalyst, 1994). In other words, those examples did not make sense to men and women from Argentina because they were conceived from a North American perspective, considering that the Argentine society has its particularities historically (Barrancos, 2008), culturally (Stobbe, 2005), and economically (Novick, Rojo, & Castillo, 2008). Moreover, this was corroborated during some interviews done at the beginning of 2012 in one of the companies that participated in the MEGA when it was expressed the rigidity in the approach during the training sessions. According to these interviews, the training sessions were a possibility to explore the organization’s culture and understanding of gender relations by themselves. 9 The participation in the project before mention motivated the questioning of standard solutions to address the complexity of the social phenomenon of gender issues within a context of postcolonial North/South relations. This paper proposes to move towards a de-colonial analysis of the MEGA by revealing the local understanding of men and women from Argentine companies. The de-colonial approach taken in this study is based on Walter Mignolo’s works. His works bring into the picture the particularities of postcolonial relations in “Latin” America (Mignolo, 2005); the intersectionality of local histories and global designs (Mignolo, 2000) and the alternatives to de-colonize knowledge (Mignolo, 2011). It is unclear how to carry out a de-colonial analysis in organizations, thus, this paper suggests the use of a sensemaking framework to organizations because of its similarity with Mignolo’s de-colonial theories regarding knowledge creation. Mignolo (2009, p. 2) focus is on “Who and when, why and where is knowledge generated”, similarly Weick (1995, p. 4) says “how they construct [active agents] what they construct, why, and with what effects are the central questions for people interested in sensemaking”. In sum, the combination of Mignolo’s de-colonial theories and sensemaking processes (Weick, 1995) allows addressing alternative ways of thinking and understanding from the South of America. This paper will start with a discussion of the insights of postcolonial and de-colonial literature based on Said’s and Mignolo’s works. This will be followed by a problematization of the globalization of equity issues through feminist lenses. Some feminists, using postcolonial perspectives, have criticized programmes of development for the universalization of Western approaches to womens’ issues (Baker, 2000; Ferguson, 2000). Also, they have argued that the same organizations that create those programmes (i.e. the WB or IMF) create the structure that worsens labour condition of women across the border (Sassen, 2000, 2001, 2003). However, little has been done to explain, through a feminist postcolonial framework, the implications of these programmes within organizations. Finally, it would be propose that a sensemaking approach on organization favours a way to move towards a de-colonial agenda where South American people create their own knowledge regarding gender issues.
Loong Wong, Murdoch University, Australia A global management theory is not possible: The tensions between universalism and pluralism Abstract David Harvey has reminded us that we should ask of knowledges not whether they are ‘true’ or ‘false’ but, rather, “what it is that produces them and what they serve to produce” (Harvey, 1974: 162). Harvey was not and the only person to do so. Critical scholars and postfeminists e.g. Donna Haraway, have all bought into the fray and the advent of postcolonialism sought to open the laden and sedimented discourses in the social sciences, humanities and management. Sure, the social sciences and humanities have gone through what is purported the ‘culture wars’ and is more ‘open’, , management and business studies have, somehow, been resistant. Works within a postcolonial framework are marginal and those published, tend to read like critiques of postdevelopment studies. Indeed, there are critiques of corporate social responsibility in developing countries but in themselves, they are not postcolonial but useful and critical texts of the development project. The 9
At the beginning of 2012 in-depth qualitative interviews took place in one of the companies that participated in the MEGA, as part of a larger research study. Although these interviews are not going to be analyzed in this study; they are brought to illuminate some of the issues addressed in this research.
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epistemological and ontological realities of the discourses implicit in these critiques are still grounded in and refracted through ‘western’ critical theory(ies). This is, of course bolstered, by the ’global’ academic project and enterprise – publishing. Journal rankings shape and dictate critical writings and the global management hegemony reinforced. What I have been intending to say is to point out that space and location matters. Knowledge claims universal but is geographically shaped, produced and worked through. They are informed by a geographical lens and they actively shape the thoughts, actions and self-understanding of those who purvey, consume, produce, construct and/or reconstruct these knowledges, wittingly or not. In other words, following Foucault is productive as well as being produced. Knowledge thus, is a quotidian instruction about the world we populate and also the world beyond our doorstep. Critics have charged its as colonising, ‘imperialistic’ I, and of course, the transfer of such knowledges is never innocent. Its translation, adaptation, receptivity and even ‘localisation’ is fraught with issues. This process is, by default political. As such, any reading and/or critique of management and the business literature needs to be cognisant of such forces at work. In this paper, I argue that a mere critique is not enough and rather naïve. There is the need examine and critically interrogate the dominance of this putative ‘global’ management discourse. Drawing on (east) Asia and its history(ies), the paper seeks to show that this discourse is based on a particularistic reading of the world and the production of knowledge and as such, is riven and based on a series of tacit assumptions and specific ideologies. The interaction of these assumptions and ideologies create a hegemony which encourages and privileges the emergence of a management practice suffused with power. The paper argues that an epistemological break is essential break is both required and necessary to facilitate, induce and fashion a counter position which enables students and practitioners agency, a sense of initiative and possibility. In so doing, the paper aims to foster a more critical, reflexive, engaged and more open management discourse.
Fabio Vizeu, Unigranrio, Brazil; Antonio Hocayen, Unicentro, Brazil; Rene Seifert, Universidade Positivo, Brazil Non-Capitalist Organizations in Latin America: Lessons from a Brazilian grass-roots Community Abstract Although the mainstream literature in Organization Studies announces the existence of many different organization forms, we contend that these are in fact manifestation of one single model of productive organization, based on the capitalist system and Anglo-Saxon managerialism. With roots in Eighteenth Century Liberalism, the capitalist model of organization invades different enclaves of human life (Ramos, 1989); especially in public sphere. It becomes the reference used as a model for organizational practices and values. Good examples of this invasion are Peter Drucker’s concept of social profit in Third Sector and the managerialist model of the ‘New Public Management’. In a very simple way, we call this monolithic form of organization as Capitalist Organization. Following De-colonization perspective and assuming our own Latin American condition, it is imperative that we start paying attention to our own knowledge and history, looking for new models and references to build new organization theories and principles. In Latin American context, this attempt should take into account organization forms in both pre-Colombian period as well as in recent history, of organizing forms of resistance and struggles against capitalist imperialism. Emerging mainly in the rural context, the Latin America’s Non-Capitalist Organizations (NCO) considered in this study carry the heritage of pre-Colombian societies hybridized with European and African cultures. These ethnic groups were typically formed in marginalized conditions of survival. This is for example the case of Brazilian Quilombolas (small communities of ex-slaves), and many others Brazilian agricultural communities founded by unemployed workers. All these cases have in common the fact that they are inspired by a community sense of work and life, which, during a long period of marginalization, became an ideological form of resistance to the capitalist way of life. This paper aims to analyze the conditions of emergence of NCO in Latin America, by investigating a grass-root form of organization in the South region of Brazil, named ‘Faxinais’. In so doing, we highlight the main principles of capitalist organization that are challenge by this alternative organizational model, namely: economic rationality, growth orientation and market competition (Seifert; Vizeu, 2011). These ideological principles of modern society, as part of the constitutional foundations of capitalist organizations, are challenged by collaborative principles inspired in a natural sense of community. The Faxinal is a form of grassroots organization that emerged in face of the struggles in the use of land during the Brazilian Colonial period. It is based on the practice of subsistence production, and the conservation of natural resources. Therefore, opposes the principles of modern capitalist agricultural organization based on the premises of individual production and the indiscriminate and exploitive use of land (Löwen-Sahr, 2005).
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Historically, the ‘Faxinais’ appear for the first time around 1860s, and there are three possible explanations for their emergence. The first one attributes its origin to the Jesuit Missions established in Paraná (a state of Brazil) during the Colonial period. It is reported by historians that the Jesuit attempt was to replicate in Brazil the experience of European community life. However, the Brazilian context demanded significant cultural adaptations in face of the presence of indigenous people in region and the strong impact of their principles, traditions and way of life. The second explanation is related to the concentration of large areas of land, which were at the most pastures and Araucaria forests, owned by a single family. These landowners were in need of labor to work on the production of Erva Mate, so they received settler families and allowed them to establish in land and do their own production, but with the commitment to devote themselves to work on the property. A third explanation about the origin of the Faxinais is that this rural form of organization emerged out as a social movement, started by caboclos (which are mixed Brazilian indigenous and European) and immigrants from Eastern Europe, who demarcated large amounts of land unclaimed by other people. This heterogeneous group established a form of collective ownership of the land and started the production of goods for their subsistence (Novak & Fajardo, 2008). The Faxinais have been distinguished from other forms of community organization in rural areas due to its particular characteristics, namely "the ecological use of natural resources, cultivation of a community sense of life and preservation of a common memory" (Campigoto, 2008, p. 1). The members of Faxinais organize themselves around the use of territorial spaces delimited by social, economic, environmental and religious aspects. Their relationships give meaning to the principle of communalism which promotes pacific coexistence between group members. Economically, there is an overriding need for subsistence which keeps families away from the logic of capitalist relations. Finally, there is a strong bond with the environment, so that the production practices are guided with a sense of responsibility and conservation (Sahr; Löwen-Sahr, 2009). From the Faxinais’ experience we learn an interesting logic that permits well being outside the capitalist world. Historically built by the hybridization of different marginalized ethnic groups in the South region of Brazil, the Faxinais informs the possibility of a form of organizational life based on the principles of cooperation consolidated by principles of social and sustainable production, ecological balance and social equality.
Daniel da S. Lacerda, Lancaster University,U.K. Decolonizing ‘Space’ – An Analytical Category For The Methodological Analysis Of Organizations Abstract Weber, considered by many the founding father of organizational theory (Hinings and Grenwood, 2002, p.411), approached the sociological consequences of the existence of organizations, defining what would be later called the “Organizations Era”. The description of the way organizations structure themselves, bureaucracy, was defined by Max Weber based on patterns of authority and rationality, what makes possible for organizations to control environments. Today, organization studies have advanced in many ways the comprehension of how organizations enact in the environment and the methods that are used to exercise such control (e.g. Baldry, 1999; Myerson and Ross, 2003; Zhang, Spicer and Hancock, 2008). Nevertheless, the groundings of Weberian bureaucracy still explain most of the observed relation between organizations and the surrounding space, as the same epistemic design continues to be used for analytical purposes. The most common alternative to the reduction of space under organizations is the tradition based on epistemological nominalism, which grounds e.g. phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), for which the mental perceptions define the attributes of space. This approach is tied to constructivist epistemologies, and under concrete accounts is actually a rejection of the influences of material space. On the other hand, advocates of traditional realism are constrained by the dominant and colonialist mainstream, for which the essence of the bureaucratic thought defends an outmost centrality of the organization. Any other variable (especially external variables) is reduced, thus, to the effective calculation of organization actions toward the external space. Under this tradition, the more representative proxy for ‘space’ in organization theory is the later developed concept of ‘environment’. According to systems theory, environment is a variable to be considered strategically for optimizing efficiency in the exchange of organizations with the outside. The so-called ‘open systems’ allows exchange and adaptability to the environment, and is classified as a dynamic system when this response is quick (see Emery and Trist, 1965). The concept of “environment” was led to spotlight in the mid 1970s by many classical organization theorists (e.g. Emery and Trist, 1965; Hall, 1978). Trying to answer the question “Why are there so many kinds of organizations?” (Hannan and Freeman, 1977), the ecological perspective grew in organization studies asserting
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that contextual conditions provoke an organization to change itself and adapt to environmental uncertainties. The environmental variables are to be considered in the calculus that indicates whether an organization justifies its existence by absorbing from the environment the necessary resources, and delivering the expected output in a more efficient way than other associative forms would do. However, organizations are not self-constructed nor can be depicted as only subjugated to a set of planned objectives. Hinings and Grenwood (2002) alerts for the risk of performing organization studies only through the business schools typical orientation for an efficient organization design, and invite to a critical reasoning over organization issues posing two questions: “what are the role and the impact of organizations in society?” and “who controls organizations?”. This critical standpoint is also and exercise of decolonization, since the valorization of context is breaking with the logic of management orthodoxy and rescuing the demands of localities over management. As contended by Vieira and Garrofa (2005), a proper discussion of the spatial form and context is essential even if the objects of evaluation are management techniques and economic and social models, in order to prevent a manipulation of the sense of time and the meaning of space. The present work scrutinizes the analytical framework derived from organizational ecology (according to Hall, 1978 and Baum, 1996) and proposes theoretical input to construct a more encompassing consideration of spatial context. The benefit of adjusting the category ‘space’ in the analysis of organizations is two-folded. From the perspective of researchers, it conveys a more comprehensive picture of limits and potentialities of the organization, beyond the unique discourse of mainstream management. For organizations, it means not to overlook strong elements of organization reality and the impact of management on society. Aiming at these outcomes, this work is intended to explore possibilities of introducing space as a key analytical category and to propose guidelines for this endeavor. The application of this method is not an alternative to the ecological analysis in all senses, as it serves mainly to different purposes. Strategic planning, for example, would be much more efficiently elaborated with the environmental identification of variables and the necessary actions to mitigate the uncertainties based on them. In contrast, if the interest is shifted for example to the analysis of social role, impacts on natural resources or participation in development process, spatial-analysis is likely to provide more suitable outcomes.
AN ANTI- IMPERIALIST MOMENT IN MOS ? Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm D5
Arun Kumar, Lancaster University, U.K. Disciplining, Re-constructing, and Modernising the World: American Philanthropy and Management Abstract In a recent book, Parmar (2012) discusses the role of American philanthropic foundations, most notably the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, in the rise of the American soft power. In doing so, he discusses the investment of American philanthropic foundations in creating globalist, elitist networks of ideas, individuals, and discursive spaces, which has led to re-casting the world in its own ways. By this, Parmar refers to the American vision of itself and the wider world which needs to be re-configured, which is not a static conceptualisation, but one that has historically shifted from nationalism, to ending isolationism, promoting globalism and now neoliberalism. However, the interests of elite modern American capitalism have been central and common across the various shifts in what constituted American interests. Contributing to this idea of the rise in American capitalist modernity, the paper focuses on the role of philanthropic foundations and its influence on management knowledge/education, and uses this to hopefully tease apart more significant questions relating to modernity itself. The paper traces the role of American philanthropic foundations, particularly the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, in establishing and ‘developing’ the field of management within three key sites of the world: first the US itself, where the foundations were particularly responsible for disciplining management as a field (Khurana, 2007); and secondly as part of re-construction of post-World War 2 Europe (Gemelli, 1998, 2000). And lastly within the developing world, where management became central: both conceptually, and as a practice, to the attainment of modernity. The paper is based on a review of extant and emerging scholarship in the area of American philanthropy, and its influence on management knowledge/education in the three sites
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identified above, and particularly with respect to Brazil and India as part of the modernizing mission in the developing world. While the discussion on US and Europe is integral to understanding historically the involvement of American philanthropy in shaping management knowledge/education, the paper will focus more significantly on the last: that is the often unproblematised, and somewhat under-researched, role of philanthropic foundations in the rise of management, through the introduction and establishment of the field of management, in the developing world. The central thesis that emerges from the review of the extant scholarship is that the development and transfer of management knowledge, and the role of philanthropies is closely tied with the idea of American version of modernity, within the US and later across the globe: first in the name of developing a modern, capitalist, industrialized American nation; and in re-building this capitalist modernity in war-ravaged Europe and later in saving it from the threat of Communism;; and still later in the name of developing the ‘traditional’ and ‘pre-modern’ colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Thus, management education and knowledge has been central to the diffusion and expansion of the capitalist modernity. Thus, American philanthropy played a significant role in the introduction and establishment of management within the developing world. Woven onto the idea of management as modernity, were the politics and pragmatics of nation-building, particularly through the management of development itself. In developing these ideas of management and/as modernity, the paper attempts to explore more significant questions relating to modernity in postcolonial societies, including its epistemic coloniality, but more significantly in re-thinking modernity itself (Ibarra-Colado, 2006; but more importantly Chatterjee, 2011). This involves working with the alternate, but richer, conceptualisations of modernity within/of ex-colonised societies which cannot be conceived of as deviations any longer; and therefore, possibly with alternate versions of management itself, beyond the Anglo-American hegemonic management.
Sergio Wanderley, Ebape/FGV, Brazil; Alex Faria, Ebape/FGV, Brazil Toward DMS: A decolonial (re)framing of dependence Abstract Market-based managerialism focused on the development of emerging economies has been fostered just after the crisis of the Western order in 2008 by the enduring dark side of neoliberal capitalism (Hart, 2009; Peck, Theodore and Brenner, 2009). This picture helps explain the rise of (strategic) management focused on international development literature (e.g., Porter & Kramer, 2011), and critical management research informed by post-development studies (e.g., Misoczky, 2011) and post-colonialism (see special issue of Organization, 2011). The authors of this paper argue that the rise of these arguments focused on management and development is related to the rise of rewesternization (Mignolo, 2011), a project aimed to rebuild the confidence the world had in the United States (and Europe) which touches upon all the levels of global design or colonial matrix of power, in particular the sphere of knowledge: “the task is to promote science and technology toward the corporations allegedly to revamp the economy” (Mignolo, 2011: 36). In this paper we aim to address from a perspective of decoloniality the overlooking of the rise of rewesternization through managerialism by CMS researchers from different parts of the world. Drawing upon the modernity/coloniality research program from Latin America (Mignolo, 2000; 2007; 2011; Quijano, 2000) we aim to foster a decolonial reworking of the notion of dependence as a way towards decolonial management studies (DMS). Our general argument is that the reworking of subalternized knowledges and alternatives from emerging economies, illustrated by the broad notion of “dependence studies” from Latin America, is a way of enabling CMS to move beyond coloniality toward DMS. The trajectory of dependency theory (DT) – as it has been branded, classified, and analyzed mainly by the North – is analyzed in this paper as a fine example of a both theoretical and practical contribution from Latin America which has been subalternized in a particular way by the dominant geo-epistemic and geopolitical mechanisms. DT has represented the density of the social knowledge in the region and has moved beyond the mere reproduction of knowledge and methodologies imported from the center (Dos Santos, 2000). Our historical decolonial (re)framing of dependence shows that much of the knowledge that would be later classified as DT had Santiago/Chile as an important nest (Beigel, 2010). There is (still) located the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean (ECLAC), which was responsible for the development of the knowledge that became known as structuralism and spread throughout Latin America (Beigel, 2010). From this locus of enunciation, from the ‘outside of the inside’ (Mignolo, 2011), we argue that the main proposals from ECLAC, produced from the colonial difference, implied a different connection of management and development. We also argue that “dependence studies” provide a link from where to reconnect management and development otherwise and foster the replacement of Eurocentric universality by geo-epistemic pluriversality.
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We point out that the colonial experience in Latin America did not have to wait “until the word postcolonialism entered the U.S. academy in the early 1980s, after the word postmodernism was introduced in France” (Mignolo, 2011: 57). “Dependence” from Latin America antecedes Euro-American postcolonialism/post-development and postcolonial studies and moves beyond “knowledge” produced by formal institutions as ECLAC. It has a broad embeddedness on different understandings of decoloniality even though it was subalternized and classified as “dependency theory” (mainly within the realms of economics) by the geoepistemic mechanisms of classification of non-Western knowledge which denied its constitution as (decolonial) “dependence studies”. Our historical decolonial analysis of dependence aimed at reworking it as “dependence studies” shows that much of such contribution from Latin America has been subalternized mainly by the successful trajectory of Anglo-American post-colonialism and Marxism within Western “critical social science”, and the absence of a critical perspective from the borders of the South which takes coloniality as an intrinsic condition of modernity (Mignolo, 2000; 2011) and moves beyond DT and formal knowledge. Postmodernism informed many analyses on dependency theory, grounded on the tradition of postdevelopment studies. Consequently, instead of recognizing the broadness of “dependence”, post-development authors suggest that critiques of development by dependency theorists functioned “within the same discursive space of development, even if seeking to attach it to a different international and class rationality” (Escobar, 1992: 26). Our analysis shows that Westernized framings fail to recognize that “development has always been far more heterogeneous in discourse, policy and practice than implied by the universalizing claims of many anti- and post-development authors” (Simon, 2006: 12). We argue that such Westernized classifications and debates on “dependency theory” represent a process of double subalternization which has concealed not only the decoloniality grounds conveyed by “dependency studies”, but also its geo-political embeddedness. Given the questions raised by this paper the consequence of our initiative of reframing “dependence studies” is twofold: the engagement of (critical) management with “dependence” in Brazil (and beyond), and the pluriversal promotion of decoloniality from within CMS. Both initiatives could counterbalance the current processes of rewesternization by the dark side of Western neoliberal order. In other words we stand for the reworking of “dependence” as dependence studies in replacement of dependence theory to reconnect management and development “otherwise” toward decolonial management studies (DMS) through pluriversality.
Frederik Claeye, Lille Catholic University Managerialism: A post(-)colonial deconstruction Abstract Managerialism has become a major focus in the discourse about and practice of management and organisation in development organisations. Premised on the primacy of management (Holmes, 2010; Murphy, 2008), and the belief that trained managers and techniques of formal organising are a panacea that can solve persistent social problems (Srinivas, 2010), ‘managerialist colonisation’ (Hancock & Tyler, 2004, 2009) has globalised generic (Western) management concepts and techniques, as well as formal organisational structures (Deetz, 1992) to managing development (Dar & Cooke, 2008; Gulrajani, 2011; McCourt & Gulrajani, 2010) and development non-profit organisations (NPOs) (Roberts, Jones, & Fröhling, 2005). The present papers aims to deconstruct managerialist discourse using a post-colonial theoretical lens with a view to highlighting the mechanisms through which it operates and establishes itself as the dominant canon in understanding and practicing management in de context of international development aid. Post-colonial theory, as a configuration of a number of theories examining the postcolonial condition, offers a theoretical framework to help us deconstruct and understand the effects of managerialist discourse on organisational practices in the global South. Focusing their attention at the problem of the Other (who is often located in developing countries) and his or her representation in Western discourse, post-colonial theorists aim to bring a critique of the Western discourse and its representation of ‘the Rest’. Taking the example of NPOs in South Africa the present paper deconstructs ‘managerialist colonisation’ of the development enterprise. It shows how managerialism (re-)produces a system of intertwined management knowledge and practices that are gaining legitimacy as the taken-for-granted ways in which organisations should be managed. It does so by ‘Othering’ alternative ways to managing NPOs by dismissing it as ‘haphazard’ or ‘lackadaisical’. The paper ends with some reflections of how the voice of the subaltern (1988) may be recovered and points to ways in which NPO management may be decolonised.
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Daniel da S. Lacerda, Lancaster University,U.K. Gramsci And UPPS – The Passive Revolution Of Capitalism In The Favelas of Rio De Janeiro Abstract The spectacular show that the city of Rio de Janeiro is screening to the world – in which military forces dominate the favela slums by the use of armed soldiers and army tanks – hardly goes unnoticed. Yet, in many ways, being noticed is the idea of the program “UPPs - Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora” (Pacifying Police Units), a security policy already implemented in more than twenty slums. This program is a political effort, sponsored jointly by the government and big corporations, also involving civil society organizations. All these elements, in addition to how slum territories are chosen and “occupied”, produce an interesting phenomenon regarding state relations, which Gramsci would call ‘passive revolution’. The moment for this is not arbitrary. The recent financial crisis and pessimistic forecasts for capitalist economies could be interpreted as signals of a tottering capitalist system, which cannot afford the supremacy of market over minimum state anymore, and Gramsci was the first one to show, through the concept of passive revolution, how capitalism can absorb crisis and transform itself. Favelas are situated in a context of social exclusion and high inequality, a part of a famous city that is frequently hidden or romanticized. The occupation of the Rio de Janeiro hills by ex-slaves and immigrants started more than a hundred years ago and continued to grow with industrialization and the concentration of resources in the national arena. Nowadays, favelas are growing three times faster than city average (Coelho, 2004), and already represent 20% of the city populations (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística [IBGE], 2010). Since the 1940s, Brazilian society has acknowledged more and more the existence of slums, eventually expressing the problem as a source for different issues, from estates devaluation to nature degradation and, finally, as the main cause of violence all over the city (Oliveira, 1985). In the recent decades Rio’s governors have used different strategies to deal with the drug dealers operating from the favelas: covering up its existence, massive confrontation, negotiation, and finally the military occupation. In all cases, honest citizens who happened to live in the slums but had nothing to do with drug trafficking had to deal with the side effects of such a war. According to traditional state theory (Jessop, 1990), the state is defined by three main aspects: i. a controlled territory; ii. an apparatus that makes collectively binding decisions; iii. a resident population subject to state authority. In the case of favelas, drug dealers control the access to the slum territory (i); gangs run their own judicial system and favelas usually have their ‘owner’ (dono) who is the local leader of the gang (ii); and favela inhabitants not only comply with gang rules but regard criminals as role models and aim for the same ‘career’, one of the few ways for ‘success’ in life (iii). The problem of recovering the segregated territory is often depicted in metaphors of war. It would be defined by Antonio Gramsci as follows: “How to reconstruct the hegemonic apparatus of the ruling group, an apparatus which disintegrated as a result of the war?” (Gramsci, 1971:479). Gramsci dedicated his years in prison researching and constructing a theoretical framework to understand state relations and the necessary conditions for revolution. Among the key concepts proposed by him, there is great explanatory power in the characteristics of state hegemony, enlarged state and war of position/manoeuvre. In Gramsci terms, a passive revolution is led by the ruling class of Rio de Janeiro, which plan to dominate territories by the use of force and obtained consent, in order to establish hegemony based on organic ideology implemented by the enlarged state. The objective of this paper is to analyze the process of pacification undertaken in Brazilian favelas since 2008 using the Gramscian framework, in order to unravel hidden aspects of this revolution. This work will use primary data collected by the author during six months in a Brazilian favela, secondary data collected by fellow researchers and published in academic papers, and public domain news and articles published both by outsider reporters and insider inhabitants. Some excerpts are analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis from DRA tradition. The analyzed data is framed in three topics: antecedents of pacification, which presents the strategy and rational of UPP; how the passive revolution takes place, in terms of co-optation of leaderships, territory control, and transformation of culture; and consequences for the city, where the main implications and contradictions are discussed. This process aims to recover the confidence of internal and external investor in the capacity of the local and national government to control the city, but entails also serious implications which are here analyzed and criticized.
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REFRAMING THE BORDER AND THE CENTRE Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm D5
Gillian Marcelle, Wits University, Johannesburg; Shahid Vawda, Wits University, Johannesburg Reflections on innovation from the South: implications for theory and practice Abstract Within the field of management, there is considerable interest and attention on the role of innovation in facilitating superior competitive performance and there has been within the last twenty years, the development of a sub-field that has focused on the management of innovation. This management treatment sits beside the economic analyses and policy orientated studies and enquiries into the nature of scientific and technological change and the related process of innovation. Within the very recent past, there has been an acknowledgement that there has been a relative neglect of the social dimension of innovation and that scholarship in the area remains deterministic. This is true for both theoretical and empirical treatments. Furthermore, there is growing acknowledgement of the need to include the concerns and realities of the developing world. This is being done at an instrumental level, and there is a great deal of cooption of language, without credible evidence of real commitment to the values of ideological plurality and contextual specificity. This leads to a number of important biases and preoccupations with work that is more relevant to wealthy, industrialised countries. The proposed paper sets out an argument that explores why it is important within the project of decolonizing management studies, to include a specific focus on the ways in which management studies has understood the processes of science and technological change and innovation. Interest in understanding the new dynamics of innovation has led to the emergence of a large number of terms related to, or suggestive of, the idea of including the social in innovation. Some of the terms associated with this work include: social innovation, inclusive innovation, reverse innovation, grassroots innovation, and community innovation, innovation for development and innovation at the bottom of the pyramid. However, there is little if any conceptual clarity surrounding these terms and their meanings. This is important because there are a number of organisations involved in development programming in this field including many of these practice led interventions proceed without clarifying what is meant by the terms used in programming documents and without exploring the implications of contradictions and inconsistencies. For the purposes of this paper, we will explore the implications of conceptual development without contextual specification and argue that leads to contortions on the part of developing country actors – at various levels – to fit into a set of preconceived notions of the sources and dynamics of innovation. We have proposed a preliminary ordering for the understanding of the nature of major interventions and a process of analytical comparison. Of particular concern is that the field of social innovation is being imbued with a sense of altruism that smacks of paternalism as Northern actors extend innovation for the benefit (supposedly) of poor people in the South. We also note that there is a growing interest among academics in this field, and recognise that there are important differences between the treatment from scholars working in the South, who by and large, stress the importance of aligning innovation with social development aims. Despite increased knowledge production on these questions from the South, when developing country policy makers begin their reflections on social innovation, it is interesting and perhaps ironic that the points of reference are to OECD and other international references rather than the work of Southern based scholars. The paper brings together ongoing work form a research programme on technology and society and will review the current state of conceptual development and empirical research in the area of the social in innovation, including looking at the trajectory of particular terms and exploring how they are used and the implications thereof. The insights presented here are interdisciplinary and in particular, adds the insights of the disciplines of innovation studies and anthropology to management studies. We believe that the paper fits well with the theme described as deconstructing and decolonising management studies and believe that it will add to the overall aims of the conference.
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Alex Faria, Ebape/FGV, Brazil; Take Imasato, UFRGS/PPGA, Brazil; Ana Guedes, Unigranrio, Brazil A Border Theorizing of International Social Strategies Abstract “...while there has been the development of a huge literature on globalization in disciplines such as sociology in recent years, little of it seems to have made its way onto the strategy agenda, which is still inclined to see the global world through imperial prisms of conquest that remain very ethnocentric, under the rubric of ‘international business’” (Clegg et al., 2011:35) As estratégias sociais internacionais de grandes corporações do Ocidente têm alcançado crescente importância no resto do mundo em paralelo à expansão da crise da globalização neoliberal. Western Grandes corporações passaram a desenvolver estratégias sociais internacionais focadas nas supostas deficiências de “países em desenvolvimento”. Estas estratégias promovem a inclusão de um amplo leque de stakeholders e focam a produção do bem comum em escala global (Barley, 2007; Singer, 2006), e não mais somente os interesses de acionistas e o bem privado. Estas estratégias, desenvolvidas principalmente nas grandes economias emergentes (Reimann et al., 2012), incorporam objetivos sociais e políticos aos econômicos e incluem poderes locais, both desafiado e fortalecendo a lógica managerialista neoliberal e a ordem geo-epistêmica correspondente. Baseada na ideia de levar desenvolvimento ao “resto do mundo” – especialmente em economias emergentes e particularmente após a crise da ordem neoliberal Ocidental em 2008 – as áreas de strategic management e international business foster uma lógica de pluralismo que é informada pelos mecanismos neoliberais e neocolonialistas de inclusão excludente (e.g., Aulakh & Kotabe, 2008; Porter & Kramer, 2006; Reimann et al., 2012). Estas dimensões assimétricas são mantidas invisíveis pela literatura correspondente, liderada por US acadêmicos e instituições, e co-produzida por acadêmicos e instituições de diferentes partes do mundo. Análises críticas baseadas na dicotomia colonizador-colonizado argumentariam que essas ISS e a literatura correspondente representam a face (neo)colonialista da globalização neoliberal. Com base em uma perspectiva decolonial (Mignolo, 2000 & 2011) informada por uma perspectiva interdisciplinar em management focada em relações internacionais (Guedes e Faria, 2010), este artigo argumenta que as ISS e a literatura correspondente reforçam mecanismos geo-epistêmicos de colonialidade por meio de uma perspectiva trans-local que vai além da dicotomia colonizador-colonizado. Argumentamos que tais estratégias adentram os domínios da política e sociedade, desafiando e reforçando os pressupostos economicistas e geo-epistêmicos do strategic managerialism por meio dos discursos managerialistas revolucionários – também chamada de “capitalismo inclusivo” (Prahalad & Hart, 2002) – que desafiam a clássica divisão colonizador-colonizado e os mecanismos correspondentes de colonização que costumam ser privilegiados por CMS researchers. Border theorizing is thus needed. Os autores defendem a re-teorização das estratégias sociais internacionais from the borders of the South. Essa re-teorização decolonial desenvolvida em uma economia emergente é justificada por duas razões principais: (a) economias emergentes têm sido representadas não apenas como mercados importantes para as grandes corporações, mas também como importante fonte de ameaça políticoeconômica e epistêmica para o Ocidente; e (b) como ilustrado pela crise da ordem neoliberal a partir de 2008, o conhecimento Western de management tornou-se problemático não apenas para poderes locais em economias emergentes, mas também nos EUA e Europa. Uma análise decolonial das estratégias sociais da Unilever em Araçoiaba, pequeno município de Pernambuco, no Brasil Northeast, ilustram esse quadro. As estratégias sociais dessa corporação foram desenhadas para promover o desenvolvimento desse município por meio de inclusão de poderes locais, por meio de acordos com a prefeitura e organizações locais – mais especificamente, Pastoral da Criança, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas de Olinda e Fundação Joaquim Nabuco –, e mobilizaram o apoio de organizações internacionais poderosas como a Oxfam. Essas estratégias receberam especial destaque na mídia nacional de negócios e em outras mídias, fortalecendo o interesse de acadêmicos e poderes locais de diferentes locais por este tipo de estratégia. Essas estratégias e a literatura correspondente são vistas pelos autores do artigo como uma resposta neoliberal, co-construída trans-localmente, às críticas de que a globalização neoliberal “exacerbou desigualdades econômicas, centralizou poder político, e teve efeitos culturais homogeneizadores e destrutivos” (Shefner & Férnandez-Kelly, 2011, p. 149) e restringiu mecanismos locais de democracia e participação (Frey, 2007; Cooke & Kothari, 2001). O paper irá argumentar que as ISS e a literatura correspondente aproximam Western corporações a membros de elites locais (incluindo acadêmicas) tanto a organizações internacionais, tais como o Banco Mundial e as Nações Unidas, quanto a poderes locais em diferentes regiões do resto do mundo. Essa aproximação está vinculada tanto a uma retomada do desenvolvimento internacional liderada por grandes corporações, como a
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processos cada vez mais sofisticados de engajamento e cooptação de poderes locais (Kothari, 2005), desafiando concepções baseadas em na dicotomia colonizador-colonizado. O artigo será dividido em cinco partes. A primeira seção promove um diálogo entre as perspectivas de póscolonialismo e de poder local da área de EOs para a reteorização das estratégias sociais internacionais. As três subseções seguintes analisam o pluralismo economicista de GE, as dimensões geo-epistêmicas que fomentam a construção e institucionalização da área de GE, e a vinculação das estratégias corporativas sociais reproduzem a uma teorização de globalização que fomenta a inclusão neoliberal de poderes locais em termos territoriais e geo-epistêmicos. No final, inspirados pela retomada dos zapatistas ao poder político na América Latina no final de 2012, os autores defendem a re-teorização de estratégias sociais sob uma ‘outra’ perspectiva geo-epistêmica para tornar a área de GE relevante para os diferentes poderes locais que enfrentam em diversos locais as seguidas crises da globalização neoliberal.
Rene Eugenio Seifert, Universidade Positivo/Instituto Brasileiro de Estudos e Pesquisas Sociais - IBEPES, Brazil; Fabio Vizeu ,UNIGRANRIO/IBEPES, Brazil; César Renato Ferreira da Costa, UNICENTRO/Universidade Positivo, Brazil Sustainability, Colonial Management Thought, And The Practical Wisdom Of Latin America Indigenous Communities? Abstract In the past 200 years the dominant model of management and organization has produced immeasurable wealth, industrial and technological development. Nevertheless, it also produced immense social and ecological dilemmas (SHRIVASTAVA, 1995). Issues such as global warming, ozone depletion, declining biodiversity, air and water pollution, acid rain, deforestation, land degradation, resource depletion, and others became common topics in the list of major ecological issues characterizing modern era (Simms, et al., 2010; Solomon, et al., 2007). On the social side, issues such as increasing inequality, poverty, overpopulation, health problems, violence, family disruption, unemployment, and others, populate this list. Currently, such problems are typically grouped under the umbrella of sustainability. In recent years, sustainability has received increased scholarly attention in the field of management and organization research. In this context, a number of perspectives and approaches aiming to promote sustainable forms o management and organization have been proposed. They include the sustainable development movement, the Triple Bottom Line model (Elkington, 1997), or the Green Economy Model advocated by the former US Vice President, Al Gore. Interestingly, this body of knowledge has been characterized by prescriptions that advances towards sustainability in management and organization are dependent on a continuous flow of investment on innovation and technology championed by universities, research institutes, large organizations and the government. In this paper we contend that this dominant view of sustainable management and organization incorporates a green version of orthodox colonial management thought. Therefore, does not break with the ideological view of progress and development, market production, unlimited growth and economic totalitarianism. In so doing we argue that they are incapable of making any real difference in informing sustainable forms of management and organization. Moreover we contend that colonial management thought characterizing mainstream sustainability knowledge has favoured a singular, universalistic and single-minded view of the issue that downgrades any prior, local or traditional form of wisdom. In particular, the practical wisdom and knowledge produced in the context of traditional, grassroots and indigenous communities located towards the south of the borders of Europe and the USA. Typically, knowledge and practice produced by these communities have been considered far too primitive and archaic to be of any relevance, and, in so doing, received with prejudice and distrust by managers, academics and politics. This study argues towards an alternative path to this view. It focuses on the practical wisdom of Latin American indigenous communities in order to humbly learn how their way of life, mode of organization, and traditional practices can inspire management and organization action aiming to better deal with the modern sustainability predicament. Methodologically the study is based on a review of anthropological reports of Brazilian/Latin American indigenous communities. This is done in order to critically evaluate how their life, organization mode, and practical wisdom can inform and dialogue with major contemporaneous dilemmas of sustainability. Specifically the study reviews three cases reporting the practices of indigenous communities. The cases were chosen on the basis of their intrinsic relevance for the purposes of this study, and their contribution to our reflection on how their practical wisdom could inform management and organizational thought regarding sustainability. The results pointed out towards at least four alternative paths to dominant views of management and organization sustainability, namely: 1) buen vivir as an alternative to progress and development: 2) subsistence
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as the alternative to market consumerism; 3) limits as the alternative to unlimited growth; and 4) ecological awareness as the alternative to economic determination. The paper is organized in the following way. First we introduce the topic and the objectives of the study in the face of major sustainability predicaments and colonialist knowledge in the field. Then we review major models of sustainability developed within mainstream management thought, pointing out their attachment to colonial ideological principles. The third section presents the methodological rationale informing the study. The following section describes the cases studies and consolidate the findings in relation to our main objectives. The paper finalizes with a discussion of its major contributions, the proposal of research agenda in the field, and the summary of major conclusions.
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STREAM 29: SENSUOUS STRATEGY: RECONNECTING CREATIVITY, AESTHETICS, AND EMBODIMENT TO STRATEGY-MAKING
Garance Maréchal, University of Liverpool, UK Duncan Angwin, Oxford Brookes University, UK Stephen Cummings, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ
SENSUOUS STRATEGY SESSION ONE Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm G6
Garance Marechal, Duncan Angwin and Steve Cummings Introduction
Robert Ott, School of Fashion, Ryerson University
[email protected] Wendy Cukier, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University,
[email protected] Materiality and Design Thinking: Learning from Fashion Designers Abstract Strategy has historically been associated with instrumental rationality by adapting military approaches to business competition (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 66). However, increasingly the limitations of this approach and metaphor have been revealed with extensive discussions and rhetoric surrounding “design thinking” (Bauer & Eagen, 2008; Brown, 2008; Martin, 2009). Strategy formulation has also been positioned as interactive sense making or “crafting” akin to a potter shaping clay on a wheel, driven “not so much thinking and reason as involvement, a feeling of intimacy and harmony with the materials at hand, developed through long experience and commitment” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 66). Based on the literature and an empirically based study of the perceptions of twelve fashion designers regarding the design process, design thinking, and decision making, this paper explores the implications for strategic management with a particular emphasis on materiality. How Designers Think (Lawson, 2006) traces the interplay between “technical” and“tacit” design knowledge, both of which are developed through drawing, interactions with technologies, and conversations. Individual acts of “doing” lead to sequential steps and eventually to a process. The design process attempts to codify the techniques and rules that are used by a specific design sector. However, there is no single prescribed process within a discipline. In fact, the design process does not result in a nicely packaged solution, even if guided by a step-by-step procedure (Ling, 2010; Merholz, 2009). Ultimately, the design process uses cognition, emotion, sensation, intuition, and interrogation to deal with problems that are incomplete, contradictory, and shifting (Eagen, Aspevig, Cukier, Bauer, & Ngwenyama, 2011). The process requires empathy, creativity, and rationality or instrumental thinking (Bauer & Eagen, 2008; Lawson, 2006; Lloyd & Scott, 1995; Schön, 1988). Less developed is the role of physicality in the design process, although the role of learning by “doing”—physically working with materials—has been elaborated by scholars such as Schön (1983). The importance of materiality (Kimbell, 2012) and embodiment (Poulsen & Thøgersen, 2011) in the design process has been described but is less well theorized. In 1987, Rowe coined the term “design thinking” to explain the underlying process by which architects—and, in the broader sense, all designers—go about creating an artifact. Boland and Collopy (2004) explored the idea of “design attitude” to describe how designers do not just choose among alternatives, but generate entirely new
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concepts. As a result, design thinking has been advocated as a tool to drive innovation in organizations, and in particular as a method for designing “experience,” which is especially important for particular services and products (Bauer & Eagen, 2008). Design thinking rests on the notion that design processes are not purely rational and functional, but neither are they entirely artistic and creative. Decision making in the design process is often justified after the event, because the process itself is often “felt” rather than chosen. While conventional approaches to strategy are linear and based largely on rational choice models, in reality these conditions seldom exist in business situations and the ability to make a “rational” decision is mitigated by uncertainty, shifting objectives, and unanticipated consequences (Feldman & Kanter, 1965; Hoy & Miskel, 1991; Mintzberg, 1983; Thompson, 1967). In our study, we learned that the design process, although acknowledged to have no systematic and formalized methodologies, has limited, empirical evidence in fashion. Fashion designers define the client’s needs, investigate new opportunities, organize ideas, devise approaches to effective problem solving, set challenges, and decide when the work is finished. For example, designers explore new opportunities by developing a signature item that helps them to differentiate themselves from their competitors or set themselves challenges by finding new uses for existing materials. As suggested in the literature, the participants in this study confirmed that the process is not always carried out in the same order, and can change from season to season. As a matter of fact, nearly all designers in this study had developed their own version of the process. We found evidence that typical fashion designers moved through stages which included both rational choice and creative processes. For example, like managers they face constraints—focus on finishing a project on time and on budget. However, as Cross (2001) notes design is not simply about solving a problem. It requires cognition to allow emotion, sensation, and intuition to guide and influence the design process (Eagen et al., 2011). What was particularly interesting, were the discussions of materiality—the way in which the design emerged from the fabric and the way in which fabric was an active agent in the creation of the design. In the same way, we observed that physical environments and tools shape both creative and management processes and practices, but there is less explicit exploration of these dimensions. The fashion design process parallels the “crafting” of business strategies with its interplay between reason, intuition and materiality. Some researchers have looked at embodiment as a way of manifesting sense making around imagery (Heracleaous & Jacobs, 2008). However, fewer have looked at materiality in the process of strategy making. It is very evident that the physical acts by managers walking around, interacting with employees, and engaging in decision making have an impact on strategy making. We believe Mintzberg’s metaphor of “crafting clay” and our study’s fashion design process of “doing” are connected. Further research is needed to assess the extent to which these insights can be applied to enrich processes of teaching, learning and practicing strategy. References Bauer, R., & Eagen, W. (2008). Design thinking: Epistemic plurality in management and organization. Aesthesis, 2(3), 568-596. Boland, R., & Collopy, F. (2004). Managing as designing. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84. Cross, N. (2001). Design cognition: Results from protocol and other empirical studies of design activity. Design knowing and learning: Cognition in design education, 79-103. Eagen, W., Aspevig, K., Cukier, W., Bauer, R., & Ngwenyama, O. (2011). Embedding "design thinking" in business school curriculum. The International Journal of The Arts in Society, 6. Feldman, J., & Kanter, H. E. (1965). Organizational decision making. In March, J. (Ed.), Handbook of organizations, (pp. 614-649), Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Heracleous, L., & Jacobs, C. D. (2008). Crafting strategy: The role of embodied metaphors. Long Range Planning, 41(3), 309-325. Hoy, W. K., & Miskel, C. G. (1991). Educational administration: Theory research and practice (4th ed., Vol. 67). New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill. Kimbell, L. (2012). Rethinking design thinking: Part II. Design and Culture, 4(2), 129-148. Lawson, B. (2006). How designers think: The design process demystified. London: Architectural Press. Ling, B. (2010). Design thinking is killing creativity. Retrieved from http://www.designsojourn.com/designthinking-is-killing-creativity/ Lloyd, P., & Scott, P. (1995). Difference in similarity: Interpreting the architectural design process. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 22, 383-406. Martin, R. L. (2009). The design of business: Why design thinking is the next competitive advantage. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Merholz, P. (2009, October). Why design thinking won't save you [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/merholz/2009/10/why-design-thinking-wont-save.html Mintzberg, H. (1983). Power in and around organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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Mintzberg, H. (1987). Crafting strategy. Harvard Business Review, July-August, 66-75. Poulsen, S. B., & Thøgersen, U. (2011). Embodied design thinking: A phenomenological perspective. CoDesign, 7(1), 29-44. Rowe, P. G. (1987). Design thinking. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books. Schön, D. A. (1988). Toward a marriage of artistry & applied science in the architectural design studio. Journal of Architectural Education, 4-10. Thompson, J. D. (1967). Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Janet Johansson, School of Business, Stockholm University,
[email protected] Crafting Embodied Leadership Aesthetic Strategies - an Interactionist Study on Athletic Top Managers in Sweden Abstract Manager’s work is most commonly being understood as a work of mind. Mintzberg makes distinctions of the leading strategies between the “intended” and the “realized” which are described respectively as either ‘a pattern in a stream of decisions’ (Mintzberg, 1972) or ‘streams of actions’ (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985: 257). Although the craftsmen approach is tentative in examining the emerging patterns of actions and practices as important constituents of strategies (Mintzberg, 1987), the bodies which realize the actions are often missing. The body of the managers are being neglected in organization studies in management and leadership studies in general (Dale & Burrell, 2000; Hassard, Holliday, & Willmott, 2000; Sinclair, 2005a; Sinclair, 2005b) and in the making of leadership strategy in particular. Pyke (1996) suggests that micro-practices such as the work of body may systematically attribute to the formation of structural norms. The missing body in leadership studies thus not only reduces the work of leading as a mere cognitive and/or behavioral processes, but also, most importantly, the disembodied leadership theories, conceal the forging of authoritative corporal values and norms in organizations (Sinclair, 2005b). In this work, the bodies of managers are not merely the carriers of actions and practices. Rather, they are both the object and the subject of emergent leadership strategies. The meanings of health and fitness of the body is articulated explicitly as a self-interrogation project to shape the ideal of one’s self (Goffman, 1959;; Giddens, 1991). The “art of existence” is demonstrated as self-questioning in the form of challenging one’s physical and psychological constraints (Foucault, 1984a). Following the Foucaudian notion about the “care of self” (1984a) some organization studies address managerial intentions on cultivating aesthetic truth of “care of the self” through molding the practices over individuals’ health and bodily attributes (Lupton, 1995; Kelly, Allender, & Colquhoun, 2007; Starkey & Hatchuel, 2002; Zoller, 2003). However, the bodies in these studies are reduced to the mere coersive existence of mangerial discourses, namely the docile, productive bodies (see Lupton, 1995). Little has been done to scrutinize the “leading bodies”. That is, the corporal figures atop the organization hierarchy, how their lived experiences, emotions as well as senses come to embody and enforce the strategies of self-cultivation still remians understudied. Drawing on Sinclair’s statement, the disembodied leadership (2005) potentially conceals the formation of authoritative organizational norms, it is presumed in this study that disemboided leadership may also gloss over the emergence of managerial disposition of corporeal strategies. Adapting a symbolic interactionist perspective about the body which suggests that “the body is an object cannot be seperated from the body as a subject” (Waskul & van der Riet, 2002:510), this work, hence, attends to uncover the manner in which organization managers make efforts molding bodily aspect to embark on new leadership aesethic strategy at workplaces. Empirically, this study focuses on the phenomenon of increasing number of athletic organization managers emerging from Sweden. In Sweden, the corporate CEOs and top managers are reportedly becoming more focused on physical exercises. These ‘athletic executives’ are making business newspaper headlines frequently. For example, in the most prestigious business newspaper in Sweden, Dagens Industri (DI, The Industry Daily), the Saturday issues often report extensively on company CEOs’ sport engagement and training routines. Apart from business magazines and newspapers, ordinary daily newspapers also publish articles about the corporate “Elite Sportsmen”10, suggesting that a new category of corporate sportsmanship is emerging amongst people 10
Johansson, A. (2012). Provocerande med chef som hårdtränar. (Bosses who work out hard provoke). Dagens Nyheter, November 21, 2012, p. 16
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between 30-50 years of age and hold prominent positions in their work organizations. I conduct a qualitative study based on interviews (some of which are multiple interviews) with 24 organization top managers and CEOs’ (17 males and 7 females) and participant observations of several sport competition events among the top managers in Sweden. The analysis anchors in managers self-narrative about their view of bodily, emotional and sensuous aspects of the leadership aesthetics. The study discusses how self-management is fulfilled and enforced through top managers’ cultivation of these bodily attribute of leadership;; and how and what new corporeality is intended by the athletic elites through their diligent work of body. It is found that the “productive” bodies are “voluntarily” configured with the motivation and beliefs in “a successful leader starts with disciplines and control over the self”. The pursuit of the disciplined self is carried out through 1) constrained emotions about physiological “unwellness”, private issues, 2) the passion and sometimes obsession of the fitness look and healthy appearance, 3) promotion of competition and desire of winning and, 4) socialization of the post workout body senses (sores and even injuries). Meanwhile, the competent bodies are viewed as also capable “to attend to their (his) fellow citizens like a father or an older brother in order to show them that what is important …” (cf. Nahamas, 1998: 166). “Take care of yourself “and “get to know yourself” are expressed in imperative modality by healthy managers often with the claim of the self-evident good-will embedded in them. Self-management amongst the top managers in this study is seen as the ultimate outcome of gaining self-knowledge through embodied practices of “care of self”;; in the meantime, the strategy of this selfcultivation also enables strength in managers’ professional role to define the corporal and the social reality of the others. A subtle form of imperative force is fund instituting in the managers’ articulation and actions around the “care of self”. The “craftsmen” mold the fitness of their bodies in order to emphasize the general corporate ideologies around efficiency and productivity. Examining the embodied leadership renders insights of the formation of new leadership aesthetic strategy. The bodily, emotional and even sensuous norms are induced from managers’ work of bodies which are intended to permeate in work life. Yet both researchers and practitioners ought to be cautious about the danger and dark-side of the corporal strategic implementations at workplaces – how they potentially bring rise to “some bodies” and exclude the others. Furthermore, based on symbolic interactionist resonance on body, this study not only brings the “leading figures’” blood and flesh to the research forefront, scrutinizing the work of leading bodies; most importantly, it also adds to the interactionist advocation which argues that the body, as the core of a self-project (Giddens, 1991), does not merely inhabit in a static object position, but it “is subjectively embodied in a fluid, emergent, and negotiated process of being” (Waskul & van der Riet, 2002: 488). Hence the distinction between the management of self and disciplines of the body “are not only permeatable” but they are configured and manipulated through social and corporal reflexivities . Bibliography Dale, K., & Burrell, G. (2000). What shape are we in? Organization theory and the organized body. In J. Hassard, R. Holliday, & H. Willmott (Eds.), Body and Organization (pp. 15-30). London: SAGE. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books. Hassard, J., Holliday, R., & Willmott, H. (Eds.). (2000). Body and organization. London, SAGE. Kelly, P., Allender, S., & Colquhoun, D. (2007). New Work Ethics?: The Corporate Athlete's Back End Index and Organizational Performance. Organization, 14(2), 267 - 285. Lupton, D. (1995). The Imperative of Health: public health and the regulated body. London: SAGE. Mintzberg, H. (1972). Research on strategy-making. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. Minneapolis. Mintzberg, H. (1987, July-August). Crafting strategy. Harvard Business Review, 66-75. Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. (1985). Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. Strategic Management Journal, 6,
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257-272. Pyke, K. D. (1996). Class-based masculinities: the interdependence of gender, class, andinterpersonal power. Gender and Society, 10, 527–549. Sinclair, A. (2005a). Body and Management Pedagogy. Gender, Work & Organization(12), 89-104. Sinclair, A. (2005b). Doing Leadership Differently. Australian Institute of Management. Starkey, K., & Hatchuel, A. (2002). The Long Detour: foucault's History of Desire and Pleasure. Organization, 9(641), 641-656. Waskul, D., & van der Riet, P. (2002). The abject embodiment of cancer patients: Dignity, selfhood, and the grotesque body. Symbolic Interaction, 25(4), 487-513. Waskul, D., & Vannini, P. (Eds.). (2006). Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Zoller, H. (2003). Working out: managerialism in workplace health promotion. Management Communication Quarterly, 17(2), 171-205.
Christopher Land and Tyler Hinson, Essex Business School,
[email protected] Socialized Privatization: Strategies of Affective Creative Production in the Era of Immaterial Labour Abstract In the classical Marxist understanding of political economy, there is a basic antagonism between the capitalist and labourer because the former owns the means of production whilst the latter owns nothing but their own labour-power, which they are perforce obliged to sell to the capitalist in order to engage in productive activity. Today, we are told, we live in an information, knowledge, digital or immaterial economy where ownership is no longer the dominant paradigm and agile entrepreneurs seek instead to rent the means of production in order to assemble temporary and unstable networks and projects (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Howkins, 2001; cf Doogan, 2009). The products of these assemblages are immaterial, hence the immaterial labour of Hardt and Negri (1999) and Lazaratto (1996). In Hardt and Negri’s (1999;; see also Hardt, 1999) analysis, there are three main forms of immaterial labour: symbolic analysis, or the knowledge work of intellectual labour; socially productive manufacturing, which depends as much on the social/collaborative and analytical skills of workers as it does on raw labour power; and the affective labour of caring. Whilst all of these have been subject to significant academic analysis in recent years, less attention has been given to the affective dimensions of knowledge work like design and artistic production. Whilst the artist is arguably the paradigmatic employee of the 21st century creative economy (Hesmondhalgh, 2013), the labour of producing an aesthetic affect has been given relatively little consideration in studies of work and organization. Where work has analysed creative labour of this form (refs; Pratt and Gill, 2008; Ross, 2009; McKinlay and Smith, 2009), little attention has been given to the political economic structures that underpin the labour process of affective production. In this paper we present the thesis that the shift toward affective production within the creative sectors of the economy has gone hand in hand with what we call ‘socialised privatisation’: the process whereby the costs of the means of production are being returned to the productive worker, who effectively rents the means of production from one set of capitalists in order to labour for another, albeit not within an industrial contract of employment, but within marketised relations of project-based contracting. To illustrate this thesis, let us give the example of a graphic designer who has recently graduated or left their job in London to better balance the demands of work and life. They join the majority of the creative industry workers in this country who are either self employed or work for micro-enterprises of two to three employees (Burrows and Usher, 2011). To combat the isolation and cabin fever of home working, they rent a desk in a co-working space three days a week, where they have access to wifi, an infinite supply of coffee, and the community of fellow ‘creatives’. Seeking inspiration for a commission they wander the local high street like a Benjaminian flaneur, absorbing the fashions and styles on the street. Back at their desk they connect their headphones, signaling ‘do not disturb’ to their fellow co-workers and providing a creative backdrop to the work they now
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settle down to. This example illustrates the process through which a creative labourer assembled an atmosphere (Borch, 2010), or ‘infosphere’ (Berardi, 2012: 97), through a process of affective assemblage. The conviviality of the creative milieu in the co-working space, the shopping in the high-street, the cost of the music played over the headphones, and even the headphones themselves, are all ‘means of production’ for this kind of creative work, but are not provided by an employer. Rather, the cost is borne by the immediate producer. In producing affect, the creative labourer in the social factory must bear the cost of the means of their immaterial production directly. In short, the costs of production are socialised via the privatised creative worker, forcing a rethinking of the classical distinction between individual consumption and productive consumption found in volume one of Marx’s (1976) Capital. In this paper we work through the political-economic implications of this analysis, illustrating it with empirical material drawn from studies of visual artists, graphic designers, and co-working spaces, undertaken between 2008 and 2012. Our core argument is that rather than understanding the rise of the self-employed creative as indicative of an incipient creative communism of capitalism, the process of socialised privatisation is pushing the costs of production onto the immediate producer who, as consumer, is also directly productive both as a prosumer (Comor, 2010) - recreating and adding to the symbolic and brand value of the commodities they consume - and in a direct process of productive consumption. Whilst this might appear to be a return to a petite bourgeois idyll of independent artisans and craftsmen, in reality it functions to constitute capital as increasingly parasitic, rather than productive, and to render ‘profit’ as a form of rent (Vercellone, 2010;; Marazzi, 2010;; Pasquinelli, 2009). Through the mobilization of precarious, self-employed, entrepreneurial labour in the creative city, socialised privatisation is thus becoming a key strategy of capitalist value production, closely associated with the process of gentrification as a process of financialised accumulation (Harvey, 2012) References: Berardi, F. (2012) The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Boltanski, L. and Chiapello, E. (2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso. Borch, C. (2010) ‘Organizational Atmospheres: Foam, Affect and Architecture’, Organization, 17(2): 223–241. Burrows, H. and Usher, K. (2011) Risky Business. London: Demos. Comor, E. (2010) ‘Digital prosumption and alienation’, ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 10(3/4): 439-454. Doogan, K. (2009) New Capitalism? The Transformation of Work. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gill, R. and Pratt, A. (2008) ‘In the Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work’, Theory, Culture & Society, 25(7–8): 1–30. Hardt, M. (1999) ‘Affective Labor’, Boundary, 26(2): 89-100. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (1999) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. (2012) Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013) The Cultural Industries, 3rd Edition. London: Sage. Howkins, J. (2001) The Creative Economy. London: Penguin. Lazzarato, M. (1996) ‘Immaterial labour’, in P. Virno and M. Hardt (eds) Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McKinlay, A. and Smith, C. (eds) (2009) Creative Labour: Working in the Creative Industries. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
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Marazzi, C. (2010) The Violence of Financial Capitalism. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Marx, K. (1976) Capital: Volume 1. London: Penguin. Pasquinelli, M. (2008) Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons. Amsterdam: INC. Ross, A. (2009) Nice Work if You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times. Vercellone, C. (2010) ‘The Crisis of the Law of Value and the Becoming-Rent of Profit’, in A. Fumagalli and S. Mezzadra (eds) Crisis in the Global Economy: Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios. New York: Semiotext(e).
SENSUOS STRATEGY SESSION TWO Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm G6
Wendelin Küpers, Massey University,New Zealand,
[email protected] The art of Embodied and Creative Inter-practices of Strategizing Abstract This article offers phenomenological perspectives on strategising as an embodied material and relational practice. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of embodiment and practice, strategising is interpreted as emergent process of an ‘inter-practice’. The purpose of this contribution is to develop a critical and extended understanding of strategizing in organization and leadership from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s advanced phenomenology and ontology for understanding the role of the lived body and embodiment for practices of strategising in organisational life-worlds. The recent return towards practice and strategy as practice in particular, is marked by a search and research for developing more adequate approaches, vocabularies and interpretations that allow a more adequate understanding while transcending divisions between entities and levels. As practices are multi-folded and complex, referring to a broad range of actions, orientations and methodologies, there are various theoretical and empirical ways for thematising and exploring them more creatively. A ‘strategy-as-practice’ approach is used (e.g. Balogun et al., 2007;; Golsorkhi et al., 2010;; Jarzabkowski, et al., 2007; Samra-Fredricks, 2003; Whittington, 2006, Küpers et al., 2012) for investigating daily activities of practitioners, such as strategic planning, strategy workshops, and strategy reviews. Even though many practice-based approaches are inspired by phenomenological life-worldly interpretations (Holt & Sandberg, 2011), the contribution of advanced phenomenology and ontology of Merleau-Ponty has not been used systematically in an integrated way. To consider sufficiently the entwinement of life and world of practice (Sandberg & D’Alba, 2009), a specifically reintegrated strategizing practice needs to be seen as an embodied one. Following the ‘practice turn’ and a complementing ‘body turn’ (Hassard et al., 2000, Dale, 2001) can serve as a critique of positivistic, cognitivistic and rationalist as well modernist and representational conceptualization of organizations and leadership as well as strategy. Facing the prevailing neglect and marginalisation and instrumentalised understanding of the body in organisational and management theory and practice, a phenomenological approach can help to re-member the nexus of senses, body, embodiment and practices of strategising. This re-membering allows not only a critique of reductionistic understandings and misled interpretation of practices within a management of everyday life that prioritises instrumentally orientated action; it also contributes to an extended reflexive practice, allowing reflection in and on action. Moreover, this bodily approach helps reintegrating experiences and material qualities for a re-embodied organisation (Styhre, 2004) or a body-aware strategic organisation (Minocha & Stonehouse, 2007). The premise of this contribution is that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and ontology (1962, 1995) provide an important entry-gate for approaching and interpreting sensuous, bodily and embodied practices of strategising as an emerging event. From a Merleau-Pontyian perspective, all those involved in organising and managerial
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practices are to be considered first and foremost as bodily sensuous beings, embedded in the embodied situations of their specific life-worlds. Even more, groups and entire organisations, as incorporations of practices of strategies, are manifestations of embodiments. Based on primordial and pre-reflexive dimensions, phenomenologically, practicing is not only embodied, but being embodied is always already a way of practicing mediated by living senses and bodies within a situated and responsive praxis. Furthermore, research itself can be interpreted as embodied practice, in which researchers are bodily involved in their research con-text and produce insights and findings, then expressed in bodies of texts (Essen & Winterstorm, 2012). Thus, not only can Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy present good reasons for critiquing approaches of ‘objectified disembodiment’, it also provides the base for post-dualistic approach and an re-embedment of recursive corporeal dimensions into practices of organising and researching. The body of the paper will be organised as follows: First, a phenomenological, particularly Merleau-Pontyian understanding of embodied practice will be presented. On this basis then, embodied practices of strategizing are interpreted as relational and responsive processes of ‘inter-practice’ (Küpers, 2009). Based on the post-dual ontology of ‘inter-being’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 208) such radicalised relational orientation understands practice and practicing of strategising as co-constituted and continuously influenced by embodied pre-subjective and pre-objective capacities of experiential processes within what Merleau-Ponty calls the “Flesh” (Merleau-Ponty, 1995, p. 131). This elemental mediating flesh refers to an incorporated intertwining and reversibility of pre- and non-personal with personal and interpersonal dimensions. In the social world of organizations, flesh manifests as an inter-mediating, open-ended soma-significative and dialogical exchange as chiasmic wave-like flow and entwinement between embodied selves and others processing their shared “We-can-Mode”. The relational flesh creates ‘in-between spaces’ (Bradbury & Lichtenstein, 2000) of inter-practicing, which include various interwoven, emerging processes and feedbackloops. Providing possibilities for an unfolding in-betweenness flesh serves as generous source, enacted as a corporeal generosity of embodied mutual recognition (Hancock, 2008).
For showing a possible enactment of this embodied inter-practicing of strategy, improvisation will be explored as an exemplarily form and medium for the situational realisation. Finally, some practical, political, and theoretical implications and perspectives on embodied inter-practices of strategizing are discussed. References Balogun, J. Jarzabkowski, P. and Seidl, D. (eds.). (2007). Special Issue on “Strategizing: A Practice Perspective”. Human Relations 60(1). Dale, K. (2001). Anatomising Embodiment and Organisation Theory, London: Sage. Essen, A. & Winterstorm, & Vaerlander, S. (2012). The mutual constitution of sensuous and discursive understanding in scientific practice Management Learning March, 14, 1-29. Golsorkhi, D. Rouleau, L. Seidl, D. & Vaara, E. (2010). (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of strategy as practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hancock, P. (2008). Embodied generosity and an ethics of organization. Organization Studies, 29(10), 1357– 1373 Hassard, J. Holliday, R. & Wilmott, H. (2000). Body and Organisation, London: Sage. Holt, R. & Sandberg, J. (2011). Phenomenology and organization theory. In: H. Tsoukas & R. Chia (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations (pp. 215-249). London: Emerald. Jarzabkowski, P. (2005). Strategy as practice. An activity-based approach. London: Sage. Küpers, W. (2009). Perspective on integral ‘pheno-pragma-practice’ in organizations. International Journal of Management Practice, 4(1), 27-50. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962/1996). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1995). The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2003). Nature. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press Minocha, S. and Stonehouse, G. (2007). Towards a body-aware strategic organization, Strategic Organization, 5(40), 437-45. Samra-Fredericks, D. (2003). Strategizing as Lived Experience and Strategists’ Everyday Efforts to Shape Strategic Direction. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 141-174. Sandberg, J. & Dall'Alba, G. (2009). Returning to practice anew: A life-world perspective, Organization Studies 30(12), 1349-1368. Styhre, A. (2004). The (Re)Embodied Organization: Four Perspectives on the Body in Organizations', Human Resource Development International 7: 101-16.
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Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies. 5, 613-634.
Elinor Rebeiro, Essex Business School, Delta 7 Change,
[email protected] Samantha Warren, Essex Business School,
[email protected] Sensing voice? Arts based approaches to HR strategy Abstract A cornerstone of strategic Human Resource Management is the exhortation of employee commitment over mere compliance (Boxall and Purcell 2008). Within this, is folded a concern with employee engagement that seeks to encourage worker participation in organizational affairs (e.g., Vlachoutsico 2011). Such engagement is commonly assumed to be effected by various practices designed to encourage (or require) employees to speak up, speak out, speak with, speak for and generally ‘have their say’ in matters of concern addressed to them by management. ‘Employee voice’ is a well established concept in the context of industrial and employment relations, with debates ranging from the prescriptive to the critical (Freeman et al. 2007). The extent to which employees’ voices are authentic or ‘pseudo’ (de Vries et al 2012), complex and multidimensional (Dyne et al. 2003), and the importance of employee silence (Wolfe-Morrison and Milliken 2000) are touch points in strategic considerations of how to best involve – and by extension, engage – employees at work. However – and in response to the eloquent call for this stream – in this paper we ask what happens if we take managerial mobilization of ‘voice’ as a sensuous strategy? Voice is intimately fluted with bodily identity. The accents of our speech locate us in a nexus of class, race, gender and age to name but a few – voice is an aural and aesthetic embodiment of the self and it can be soft or harsh, with varying pitch and tone, resonance, volume, timbre and inflection, all of which are of the flesh that is the body-in-theworld (Merleau-Ponty 1962). When we are asked to ‘speak’ in the political arena of the workplace, what fleshy dynamics, then, are at play? What can we learn about the socio-political context of contemporary workplaces by taking the metaphor of voice seriously? How does our breath as “the life force of performance” (Ouston 2009: 88) sing as an instrument of emancipation, or condense into our own domination? The paper begins by putting forward a chorus of voices, on voice. Using vocal metaphors, we review the ways in which employee voice has been hitherto regarded in mainstream employee relations/ HR strategy noting the curiously disembodied ways ‘voice’ is (not)vocalized in organizational life. In an attempt to return the sensuousness of voice to the debate, we then turn to the scant literature on voice as an aesthetic resource in organization studies (e.g., Nissley 2002’s work on organizational song, and Corbett’s (2006) review of sound in organizing processes). Finally, we consider the phenomenon of arts-based interventions as a contemporary manifestation of organizational engagement and discuss how such approaches – drawing, modelling, painting, theatre, dance – and of course, song – are intended by consultants and the HR departments who commission them, to give rise to a different kind of voice, namely one that is assumed to be more expressive, authentic and with stronger echoes carrying back into the everyday workplace context – yet one that perhaps does not actually speak. References Boxall, P. and Purcell, J. (2011) Strategic Human Resource Management, Macmillan: London Corbett, M. (2003) ‘Sound organization: A brief history of psychosonic management’ ephemera: critical dialogues on organization, Vol 3(4), pp. 265-276 de Vries, G. Jehn, K. & Terwel, B. (2012), ‘When Employees Stop Talking and Start Fighting: The Detrimental Effects of Pseudo Voice in Organizations.’ Journal of Business Ethics, 105 pp. 221-230 Dyne, L.V., Ang, S., Botero, I. (2003) ‘Conceptualising Employee Silence and Employee Voice as Multidimensional Constructs.’ Journal of Management Studies. Vol. 40(6) pp. 1359 -1392 Freeman, R., Boxall, P., & Haynes, P. (2007) What workers say: Employee voice in the Anglo-American workplace, ILR Press/ Cornell University Press: Ithaca Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge: London Nissley, N. (2002) ‘Tuning in to song as organizational discourse’ Culture and Organization, Vol 8 (1) pp. 51-68 Ouston, J. (2009) ‘The Breathing Mind, The Feeling Voice: exploring the connection between breath, voice and emotion.’ in J. Boston and R. Cook (eds.) Breath in Action, Jessica Kingsley: Philadephia Vlachoutsicos, C. (2011) ‘How to Cultivate Engaged Employees.’ Harvard Business Review., Sept 2011 Wolfe Morrison, E. & Milliken, F. (2000) ‘Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World.’ Academy of Management Review Vol. 25 (4), pp. 706 - 725
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Louise Grisoni and Hilary Ramsden, Oxford Brookes University,
[email protected] Engaging Art-Based Inquiries in Strategy Abstract Within the fields of organisation and management studies claims have been made regarding the efficacy of arts based approaches in accessing and eliciting data and material that other modes of inquiry do not. These claims include giving voice to those unheard via traditional mechanisms; accessing tacit knowledge and communicating the ‘unthought known’ (Bollas 1987); offering new, imaginative ways of approaching, analysing and reflecting on old problems and creating opportunities to work with the challenges of ambiguity and uncertainty. These are important claims; however, we suggest that there is a discrepancy between the findings of such research and their systematic inclusion in developing strategies and other organizational practices. In this paper we ask: ‘How can these embodied forms find relevance to strategic challenges?’ We will explore claims as to the efficacy of arts based inquiry and critically examine restrictions affecting the implementation into organisational practice within organisations. We draw on our experiences of working with arts based inquiry to address strategic organisational issues including developing departmental strategy through the use of collage to examine our claims and findings. Over the last 10 years despite the powerful case for arts based inquiry there is little evidence of such approaches being taken up in a consistent and systematic way within management. In 2002 Inns argued that recent writings (Knights, 1992;; Burrell, 1997;; Chia, 1996;; O’Connor et al, 1995;; Kallinikos, 1996) suggested that the field of organizational analysis was “still dominated by positivism, empiricism and representationalism” preventing “other voices from gaining a hearing.” (Inns, 2002: 303). Recent trends in organization literature (Brearly and Darso, 2008; Adler, 2006; Dey & Steyaert, 2007) tell us that we are not alone in the search for new and innovative modes of inquiry that question “assumed certainties” (Dey & Steyaert, 2007: 443). Others (Adler, 2006; Tung, 2006; Taylor & Ladkin, 2009; Hargadon, 2002; Weick, 2007) recognize the need to find new ways to address the demand for flexible responses, innovation and knowledge creation in times of unpredictability and instability, and have renewed calls to the organizational and management studies community to take inspiration from the arts. We suggest that the tendency to seek new ways of problematizing contemporary challenges is not happening by chance or in isolation. We propose that it is part of a much wider and deeper movement to find and construct meaning in more holistic, flexible and sustainable ways. It represents a response to a contemporary world of global interconnectedness, domination of market forces and an increasingly turbulent, complex and chaotic economic environment. Adler (2006) renewed calls to the organizational and management community to take inspiration from the arts to fulfil the demand for flexible responses, innovation and knowledge creation in times of chaos and instability. She claims new ways of seeing are necessary to be able to understand the actual ‘realities’ of the world we live in, and not to mistake that for seeing things are they are labelled. Suggesting that people have to be able to dream, to envision possibilities, Adler (2006) quotes Hamel: “Companies fail to create the future, not because they fail to predict it, but because they fail to imagine it.” (Hamel, 2000: 120). Arts-based methods have been recognised for exploring, examining and eliciting the less obvious, the unaccountable, the socalled non-rational elements of organizational experience, complementing the more traditional business and management tools of logic and rationality. Arguing that such methods offer a fundamentally different way of approaching the world Taylor and Ladkin (2009) suggest that arts based methods enable us to access and develop different ways of sensuous knowing which can “contribute to a more holistic way of engaging with managerial contexts” (2009: 56). In this paper we look first at a number of claims made for arts-based approaches including: giving voice to those unheard via traditional mechanisms; enabling access to tacit knowledge and communication of the ‘unthought known’;; creating contexts in which we are faced with ambiguity and uncertainty;; and offering new, imaginative ways of approaching, analysing and reflecting on old problems. Responses given to support the use of the arts for inquiry involve a range of assertions: those words are proxies for direct experience that we know more than we can say and that the arts access the range of human emotion and make a more holistic contribution to our understanding. Bollas (1987) speaks of the ‘unthought known’ a concept that relates to the tacit knowledge we hold in our bodies and at the edges of our unconscious finding expression through feelings and non-verbal forms of communication. If we conceptualize the ‘unthought known’ as what we already know but don’t yet know that we know, one way to access this knowledge is through arts based approaches which engage the emotions and explore the permeable boundary between inside and outside, bringing visions, thoughts and feelings to life. Why then have we not seeing a corresponding increase in organizational strategies and problem-solving underpinned by arts-based methods? Taylor and Ladkin (2009) suggest that because these different ways of knowing utililsed by arts based forms of inqiry come from the five senses and because this embodied and sensuous, tacit kind of knowing is unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable and unreliable for most of us, they can be too easily dismissed for lacking relevance and rigour (Taylor & Ladkin, 2009). We would add to this by
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suggesting that there are several, perhaps more ideological and political issues that emerge from our explorations: first, the sense that perhaps arts based methods of inquiry are viewed more as individual therapy for managers than offering practical solutions to organisational problems; second that such methods are doomed to be in the service of managers and CEOs in trying to get employees to work harder by finding ‘softer’ ways to sugar the output pill; third, that arts-based inquiry does not in fact belong to the daily routines of management and therefore has no place within a business context other than as an interesting diversion. Our experience of working with arts based approaches seems to require an ability to work with complexity and uncertainty to transform the future. It is in this sense art-based inquiry can make a very specific contribution to business and organisational strategy.
Clive Holtham, Cass Business School,
[email protected]; Maryann Kernan, School of Arts and Social Sciences, City University London,
[email protected]
Allan Owens, Faculty of Education and Children's Services, University of Chester,
[email protected]
Anne Pässilä, LUT Lahti School of Innovation, Lahti, Finland M
[email protected]
Accelerating Movement across the Intentional Arc - Developing the Strategic Sensographer Abstract Our research question relates to those who need to be activists in strategic sensography as described in the call for papers. We call these activists "strategic sensographers". Our own definition of sensuous is characterised by a pseudo-formula, namely 5S+3D (5 senses plus 3 dimensions), which we contrast with the 2S+2D world which dominates the modern office and even university. We take strategists to include both senior executives themselves and those who explicitly support them in the strategy process, whether in a line or staff role. Our model of the intuitive qualities required for strategists has in part been derived from the recruitment criteria of leading organisations, as well as from analyses of the qualities needed to support creativity and innovation (Lucas and Claxton 2012). We examine the routes through which strategists are currently educated or shaped, and conclude as have many others (Mintzberg, 2005), that their education is biassed in favour of rational-logical thinking. It is in part the tension and interplay between the rational and the intuitive that contributes to sensography, a term that has in part spun off from “stratography” (Cummings and Angwin, 2011) In terms of areas of study, firstly we are concerned with innovative management education. Our focus is the nature of expertise and the intentional arc (Dreyfus, 1996), which is “supposed to embody the interconnection of skillful action and perception”. Secondly, we have a specific interest in the role of embodiment in educational processes. More narrowly we are concerned with the role of artefacts in strategising. We trace the evolution of embodiment in strategy from the Marquis de Louvois as war minister of France in 1686 commissioning scale model cities for military strategy, through the contribution of Berch in 18th century Sweden through his Theatrum Oeconomico-Mechanicum, models and samples of industrial objects (Liedman and Persson, 1992), to the wide variety of contemporary approaches (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2011). We worked on a series of projects which deployed transitional objects (Winnicott, 1987) as an explicit part of research and consultancy processes related to business strategy. Figure 1 shows a selection of 6 such artefacts.
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Figure 1: Six transitional objects relating to business strategy Thirdly, our work is rooted in concepts of both teachers and strategists as facilitators of change, each relating to all three levels of individual, organisational and societal. In this we have been influenced in particular by the Heron (1992) hierarchy. It is interesting that in Lampel's (2001) study of artefacts in innovation processes, he explicitly touches on the need in certain types of innovation to divert attention away from imperfect and incomplete products, to create an emotional quality to the product presentations, as exemplified by Whitney, Edison and Jobs. Strategic sensographers need to be developed though methods which are themselves dominantly sensuous. We concluded that this is very well achieved through a specialised route rather than by waiting for rationally based programmes such as the MBA to change by themselves. Strategic sensography is so different from rational strategising, that it involves disruption for the individuals most directly involved, including teachers as well as learners. This needs to be recognised, and the emphasis put on slow and deep learning rather than fast and shallow learning. A business school is so strongly dominated by rational interests and disciplines that it is highly desirable for strategic sensography to involve authentic collaboration across apparently unrelated parts of the university We characterise the MBA-dominated approach to the education of strategists as a "fast" approach; our own interests have been by contrast been in "slow" approaches. In the next section we go on to review the actual pedagogic approaches developed, which fall into two areas. We review an unusual Masters in Creative Leadership, now in its third cohort and with the first set of students about to graduate. This degree programme set out to take a unconventional approach to the education of strategists. We particularly review components of the programme which most heavily address embodiment, and we conclude with an assessment of how far in practice its goals have been achieved. Secondly, we review the application of process drama to strategy development and implementation in executive education (McKenzie, 2001), drawing particularly on Finnish-based experiences in a variety of organisational contexts, and including a specific form of drama-based approach that deploys masks as a special type of artefact. Our repertoire of learning methods for the strategic sensographer is deliberately diverse. This has made it possible for participants not simply to rely on specific formulae, but to find ones that are appropriate for them as strategists, and/or most appropriate to the environment under consideration, and also facilitating improvisation, the introduction of an approach unexpectedly in "mid flight". We believe that the greater impact arises from the slow and deep nature of the MCL, also that the individuals on the MCL are expecting and looking forward to such educational experiences, rather than fearing or even resenting them. In the final section we draw on evidence of success or otherwise in the aim of developing strategic sensographers with reference to the methods under consideration. The evidence is culled from the outputs of the learners, their actual performances and artefacts, and from interviews. The concept of slowness was not an explicit initial aim of the programme, but when we reviewed the striking differences between the outputs of the students and, for example equivalent MBA students, it then struck us that the slowness, the cumulative steady consistent dripping of different approaches to the same problem, was indeed a fundamental factor in promoting learning success. Overall we have been concerned with developing innovative management education to develop strategic sensographers for and through change, drawing heavily on tools and processes which facilitate embodiment. Our approaches are far from unique. Nonetheless, we still feel that we have quite single-mindedly, and somewhat successfully, sought out a 5S+3D approach to strategic sensography References Cummings, Stephen, and Angwin, Duncan (2011) “Stratography: The art of conceptualizing and communicating strategy” Business Horizons, Volume 54, Issue 5, September–October 2011, Pages 435–446 Dreyfus, Hubert L (1996) "The current relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment" The
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Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, Vol 4, Spring, pp1-16 Fayard, Judy (2012) “France's Visionary Scale-Model Cities” Wall Street Journal, 27th January 2012 [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577172500657272264.html retrieved 28 th January 2012] Heracleous, Loizos and Jacobs, Claus D. (2011) Crafting Strategy: Embodied Metaphors in Practice” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Heron, J. (1992) Feeling and Personhood: Psychology in another key. London and Newbury Park, CA: Sage Lampel, J., (2001) “Show-and-tell: product demonstrations and path creation of technological change” In: Garud, R., Karnøe, P. (Eds.),Path Dependence and Creation. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Liedman, Sven-Eric and Persson, Mats (1992) "The Visible Hand: Anders Berch and the University of Uppsala Chair in Economics" The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Vol. 94, Supplement. Proceedings of a Symposium on Productivity Concepts and Measurement Problems: Welfare, Quality and Productivity in the Service Industries (1992), pp. S259-S269 Lucas, Bill;; Claxton, Guy and Ellen Spencer (2012) “Progression in Creativity: Developing new forms of assessment”;; Background Paper for the OECD conference "Educating for Innovative Societies", Centre for RealWorld Learning, University of Winchester Mintzberg, Henry (2005) “Managers not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development” Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco McKenzie, J., (2001) Perform or Else: from Discipline to Performance, Routledge, London Winnicott, D. W. (1987) “Babies and Their Mothers”, Addison-Wesley, New York
SENSUOUS STRATEGY SESSION THREE Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am G6
David Bubna-Litic, University of Technology, Sydney,
[email protected] Presencing in Strategy: A Critical Appraisal Abstract Recently, practitioners within the organizational learning sphere have embraced Otto Scharmer’s notion “Theory U” which explores the notion of “presencing” as a basis for organisational change, as well as strategising. Presencing is said to be the allowing organisational members to tap into an embodied state of “inner knowing” in which possible new understandings emerge from the unconscious and may be crystalised into strategic action. This knowledge is assumed to occur at potential deeper levels beyond consciousness (Senge et al. 2004; Scharmer et al., 2007). Given the popularity of Scharmer’s “Theory U”, however, it is notable that there is little systematic, critical consideration of this concept or its origins (Scharmer et al., 2007). This paper explores the bricolage of origins of “Theory U” and shows how much of its theoretical foundations are driven by notions which have little to do with an organizational or collective context, but rather can be traced to ideas based on an individual level of cognition, including new theorising around attempts to improve the status of phenomenological methods of research within Cognitive Psychology. The paper maps the theoretical sources of Scharmer’s conceptualization of “presencing”, including Varela’s (1999) work on embodied ethical action and learning, and proposes an original theoretical contribution by linking “presencing” with a holistic view of strategizing which sits better with the full implications of its hidden Buddhist origins (Depraz, Várela, & Vermersch, 2003). The paper then explores how a clearer conceptualisation of presencing might fit with recent developments in the literature, particularly those which recognise the ephemeral nature of identity in organisational becoming (eg Tsoukas, and Chia, 2002) and sets out implications for strategic practice. References: Depraz, N. Várela, F. J. Vermersch, P. (2003). On Becoming Aware. A pragmatics of experiencing, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Scharmer, C. Otto. (2007). Theory U, Leading from the future as it emerges. The social technology of presencing, BerrettKoelher, San Francisco. Senge, P, M.; J. Jaworski; B. S. Flowers; C Otto Scharmer (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society Cambridge : Society for Organizational Learning. Tsoukas, H. and Chia, R. (2002) ‘On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change’,
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Organization Science 13(5): 567–82. Várela, F. (1999). Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition. Stanford University Press.
Elena Antonacopoulo, University of Liverpool Management School,
[email protected] Putting the Senses Back into Sense making: The Flesh and Blood of Practising Strategizing Reflexively A recent review by Vaara and Wittington (2012) of the Strategy-as-Practice research trajectory so far, has called for a more serious engagement with social practices, that some scholars had already introduced as the practice turn in management and organizational studies more generally (see Schatzki et al., 2001; Orlikowski, 2002; Nicolini et al. 2003). The same review also identified that a key priority for future research in this field, is to better understand the emergence of strategy practices with special attention to the role of phronesis. This paper is a direct response to this call. It extends earlier accounts of practising as integral to the emergence of practices (Antonacopoulou, 2008) and its contribution to understanding strategizing practice (Antonacopoulou, 2009). It presents this dynamic nature of practising strategizing by accounting for the role of phronesis. The analysis of phronesis itself however, reveals the centrality of the senses as the flesh and blood of practising and shows how the senses inform sense-making when done reflexively. The Aristotelian notion of phronesis (prudence, wisdom or practical judgment) has been receiving attention in management studies and has been employed as a basis for rethinking leadership and management education and more recently managing change (Badham, et al., 2012; Antonacopoulou, 2010a; Eikeland, 2009; Nonaka & Toyama, 2007, Flyvberg, 2001). Across the variety of ways in which the concept has been interpreted, there is general agreement on its basic principle of explaining the ways people act in everyday situations. Phronesis demonstrates through the actions man takes ‘his’ capacity to exercise judgment with regard to what is deemed good or bad (Dunne, 1993). Hence, phronesis is a way of acting, thinking, knowing and living, which reflect the character of man described as phronimos (Noel, 1999) or homo-phroneticus (Antonacopoulou, 2012). Essentially the point here is the intimate connection between practitioner, their phronesis and the ways they perform their practices (Antonacopoulou, 2010b). It could be argued that practitioners make their practice what it is, by virtue of who they are and vice versa. This tight connection between who we are and what we do adds authenticity to our act, and as Carlsen (2006, 2012 personal communication) argues it forms an integral aspect of our becoming, because it reflects our emerging identity. This point can be appreciated when we study the processes that are integral to the act of phronesis itself as some scholars laboriously explicate the role of discernment, practical syllogism, insight, wisdom, virtue, and moral excellence (Wall, 2003). Phronesis then, opens up the scope to better appreciate not only what practitioners do and how they perform their practice, but why they do what they do in the ways they do it (Antonacopoulou, 2008). Phronesis as an act of judging and living well, is bounded by personal choice as much as by social, cultural, political and historical values grounded in the communities of practice in which actors perform their work. Put differently, phronesis provides access to the profound tension between self and community (personal and organizational priorities, personal and work identity) and ways this is reflexively worked with in a practising mode. This scope for reflexivity is not just about the meanings that inform action. It is about the choices and judgments that guide one’s predisposition. In other words, taking a stance towards a situation is not merely a sense-making process of negotiating competing priorities. It is also a process of practising how to balance competing priorities that create internal conflict. Practising is defined as “deliberate, habitual and spontaneous repetition” (Antonacopoulou, 2004; 2008a, 2008b). Central to practising is rehearsing, refining, learning and changing actions and the relationships between different elements of an action (intension, ethos, phronesis). Practising is a space where possibilities are born as practitioners try things out. Practising is analogous to a regular routine followed by a performing artist when they systematically engage in a process of performing again and again a set of actions integral to perfecting both their technical skills as well as, their ways of expressing themselves in their performances which are never the same. Whilst practising reflects a systematic and conscious drive to improve performance it is also a subconscious process. It is this subconscious practising that is integral to reflexivity guided by phronesis that this paper draws attention to, because it provides scope to see strategizing as a learning space (Antonacopoulou, 2009). This perspective on reflexivity has affinity to empirically informed accounts of the dynamics of managers’ reflexive practice as they engage in learning from changing and changing from learning (Antonacopoulou, 2004). Understanding the dynamics between practising, learning and changing presents a unique opportunity to reconsider reflexivity. Reflexivity through this lens can be considered as an act of imagination, a process of wondering, improvising and innovating. By broadening the ways in which we understand reflexivity as a
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practice we not only embrace the role of practising, learning and changing as integral dimensions of the process. We also allow a greater sensitization to the role of phronesis that has hitherto received little attention. Central to our analysis of phronesis and practising in the emergence of strategizing is the role of the senses. Put simply, discernment, insight and wisdom as part of exercising phronesis is not just a matter of making sense of something by mobilizing our emotions and cognitions as much sensemaking research has come to acknowledge over the years (Weick, 1995; Maitlis, 2005). It will be argued in this paper, that more fundamentally we need to put the senses back into sensemaking. This is about engaging the senses (touch, eyesight, hearing, smell, taste) whose orchestration creates an energy that both propels us to act in particular ways, as well as, engage in such acts more fully as humans. This orchestration of the senses, scientists refer to frequently as a condition called synesthesia (syn+esthisis - combining multiple senses in everyday experiences see Campen, 2007). This idea of the unity of the senses is echoed also by Aristotle who expresses it in quite different terms (in De Anima, 426 B). He explains the unity of the senses as part of the judgments that inform perception that can be both divisible and indivisible. Aristotle puts it like this: “[it] is one and judges at one time in so far as it is indivisible, but in so far as it is divisible it simultaneously uses the same point twice...”. This means that at any point in time any one of the senses may be taking the lead but it is always supported and never separated from all the other senses. The key message that runs through all the references to senses and their unity is the connectedness of the various functions that make up a conscious life. The conscious life however, as Aristotle presents the role of phronesis, is a primary sense that is common to other senses. Hence, to make sense is not to seek to understand something in a detached way, but to be actively engaged and in a way where one participates completely with the act with which one is engaged with. In putting the senses back into sensemaking therefore, it will be argued that the importance of orchestrating all the senses becomes a source of movement that provides potency and energy (energeia) to act. Practices like strategizing therefore, are not only performed by practitioners but practitioners are energized to act and do so repeatedly. This repetition is integral to practising but must not be confused with replication. Practising as repetition is a movement akin to the permutation of waves in the feed-forward – feed-backward or up and down movements and in their rippling effects. Practising then is a process of repetition at the core of which lies difference. Deleuze (1994) spoke of this idea when he claimed that repetition is difference, in that even in the cyclicality of repeating something we still do not arrive to the same point twice. Practising then entails repetition that allows practitioners to re-view, re-hearse, re-turn, re-vise, re-cognize and continuously re-search ways of performing their practices differently. The key point in this analysis is the attention it draws on the intimate engagement of the actor in their acts of thinking, knowing, judging, acting, living and learning. All of these acts are integral to practising strategizing. This view of strategizing and the importance of practising by orchestrating the senses in the way phronesis guides reflexive action, provides a framework for arresting the emergence of strategy practice. Such a framework reveals the importance of perception, critique (krisis) and imagination (phantasia) as critical aspects of reflexivity. The essence here is the way practitioners perceive - grasp a situation and choose to respond. This process of grasping a situation is as much founded on deliberation and dwelling as is supported by sensation – aesthesis – which guides how strategic actors exercise choice by perceiving both the quiddity (the essence) and quality of an object or subject in a given situation through orchestrating the senses. Hence, instances of intuiting, imagining, harmonizing reflect the critical connection between emotions and cognitions invoked by the senses which signals that practitioners attend to situations with synesthesia – not just by drawing on all the senses, but also with consciousness (which is also what the word synesthisis means in Greek). It is the power of consciousness that this paper will argue lies at the core of a sensuous strategizing done reflexively. The paper will discuss systematically all concepts and their relationships to articulate in the discussion section an agenda for future research and practice adopting a sensous approach in the strategy field. Particular attention throughout the analysis will be paid not only on reflexivity as a practice that strategy actors engage in when they exercise phronesis. The analysis, will also account for the tensions and potential traps that strategy actors may experience when seduction enhances their subjectivity in ways that it limits their capacity to engage in practising strategizing reflexively. Insights in accounting and demonstrating both the concepts and the agenda for future research as part of the proposed sensous view of strategizing, are based on-going projects pursued by the author. Anecdotal evidence from empirical findings will be offered in the paper to illustrate the issues. References available on request.
Damian Ruth, Massey University,
[email protected] To Follow Knowledge like a Sinking Star: The Aesthetic Strategy Map Abstract The map is one of the most pervasive metaphors in strategy. It resonates well with other common metaphors
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such as war and territory. The map is also a complex artefact that can obscure as well reveal, as historians (Barber, 2005) and theorists (Klinghoffer 2006) of cartography show us. Its aesthetic potential has also been exploited;; “Is there any motif so malleable, so ripe for appropriation, as maps?” (Harmon, 2009:10) This paper explores the aesthetics of maps and their potential to develop an aesthetic strategic sensibility. Tim Robinson (1984) is Cambridge mathematician who has spent years making exquisitely drawn maps of Connemara and the Aran Islands. What he observes about mapping can be applied to strategy; In the basic geographic act of mapping I find three conjunctions: that of the place mapped with the one who maps it; that of the mapper with the map itself; and the finally that of the map with the mapped – this last a confrontation that tests the worth of the first and second. (Robinson 1984) The strategist needs first and foremost to observe. For all the emphasis on environmental scanning, the capacity to accurately observe is often reduced to information processing, rather than a personal capacity and an act of commitment. Aesthetics is an area where the capacity for and commitment to observation is highly valued. What is the value of the map? Robinson’s maps are aesthetically beautiful and certainly one way they can be valued. One might also ask are they accurate and useful? The next question is, accurate and useful in what way? Weick (1987) tells the story of soldiers lost in the Alps but who eventually found their way out on the basis of a tattered map found in a seldom used pocket. The map did not seem to quite fit the terrain but eventually they discovered their bearings, and found their way back to camp. Their officer had a good look at their map. ‘This isn’t a map of the Alps,’ he said. It’s a map of the Pyrenees.’ The lesson seems to be that there is more to assess than Robinson’s conjunctions. What saved the soldiers was not the rational and accurate analysis of data, but rather what Chester Barnard identified as ‘the executive functions’ - “ ‘feeling’, ‘judgement’, ‘sense’, proportion’, ‘balance’, [and] ‘appropriateness’”. According to Barnard, the executive function is “a matter of art rather than science, and is aesthetic rather than logical” (Barnard, quoted in Schon, 1984). Maybe approaching the map as an aesthetic object may present metaphors radically different to the standard contours of the territorial debates in strategy, and striating them in unexpected ways, establishing cairns instartling places, among false trails and stories of misguided but serendipitous lais. We do not use a map in order to make sense of where we are – we create maps in the process of making sense of where we are. Cummings and Wilson (2003) point out how people are animated and orientated by maps and how the 17 th Century creation of the scientific gaze – an arboreal hierarchy - has fashioned strategic thinking. Unless we are aware of the metaphorical implications of our ‘map’, we are as likely to create dust storms and cloudy conditions as we are likely to find ‘True North’ (George, 2007). The point is to do the work of mapping with a sense of its provisional and creative nature. What do maps actually do? Huff and Jenkins (2002) suggest that cognitive maps make conceptual entities more visible (Walsh, 1995). They can also facilitate discussion of cognitive processes that cannot be directly observed (Eden, Jones and Sims, 1979). However, maps do not only reveal but obfuscate as well. Klinghoffer (2006) points out that a mapmaker superimposes his or her own vision upon the world so that the cartography is conditioned by the classical psychological function of projection. The cartographer’s projection is therefore dependent on his own inner psychological state as his maps are based on an “art of seeing” rather than on “what was seen.” People tend to see what they describe, rather than vice versa. However, according to neuroscience (Pally, 2006) even before events happen the brain has already made a prediction about what is most likely to happen, and sets in motion the perception, behaviours, emotions, physiological responses and interpersonal ways of relating that best fit with what is predicted. In a sense, we learn from the past what to predict for the future and then live the future we expect. If we accept Klinghoffer’s and Pally’s insights, the inner landscape of the strategist is an absolutely crucial factor in any attempt to produce a scenario of what may be. We need to map this inner world as well. There are three areas we draw on here; embodied metaphor (Heracleous and Jacobs 2008), sociomaterial practices (Orlikowski, 2007) and organizational aesthetics (Taylor and Hansen, 2005). Heracleous and Jacobs report on a study of parties engaged in ‘constructing metaphors in the flesh - physical entities’ (page 46);; “we perceive and understand the reality of physically external, independent elements through the way our embodied existence shapes our experiences and perceptions; which then influences how we interpret more abstract entities, as evidenced, for example, by essential orientational and spatial metaphors in our everyday discourse (Johnson 1987;; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999)”. (References in the original.) This is what we do when we make maps. In this paper we explore the hypothesis that through becoming aesthetic (Taylor and Hansen, 2005) and conscious metaphorical map-makers we may vivify our strategic thinking, and come to realise how ‘every organizational practice is always bound with materiality’ (Orlikowski, 2007:1436, emphasis in the original). The ‘constitutive entanglement’ that Orlikowski explores would come into play when actors attempt to link their metaphorical constructions with the material reality of their organization’s context. This may ameliorate the
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instrumental analyses that obscure or impede the aesthetic and affective dimensions of strategy. I
From Tennyson’s Ulysses: “… this gray spirit yearning in desire/ To follow knowledge like a sinking star,/ Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” The point for Ulysses was to leave Ithaca without a map and to “sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die”. An entrepreneurial spirit one might say.
Matthew Hancocks, University of Essex, Business School,
[email protected] Divine Origins: How Fundamental Attunements or Moods Open or Close Strategic Possibilities Abstract Mood is a central determinant of the appearance and saliency of situations, both for what shows up to participants and for how it shows up11. Consider how, during the exuberant moods that pervaded the economic bubbles of the dotcom era, the Celtic Tiger or the sub-prime economy, continuing and dramatic economic growth appeared straightforward and self-evident to many experienced and skilful participants, and voices of caution appeared pessimistic. These moods affect the ways that actors make sense of their world and they affect these actors directly, through the attunement of bodies to a situation, and without reliance on verbal or symbolic mediation. In addition to personal moods, moods are also both spatial – consider the mood of an advertising firm compared to a firm of auditors and a major projects engineering firm, or of American, German and Chinese businesses - and temporal – consider the pagan polytheistic mood of Ancient Greece in contrast with the cybernetic, results-driven organizations of the 1970s. In this paper, I first introduce the topic of the effect of embodied mood on perception and action as absorbed practical engagement with the world. Having introduced mood and its effects in everyday life, I then place it into historical context in order to illustrate how the phenomenon of mood has been displaced over two millennia from a central role in our understanding of good or right thinking. In Ancient Greece, stories of the roles of the various gods in an actor’s life attested to the central role of the moods in a life lived at its best – Athena would bring a mood of wisdom, Aphrodite a mood of eroticism, Aries a warlike mood, and so on (Dreyfus & Kelly, 2011). In contrast, in the epoch initiated by Descartes and Kant, mood has been relegated from a central role in our understanding of life at its best to an unruly, perhaps dangerous, element to be controlled and suppressed and replaced by a calculative, rational and autonomous way of thinking. In our contemporary epoch, the move away from external sources of authority in the form of divine, spatial, and temporal moods is completed in the Heideggerian “technological age”, an epoch in which all entities including other people and ourselves, our bodies, and our language appear only as flexible, ever-available resources to be ordered and re-ordered in the eternal drives of the will. In this philosophical and historical context, I set out my materialist methodology for reading a situation for its mood. Paying particular attention to the contemporary rhizomatic, ludic and artistic strands of strategic research and practice, I survey the strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation literature to illustrate the existence and effect of each of three moods. I describe the two dominant and increasingly nihilistic and wilful moods that characterise the contemporary epoch and its particular political economy. I call these two nihilistic moods the “controlling” and the “opportunistic” moods. I illustrate both moods and demonstrate how each draws strategists to consider their organisations and themselves either as “controllable value-creating machines” or as “opportunistic resource leveragers”, and attunes them to the development of strategising practices that suit such controlling and opportunistic moods. Having introduced the two dominant nihilistic moods, I set out my close reading of a foundational text in the embodied approaches to politics and economics Disclosing New Worlds by Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus, (2007) to propose a third emerging mood, that I call the mood of “disclosure”. This new mood “twists free” of the wilful mood of the current age (Davis, 2007) and is released both from representing the world for one’s own manipulation and the accumulation of power and value, and toward the emergence of new meanings and ways of being in the world. I propose that the mood of disclosure radically expands the range of creativity open to practitioners and avoids some of the deleterious effects of the dominant moods of nihilism and wilfulness that marked the strategy domain in the last two decades.
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For reviews of the influence of Heideggerian philosophy (whence this focus on mood derives) in strategic and innovation management practice see (Chia & Holt, 2006, 2009; Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2011; Shaw et al., 2011; Spinosa et al., 1997; Steyaert, 2007; Tsoukas 2010a, 2010b).
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As a strategy executive and consultant, I have fifteen years experience working with both orthodox strategic management approaches and a wide range of dramaturgical, literary, and sculptural practices. In my analysis, I will pay close attention to the extent to which the extension of strategic practices into more playful and artistic modes, rather than representing an escape from nihilism, actually draws us into an intensification of that nihilism which treats all entities as resources for the drives of eternal will. To conclude my presentation, I return to consider the implications of a mood of disclosure for the wider political economy and, by drawing on contemporary Heideggerian philosophers (Kelly, Malabou, Harman and Ziarek), I speculate on the implications for a disclosive political economics. References Chia, R. & Holt, R. (2006) Strategy as practical coping: a Heideggerian perspective. Organization Studies 27(5), 635-655. Chia, R. & Holt, R. (2009) Strategy without design: the efficacy of silent action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, B.W. (2007). Heidegger and the will: on the way to Gelassenheit. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press. Dreyfus, H.L. & Kelly, S.D. (2011). All things shining: reading the Western classics to find meaning in a secular age. New York, USA: Free Press. Sandberg, J., & Tsoukas, H., (2011). Grasping the logic of practice: theorizing through practical rationality. Academy of Management Review 36(2), 338-360. Shaw, R., Dun-Hou Tsai, S., Yu-Chung Liu, T. & Amjadi, M. (2011) The Ontology of Entrepreneurship: A Heideggerian perspective. Proceedings of the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management. 7 December 2011. Spinosa, C., Flores, F., & Dreyfus, H.L. (1997) Disclosing new worlds: entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the cultivation of solidarity. The MIT Press: Cambridge/ London. Steyaert, C. (2007) ‘Entrepreneuring’ as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship and regional development. 19, 453-477. Tsoukas, H. (2010a). Practice, strategy-making and intentionality: a Heideggerian onto-epistemology for Strategy-as-Practice. In Golsorkhi, D., Rouleau, L., Seidl, D., and Vaara, E. (eds). The Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tsoukas, H. (2010b). Strategic decision-making and knowledge: a Heideggerian approach. In Nutt, P.C. & Wilson, D.C., (eds). Handbook of Decision Analysis. Basingstoke: John Wiley & Sons.
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SENSUOUS STRATEGY SESSION FOUR Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm H2
Mark Egan, The York Management School,
[email protected] Sensual Strategies against the Force of Vibration: An Ethnography of Engineering and Affect Abstract This paper is about work conducted against the force of vibration, which necessitates alternative modes of sensual strategies, to achieve the successful production and launch of a space instrument. For a space instrument to reach the outer limits of Earth’s gravitational pull, it must endure seven minutes of violent oscillation. This poses a strategic problem for an assembled project group of space engineers and scientists - how do you get your instrument into space, in one piece and fully operable? The paper draws from fieldwork at a Space Science Centre (SSC) conducted over an 18 month period. During this period, vibration was exposed as an elemental force of life at the SSC that always traversed and exceeded every domain. Vibration assumed an ephemeral, adversarial role, something the engineers had to strategize against through a ‘becoming-predator’ relationship. Such a relationship provided the engineers with three strategic outcomes. Firstly, such a strategy allowed the engineers to understand the relationships of bodies, and their capacities to affect and be affected in displays of the instruments non-organic vitality. Secondly, through different modes of sensory engagement, the engineers gained a mutual sense of becoming with the non-organic, and a sharing of ‘molecular proximity’. Thirdly, engineers through operating a sensual strategy ‘learnt to be affected’ and understand the indeterminacy of matter, and its ability to bite back outside the predicted outcomes of strategic planning. Overall, such attunement to the performance of the instrument achieved a sensual mode of collective affect, not limited to a person or thing, but consisting of multiple relations between things and their capacity to affect and be affected. The paper will examine a sensual strategy through the study of engineers and scientists working with vibration at three ethnographic sensory spaces of the workshop, test facility, and launch site. Furthermore, alongside the empirical data, the paper advances a lateral reading of Spinoza’s Ethics and his axiomatic interpretation of affect, to offer a view of space science as a set of strategic decisions against the consequence of encounters. The first part of the paper highlights vibration at the point of instrument assembly in the workshop, where the process of bonding metals and the handling of matter alters the relational consistency of the instrument. In this location, restricted space requires a form of precision engineering that demands a heightened sensual awareness. Further to the challenge of restricted space, technicians also work with the knowledge that stray fragments and weak silicone bonds have the potential to jeopardise the success of a mission, making the labour of a technician fraught with anxiety. Observation and interview data will reveal how the future event of vibration, in the test centre and at launch, affects the work of the technician, where it is seen to transpose the sense of fear into construction. The paper will discuss how this duel pressure of restricted space and fear of failure is overcome by technicians in a sensual strategy to manage their own haptic vibrations. The second part of the paper follows the instrument to the test facility. Here, vibration assumes an adversarial role, as a force to be opposed. During the vibration test, energy senses the most efficient escape route across the assemblage of materials, disregarding the strategic bidding of engineers and threatening the integrity of the instrument. This part of the paper will highlight how engineers overcome this threat through a process known as notching. The technique of notching will be understood as an intuitive sensual strategy learnt from an affective working relationship with instruments and thus allowing the engineer to understand the position of resonances in rhythmic relations of vibrating matter. The final part of the paper follows the instrument to the launch site and the seven minutes of vibration as it attempts to escape the Earth’s atmosphere. Here, the sonic roar of lift off pays notice to the assembled engineers that fragility exists in these moments. Vibration is heard and felt by those watching launch, and it is sensed by the whole body acting as a transducer of surrounding affects. The ethnographic data will help articulate the launch site as an affective sensorium and final expression of strategy as a sensual world of matter and force, which is always vibratory.
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Allan Owens, Professor of Drama Education, University of Chester
[email protected] Anne Pässilä, LUT Lahti School of Innovation, Lahti, Finland,
[email protected] 60 minutes workshop – Dramatizing strategy Abstract The workshop will draw on enactive drama methods as a process to facilitate strategising. this will be run by Allan Owens, and/or Anne Passila, both of whom have very considerable experience of applying drama in strategic thinking, particularly in Finland.
Allan Owens, Professor of Drama Education, University of Chester
[email protected] Anne Pässilä, LUT Lahti School of Innovation, Lahti, Finland,
[email protected] 60 minutes workshop – Dramatizing strategy…. continued Abstract
Garance Marechal, Duncan Angwin and Steve Cummings Conclusion
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STREAM 30: HRM & LABOUR RELATIONS: POLITICS, IDEOLOGY AND CONTEXT Convenors Miguel Martinez Lucio, Mark Stuart & Ray Hogler
HRM & LABOUR RELATIONS: POLITICS, IDEOLOGY AND CONTEXT (1) Wednesday 10th July, 2 – 4pm D1
Joel P Rudin Rowan University, USA ‘Foucault’s Foot Soldiers: American Human Resource Managers after Obamacare’ Most Americans get health insurance through their employers, but almost all American employers hire other companies to provide the insurance. American human resource managers rarely have a voice in the selection of their company’s health insurance provider, but one of the most unpleasant aspects of their jobs is dealing with employee complaints about health insurance, because there is not much help that can be provided and because employees understandably tend to get very emotional when they feel that their own health or the health of their loved ones is being placed at risk by the callous indifference of the insurer. Comprehensive reform of health insurance in the United States will take effect next year. It is an extraordinarily complicated system that will have varying effects on American human resource managers depending on the size of the employer. Small businesses are given some incentives to continue their health insurance under health care reform, but they are given bigger incentives to drop it because the penalty for doing so is lower than the cost of providing insurance. Workers whose employers don’t offer health insurance will be free to purchase it from something called a health insurance exchange, where a variety of plans will be available for purchase. The plans on the exchange may be better and cheaper than the ones that were previously offered by the employer. Small American employers represent high risks to insurance carriers so they pay higher fees per employee. And once the company stops offering health insurance its HR staff will no longer have to deal with employee questions and complaints about it. Thus, health care reform should have a positive effect on employees of small businesses and also on their human resource managers. The impact on employees in large businesses will be much more unpleasant and interesting. Large businesses are more likely to maintain their health insurance because they pay a bigger penalty for dropping it and because they pay less per employee for having it as their size reduces the insurance company’s risk that a high percentage of subscribers will get sick. Ironically, the insurance companies call it “adverse selection” when customers use the insurance that they have paid for. But an overnight hospital stay is likely to become far more expensive due to health care reform. It will increase from a nominal fee to hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars, because the American government has imposed a 30% “Cadillac tax” on health insurance plans that transfer too little of the total costs to employees. The choice of the term “Cadillac” to describe this surcharge is a brilliantly perverse manipulation of discourse to make it seem as if a health insurance plan that makes it possible to spend a night in the hospital without going bankrupt is an unnecessary luxury. Health insurance plans that had been negotiated as part of a collective bargaining agreement would have been exempt from this tax. This would have been a tremendous boon to the labour movement because only union members could have gone to the hospital for a nominal fee. But this clause was stripped from the legislation, providing further evidence of the political weakness of American trade unions. Why does the American government want to make hospital stays so much more expensive? Because they believe that the American people act irresponsibly when it comes to staying healthy, specifically that they wait too long and let their medical problems get worse until hospitalization is required. By making it far more expensive to go to the hospital, the hope is that Americans will take steps to avoid having to go there. There are a lot of unhealthy things that Americans feel they should be free to do, from firing guns to riding motorcycles without helmets, and the government is taking few steps to discourage these activities. Instead, they have targeted all of their ire onto the obese, who are accused of making others pay for their indolence by driving up health care utilization and hence health insurance costs. This portends unhappy times for human resource
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managers at large American employers. Not only will they have to tell the employees that a night in a hospital is about to cost a lot more, they will also have to tell the obese employees that their health insurance is about to cost more. In another example of perverse discourse management, health care reform allows insurance carriers to offer big “discounts” to employees whose body mass index (BMI) scores are 30 or lower. This is the part that would have fascinated Foucault, because there are so many obvious parallels to his classic work Discipline and Punish. Playing the role of the Panopticon are hundreds of thousands of human resource managers who will be fanning out across large businesses in search of overweight employees to be charged higher health insurance premiums than their skinnier coworkers. Health care reform was bitterly opposed by the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional society with which about one quarter of American human resource managers are affiliated. Their arguments had nothing to do with its likely effects on the quality of work life for human resource managers. Instead they parroted the employer association messages, such as “companies should be able to choose whether or not to offer health insurance without government interference.” If the HR professional society truly advocated for the interests of its members, it would have lobbied for a Canadian-style single-payer system. Had that been the route chosen by the Obama administration, human resource managers could have directed all employee health care concerns to the government. Also, life expectancies would have risen and the percentage of GDP spent on health care would have declined. Instead, millions of new customers have been recruited for private insurance companies, some of whom will pay more for care that is less comprehensive than before, especially if they are overweight. And human resource managers will only experience more pleasant workdays thanks to health care reform if their employers stop offering health insurance.
Jo Cartwright Manchester Business School ‘Competitive Strategy, HRM and Emotional Labour’ Abstract Scholars maintains that service organisations pursuing the higher value segments of customer are more inclined to invest in high commitment work practices in order to benefit from improvements in the quality of service (Batt 2000, Boxall 2003, Boxall and Purcell, 2011). Lloyd (2005) presented her critique to the competitive strategy debate, with findings indicating no substantial differences in HR investment between premium and local authority run fitness clubs. The purpose of this study was to take a more critical approach and look at how competitive strategy, HRM and emotional labour compare and contrast in firms in the retail industry. A comparative case approach of four retailers was employed; two in the electrical industry and two in the clothing industry, each of which reflecting different competitive strategies. Semi-structured interviews were used to gain in-depth interpretations from both line managers and sales advisors. A total of 37 interviews were conducted. Tentative findings suggest limitations associated with the customer segmentation model. As a result, it was necessary to draw upon ‘other factors’ and the customer-worker interface in order to explain HR investment within the case study firms. This again raises the question of the relevance of strategic models of HRM in the service sector. Batt, R. 2000 Strategic segmentation in front line services: matching customers, employees and human resource systems. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 11(3): 540-561. Boxall, P. 2003 HR strategy and competitive advantage in the service sector. Human Resource Management Journal, 13(3): 5-20. Boxall, P. and Purcell, J. 2011 Strategy and Human Resource Management (3rd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lloyd, C. 2005 Competitive strategy and skills: working out the fit in the fitness industry. Human Resource Management Journal, 15(2): 15-34.
Peter Hamilton Durham University ‘The Rhetrickery of the John Lewis Constitution’ Abstract On a blog a mother writes that her 19 year old son, with a previous good record, has been dismissed by his employer for eating a piece of bread in the stockroom. On another, it is reported how after 25 years employment an employee was summarily dismissed for using a deodorant before he was able to pay for the item. Added to this are the dismissals of an employee for eating six grapes left in a supermarket trolley, two
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separate cases of dismissals due to Facebook postings which were deemed insulting by the company, and a victory for low paid cleaners who stopped proposed 50% cuts to jobs and hours. While we might consider these redolent of the contemporary experience which many workers face (Bolton and Houlihan 2009), they all occurred within the John Lewis Partnership, the UK retail organisation whose model of HRM has been widely lauded and celebrated.Although such actions might seriously undermine any notions it projects to be an employer which values dignity at work (Hodson 2001), praise for John Lewis has come from a variety of sources. For example, both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister on separate occasions during 2012 extolled the virtues of the ‘John Lewis model’: David Cameron exhorting it as a model for running a range of public services;; Nick Clegg contending it was illustrative of ‘responsible capitalism’. Indeed much commentary presents the John Lewis model as a win-win for company, employees and customers. For example, Guidi et al (2010) argue that its form of ownership maximises its value to society, while contrary to the incidents recounted above, John Lewis is also typically viewed as treating its workforce with dignity. For example, Dandy (1996) contends that its service quality is underpinned by the way in which it values and treats its staff, and provides them with a sense of responsibility: this in turn leading to customers being well treated. Similarly, Storey’s (2007: 71-72) illustration of the company as an example of a distinctive human strategy in action presents it as a model employer in relation to the pay, terms and conditions, and forms of employee engagement/voice. Such accounts of the company evince dignity in work, and dignity at work (Bolton 2007). The foundation for such depictions can be traced back to the celebrated actions of John Spedan Lewis, the son of the company’s founder, who established the John Lewis Trust in 1929, and who, it has been argued, had a deep concern for employees, suppliers, customers and community (Donkin 2010). Indeed the opening pages of the current edition of the John Lewis constitution lauds his “extraordinary vision and ideals” (2009: 3). The constitution itself is claimed to continue to embody his vision and ideals. In existence since 1928, the reasons for its existence according to the current Chairperson are twofold: first it historically, “defines what we [John Lewis] are” (p3);; second, it shows that their approach demonstrates, “that we are a better form of business” (p3). Although the current constitution is close to ten times shorter than the original 1928 version, all the constitutions have outlined inter alia the governance structure, as well as the rights and responsibilities attached to, for example, the Chairperson, managers and employees. While our context is obviously a commercial organization, the John Lewis constitution does in many respects resemble Bogdanor’s point that a written constitution, “provides a clear, accessible and coherent account of the body of fundamental rules and principles according to which the state and society are constituted and governed. In addition, it defines the powers of the institution of government and sets out the rights of individuals and their responsibilities” (2007: 499). Although it can be argued that the existence of such a document is testimony to the ‘John Lewis model’, and indicative of a high value being attached to rights and responsibilities, in this paper we argue that the written constitution is what Booth (2004) termed an instance of ‘rhetrickery’. While Booth, over a long and distinguished academic career, was convinced of the emancipatory possibilities of rhetoric, he was also fully cognizant to the existence and consequences of bad rhetoric. In this paper we argue that the John Lewis written constitution now falls into the scope of Booth’s sense of bad rhetoric or ‘rhetrickery’, illustrative as it is of, “shoddy, dishonest communicative arts producing misunderstanding – along with other harmful results.” (2004: 11). Such an argument might be seen to overlook the experience of John Lewis employees and their possible views of the company as a ‘good employer’. However, we argue that a document which is considered to have both established the organisational philosophy and guide behaviour within the company over the previous 85 years, has over the years simply become a banal endorsement of the neo-liberal agenda which has held sway for the last few decades. We argue and justify this through a comparative analysis of each version of the constitution up to the most recent version produced in 2009. Bogdanor, V., Khaitan, T. and Vogenauer, S. (2007) “Should Britain have a written constitution”, The Political Quarterly, 78(4), 499-517 Bolton, S.C. (2007) “Dignity In and At Work”, in Bolton S.C. (ed.) Dimensions of Dignity at Work, London, Butterworth-Heinemann Bolton, S.C. and Houlihan, M. (2009) “Work, Workplaces and Workers: The Contemporary Experience” in Bolton, S.C. and Houlihan, M. (eds.) Work Matters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Work, London, Palgrave Booth, W. (2004) The Rhetoric of Rhetoric, Oxford, Blackwell Dandy, J. (1996) “The ethical route to service quality at John Lewis Partnership”, Managing Service Quality, 6(5), 17-19 Donkin, R. (2010 The history of work, London, Palgrave Guidi, M., Hillier, J. and Tarbert, H. (2010) “Successfully reshaping the ownership relationship by reducing ‘moral debt’ and justly distributing residual claims: the cases from Scott Bader and John Lewis Partnership”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 21, 318-328 Hodson, R. (2001) Dignity at Work, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Storey, J. (2007) “What is Strategic HRM?”, in Storey, J. (ed., 3 rd edition) Human Resource Management: A
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Critical Text, London, Thompson
Tom Keenoy Cardiff Business School Engagement and the Workplace Zombie Apocalypse Abstract Following the effective collapse of the 'HRM-Performance' project (see Guest, 2011; Keenoy, 2009), HR consultants have been casting around for a new product. What has emerged is the construct of 'employee engagement'. This now popular construct was given considerable impetus with the publication of the MacLeod Report (MacLeod & Clarke, 2009) which endowed it with a measure of political legitimacy. 'Engagement' finds its academic origins in 'positive psychology', a US-inspired field which - according to Wikipedia - 'is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 [as]: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities.". Positive psychologists seek "to find and nurture genius and talent" and "to make normal life more fulfilling" '. While by no means all the work conducted on employee engagement echoes this 'feel-good' perspective, these origins play a significant role in how this construct has been translated into a highly desirable practical object by policy-makers and management consultants while HR professionals and academics have been somewhat more sanguine about the potential payoffs from improving employee engagement. Nevertheless, the idea of employee engagement now appears to be centre-stage as a 'solution' to the 'problem' of how to motivate employees in these troubled times. The question is: what are the implications of this notion for contemporary HR theory & practice? The immediate difficulty one is faced with in attempting to answer this question is that - apart from the emboldening clarion call that employees 'go the extra mile' - there is no widely accepted conception of what it refers to. Psychologists argue the relative merits of state engagement, behavioural engagement and trait engagement; and it remains unclear whether it is a property of the individual-work/task relationship or a property of the individual-organization relationship (or both). All are concerned to identify whatever it is as 'different' from what has come before. In order to unravel the various strands within this 'engagement narrative', the paper offers a discusive analysis of a variety of texts which have emerged to construct the notion of 'employee engagement'. Drawing lightly on actor-network theory and sensemaking, this involves a consideration of the 4 objects: the policy object(s); the consultancy object(s); the practitioners' object(s) and the academic object(s). In addition to offering an evaluation of each of these 'engagement objects', the paper draws some wider conclusions about the implications of the 'engagement narrative' for our understanding of HRM and the contemporary politics surrounding the regulation of the employment relationship. Footnote: 1 . I did not make this up. It comes from a web-site dedicated to collating popular remedies designed to 'enhance employee engagement'. References: Guest, D. E. (2011) Human resource management and performance: still searching for some answers, Human Resource Management Journal, 21, 1: 3–13 Keenoy. T. (2009) ‘Human Resource Management’, in Alvesson, M. Bridgman, T. and Willmott, H (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies, Oxford: OUP MacLeod, D. and Clarke, N. (2009) Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement. Office of Public Sector Information
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HRM & LABOUR RELATIONS: POLITICS, IDEOLOGY AND CONTEXT (2) Wednesday 10th July, 4.30 – 6.30pm D1
Mark Stuart Leeds University Business School and Miguel Martinez Lucio Manchester Business School ‘Voice, fairness and regulation: Ambivalence and the State in a Liberal Market Economy’ Abstract The question of voice is central to the concept of fairness, as it ensures that fairness agendas are shaped by employees and other stakeholders within organisations. However, voice and participation are subject to tensions that exist in relation to the way it is constructed. In the United Kingdom, irrespective of its liberal market features as a system of capitalism and lower levels of commitment to collective employment regulation, the fairness agenda in relation to work-life balance, equality and others aspects has developed and formed a critical feature of employment policy and rhetoric. As Howells (2007) has pointed out, the emphasis in the UK during the past two decades has been on the individual dimensions of rights and not the collective dimension. Yet the state has continued to propagate a market facing/micro level form of participation since the 1980s and consequently countered the collective with an individualist or management-facing dimension. The paper will examine the way the state has tried to therefore shape the nature of voice and fairness through legislation, policy processes and new forms of benchmark-learning (Stuart and Martinez Lucio, 2008). Using the approach developed by the authors (Martinez Lucio and Stuart 2011) - which focuses on networking and the development of new forms of knowledge sharing and collaboration, developing benchmarks and standards, and setting targets and objectives - the paper will look at how policies of voice focus on new forms of and mechanisms of participation. However, the cultural and capacity dimension related to them - whilst often approached through the prism of a fairness agenda for example - remain based on avoiding a commitment to effective, independent and sustainable collective worker participation which bring further ironies and tensions around new actors and politics within employment relations. Howell, C. (2007) Trade Unions and the State Princeton: Princeton University Press Miguel Martinez Lucio and Mark Stuart. "The State, Public Policy and HRM." International Journal of Human Resource Management 22, no. 18(2011) : 2661-2771 Stuart, Mark, and Martinez Lucio, Miguel. "The New Benchmarking and Advisory State: The Role of the British Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service in Facilitating Labour--Management Consultation in Public Sector Transformation." Journal of Industrial Relations 50, no. 5(2008): 736-751
Beverley Geesin ‘Between regulation and organisation: the creation of the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania’ Abstract This paper follows the formation of the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This case study highlights the need for collective action, the difficulties in organising and the complexities of worker’s rights within the post-industrial context. Issues of economic inequality are clear within an industry predominantly filled by immigrants who suffer from low pay and little job security. When the state took over regulation of the industry from the city, the regulatory body (the Philadelphia Parking Authority) began to micro-manage the taxi industry further exploiting the labour, degrading the profession and integrating the industry within broader programmes of urban renewal. When the mandatory use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) within the cabs was introduced, the drivers began a struggle with the Philadelphia Parking Authority which has continued for nearly ten years. This case study is a demonstration of the complexity of interests and motivations within the management of such an industry and within this particular context of the post-industrial city as the dispute involves the drivers, the owners, the regulatory body and both the city and state governments. Drivers, as predominantly recent
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immigrants, have struggled for recognition and support from both the public and traditional union organisations. They have struggled to be recognised as both part of the community and part of the labor movement. Meanwhile, in response to their opposition, the Philadelphia Parking Authority has threatened deportation and used the Patriot Act in their efforts at intimidating the drivers. This case study does not fit into traditional narratives around collective action and unions. It raises difficult issues around the effectiveness of collective action, the difficulties of unionising and challenges the role of traditional labour bodies. This paper argues that traditional understandings of labor struggles need to be reappraised in light of the changing nature of the working class, the changing nature of their work and the management of industries such as the taxicab industry. Research is drawn from interviews with Taxi Workers Alliance organisers over two years and the analysis of primary research in the form of court and government documents. The case study overall dates from the switch to a state controlled regulatory body in 2001 to the present. This case study contributes to this theme through its exploration of the effects of unions on both equality and justice; the role of unions as social institutions and the potential causes of union decline.
Shweta Argawal, Amit Gupta RK Gupta MDI India ‘Role of Institutions in Industrial relations in India’ Abstract Incidence of industrial strife and violence in Maruti India shook the entire Indian community. Such violent industrial conflicts are not new in India, though their incidence has dropped in the last decade. According to E.A Ramaswamy(1978), most violent industrial conflicts occur when democratic rights of workers are taken away. There are multiple forms of coercion faced by the Maruti workers in their everyday lives and spectacular moments of capital-‐labour conflict (Sen, 2012). Good Industrial relations does not mean absence of conflict, but rather management of conflict. Our objective of this paper is to find out why industrial conflicts persist in India? What leads to conflict or cooperation in India? How conflicts are resolved, if they are resolved at all? There is lot of research done in area of Industrial relations in India (see for example reference). However, the role of institutions in systemic nature of Industrial conflicts has not been examined. In this paper, we explore the role played by different institutions in industrial conflict. In particular, we analyze the role played by state, legal framework, family, and caste system in India. We did analysis primarily based on interviews and secondary sources. We propose recommendations at macro level and micro level. Ramaswamy, E.A (1978), Industrial relations in India : A sociological perspective, New Delhi , Macmillan Sen, Arup Kumar, On a Leash, then and now, Economic and Political weekly, Vol XLVII, no 51, Dec 22,201
Raymond Hogler, College of Business Colorado State University Herb Hunt, California Polytechnic University ‘Mechanisms of Inequality: culture, institutions, and wealth in the USA’ Abstract This paper examines major sources of income inequality in America. The argument is that cultural factors dictate the basic terms of the US political economy, and those factors are particularly manifested on a regional level through state governments. Differences in culture can be attributed to the geography and history of social systems created to sustain the practice of slavery, and since the time of the New Deal, race has permeated debates about redistributive policies. We focus on two institutional forces which help to explain the growing disparity of wealth in America. Organized labor from the 1950s to the mid-1970s provided the economic bargaining power for workers to obtain a greater share of output than at any time in industrial history. Complementing the effects of collective bargaining on labor markets, tax policies throughout the period remained progressive and redistributive. As the social accord began to unravel through the 1980s, unions lost economic and political influence, and taxation was recast as a transfer from hardworking and industrious Americans to the “welfare queens” during the Reagan era. The Bush tax cuts of the early 2000s and the great recession of 2008 fueled record deficits and led to political paralysis in Obama’s second term, which was characterized by implacable resistance to any form of revenue increases. As a result, there is little likelihood that trends in wealth distribution in the United States will alter course in the foreseeable future.
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HRM & LABOUR RELATIONS: POLITICS, IDEOLOGY AND CONTEXT (3) Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am D1
Sue Kinsey, Plymouth Business School & Virginia Fisher, Plymouth Business School Pursuing professional legitimacy through neo-liberal identification: the failed case of the HR function? Abstract Despite the attempts of ‘professional’ bodies, functionalist writers and author- practitioners to professionalise and legitimise the HR function through managerially aligned neo-liberal rhetoric, the ‘professional’ status and organisational legitimacy of the HR function remains perilous. The best endeavours of the CIPD and many HRM scholars to articulate the function as ‘strategic’, ‘business-partnering’, and ‘value-adding’ has not delivered on the organisational and professional aspirations of the function. Threats of outsourcing, devolution, rationalisation, degradation and withdrawal of status and resources continue to beleaguer and to hamper the professional ‘identity project’ of the HR function. The CIPD itself, which has for some years exhorted members of the function to ‘talk the language of the business’ in pursuit of ‘professional’ status, reports that despite the attempts to demonstrate the business-alignment of the function, there remains a considerable disconnect between line manager perceptions of the value and contribution of the function and those of HR practitioners (CIPD, 2013). The aim of this paper is to explore that ‘disconnect’, and to consider the competing discourses through which HR practitioners construct their identity. Using discourse analysis and grounded in a critical constructionist perspective, the paper draws on 47 interviews with HR practitioners in English local government to consider the discursive means by which those in the HR function construct and seek to legitimise their role and identity. The local authority environment offers a rich context in which to consider the legitimising capacities of managerialist and neo-liberal talk: the construction of the local authority HR identity and agenda might capitalise on the apparent discursive synergies between public sector ‘reform’ and human resource management. Yet these synergies remain at best loosely articulated by the research participants, at times tempered with alternative discourses, and frequently (discursively) resisted. The research explores the limits of neo-liberal rhetoric in the talk of HR practitioners and considers the alternative discursive strategies by which HR practitioners articulate their identity, role and organisational contribution. It concludes by suggesting that the alignment between HR and managerialist, unitarist agendas and concerns has failed to garner power and legitimacy for the function. It considers an alternative overarching narrative for HR practitioners in their pursuit of independent, professional credibility and status, which may always be at risk whilst the function and its members remain in thrall to the whims of management and the narrowly defined ‘business-serving’ and ‘added-value’ basis of the managerial agenda.
Andrew R Timming School of Management University of St Andrews ‘Employee silence and the authoritarian personality: a political psychology of workplace democracy’ Abstract Drawing from Adorno et al’s (1950) The Authoritarian Personality, this paper seeks to explain why some workers resist participation in decision-making on principle, preferring instead to defer to managerial authority. After reviewing the literatures on employee voice and silence, the paper argues that some employees have personality structures that make them more susceptible to anti-democratic thoughts. Potentially fascistic personalities, as measured by the F-scale, are expected to derive pleasure in submission to the will of management. The paper makes an original contribution to the employee silence literature by being among the first of its kind to examine the political psychology of fascism in the micro-context of the workplace.
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Steve Vincent Newcastle University Business School Reconnecting Capitalism: A Critical Realist Anatomy and Prognosis for HRM in Crisis’ Abstract Thompson (2003) argues that in Anglo-Saxon economies, such as the UK, the crisis in HRM stems from a disconnection between local employment structures (factories, offices, supermarkets, etc.) and incentive systems at higher levels of the political economy. These systems, which include valuable share-based rewards for business leaders, reify shareholder interest and, arguably, preclude the steady flow of resources that local HR managers need to make credible commitments to employees. Similarly, Godard (2004) observed that in Anglo-Saxon economies short-term financial considerations mean it is often easier for managers to use the fear of restructuring to increase worker effort than more costly and sophisticated approaches to HRM. He also asserts that the paybacks from “high commitment practices” (HCPs) may be lessened by the low-trust environments that short-term financial imperatives tend to create. These accounts highlight a need to theorise and explain the interconnections between different levels of the political economy of work, wherein various actors outside of workplaces have implications for HR outcomes within them. This paper starts to develop a contribution in this area by extending a critical realist analysis of the political economy of HRM. Arguably, when seeking to make connections between “higher-level” activities within the political economy and local HR outcomes critical realism has several advantages. These advantages stem from the conviction that reality is best conceived as stratified into a hierarchically organised system of entities that have independent causal powers (Bhaskar, 1978). Conceiving the world in this way allows researchers to explore and dissect how causal powers of entities at different levels and locations (individuals, teams, organisations, supply chains, trade unions, professional associations, governments, etc.) are interrelated in affecting particular outcomes. By accepting and adopting such a position, the conclusions of Thompson and Godard can be placed within a broader theoretical framework that recognises the independent roles of different institutional actors within political economy. Critical realism is useful, then, because it encourages the creation of explanations that connect levels to better demonstrate how and why outcomes differ across employment systems. Importantly, by comparing how different casual conditions result in different outcomes in different locations researchers can create a powerful position from which to explain the genesis of events and, in so doing, offer practical advice to policymakers and practitioners. For example, Muller (1999) observes that some HCPs (notably training, employee involvement and sharing the rewards of success) are encouraged by institutional actors within the German political economy because there are robust trade unions and state supports which cement the positive outcomes associated with these practices. When this insight is combined with other data about the relatively good performance of the German industrial sector, both before and throughout the crisis in Europe, it can be argued that institutional actors may play an important role in ensuring that, more locally, managers have to offer credible commitments to their workers. Whilst this is a simplified and abstracted view of reality, the example highlights the positive role that the government and other regulators can play in creating mechanisms that connect interests at different levels of the political economy in ways that increase collective goods. It is also apparent that connections between levels within the political economy are more palpable and apparent in some locations than others, with Anglo-Saxon economies noted for a privation of connections between capital and labour. This is not to deny that layers are interacting, even if palpable and apparent connections do not exist. After all, Thompson suggests it is disconnections between the interests of capital and the management of labour that explains the lack of HCPs more locally. In this regard, another advantage of critical realism is its commitment to accounting for the “deep”, hidden or less obvious causes of local patterns of events. The critical realist commitment to producing “deep” explanations develops from the recognition that causal powers do not have to be actualised or empirically manifest to have real effects (Bhaskar, 1978). Arguably, for Thompson and Godard short-term profit motives negate the potential of sophisticated approaches to HRM, and this happens regardless whether or not, more locally, well intentioned HR managers believe they can deliver on the promises of HCPs. A similar "deep" potential can be seen in regulators, such as government and trade unions. These institutions may act against the grimmest consequence of profiteering, thus preventing more punitive forms of employment practice occurring. Arguably however, in many instances they do not have to. Managers can be socialised into cultures that do not to seek to manage in ways that divergently transgress collectively held norms of decency. So, the regulators do not act because other (cultural) mechanisms have evolved which enable the production of (minimally) socially acceptable outcomes. Arguably, in this case, the level of cultural practices can prevent the need for activities by powerful actors at other levels, but this is not to deny the role of these powerful actors in creating the status quo: cultures are the way they are because people have learned to navigate the social formations they are part of. Given this insight, at least part of the explanation of the crisis
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of HRM, for Anglo-Saxon economies at least, is that the triggers that invoke the government and other regulators to build connections between the interests of capital and labour are relatively lacking. Indeed, the current Right-Wing Government is acting in the opposite direction, threatening to restrict the opportunities trade unions have to act against excessive exploitation. Furthermore, they are doing this as the economy stagnates despite employment growth. One relatively bleak and obvious conclusion we can draw from this is that "bad jobs" are both culturally and institutionally accepted in the UK, for the time being at least. As a result, the prospects for the widespread adoption of more sophisticated approaches to HRM remain very weak as the potential for developing “connective tissue” between the interests of capital and labour is sadly lacking. Bhaskar, R. (1978) A Realist Theory of Science [2nd ed.], Brighton: Harvester Press. Godard, J. (2004) ‘A critical assessment of the high-performance paradigm’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 42(2): 349–378. Godard, J. (2011) ‘What has happened to strikes’, British Journal of industrial Relations, 49(2): 282-305. Muller, M. (1999) ‘Human Resource Management under Institutional Constraints: The Case of Germany’, British Journal of Management, 10, S31–S44 Thompson, P. (2003) Disconnected Capitalism: Or why employers can't keep their side of the bargain, Work Employment and Society, 17(2): 359-378. Thompson, P. and Vincent, S. (2010) Labour Process Theory and Critical Realism in Thompson, P. and Smith, C. [Eds.] Working Life: Renewing Labour Process Analysis, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Tracy Wilcox Australian School of Business University of New South Wales, Australia ‘Sizing the Prize: HRM and Institutional Politics’ Abstract Human resource management departments differ from many other functional sub-units in organisations in that their perceived purpose, at least at one level, includes a putative responsibility for the well-being of employees, to “balance the needs of the firm with the needs, aspirations, and interests of the workforce and the values and standards society expects to be upheld at work” (Kochan, 2004, p. 133). In countries where a neoliberal agenda has been pursued through the market-based re-regulation of the employment relationship, the stripping back of traditional protective mechanisms, and the individualisation of employment arrangements, this responsibility for employee wellbeing has intensified. In spite of, or perhaps because of, this espoused responsibility, HRM can be seen as peripheral to the ‘real’ needs of the organisation;; as Guest (1990 p 392) put it some time ago, “management of human resources is the area in which executives realize they ought to be doing more and to which they promise to turn their attention the day after tomorrow.” As a “day after tomorrow” priority, the legitimacy of the HRM function faces ongoing challenges. Drawing on institutional theory and relational sociology, this paper provides a theorised empirical account of the political action of a group of human resource managers as they respond to their internal organisational context. It demonstrates how HR actors become aware of, and exercise, their potential for agency within a hostile inner context. These HR actors had to respond to a changing set of structural, cultural and micro-political conditions which included a major erosion of their relative influence in the face of major labour cost-cutting strategies initiated by their firm’s CEO. We consider their purposive appropriation of the institutional vocabulary of accounting and finance, as they seek legitimacy for their major strategic initiative. Institutional politics involves the purposive employment of institutional logics – those social-structural elements that act as “organising principles” influencing action (Friedland & Alford, 1991) – in a particular situation to resolve conflicts of interest and value (Stryker 2000, see also Clemens and Cook 1999). The degree to which any set of logics prevail will depend on the particular political, material and symbolic resources and relationships predominant at a particular place and time. Stryker (2000, p197) has suggested that logics can “shape the bases of cleavage and conflict” within organisations, but she does not elaborate on how this can happen. There remains a need to examine the processes through which taken-for-granted structural features (such as logics, interpretive schemes and associated norms) are challenged by alternative logics, interpretations or norms (Clemens and Cook 1999). In the case of HRM, practitioners face multiple tensions between the logics of market capitalism in its various forms, the logics of professional practice (if they consider themselves to be HR ‘professionals’), and the logics of state interpretations of the employment relationship. Increasingly, though, it is the logics of global (or more precisely, Anglo-American) capitalism – of “accumulation and the commodification of human activity” (Friedland and Alford 1991, p. 248) – that have come to dominate. The case study featured in this study derives from a larger research undertaking involving ethnographic fieldwork in the corporate HR department of a large global corporation. Empirical material was collected from interviews, participant observation, and archival research over a fourteen month period. During this time the CEO initiated
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two major downsizing exercises, accompanied by other strategies aimed at reducing labour costs, such as across-the-board changes to employee wages and conditions. The institutional logics of market capitalism and the cost-cutting logics of the industry were heavily employed in the CEO’s discourse. Together with a coalition of management consultants and sympathetic senior managers the CEO constructed a scenario of financial dire straits and over-expensive labour, in spite of the fact that relative to competitors, the company was performing well financially and operationally. The narrative account shows how, as the context experienced by the HR managers shifted, they became increasingly aware of their structural positioning and concerned about their ability to continue with their proposed programs, which they saw as part of their ‘professional’ responsibilities. The HR managers eventually became aware of the conflicts of the previous and emergent dominant logics in the firm, and the resulting threat to their own interests, values, and legitimacy. They ‘mobilised’ by forming a strategic alliance with the firms’ marketing department and engaging a well-known global accounting firm to develop a complex, financially-based model which tapped in to the ascendant logics and norms of the market. They produced a complex portfolio of ‘hard numbers’, integrating disparate HR and customer service initiatives and building a comprehensive case for them which came to be labelled ‘Sizing the Prize’. The ‘Sizing the Prize’ exercise, with its alliance-building, relational politics and purposive crafting of symbolic strategic artefacts (Whittington et al, 2006), constituted a pragmatic response to the changing logics experienced by the HR protagonists, a direct attempt at symbolic identification with market institutions. This paper addresses the conference theme by showing how the importance of considering the political dimensions of HRM action in organisations, particularly in actions in pursuit of legitimacy (cf. Brown, 1994). The study also supports Stryker’s (2000) suggestion that the emergence of alternative institutional logics brings the contested nature of such logics to light, eroding taken-for-grantedness (and legitimacy) but providing an arena for value- or interest-based conflict and hence political action. It also addresses Clegg’s (2010, p.9) call to “bring power and agency back in” to institutional analyses, by examining the purposive use of institutional politics by these HR managers in the face of an increasingly hostile and dynamic set of structural and cultural conditions. References: Brown, A. (1994). Politics, symbolic action and myth making in pursuit of legitimacy. Organization Studies, 15(6), 861-878. Clegg S. (2010). The State, Power and Agency: Missing in Action in Institutional Theory? Journal of Management Inquiry, 19(1), 4-13 Clemens E. & Cook J. (1999). Politics and Institutionalism. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 441-466 Friedland, R., & Alford, R. (1991). Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices and Institutional Contradictions. In Powell & Di Maggio (Eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, 232-266 Chicago: UCP. Stryker, R. (2000). Legitimacy Processes as Institutional Politics. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 17, 179-223. Whittington, R., Molloy E., Mayer M. & Smith A. (2006) Practises of Strategising/ Organising. Long Range Planning, 39, 615-62
HRM & LABOUR RELATIONS: POLITICS, IDEOLOGY AND CONTEXT (4) Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm D1
Anna Laura Hidegh Budapest Business School Sara Csillag Corvinus University of Budapest Gergely Kovats Corvinus University of Budapest ‘
To Be or not to Be an Ideologist? Teaching Organization Theory and Human Resource Management From a Critical Perspective’ Abstract After the start of the economic crisis in 2008, a heated debate commenced in economic and business journals about the responsibility of business schools and the role of business education. 2008 was the time when these concerns become widely published, but worrying about mainstream (positivist) business education had started much earlier in the business ethics community (Piper, Gentile & Parks 1993) and was also evident in the appearance of Critical Management Studies (CMS) in the 1990s which picked up the thread of the
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discourse started by the proponents of critical pedagogy (e.g. Freire 1982). A new field of science called Critical Management Education (CME) (Contu 2009) emerged, which raises issues about how mainstream management education conceals the ideological nature of “value-free” managerial techniques and how the lack of reflexivity and sensitivity inculcated in students results in an instrumental way of thinking, leading to a managerial mindset which is the cause of the current economic and social crises (Ghoshal 2005). This criticism does not apply only to the content of educational programs, but also to approaches to teaching. CME wishes to challenge the dominance of positivist business education by making students aware of the social embeddedness of management, by reducing the power asymmetries of the teacher-student relationship and by striving for the emancipation and transformation of students. In two courses (among others) on the Master’s Programme in Management and Leadership (being held in the Corvinus University of Budapest) teachers are striving to define an educational space in which these goals can be fulfilled; namely on the Organisation Theory and Alternative Approaches to Human Resource Management courses. By choosing these two courses to describe we aim to illustrate the possibilities for critical pedagogy, and not just as regards abstract, theoretical perspectives, but also in more practice-oriented education. In this paper we present: (1) a theoretical introduction into the narrow and broader meaning of ‘the responsibility of business education’ and into CME – in which we emphasize the distinctive features and educational goals from mainstream business education; (2) a short overview of the general Hungarian context and the characteristics of participants of the programs. Following this; (3) we provide two examples of the practical implications of the principle of critical pedagogy: Organization Theory and (4) Alternative Approaches to Human Resource Management. Finally; (5) we discuss a few of the dilemmas we encountered in our teaching practice. The majority of our dilemmas are concerned with the (non-) ideological way of teaching: do we really manage to create a power-free, democratic climate for our course? Do we manage to challenge old ideas; to emancipate students? Is this possible at all in a traditional university environment, featured by hierarchical teacher-student relationships? Do students really experience emancipation? Or do they just understand our efforts at emancipation as being another type of course requirement, and try to perform the expected behaviour (being emancipated)? In the case of a ‘yes’ to the last question, our attempts become only a kind of “alternative ideology”. Students frequently ask us about the ‘right’ answer, the truth, or the best way to solve certain problems. Although we emphasize that our answer is only one answer of many answers, sometimes it seems that our ‘ideology’ just replaces the old ideology (at least for a while). Thus we believe that the greatest challenge for a critical pedagogue working at a traditional university is to avoid creating an alternative, but similarly monopolistic ideology to the one which is being criticized. On the other hand we think that offering alternatives to mainstream ideologies is valuable – even if alternative ideologies are also monopolistic in nature – because pluralism itself encourages students to question ossified structures, power relations and institutions.
Anna Laura Hidegh Budapest Business School ‘HRM as Colonizing Power: The Habermasian Analysis of Human Resource Management’ Abstract In this paper, I would like to present the Habermasian analysis of soft HRM, building upon the theory of communicative action. My main argument is that HRM operates as a colonizing power (about management as a colonizing power see Alvesson and Willmott 1996) by interfering into the reproduction process of the lifeworld at the workplace. First, the subject of the critique needs to be clarified, namely, what is meant by soft HRM. The soft model regards the employee as a valued asset, who is capable of shaping the company's value creation processes in a proactive manner, and is hence a potential source of competitive advantage through commitment, adaptability and performance. The model, in line with the principles of developmental humanism, attaches importance to investing into the employee as a key factor of value creation. It incorporates the following policies: competence-based recruitment and selection, the extended use of communication channels, teamwork, personnel development, knowledge management, involvement in decision making and empowerment, creating a link between performance evaluation and the compensation scheme, etc. (Legge 2005; Legge 2006) Second, a short introduction is provided into the theory of communicative action. Habermas (1981) argues that society has to be considered as the unity of system and lifeworld. The former is responsible for coordination through instrumental rationality which includes economic, political and administrative processes.
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The latter incorporates cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization which are achieved through communicative action. His main thesis is that in modern societies the system colonizes the lifeworld causing pathologies in the latter’s reproduction processes. (Habermas 1981) Third, the paper turns to its main focus: the critical analysis of soft HRM. Willmott (1993) identified two major avenues for critical corporate culture research, which, I believe, can be extended to the entire field of critical HRM research, and which I will use as a guide in the Habermasian analysis of HRM. Willmott's first major dimension is the analysis of the historical conditions of the organizational phenomenon in question – in this case of the soft model of HRM. I will scrutinize the conditions of emergence and the history of HRM in order to uncover its role in operating the capitalist system and in correcting its crisis tendencies (see Habermas 1994). I argue that, instead of actually working to reconcile different interests, HRM rather acts to keep existing conflicts of interest latent. HRM as a science and a practical profession has to face the very basic contradiction of capitalism that even though labour power is a commodity that is key to maintaining the production order that serves the interests of the dominant groups, the employee as an autonomous being is, at the same time, also inclined to oppose these interests and refuse to cooperate (Legge 2005). Relying upon the historical reports on HRM (Kaufman 2008; Guest 1990; Legge 2005), I put forward the theoretical proposition that the development of HRM is a reaction to the crisis tendencies of capitalism. Primarily, it offers a solution for the motivation crisis threatening to disrupt work organizations' performance, yet it has been active in restoring the social legitimation of corporations, as well (the corporate social responsibility movement has a more significant role in the latter). As Alvesson and Willmott (1996, 106) noted: „Current talk of business ethics and the strengthening of corporate culture to facilitate empowerment, trust and teamwork can be seen as a – largely synthetic – system response to its own corrosive effects upon lifeworld values and practices.” The other major dimension of critical investigation is concerned with the contents and the practical applications of the organizational phenomenon; Willmott (1993) also defined two subgoals here. One of the subgoals is to illuminate and assess the concerned theory from a critical perspective, which I intend to accomplish also in this paper. I am looking into how HRM practices – at least as far as their theoretical objectives are concerned – interfere into the reproduction of the symbolic structures of the lifeworld. (The other subgoal is to empirically examine the real-world applications of the concerned phenomenon which won’t be addressed in this paper.) Habermas, believes that "organizations gain autonomy through a neutralizing demarcation from the symbolic structures of the lifeworld; they become peculiarly indifferent to culture, society, and personality." (Habermas 1981, 403) Thus in organizations, systemic coordination is dominant, the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld is secondary, in fact, it happens outside the walls of the company. This paper is concerned with the realization that ever since the importance of the "human factor" was recognized, corporations have been anything but indifferent towards the symbolic structures of the lifeworld. What is more, it was exactly the exploration and the shaping of organizational culture, human relations and personalities – that is, the symbolic structures of the lifeworld – that soft HRM practices set out to accomplish. Even though Habermas treated the organization as a black box, and was not concerned with any potential tensions emerging at the interface of system and lifeworld within the organization, the theoretical framework he developed is still well-suited for the analysis of the reproduction processes of the organizational lifeworld (see O’Donnell 1999;; O’Donnell and Henriksen 2002;; O’Donnell 2004;; O’Donnell 2007). HR practices generate processes in the organization that resemble the reproduction processes of the lifeworld, and make them appear as undistorted communicative action. These processes take over the reproductive functions of communicative action, but they do so in behalf of the system's interests, thus it is reproduction itself that comes to bear a functional value: the various forms of purposive-rational action are draped in the guise of communicative action, and hence what is 'given' appears as 'possible', a 'compromise' appears as a 'consensus', and 'necessity' as 'freedom'. In other words: the function of HRM is to provide a soft and calm ideology in order to hide the structural violence caused by colonization. References Alvesson, Mats, and Hugh Willmott. 1996. Making Sense of Management: A Critical Introduction. Sage Publications Ltd. Guest, David E. 1990. „Human Resource Management and the American Dream”. Journal of Management Studies 27 (4): 378–379. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. A kommunikatív cselekvés elmélete. (The Theory of Communicative Action) Budapest: Gondolat. ———. 1994. „Válságtendenciák a kései kapitalizmusban”. (Crises Tendencies in Late Capitalism) In , szerk Gábor Felkai, 59–140. Jürgen Habermas: Válogatott tanulmányok. Budapest: Atlantisz Könyvkiadó. Kaufman, Bruce E. 2008. „The Development of HRM in Historical and International Perspective”. In Peter Boxall, John Purcell, and Patrick Wright (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management:19– 47. Oxford University Press.
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Legge, Karen. 2005. Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities. Vol Anniversary Edition. Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2006. „Human Resource Management”. In Stephen Ackroyd, Rosemary Batt, Paul Thompson, and Pamela S. Tolbert (eds), 220–241. The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization. Oxford University Press. O’Donnell, David. 1999. „Habermas, Critical Theory and Selves-Directed Learning”. Journal of European Industrial Training 23 (4-5): 251–61. ———. 2004. „Theory and Method on Intellectual Capital Creation Addressing Communicative Action Through Relative Methodics”. Journal of Intellectual Capital 5 (2): 294–311. ———. 2007. „On Critical Theory in a Truth-Less World”. Advances in Developing Human Resources 9 (1): 111–119. O’Donnell, David, and L. Bo Henriksen. 2002. „Philosophical Foundations for a Critical Evaluation of the Social Impact of ICT”. Journal of Information Technology 17 (2): 89–99. Willmott, Hugh. 1993. „Strength is Ignorance;; Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations”. Journal of Management Studies 30 (4): 515–552.
Yanick Kemayou, University of Paderborn - Faculty of Business Administration and Economics ‘Socioeconomic background as a new category in management research’ Abstract Nobel-Prize laureate Paul Krugman recently wrote in one of his columns for the New York Times that “what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess (...) were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people”. The quote points out that the origin of the recent economic and social problems in the industrialized countries is related to the concentration of societal decision-making power within the hands of a small minority. This macro level statement would amount at the meso level – the organization – to a support for the upper echelon theory according to which organizations can be seen as reflection of the values, attitudes and cognitions of actors at the top level of the organization. This concentration of decision-making power in the hands of a few deserves even more attention if we consider the so called self-reproduction of the elite – the idea that command posts are more or less inherited within the top social rank or class. Different studies, partly nourished by the works of Bourdieu on social reproduction, show extensive empirical support for the self-reproduction of the corporate elite in countries such as France, Germany and the UK. The main goal of this research project is to cast a light on processes through which the socioeconomic background of those at the command posts of the economic sector could affect the interplays between business and society. Although there are different paths through which the socioeconomic background can affect both HRM and organizational outcomes, in the present work I theorize that the dynamics of both socioeconomic background and status could affect organizations and their policies through three different mechanisms respectively involving the risk attitudes, the sense of control and the justice perceptions of command posts holders. Unlike the previous conceptualizations, command posts include in this research not only positions with high level of power in governmental agencies or regulatory bodies, but also those in the private sector. Discussing earlier theorists such as Max Weber and neglected works on social class can help us to better grasp “HRM as an outcome of distinct interests and narratives”, as stated in the call for papers of the stream 34 of this year’s CMS conference. Whereas some studies already discuss the effects of socioeconomic status in organizational contexts, the impact of socioeconomic background is still mostly ignored although recent works show the potential of this line of research. More efforts should therefore be dedicated to the question, even if it might lead us to discuss about social classes in presumed class-free societies. Reference: Krugman, P. The Unwisdom of Elites; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1, 2011, May 9.
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STREAM 31: DOCTORAL STREAM: ‘EXTENDING THE LIMITS’ OF PARASITICAL POLITICS Stuart Angus
DOCTORAL STREAM: ‘EXTENDING THE LIMITS’ OF PARASITICAL POLITICS SESSION ONE Thursday 11th July, 8.30 – 10.30am D6
Stuart Angus Moving Towards Extending/Transcending the Limits of Parasitical Politics Abstract Levinas (1969, 1991) has begun to be receive some attention in management and organisational studies (Roberts, 2001, 2003; Jones, 2003; Muhr, 2008, 2010). It is usual to associate Levinas with the ethical, and while Levinas has been worked with in relation to problems in business and management ethics (Beven & Covellec, 2007; Desmond, 2007; Forshorp, 2007), Levinas has also been mobilised to consider both the representational practises of management and organisational studies (Rhodes, 2009; Rhodes & Westwood, 2007), and also the problem of the ethico-political (Aasalnd, 2007; Byers & Rhodes, 2007; Soares. 2007). This exploratory paper is explicitly concerned with the relationship between ethics and politics in Levinas’s work, and attempts to move towards the proposition that, ‘learning from’ Levinas (Biesta, 2003), we might call into question the limits of what I describe heuristically here as CMS’s ‘parasitical politics’. I draw on ‘privileged’ examples of management and organisational studies that posit that CMS may be viewed as ‘particularly well placed’ (Parker, 2004), owing to its ‘strategic location’ (Grey, 2005) in business and management schools that ‘host’ its critical politics, to challenge the status quo of mainstream management studies. Since CMS appears to a significant extent to ‘live off’ its host (the mainstream), in these exemplary texts, I contend that it is possible to consider CMS heuristically as a ‘parasitical’ movement ‘vital’ to challenging the ‘sclerosis’ (Parker, 2004) of the status quo. Despite my identification with the motivations informing this movement, drawing on receptions to and treatments of Levinas in existing literature that ‘host’ (Karamali, 2007) his work in management and organisational studies, I nevertheless argue that there is a risk that we might problematically merely ‘live off’ his work – rather than ‘live from’ Levinas and be inspired by the ‘surprising’ Desire to ‘learn from’ the affects exposure to otherness can inspire – having read Levinas (Biesta, 2003). I work through the idea that scholars ‘live off’ Levinas’s work to propose that existing literature risks reducing Levinas to its parasitical political commitments which are (according to Zald, 2002) ‘gravitated’ around against management standpoints. Working with the idea of para-‘site’-cal politics, I focus on Levinas’s (1969) distinction between the idea of a ‘site’ (which I relate to the the idea of the para-site) from a ‘home’. I argue that he describes how the self ‘at home with itself’ must ‘learn’ ‘to give’ (1969) as a ‘hostage’ (1991) to the demands of otherness that resists and even ‘can’ transcend the parasitical politics of taking possession of difference (where the status quo is differentiated from the critical us) from a ‘strategic location’ that is ‘particularly well placed’ to challenge and take possession of the status quo for its ‘situ-ated’ parasitical ends. Building on this argument, this paper seeks to establish an unsettled basis for these contentions, and to open up the question of what a Levinasian inspired ethico-political approach to research might involve in relation to the challenge of extending/transcending the limits of parasitical politics with regards to the status quo. The question of the demands that ‘face’ the researcher inspired by Levinas is worked on in order to contend that future research is needed to consider how a Levinasian ethics/politics might affect our reflexivity, and representations of Levinas’s work and otherness beyond the ‘essence’ of a ‘parasitical politics’ in order to suggest that ‘critique’ (in the Levinasian sesnse) ‘can’ (1969) potentially, interrupted by exposure to the
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otherness of management, ‘give to’ management despite identification with against management standpoints.
Daniel Torchia Bringing Football Back to the Fans: The Challenging Case of Fc United Abstract Fan ownership is a quite recent phenomenon in the UK which is expanding and creating more or less solid realities in the football leagues. Most of these clubs are established as community interest companies, rather than for- profit businesses, and are part of the Third Sector. However, a fan-owned football club shares most of the characteristics of other alternative forms of organisations/third sector companies, but operates in a competitive system of leagues which adds several pressures and challenges. Parker (2002) would define them as utopian organisations, leaving room to interpret the word “utopia”: either as something to strive to achieve, to escape from an undesired world; or with a negative connotation, as something which will never be achieved and can only be dreamed of. The vision of a better future seems to be common denominator for the formation of third sector organisations (Hull, 2011), and football clubs are no exceptions. The studies on alternative forms of organisations have not yet touched fan owned football clubs, which have been mainly analysed within the sociology of sport. Critical Management Studies (CMS), as Hull (2011) states, offers an almost natural fit to many third sector organisations, due to the political principles they are often based on. Fan owned football clubs instead have to deal with a larger set of challenges, given the competitive nature of the leagues. CMS can offer a solid ground to bridge the gap between a community interest company, aimed at benefiting its members, and competition in leagues where the opponents are privately owned clubs. But is it possible to have both? In other words: is the utopia possible? How are those issues managed? How sustainable is a business model that starts from principle of cooperation and social inclusion but has to deal constantly in an environment where it is one of a kind? Are these clubs just parasites living off the big clubs, ready to become a smaller scale version of them if an opportunity arises? Fournier (2002) envisaged a solution for alternative forms of organisations to pursue their aims of social development and liberation of the individual from oppression: remaining as small and local as possible to maximise their effectiveness, and create strong links across the different companies. This would partly explain the creation of entities like Supporters Direct, but also fails to capture the competitive status of football, where success on the pitch is to be pursued at all levels. At what cost though? This is proof that in management studies and even more in CMS, we cannot adopt a “one size fits all” model of management, given its contingency to the socio-political conditions which led to the development of fan-ownership. This tricky dualism between social development and restless competition deserves theoretical attention and development. This paper brings together literature on the sociology of sport, especially around fandom and fans resistance, and elements of CMS literature around alternative forms of organisation. The empirical work conducted takes place at FC United of Manchester, a fan owned football club born out of years of political struggle between fan groups and the way modern Premier League football is set up, and the way in particular Manchester United is run. FC United was formed in 2005 and run as a non-profit cooperative with a democratic membership system. The fieldwork consists on an ethnographic project that will carry on until the first months of 2014. It led the researcher to volunteer for the club, accepting the role of community manager’s assistant. During the first months at the club he has been an involved in the community projects FC United run in schools and other sites, to write for the match day programme, to follow almost every game home and away, and to attend social events and members meeting. The ethnographic work is complemented with interviews with board members and volunteers to grasp how the organisation is led and what are the daily challenges in sustaining and promoting an alternative business model. When football is placed within a wider socio-political context, rather than merely a focus on what happens on the pitch, growth and expansion assume different meanings. Ethnography can be a way to bridge such gaps and achieve a sound understanding of the organisation as a whole. References Hull, R. (2011) The Third Sector, Dialogues in Critical Management Studies, Vol.1 Parker, M. (2002) Utopia and Organization, Oxford: Blackwell
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Gregory Allen A Postcolonial Approach to Cross Cultural Management: The Representation of Poles by UK Expatriate Managers Abstract The overall aim of the research is to assess the suitability of Postcolonial Theory (PCT) in understanding the representation of Polish subordinates by their UK expatriate managers. A brief literature review critically evaluates the predominant CCM approach in order to illustrate the benefit of a new framework before positioning this study within contemporary, relevant postcolonial literature. The discourse of UK expatriate managers in Poland is then analysed through a sample of data gathered in a series of semi-structured interviews in order to assess the suitability of a PCT framework for continuing research. The end of Soviet communism in the Eastern Bloc can be viewed as having led those countries, Poland included, from one neocolonial system to another. Echoing Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ hypothesis (1992), Young argues that capitalist economic imperialism has become the new form of postcolonial domination in which " de facto there is now only a single world economic system, and almost all states have been obliged to make some structural adjustment towards it" (p. 60). The end of the era of Soviet dominance and the emergence of Poland as a free-market economy has had an impact on its perception by those in the West. The Western development and marketing discourse of the early 1990’s refers to the "challenges" and "expanding opportunities" the region offered for "policymakers, scholars and global investors" (Bartolovich and Lazarus, 2002, p.6). PCT has only very recently been utilised by international management and cross cultural management researchers. “Management and organization studies in general and international management and business studies in particular, have virtually ignored PCT and its areas of engagement. With a few very notable exceptions, this state of affairs also holds for critical management studies, a domain where one might have expected a better intellectual reception of studies of post-colonialism” (Westwood and Jack, 2007, p.247). Recent PCT research (Śliwa , 2008;; Thompson, 1999;; Račevskis, 2006;; Chapman, et. al., 2008) points to a growing perception that Poland, together with other Central and Eastern European countries, can be viewed as postcolonial in their interactions with the West. By focusing on the "continuation of direct Western colonialism without the traditional mechanism of expanding frontiers and territorial control, but with elements of political, economic and cultural control” (Banarjee and Prasad, 2008, p. 91), PCT has become a tool with utility beyond the traditional, historical definition of colonialism. This paper evaluates the suitability of PCT in a CCM study of Poland. Rather than a traditional CCM approach involving the cataloguing of perceived differences however, the focus will be on discourse and representation. Specifically, the aim is to explore the representation of Poles by Western expatriate managers. It is, however, very much based on the shortcomings of and over-reliance on the established positivistic approach to CCM within the Business and Management literature. References: BARTOLOVICH, C. and LAZARUS, N. 2002. , Marxism, modernity and postcolonial studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BANERJEE, S. and PRASAD, A., 2008. Critical reflections on management and organizations: a postcolonial perspective. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 4(90),. CHAPMAN, M., GAJEWSKA - DE MATTOS, H., CLEGG, J. and JENNINGS BUCKLEY, P., 2008. Close neighbours and distant friends - perceptions of cultural distance. International Business Review, 17, pp. 217234; 217. FUKUYAMA, F., 2006. The end of history and the last man. New edn. New York, N.Y. ; London: Free Press. RACEVSKIS, K., 2006. Baltic postcolonialism. Amsterdam: New York, NY : Rodopi. SLIWA, M., 2008. Understanding social change through post-colonial theory: Reflections on linguistic imperialism and language spread in Poland. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 4(14),. THOMPSON, E.M., 2000. Trubadurzy imperium : literatura rosyjska i kolonializm. Krako\0301w: Universitas.
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WESTWOOD, R. and JACK, G., 2007. Manifesto for a post-colonial international business and management studies. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 3(19),. YOUNG, R., 2001. Postcolonialism : an historical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
DOCTORAL STREAM: ‘EXTENDING THE LIMITS’ OF PARASITICAL POLITICS SESSION TWO Thursday 11th July, 1.15 – 3.15pm D6
Blandine Emilien An ongoing critical exploration of challenges posed by changing work and employment institutions in Mauritius Abstract The dominant influence of neoliberal capitalism has not spared the island nation of Mauritius. Extolled as a resilient economy that has remained buoyant on the waves of contemporary globalisation, Mauritius attributes its economic success to its government’s pro- international business agenda. Two major factors have contributed extensively to its so-called success. First, Mauritius has demonstrated historical efforts to attract foreign investment after it was decolonised in 1968. Second, its strategic geographical position in the global south has attracted foreign investors and has served the economy well. In the past decade, Mauritius’s latest initiative has consisted in the setting up of a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector. The sector was designed to minimise unemployment by absorbing its cheap, young and bilingual workforce. In order to cater for foreign employers’ expectations, several institutions have been weakened and deregulated. For instance, the employment legal framework has been adjusted to contemporary working trends. As a critical researcher, I have endeavoured to extend my exploration further. In my thesis, I seek to flesh out some of the major social challenges which remain hidden under such resilience and are taken for granted. My interest in the contemporary shape of work has led me to investigate the BPO sector, a pertinent epitome of the phenomenon. In a qualitative approach, I have interviewed Mauritian workers and their employers from two BPO companies. A group of local experts namely trade unionists, educationists and government officers have also informed my study by sharing their opinions about the BPO phenomenon in relation to changing work institutions. Per my analysis to date, the following main themes are starting to emerge. BPO workers and employers are confronted with cross-cultural tensions, workers are frustrated due to unprovided skill development opportunities while employers deplore their Mauritian workers’ lack of ‘professionalism’. In such a process akin to neo-colonisation, socio cultural implications are manifold. The thesis calls into question the government’s lack of anticipation in its economic diversification enterprise. While deregulation was ensured, insufficient attention was devoted to more socio-cultural aspects. In congruence with issues raised about skill development, I intend to highlight the challenges posed to relevant insitutions such as Mauritian education and training systems. I therefore explore the impact of contemporary work and production configurations on Mauritian work and education institutions and as a result, on the Mauritian society. The paper will summarise the literature review that led to my research questions and will present my field work as undertaken in summer 2012. Finally, the paper will present outcomes that will have emerged at this particular stage of my PhD in order to open discussion.
Elmi Keshtiban, Amir Leadership and leaderlessness in leaderless groups Abstract It has been argued that leadership is one of the most contested topics in management studies field, that there is no any agreement even upon its definition and consequently its theories (Yukl, 2010). As Fiedler (1996) argues, ‘there has been much moaning and groaning in the past that we didn’t know anything worthwhile about leadership, that leadership theories and research lacked focus and were chaotic, and some writers asked even
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whether there is such a thing as leadership’ (Fiedler, 1996: 241). This is why Burns (1978: 2) has argued that ‘leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth’. Despite all debates around leadership research and whether or not they can cover leadership phenomenon, recent movements which have been changed political geographic of the Middle East - Arab Spring - and Occupy Wall Street movement and other Occupy movements around the world which illustrates people’s power on protesting against capitalism, are movements without leader(s) unlike the other social movements. As a result, the objective of this study will be investigating these kinds of movement to find out the role of leadership - if there is such a role – and nature of these types of group (leaderless groups). The rationale for the study is based on the argument that ‘The term ‘leadership’ and ‘social movements’ are inseparably interconnected’ (Barker et al., 2001: 5). So there is an ambiguity about recent movements with no leader(s) and theories of social movements which argues about interconnectedness of leadership and social movements. Therefore, investigating these leaderless groups may shed a light not only to these kinds of groups but also to the leadership research field as well. To do so, I will use recent theories about leadership which are related to relational approach (Uhl-Bien, 2006), new ontology of leadership (DAC) (Drath et al., 2008), leadership as a language game (Kelly, 2008), and more decisively, doing empirical study of leadership based upon process ontology (Wood and Ladkin, 2008), which focuses on leadership practices as constructed in interactions embedded in a cultural context where societal notions of ‘leadership’ are both taken for granted and under re-construction (Crevani et al., 2010). The reason that I use process philosophy and especially studying leadership as process is because by adopting process philosophy, we are changing our modes of abstraction (Whitehead, 1925) or style of thinking (Chia, 1995) rather than ignoring them. Process philosophy claims that in order to understand the world there is a need to investigate taken for granted concepts and free ourselves from abstracted realities. Members of Occupy movement in London constitute the sample of study who will be interviewed in order to get their stories about Occupy movement. Moreover, exemplars from media both pro and against Occupy movement will be used in order to answer the research questions. In terms of analysing the data, critical discourse analysis will be used as a method for analysing the extracted data which has been used before to investigate process by Koivunen (2007). Moreover, the material of secondary data analysis also be evaluated by using discourse analysis, or as what Fairclough (1995) calls it, ‘discourse representation in media discourse’(Fairclough, 1995: 27). By completing this research question, the role of leadership in leaderless groups will be clarify which will help to understand leadership better and clarify its position in recent events which constitute of ambiguity and contradiction in these kind of movements. References BARKER, C., JOHNSON, A. & LAVALETTE, M. 2001. Leadership matters: An introduction. Leadership and social movements, 1-23. BURNS, J. M. 1978. Leadership New York. Harper and Row. leadership & ManageMent, 1, 22. CHIA, R. 1995. From modern to postmodern organizational analysis. Organization Studies, 16, 579-604. CREVANI, L., LINDGREN, M. & PACKENDORFF, J. 2010. Leadership, not leaders: On the study of leadership as practices and interactions. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 26, 77-86. DRATH, W. H., MCCAULEY, C. D., PALUS, C. J., VAN VELSOR, E., O'CONNOR, P. M. G. & MCGUIRE, J. B. 2008. Direction, alignment, commitment: Toward a more integrative ontology of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 19, 635-653. FAIRCLOUGH, N. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, Pearson College Division. FIEDLER, F. E. 1996. Research on leadership selection and training: One view of the future. Administrative Science Quarterly, 241-250. KELLY, S. 2008. Leadership: A categorical mistake? Human relations, 61, 763. KOIVUNEN, N. 2007. The processual nature of leadership discourses. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 23, 285-305. UHL-BIEN, M. 2006. Relational leadership theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing. The Leadership Quarterly, 17, 654-676. WHITEHEAD, A. N. 1925. Science and the modern world: Lowell lectures, 1925. WOOD, M. & LADKIN, D. 2008. The event's the thing: brief encounters with the leaderful moment. YUKL, G. 2010. Leadership in Organizations Global Edition. Pearson: New Jersey.
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Helen Mortimore The reduction of equality and diversity to the complaints-based model in the UK employment context Abstract The purpose of this conceptual paper is to highlight the reduction of equality and diversity to the individualistic, complaints-based employment tribunal model in the UK work context. Acker (2012: 221) argues that the current ‘politics of crisis’ in the US do not take inequality seriously. In overlooking the importance of equality, current US politics contrast with the active, expedient and systematic approach of the Coalition government in the UK to reducing equality structures. This paper aims to contribute to a critical debate of neo-liberal capitalism’s role in furthering a meritocratic agenda that is ideologically hostile to equality and misappropriates the diversity paradigm, and to draw attention to the role of HRM at the enactment-level of this process. The Coalition is maximizing the context of austerity to deconstruct equalities structures, capitalizing on a discourse that casts equality as ‘a site of conflict and resistance’ (Fredman, 2012: 408). Equality and diversity practices such as the Public Sector Equality Duty have become analogous with bureaucracy, thus easing the Coalition's agenda for their revision. The existing literature perceives that managers ‘confuse’ the business case for diversity with the need to avoid individual claims to employment tribunals (Greene and Kirton, 2011: 29). Rather than being ‘confused’, this viewpoint reflects the systematic reduction of equality and diversity to the individualistic, complaints-based tribunal model. Rather than engendering positive institutional change, our tribunal system is counter-productive in that it generates a short-term, negative and defensive approach to change (Hepple, 2011:316). The tribunal process focuses on the negotiation of financial compensation rather than a remedy to the alleged discriminatory practice (Fredman 2012: 408; Busby and McDermont, 2012: 182; Moore et al, 2011: 462; Dickens, 2007). In this process, operational human resource practitioners are usually tasked with the brokering of a discreet settlement; as such the alleged discrimination and potential penalties have limited meso- or macro-level visibility. Tasking HR practitioners with the resolution of individual equality cases further ‘relegates’ equality and diversity, as HR is a marginalised, maligned function, still preoccupied with establishing its legitimacy. The voice of HR practitioners is largely absent from the literature; my forthcoming research aims to identify how HR practitioners discursively construct their role in ‘managing’ cases relating to equality regulation and to what degree practitioners agree with or reject the neo-liberal discourses of regulation as a ‘burden’ and discrimination claims as ‘vexatious’. Mainstream HRM and the teaching of HRM in UK business schools perpetuate a managerialist, ‘consensus’ approach (Keegan and Boselie, 2006) which leads to a conspicuous lack of critical voice and an ineffectual professional identity. This paper contributes to the theme of extending the limits of what it is legitimate to argue in business schools in encouraging reconstructive, critical reflexivity (Janssens and Steyaert, 2009) among HR practitioners and the academics who teach them, with the purpose of disrupting the neo-liberal misappropriation of the diversity paradigm. Word count: 487 words References Acker, J (2012) ‘Gendered organizations and intersectionality: problems and possibilities’, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 31:3, 214-224 Busby, N and McDermont, M (2012) ‘Workers, Marginalised Voiced and the Employment Tribunal System: Some Preliminary Findings’, Industrial Law Society, 41:2, pp. 166-182 Dickens, L (2007) 'The Road is Long: Thirty Years of Equality Legislation in Britain', British Journal of Industrial Relations, 45:3 pp. 463-494 Fredman, S (2011) ‘The Public Sector Equality Duty’, Industrial Law Journal, 40:4, pp. 405 - 427 Greene, A and Kirton, G (2011) 'Diversity management meets downsizing: the case of a government department', Employee Relations, 33:1, pp. 22-39 Hepple, B (2011) 'Enforcing equality law: Two steps forward and two steps backwards for reflexive
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regulation’, Industrial Law Journal, 40:4, pp. 315-335 Janssens, M and Steyaert C (2009) ‘HRM and Performance: A Plea for Reflexivity in HRM Studies,’ Journal of Management Studies, 46:1, pp.143-155 Keegan, A and Boselie, P (2006) ‘The Lack of Impact of Dissensus Inspired Analysis on Developments in the Field of Human Resource Management,’ Journal of Human Resource Management, 43:7, pp. 1491-1511 Moore, S, Wright, T and Conley, H (2011) ‘Addressing Discrimination in the Workplace on Multiple Grounds: The Experience of Trade Union Equality Representatives’, Industrial Law Journal, 40:4, pp. 460-46
DOCTORAL STREAM: ‘EXTENDING THE LIMITS’ OF PARASITICAL POLITICS SESSION THREE Thursday 11th July, 3.45 – 5.45pm D6
Jenna Pandeli A Captive Workforce: Extending the Limits of Legitimate Labour Abstract Prison labour was originally used as a form of punishment. Tasks such as breaking rocks, picking tarred rope and performing unchallenging work were wide spread in the UK in the early 1900s. Work was regarded as “a means to an end, emphatically not as a craft, but as a prescribed task to be fulfilled as part of the punishment of prison” (Fenner and Brockway, 1922). However, the abolition of hard labour led to a growth in more productive, competent work. This was not only the result of the rehabilitative nature of work, but also due to the realisation that inmates could generate profit. Profit has now become an inherent part of many prisons and an ideal way of increasing this profit is by converting prisoners into a captive workforce. Prison labour is not new or novel, but given the clandestine nature of prison life and the profit motivation of a government institution aimed to punish, there is little understanding of the nature of prison work and its milieu. This paper will present an exploratory study of privately contracted prison work. The study has utilised an ethnographic approach focusing on the workshop environment and the prisoners’ role as workers during incarceration. This paper aims to provide an understanding of this alternative workforce using both participant and non- participant observation. This positions the researcher within the prisoners’ environment, facilitating a firsthand experience of day to day life inside a prison workshop. This allows the researcher to understand the many facets of prison work, particularly the workshop interactions, the workshop hierarchies and the nature of the work being performed. This paper will draw on several studies that have explored the workplace, such as Roy’s (1959) Banana time, where workers are forced to adapt to the ‘beast of monotony’ and the ‘beast of boredom’. Much of prison work or what this study will refer to as ‘Orange Collar’ work (given that the orange jumpsuit is synonymous with the prisoner), shares many similarities to blue collar work on the outside, for example, the workshop ‘banter’ and the monotonous tasks. However, there is a clear and exceptional difference. Prisoners do not go home at the end of the working day. Goffman (1961) demonstrates, through the concept of ‘total institutions’ that almost every aspect of prisoners’ lives are controlled. The prison is all consuming in contrast to the outside world where individuals eat, sleep, play and work in different places with different co-participants, under different authorities and without an overall rational plan. This confinement and control can lead to much stress and tension, often erupting in the workplace. It is hoped that this research will provide an understanding of an alternative work force and an insight into the day to day community that exists within a prison workshop. This paper will extend the limits of what is considered a legitimate workforce. Privately contracted prison work is growing quickly in the UK and as such, it is contributing significantly to our economy. Yet, it is a secreted workforce; ostracised and disregarded. This paper aims to shine a critical light on a clandestine culture that is currently under researched academically, yet is a tremendous topic of interest and concern outside of this realm.
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References Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situations of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. England: Penguin Books Ltd. Hobhouse, S. and Fenner Brockway, A. (1922) English Prisons Today: Being the Report of the Prison System Enquiry Committee. London: The Labour Party. Roy, D. (1959) “Banana Time” Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction. Human Organization. Vol. 18 (4) pp. 158-168
Simon Parker An Analysis of the Discourse of Sustainability: Informal and Formal Struggles and Materiality in Contemporary Capitalism Abstract Sustainability has been described as being an archetypal ‘empty signifier’ (Banerjee, 2001). An analytical concept borrowed from Laclau (1996), an empty signifier is a signifier without a signified: it is a concept that is “…emptied of its particular meaning” that therefore enables: “various political projects.. to incarnate or embody this idea in their endeavours to become hegemonic” (Howarth, 2004: 261-2). In this paper I intend to “unpack” sustainability and its politics by exploring the various “political projects” associated with sustainability and the various instances of cross-over between the political arena and organisations. As an analytical tool, the paper uses Bohm et al’s (2008) distinction between formal (NGOs, governmental organisations, analytic firms) and informal (identifications within political struggles, social movement groups) political struggles against the hegemony of capitalistic organisations. Bohm et al (2008) critique extant Gramscian research on political struggle (e.g. Levy and Egan, 2002) for not considering informal or “infra” political struggle. As hegemony and consent can be said to derive from formal and informal spheres, accordingly, resistance or counter-hegemony should follow suit. In this paper I build on these arguments and through analysis of documents, websites and interview data from various sources I emphasise the blurred boundaries between formal and informal spheres of struggle within sustainability. In order to “unpack” sustainability as a political project, I undertake a discourse analysis, informed by discourse theory (Howarth, 2000; Howarth and Torfing, 2005; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), on a collection of data pertaining to sustainability and its associated political struggles. Firstly, at the “formal” end of the continuum, I explore Environmental, Social and Governence (ESG) analytic firms (e.g. Trucost and Sustainalytics) that provide sustainability data and draw attention to the materiality of sustainability that they seek to develop. Secondly, to gain insight into the “informal” aspects of sustainability I draw upon interview data conducted at a sustainable financial services firm that relates to questions of identity, emotional attachment to sustainability and the political affinities of the organisational members. Having discussed my findings I then go on to show the blurred boundaries between informal and formal struggles. I then turn my attention to the radical potential of sustainability. Although sustainability is often articulated as a “business case” (Banerjee, 2007), it still retains and promotes an understanding of business and capitalism that is counter-hegemonic (Spicer and Bohm, 2007; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Indeed, the logics of sustainability can still be seen as a struggle against the hegemony of neo-liberal organisations that focus on profit maximisation and un-interrupted growth. In conclusion, this paper highlights the accomplishments of this counter-hegemonic discourse within formal and informal struggles. Yet, carefully draws attention to what is strategically undermined in this co-negotiation that moves through informal/infra-political groups into formal organisations and organisational activity. Reference List Böhm, S., Spicer, A. and Fleming, P. (2008) ‘Infra-Political Dimensions of Resistance to International Business: A Neo-Gramscian Approach’. Scandinavian Journal of Management 24 (3): 169-182. Bannerjee, S. B. (2001), "Managerial Perceptions of Corporate Environmentalism: Interpretations from Industry and Strategic Implications for Organizations," Journal of Management Studies, 38(4), 489-513. Banerjee, S.B. (2007) CSR: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Fineman, S. (1996) ‘Emotional Subtexts in Corporate Greening’ Organisation Studies 17 (3): 479-500. Glynos, J. and Howarth, D. (2007) Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory. London:
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Routledge. Howarth, D. (2000) Discourse . Buckingham: Open University Press. Howarth, D. and Torfing, J. (2005) (eds.) Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. Laclau (1996) Emancipation(s), London: Verso. Loundsbury,M., Ventresca, M. and Hirsch, P. (2003) ‘Social Movements, Field Frames and Industry Emergence: A cultural-political perspective on US recycling’. Socio-economic Review 1: p71-104. McAdam, D., McCarthy, J.D. and Rald, M.N. (1996) (eds.) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Cultural Framings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spicer, A. and Böhm, S. (2007) ‘Moving Management: Theorizing Struggles against the Hegemony of Management’. Organization Studies 28 (11): 1667-1698.
Racz, Marton M. Critical exclusions: a close reading of “The Responsibilities of Management Intellectuals: A Survey” Abstract To avoid becoming a parasitos, an entertaining guest of a patron, being truly parasitical should entail an evaluation of one's own complacency and taken-for-granted assumptions. It is to this end that I provide a critical close reading of an article by Dunne, Harney and Parker, “The Responsibilities of Management Intellectuals: A Survey” (2008). I argue that the limits of parasitical politics are marked by its very own suicidal drive—inasmuch as once critical management studies eats up its host, what we by and large call the business school, it may pass away with it. Through a critical yet sympathetic reading, I examine how Dunne et al. (2008) come to conclude that today's management intellectuals generally cannot be considered responsible for the most important social and political problems of the world, and how they are complacent in upholding the current socio-economic system. My aim is not to argue whether this conclusion is true or not, but to analyse how the authors construct their research in order to facilitate such an argument. First, I investigate how the reader is implicated in the study, what vantage point the reader is put into from which the text makes full sense. Then I will move on to discuss the sample taken for the research based on the 2001 RAE, and what such a sampling means regarding some of the authors central claims and implicit goals. Finally, I examine what kinds of categories the authors construct to make their numbers meaningful, primarily through the questions they ask from the data, to sustain their argument. My considerations will close with some remarks concerning the mentality of critical management studies (CMS) academics, and the recent debates on reflexivity in CMS (e.g. Ford, Harding and Learmonth, 2010; Tatli, 2011; Rhodes, 2009). CMS is not dead, nor do I wish its demise. However, relying on a comfortable but arbitrary dissection of mainstream and critical can only lead to a reinforcement of these categories, even if the implicit power relations turn around in the long run. This theme is explored further by looking at Harney and Dunne (in press), a follow-up paper, where the authors explore the questions raised by the lack of responsibility in terms of externalization and the source of value under capitalism. The limit of parasitical politics is its own nature. A way out that has been discussed widely lately in CMS circles is therefore becoming non-parasitical. Becoming relevant to managers, enhancing cooperation, writing to the non-academic public are all possible routes. Using the Doctoral Stream as a para-site of similar (hopefully, also future) debates, I will argue for another possibility—becoming-parasite. This could entail not deceasing by being continually eaten up by, and thus giving life to, other becomings-parasite from the inside.
Benjamin Scheerbarth Where Art and Commerce Hold Hands in the Sunset: A Pilot Study of KaterHolzig @ Papaya Playa—A Design Hotels™ Project Abstract
The paper seeks to explore new entrepreneurial subjectivities and organizational forms that emerge in relation to the world’s first “pop-up hotel” and reports results obtained following a pilot study of the ‘KaterHolzig @
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Papaya Playa - A Design Hotels Project’ located in Tulum, Mexico. The research hypothesis posits that the socio-economic structures underlying this project provide a futile testing ground for investigating and illustrating the mechanisms of contemporary, networked, and creative capitalism as well as for illuminating significant developments taking hold therein. Structurally, the paper begins with an attempt to establish a working definition of capital before deploying it to test empirically the popular notion that capital is becoming ‘spirit’. Here, we find support for Boltanski and Chiapello’s notion of co-optation. Specifically, we find that the creative individuals/artists involved in the running of the hotel playfully (and efficiently) innovate through their strive for selfdetermination (Selbstbestimmung). While the traditional corporate model presupposes a self that is yet to be actualized (Thomä, 2002), in other words, whose most natural state of being is perpetually out of reach, selfdetermination depends less on striving toward a transcendental good in its explicit drive for individual autonomy. It is the freedom to make one’s own choices, including the creation of work and membership in professional and artistic networks that drives the subjects behind the Papaya Playa Project. Today, arguably more so than before, neo-liberalism thrives on immaterial production, which, in turn, requires constant innovation or, to use its new label, ‘creativity’. Within this conception, the creative individual-as-enterprise is a crucial figure of study. In fact, many members of the Papaya Playa Project could even be thought of as individuals-as-multiple-enterprises. It is argued that the immateriality produced by these creative individuals enables a new form of capitalism, in which exchange exists at the level of individual identity. Broadly speaking, the hotel can be considered a living on-going artistic production in which the boundaries between commerce and art, and more generally, capitalism and anti-capitalism become difficult to identify. Further, a blurring of traditionally sharp distinctions between labor and leisure time, as well as producer and consumer roles (a ‘prosumer’), give rise to fluid, transitory, and rhizomatic networks of connections, in and through which the prosumer operates. The improvisational, flexible, and responsive character of these networks arguably surpasses traditional managerial networks in efficiency. The concluding reflections on both creativity and freedom caution against the unquestioned celebration of self-determined entrepreneurialism as a response to the artistic demands placed upon contemporary capitalism. Ironically then, if Deleuze is right that capitalism relies on both difference and negativity, this paper and CMS more generally, much like the subcultures encountered in this study, continuously provide spaces to be re-territorialized.
DOCTORAL STREAM: ‘EXTENDING THE LIMITS’ OF PARASITICAL POLITICS SESSION FOUR Friday 12th July, 9 – 11am D6
Corinne Starreveld Grown-up idealistic employees and mental absenteeism – extending the HRM-paradigm Abstract Did the lack of interest in meaning cause the banking crisis? Should employees be satisfied with the drudgery of meaningless office work? This may sound exaggerated, however organizations tend to avoid the questions of meaning and philosophy. In this paper I argue why organizations need these kind of conversations if they want to decrease mental absenteeism. Drawing from various authors such as Vroemen, Neiman, Maier and Perrow I conceptualize and combine a number of concepts concerning mental absenteeism, alienation, neo conservatism, moral vocabulary and institutional approach. I integrate these concepts into a four stage model of moral development in organizations. I discuss the extent and severity of mental absenteeism from an empirical perspective. Maier’s “Bonjour laziness, why hard work doesn’t pay” is presented as the ultimate form (ideal type) of mental absenteeism. Conventional HRM-approaches are often limited to practical solutions and psychological explanations. This pragmatic approach may actually contribute to mental absenteeism, creating a ‘dark side of HRM’. Neimans
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analysis of conservatism and idealism helps us to understand Vroemens observations of mental absenteeism in organizations more deeply. According to Neiman mental absenteeism is rooted in today’s neoliberal, conservative political climate. Reintroducing a moral vocabulary in organizations is the Kantian inspired remedy Neiman proposes as a strategy for becoming morally grown up. The ‘PROUDbanking’ initiative, an ethical course for Emerson employees and two meetings of ‘Meaning on the Zuidas’ (main business district in Amsterdam) are input for an analysis of recent initiatives that try to focus on end values, reflection and discussion in organizations. The analysis seems to point out three things: 1. organizations or HRM professionals themselves aren’t able to decrease mental absenteeism because of their focus on the internal environment 2. external groups, for example churches or grass roots initiatives, will be initiating dialogues with organizations about ethical, political or HRM related topics 3. places where employees can meet the neighborhood or professionals with a radically different perspective on their work (for example: theologians, philosophers or artists) may also stimulate becoming morally grown up. Based on these observations I discuss how the initiatives contribute to the four stage model of moral development in organizations and if that helps us to estimate the potential of these initiatives. Finally I reflect on the implications of these findings for the HRM-paradigm and her employees.
John A. McNamara Border Differences: The Vanishing Labour Union in Management Studies in United States and Canadian Texts Abstract Over the last forty years, the influence and power of labour unions has dwindled in the United States and Canada. However, the experience has been different in each nation. While much of the cause of the decline can be attributed to NAFTA, globalization and pro-business governments, this study looks at a more subtle relationship. Obviously, many forces of capitalism have been at work for decades (if not centuries) to reduce the cost of labour power (Braverman, 1974; Harman, 2009); however, the narrative of workers in the textbooks may have also contributed to a managerial class that was alienated from the idea of labour organizations through their ignorance of the role of collective bargaining. This dynamic led to a more antagonistic environment and willingness to eliminate labour unions in the United States while Canadian managers operated along a different path. In comparing the evolving narrative of Canadian and United States texts, along side with the changes in the labour union membership and power, one may be able to ascertain whether teaching about labour unions and collective bargaining creates a more favorable attitude towards collective bargaining. This paper uses narrative analysis to examine the language towards collective bargaining and labour unions in the textbooks used to teach management. As the anti-union movement develops, especially after the election of Ronald Reagan, the presence of collective bargaining diminishes. This leads to the creation of a generation of managers without training in collective bargaining leading to the marginalization of unions in industry, which further reduces the importance of teaching about them in management classes.
Kai Kaufmann Institutionalizability as recursion Abstract Institutionalism is alive and well. With the many adherents it gained over recent decades, researchers kept themselves busy so as not to apply their premises to their own project. Instead, their assumptions have stayed taken-for-granted and their boundary conditions vague. In the present paper, I make a Kantian turn by looking at the “conditions of possibility” of institutionalization, for which I reserve the term “institutionalizability”. As I will show after analysing the origins of institutional theory and the practice literature, in particular Giddens’ theory of structuration, “institutionalizability” depends on the possibility to rely on “recursion”. Recursion means that one processes’ output may be used as an input that is embedded into a higher-level process and continuously so forth in a self-similar way. The paper helps to explain how strategy formation actually takes place under messy circumstances and why social science is necessarily a multi-level endeavour.
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