Showing papers in "Organization in 2017"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present five contributions that develop such ideas, drawing on a wide variety of approaches, and invoking new perspectives on the organizations we study and inhabit, and demonstrate that the world of work offers an exciting landscape for studying the pulsing refrains of affect that accompany our lived experiences.
Abstract: Affect holds the promise of destabilizing and unsettling us, as organizational subjects, into new states of being. It can shed light on many aspects of work and organization, with implications both within and beyond organization studies. Affect theory holds the potential to generate exciting new insights for the study of organizations, theoretically, methodologically and politically. This Special Issue seeks to explore these potential trajectories. We are pleased to present five contributions that develop such ideas, drawing on a wide variety of approaches, and invoking new perspectives on the organizations we study and inhabit. As this Special Issue demonstrates, the world of work offers an exciting landscape for studying the ‘pulsing refrains of affect’ that accompany our lived experiences.
91 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a critical reading of the European Union social innovation policy discourse is conducted, and it is shown that rather than being a transformative discourse within European Union policy, European Union Social Innovation Policy discourse reinforces neoliberal hegemony by (re)legitimizing it.
Abstract: In this article, we conduct a critical reading of the European Union social innovation policy discourse. We argue that rather than being a transformative discourse within European Union policy, European Union social innovation policy discourse reinforces neoliberal hegemony by (re)legitimizing it. Inspired by post-foundational discourse theory and Glynos and Howarth’s logics of critical explanation, we analyse three central European Union social innovation policy documents. We characterize what kind of political project is articulated in and through European Union social innovation policy discourse, and uncover how it relates to neoliberal political rationality. Our contribution lies in showing (1) how the social logics of European Union social innovation policy can be understood as both ‘roll-out’ and ‘roll-with-it’ neoliberalization, thereby relegitimizing and naturalizing neoliberalism; (2) how the political logics of European Union social innovation policy pre-empt the critique of ‘roll-back’ neoliber...
84 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that current approaches to the study of affective relations are over-determined in a way that ignores their radicality, yet abstracted to such an extent that the corporeality and differentially lived ex...
Abstract: Current approaches to the study of affective relations are over-determined in a way that ignores their radicality, yet abstracted to such an extent that the corporeality and differentially lived ex ...
84 citations
TL;DR: The call for articles for this special issue was made in an attempt to catalyze the rising awareness, both within the critically oriented and the broader organization studies community, that we are today witnessing epochal changes, which are fundamentally redefining the social, economic, political, and environmental realities we live in in unforeseen and unimaginable ways.
Abstract: In June 2015, we launched the call for articles for this special issue in an attempt to catalyze the rising awareness, both within the critically oriented and the broader organization studies community, that we are today witnessing epochal changes, which are fundamentally redefining the social, economic, political, and environmental realities we live in in unforeseen and unimaginable ways. For many of us, the financial crisis of 2008 had crystallized the notion that capitalism in its very nature is in continuous crisis, as shown by four decades of persistent decline in economic growth rate and rise in overall indebtedness and economic inequality (Streeck, 2014, 2016). Yet the political debacle of party politics in the United Kingdom and the United States together with the rampant populism in various European countries have highlighted that this is not just another installment of a crisis-prone economic system. These ‘electoral mutinies’ suggest that what is under crisis is the governance system of neoliberalism itself (Fraser, 2017). The responses to this crisis have been proved severely wanting, leading to the weakening of all social and political institutions that offer a semblance of protection to the vulnerable (Wahl, 2017).
67 citations
TL;DR: In an unusually direct style of address, the article moves toward a novel critical practice stimulated by affect theory: inhabited criticism as mentioned in this paper, which enacts vigilanism, a more-than-representational approach enacting vigilan...
Abstract: In an unusually direct style of address, the article moves toward a novel critical practice stimulated by affect theory: inhabited criticism. This more-than-representational approach enacts vigilan...
63 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the notion of affective atmosphere provides a privileged access to the study of organizational affect as it relates to a spatial ontology of "being-together-in-a-sphere".
Abstract: This article argues that the notion of affective atmosphere provides a privileged access to the study of organizational affect as it relates to a spatial ontology of ‘being-together-in-a-sphere’. D...
60 citations
TL;DR: Rahima1 is one of the victims of the Rana Plaza collapse that occurred on 24 April 2013 in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which at least 1135 clothing workers died and an estimated 2500 were injured.
Abstract: Rahima1 is one of the victims of the Rana Plaza collapse that occurred on 24 April 2013 in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which at least 1135 clothing workers died and an estimated 2500 were injured (Star Business Report, 2016). During this catastrophic collapse, the Rana Plaza housed five local garment factories that were producing clothes for 31 Western multinational corporations (MNCs; Clean Cloth Campaign (CCC), 2015). It was the deadliest structural failure in modern history, which was followed by a chaotic rescue operation due to a huge shortage of trained rescue workers and necessary equipment. This prolonged the victims’ suffering during and after the rescue process and led to enduring physical and psychological damage. Since the Rana Plaza collapse, Rahima has spent much of her time at home as her spinal column is fitted with a stainless steel rod. She can hardly sit, sleep, or walk; when she does walk, she has to stop after a few minutes to rest. The rod in her back cannot be removed as the fracture is severe and unrecoverable. On our first meeting, at the end of 2014, Rahima told me her story:
53 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a piece of ethnographic work is based on a participant observation as a factory worker, which I conducted within a French cooperative sheet-metal factory, in order to investigate the presence within the cooperative of seemingly powerless chiefs, and draw on the works of French anthropologist Pierre Clastres (1934-1977) on stateless societies to study co-operators in their continuous effort to prevent chiefs from being chiefs.
Abstract: Knowledge of how democracy and equality are practically achieved within member-based organisations such as cooperatives remains underdeveloped in the literature. In order to investigate this question, the present study is based on a piece of ethnographic work, namely one year of participant observation as a factory worker, which I conducted within a French cooperative sheet-metal factory. Pondering the presence within the cooperative of seemingly powerless chiefs, I draw on the works of French anthropologist Pierre Clastres (1934–1977) on stateless societies in order to study co-operators in their 'continual effort to prevent chiefs from being chiefs' (Clastres, 1987: 218). Three types of day-today practices appear to be central for members of the cooperative in circumventing the coalescence of power in the hands of their chiefs: a relentlessly voiced refusal of the divide between chiefs and lay members; a permanent requirement for accountability, and endless overt critique towards chiefs; and the use of schoolboy humour. The case, as analysed through a Clastrian lens, evidences a novel avenue that is conducive to avoiding the fate of oligarchisation within democratic organisations. Indeed, it shows how power can be kept at bay by being named and then embodied in a figure, who is eventually – through mostly informal practices – stripped of all authority. In addition, it suggests that our understanding of cooperation could be greatly improved if researchers' dominant focus on governance was complemented by studies anchored in the everyday experience of co-operators.
49 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a qualitative study offers an in-depth analysis of the tensions and contradictions inherent to ethnic minorities' agency, emphasizing the successful and successful nature of ethnic minority agencies.
Abstract: Going beyond recent studies emphasizing the ‘successful’ nature of ethnic minorities’ agency, this qualitative study offers an in-depth analysis of the tensions and contradictions inherent to ethni...
44 citations
TL;DR: Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alteri cation.
Abstract: Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alter...
40 citations
TL;DR: The authors explores the symbiotic relationship between management and the military via a discussion of the Vietnam conflict and contemporary debates over restructuring the US military to fight so-called "New Wars" and argues that managerialism has long been an important ideological element of civilian and military practice.
Abstract: Managerialism versus professionalism is a central axis of conflict across many occupations ‘The profession of arms’ is no exception This article explores the contested yet symbiotic relationship of management and the military via a discussion of the Vietnam conflict and contemporary debates over restructuring the US military to fight so-called ‘New Wars’ It portrays a complex picture of the organization and measurement of destruction, arguing that managerialism has long been an important ideological element of civilian and military practice While management systems such as the infamous ‘measurements of progress’ in the Vietnam War were practically dysfunctional, they were effective up to a point in their managerialist goal of portraying civilian and military organizations as effective, evidence-based, progressive and ethical This logic also pertains to contemporary debates over ‘progress’, and its measurement in the Iraq and Afghanistan counterinsurgencies and the campaign against Isil Despite its p
TL;DR: The commons are alternative social and economic practices for fostering community development and regeneration as discussed by the authors, while finance is increasingly criticized as a trigger for individualism, community is a source of inspiration and support.
Abstract: The commons are alternative social and economic practices for fostering community development and regeneration. While finance is increasingly criticized as a trigger for individualism, community cu...
TL;DR: In this article, the industrial cooperatives with alternative structures have been forced to grow internationally in order to remain competitive in the current global context, and some of these organizations have been criticised.
Abstract: Organisations with alternative structures have been forced to grow internationally in order to remain competitive in the current global context. Some of the industrial cooperatives that belong to t...
TL;DR: The authors sheds light on public performances as important yet neglected sites for social entrepreneurship's discursive expansion as a fashionable model for social transformation, and proposes a new model for public performance as a social transformation model.
Abstract: This article sheds light on public performances as important yet neglected sites for social entrepreneurship’s discursive expansion as a fashionable model for social transformation. It approaches t...
TL;DR: The rapid emergence of mindfulness programs within organizational settings reflects an amalgam of humanistic, spiritual, and managerial perspectives as discussed by the authors. But, while impact studies have focused on effects of...
Abstract: The rapid emergence of mindfulness programs within organizational settings reflects an amalgam of humanistic, spiritual, and managerial perspectives. While impact studies have focused on effects of...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw from the French psychodynamic theory of Christophe Dejours, who is yet to be known in English language organization studies, to make the following contributions: the relationship between affect and working, the real of work, the significance of the body, and ordinary sublimation.
Abstract: Psychoanalytic perspectives (such as the Kleinian/Bionian and Lacanian literature) have made significant contributions to the study of affect in organizations. While some have pointed out the affects involved in work tasks, most of this literature generally focuses on the affects linked to organizational life (such as learning, leadership, motivation, power, or change). The center of attention is not on affects associated with the work process itself. We draw from the French psychodynamic theory of Christophe Dejours—who is yet to be known in English language organization studies—to make the following contributions. First, we show the relationship between affect and working by discussing Dejours' notions of affective suffering, the real of work, the significance of the body, and 'ordinary sublimation'. Second, we advance critical research in organization studies by demonstrating the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject. Third, the article reinterprets Menzies' well-known hospital case study to illustrate how Dejours' theory extends existing psychoanalytical approaches, and especially to point to the significant role of the work collective in supporting workers to work well. We conclude by suggesting that if the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject is acknowledged, it follows that resistance strategies, and work collectives' struggle for emancipation, should focus on reclaiming work.
TL;DR: The recent proliferation of Web 2.0 applications and their role in contemporary political life have inspired the coining of the term "Open-source politics" as mentioned in this paper, which is the basis for our work.
Abstract: The recent proliferation of Web 2.0 applications and their role in contemporary political life have inspired the coining of the term ‘open-source politics’. This article analyzes how open-source po...
TL;DR: The authors argued that despite its positive connotation, this discourse reduces ethnic minority creatives to manifestations of a 'culture' and pointed out that ethnicity is not a source of creativity in the arts.
Abstract: Much literature on the cultural industries celebrates ethnicity as a source of creativity. Despite its positive connotation, this discourse reduces ethnic minority creatives to manifestations of a ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of academics in the production and maintenance of alternative organizations within the capitalist system is analyzed, focusing on academics from the University of Buenos Aires who have supported worker-recuperated enterprises since their emergence in Argentina in the early 2000s.
Abstract: This article analyses the role of academics in the production and maintenance of alternative organizations within the capitalist system. Empirically, we focus on academics from the University of Buenos Aires who, through the extension programme Facultad Abierta, have supported worker-recuperated enterprises since their emergence in Argentina in the early 2000s. Conceptually, we build on prior studies on worker-recuperated enterprises as well as the ‘critical performativity’ concept that we define as scholars’ subversive interventions that can involve the production of new subjectivities, the constitution of new organizational models and/or the bridging of these models to current social movements. Our results uncover the multiple roles of academics in relation to these three facets and highlight the key interactions of these roles. In so doing, our analysis advances prior studies of worker-recuperated enterprises by clarifying how academics can support alternative organizations while offering a renewed conceptualization of critical performativity as a multifaceted process through which academics and workers interact.
TL;DR: In this article, a more fine-grained exploration of the identity work of social entrepreneurs from a psychoanalytic perspective is presented. But they focus on interviews with 61 social entrepreneurs.
Abstract: Building on an analysis of interviews with 61 social entrepreneurs, the study offers a more fine-grained exploration of the identity work of social entrepreneurs from a psychoanalytic, particularly...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors seek to open up the study of affect and organization to colour, which is often simply taken for granted in organizational life and usually neglected in organizational thought.
Abstract: In this article, we seek to open up the study of affect and organization to colour. Often simply taken for granted in organizational life and usually neglected in organizational thought, colour is ...
TL;DR: The authors argue that genres play a constitutive role in regulating media producers' gendered professional identities, shaping their struggle for recognition and structuring their economic sustainability, and that genres possess gendering power that influences how media producers work, think and feel.
Abstract: This article introduces the notion of genre as an analytical category for the study of gender inequality in creative work. Research on gender and creative labour typically identifies external, systemic and structural causes for gender inequality in media industries. In contrast, I argue that genres, by virtue of their internal, structural and discursive patterning, play a constitutive role in regulating media producers’ gendered professional identities, shaping their struggle for recognition and structuring their economic sustainability. Rather than being merely outcomes of production processes, genres shape gender inequality: They possess gendering power that influences how media producers work, think and feel. Gendering and gendered genre norms that privilege ‘masculine’ over ‘female’ values are so hard-wired in occupational practice and professional codes of conduct that the genre itself becomes a control and boundary ascription mechanism that implicitly governs, sustains and reproduces gendered identi...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how the material, and specifically visual, aspects of organizing contribute to understanding control and resistance issues in organizations and the role of visuality in organizing.
Abstract: This article examines how the material, and specifically visual, aspects of organizing contribute to understanding control and resistance issues in organizations. Whereas the role of visuality in w...
TL;DR: In this article, the anthropocentrism of existing treatments of creative work, creative industries and creative identities is questioned, and various strategies for overcoming this bias in the context of creativity are proposed.
Abstract: This article questions the anthropocentrism of existing treatments of creative work, creative industries and creative identities, and then considers various strategies for overcoming this bias in n...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the subjectivities fostered among schoolchildren through the recent introduction of entrepreneurship initiatives in primary and secondary school, and found that subjectivities are fostered by the entrepreneurship initiatives.
Abstract: In this article, our interest is in what subjectivities are fostered among schoolchildren through the recent introduction of entrepreneurship initiatives in primary and secondary school. The educat ...
TL;DR: In the field of research ethics, the increasingly explicit and formalised requirements of research governance and the ongoing debate a... as discussed by the authors, we are currently witnessing two concurrent trajectories in research ethics.
Abstract: We are currently witnessing two concurrent trajectories in the field of research ethics, namely the increasingly explicit and formalised requirements of research governance and the ongoing debate a...
TL;DR: In this paper, a new conceptual framework for analysing diversity and opportunity in the cultural and creative industries as outcomes of specific decisions is proposed, which suggests the following three analytical foci: (1) the points at which decisions influence an individual's opportunities for workforce participation and advancement; (2) individual workers as objects of decisions, in particular with respect to an individual likelihood of being considered in a particular decision process in the first place and what individuals present for decision makers to decide upon; and (3) the decision makers and the context of their decision making.
Abstract: This article proposes a new conceptual framework for analysing diversity and opportunity in the cultural and creative industries as outcomes of specific decisions. It suggests the following three analytical foci: (1) the points at which decisions influence an individual’s opportunities for workforce participation and advancement; (2) individual workers as objects of decisions, in particular with respect to (a) an individual’s likelihood of being considered in a particular decision process in the first place and (b) what individuals present for decision makers to decide upon; and (3) the decision makers and the context of their decision making. Using this conceptual framework, this article reviews and synthesises existing evidence from academic and industry research to ascertain what is currently understood about the factors that influence decisions about workforce participation, promotion and admission into higher education, and which research gaps remain. By focusing on decisions, this article transcends...
TL;DR: Biopolitics, traditionally understood as management of the human population, has been extended to include nonhuman animal life and posthuman life as discussed by the authors, and they turn to literatures that advan...
Abstract: Biopolitics, traditionally understood as management of the human population, has been extended to include nonhuman animal life and posthuman life. In this article, we turn to literatures that advan ...
TL;DR: Hesmondhalgh et al. as discussed by the authors argue that this hope has largely been unfulfilled, pointing out that there are continuing patterns of class, gender and racial inequalities.
Abstract: The call to ‘diversify the creative’ invokes critical engagements with both the concept of ‘diversity’ and that of the ‘creative’. The two have been yoked together in policy discourses which position creative industries as a panacea for economic decline, especially in regions where traditional industries were failing (Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), 2001). These have migrated from the United Kingdom across a range of other national and regional spaces, mutating as they travel (Flew, 2012; Prince, 2010). In the United Kingdom, diversity policies have been explicitly linked to the hope that creative industries would provide employment to marginalised groups, addressing social diversity in terms of equal access to work and of cultural inclusion and exclusion (Oakley, 2006). Creative labour has increasingly been recognised as work, with governmental technologies accounting for creative subjects x in data sets where earnings and occupations can be surveyed. The evidence so far – drawing on this same official data – is that this hope has largely been unfulfilled (Hesmondhalgh et al., 2015). Critical diversity scholars have addressed this failure and the nuanced processes by which it is achieved across a range of creative occupations. Triumphalist claims about a new ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002) are undercut by critical empirical studies showing continuing patterns of class, gender and racial inequalities (Leslie and Catungal,
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight some of the key connections between organization theory, forms of organized destruction and their ongoing mutations in the still young, but already quite bloody, 21st century.
Abstract: War, the organized destruction of human beings, of human lifeworlds and modes of livelihood, has long been regarded as outside the usual preoccupations of organization studies. And yet, as the various on-going “asymmetric wars” increasingly become the taken for granted background noise of contemporary life, this aloofness becomes difficult to maintain. This special issue then is an initial contribution to a long overdue conversation. By way of introduction to the articles that comprise the special issue this essay seeks to highlight some of the key connections between organization theory, forms of organized destruction and their ongoing mutations in the still young, but already quite bloody, 21st century.