Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

The End of History and the Last Man

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature
of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined
community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one
can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer,
in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring
the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the
notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind
of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by
definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us
describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

On Imagined Communities

Examines various industries to show how business endows products with evocative meaning. Kramer was one of the most visionary musical thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. In his The Time of Music, he approached the idea of the many different ways that time itself is articulated musically. This book has become influential among composers, theorists, and aestheticians. Now, in his almost completed text written before his untimely death in 2004, he examines the concept of postmodernism in music. Kramer created a series of markers by which we can identify postmodern works. He suggests that the postmodern project actually creates a radically different relationship between the composer and listener. Written with wit, precision, and at times playfully subverting traditional tropes to make a very serious point about this difference, Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening leads us to a strongly grounded intellectual basis for stylistic description and an intuitive sensibility of what postmodernism in music entails. Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening is an examination of how musical postmodernism is not just a style or movement, but a fundamental shift in the relationship between composer and listener. The result is a multifaceted and provocative look at a critical turning point in music history, one whose implications we are only just beginning to understand. A timely essay collection on the development and influence of secular expressions of Buddhism in the West and beyond. How do secular values impact Buddhism in the modern world? What versions of Buddhism are being transmitted to the West? Is it possible to know whether an interpretation of the Buddha’s words is correct? In this new essay collection, opposing ideas that often define Buddhist communities—secular versus religious, modern versus traditional, Western versus Eastern—are unpacked and critically examined. These reflections by contemporary scholars and practitioners reveal the dynamic process of reinterpreting and reimagining Buddhism in secular contexts, from the mindfulness movement to Buddhist shrine displays in museums, to whether rebirth is an essential belief. This collection explores a wide range of modern understandings of Buddhism—whether it is considered a religion, philosophy, or lifestyle choice—and questions if secular Buddhism is purely a Western invention, offering a timely contribution to an ever-evolving discussion. Contributors include Bhikkhu Bodhi, Kate Crosby, Gil Fronsdal, Kathleen Gregory, Funie Hsu, Roger R. Jackson, Charles B. Jones, David L. McMahan, Richard K. Payne, Ron Purser, Sarah Shaw, Philippe Turenne, and Pamela D. Winfield. `I judge this book to be something of a triumph. It provides many valuable insights into how social psychologists work within different paradigms and with quite different assumptions.... Throughout, the writing is clear, central issues are constantly reexamined, and sight is never lost of the whole \"task\" of the book... it addresses central issues both adventurously and provocatively. Students who use it are lucky to have such a feast provided, and they are bound to find the material both challenging and stimulating... there is much more about self issues in this text than in any comparable social psychology text. And that, in itself, is a major achievement' Self & Society This accessible, broad-based and a

The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life

This paper examines how the ideal of cosmopolitan identity is represented in selected popular global management texts. It is argued that the corporate cosmopolitan ideal of a flexible identity draws interdiscursively on two main discourses. First, there is the Enlightenment ideal of cosmopolitanism, expressed as a moral imperative towards detachment from existing cultural identities and loyalties in the name of the adoption of a universal perspective. This is reflected in the rhetoric of the necessity for managers and employees to ‘transform’ themselves from ‘locals’ into ‘cosmopolitans’. This uplifting rhetoric of ‘transformation’, however, is accompanied by the more prosaic discourse of cosmopolitanism as a competence in ‘managing culture’ which can be acquired by all. Second, ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ draws on a ‘postmodern’ ideal of a flexible ‘pastiche’ identity, distanced through irony from all existing cultural and other ‘hot’ loyalties. This discourse is personified in the image of the ‘hybrid’ as the ideal corporate cosmopolitan. It is argued that corporate cosmopolitanism represents, not a utopia in which cultural difference and diversity is respected and celebrated, but a dystopia in which cultural difference is made superfluous by the establishment of a flexible transnational capitalist class with no attachment to or responsibility for place.

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The Discourse of Corporate Cosmopolitanism

This paper examines media discourse surrounding two UK— German intercultural business controversies: the takeover of the German company Mannesmann by the British company Vodafone in 1999, and the disposal of its British subsidiary Rover by its German parent company BMW in 2000. These controversies were framed in the media of both countries as part of a `clash of cultures of capitalism', with the `Anglo-Saxon model' on one side and the `German social model' on the other, and can be seen as `legitimacy crises' of the two models of capitalism involved. The paper examines how cultural, economic and political discourses relating to globalization were used strategically by actors to deal with these crises, in order to legitimize a neo-liberal transformation of the German model in the first case, and to legitimize a `rebranding' of the UK model in line with a move from a concentration on manufacturing to a service economy in the second.

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Intercultural mergers and acquisitions as 'legitimacy crises' of models of capitalism: a UK-German case study.

This article makes the case for the contribution of the cultural theory of Sloterdijk and the tradition of philosophical anthropology on which it is based to an understanding of the processes of culture formation in organizations. Rather than see culture formation as the model of an autonomous self which sacrifices or gives up this autonomy as a result of identification with the organizational culture, or retains it by resisting or distancing from the culture, the article argues that we should see organizational selves as engaged in processes of askēsis, understood as ‘systems of spiritual exercises, … practised in collectives of personalised regimes’ (Sloterdijk, 2009: 12), the aim of which is the fulfilment of the imperative ‘you must change your life!’ (Sloterdijk, 2009). The article illustrates the application of the theory to the formation of ‘secessionist’ cultures, cultures devoted to the pursuit of radical ascetic aims, by outlining the mechanisms of askēsis in contemporary organizations: the splitting of the self into ‘willing’ and ‘unwilling’ elements which are in constant ‘endo-rhetorical’ dialogue; the imitation of exemplars of ascetic behaviour, or the ‘perfectionist vita’; ‘conversion’ to the organizational culture, whether as a sudden experience or as a gradual process, and organizational cultures understood as ‘cultures of observance’, the aim of which are to encourage the employee to scrutinize habitual behaviour and change this behaviour in line with the ideals of the secessionist culture. The end point of askēsis is reached when the employee conceives organizational life itself as a continual ‘test’ of commitment and will.

Askesis and organizational culture.

This article examines the role of models of capitalism in the media coverage surrounding the economic crisis in the period 2008–2009 in the UK and German press, during the outbreak of the crisis and the beginning of the ‘recovery’ from it. Models of capitalism are conceived of as ‘geographical imaginaries’, discursive entities by means of which nations mediate their economic fortunes vis-a-vis global capitalism. By drawing upon historical narratives and stereotypical attributions of national character, these models legitimize courses of political and economic action. A Critical Discourse Analysis of media texts is carried out in selected periods of the crisis in these two countries whose economic models have been held to be opposing ‘geographical adversaries’ in the history of neoliberalism. The article draws conclusions about the nature of ‘recovery’ from the point of view of such geographical imaginaries, and their importance in the continued dominance of neoliberalism.

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Signs of crisis and recovery: geographical imaginaries in press coverage of the financial crisis in the UK and German press 2008-2009.

This article examines changing conceptions of culture and nation in business literature from the early 1990s to the present In the early 1990s the growth of literature concerned with depicting the cultural differences between national varieties of capitalism and business systems seemingly betokened an interest in diversity in the business world This seeming interest in cultural diversity, however, concealed an implicit neo‐liberal teleology which implies a convergence hypothesis and change in the cultural role of the nation state to that of a ‘location manager’, whose role is merely to guarantee favourable conditions for business with the minimum of state intervention This reconceptualisation of the nation leads to the ultimate stage in this teleology, the discourse of the ‘brand state’, in which ‘culture’ is seen as just equivalent to those aspects of a country’s ‘brand equity’ which meet the requirements of instant recognisability to the outside world

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Robert Halsall

Papers

The Discourse of Corporate Cosmopolitanism

Intercultural mergers and acquisitions as 'legitimacy crises' of models of capitalism: a UK-German case study.

Askesis and organizational culture.

Signs of crisis and recovery: geographical imaginaries in press coverage of the financial crisis in the UK and German press 2008-2009.

From ‘business culture’ to ‘brand state’: conceptions of nation and culture in business literature on cultural difference