Organization RSS feed -- OnlineFirst Articles

Re-imagining E-mail: Academics in The Castle

Keenoy, T., Seijo, G. — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:21:13 PDT

Starting out from Franz Kafka’s novel, The Castle, we meander through an exploration of the impact of that seminal socio-digital artefact—e-mail—on the academic lifeworld. In the process, we illustrate not only how e-mail is ‘experienced’, facilitates instantaneity, deludes us with speed, shapes the working day and accelerates work processing but also the ultimately illusory promise of the ‘wired’ world to empower us to escape organizational boundaries. Paradoxically, the Castle is always one step behind but it never comes second.

Network-Domains in Combat and Fashion Organizations

Corona, V. P., Godart, F. C. — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:21:12 PDT

This article adapts and extends the ‘network-domain’ concept from Harrison White’s Identity and Control in order to consider how social ties are interwoven with domains of meaning in organizations. Our interpretation claims that modalities of behaviour in organizations are consequences of identities’ persistent movements among positions in network-domains as well as organizational efforts to manage these move-ments. This idea is outlined through discussion of two organizational antipodes: combat operations and fashion design. While combat operations require internal group cohesion and constrained individuality, the fashion industry is based on the distinctiveness of designs and the display of per-sonal tastes. Despite clear differences, however, we trace how attempts at managing movements among network-domains are central to identities in both contexts. This effort builds on the generally accepted understanding of identities in organizations as labile and socially constituted and thereby contributes to bridging micro/macro and structural/cultural gaps in organ-izational theorizing.

Experiencing the Shadow: Organizational Exclusion and Denial within Experience Economy

Kociatkiewicz, J., Kostera, M. — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:21:13 PDT

This article focuses on the dark and hidden aspects of experience economy events. These aspects are framed as the shadow in the Jungian sense, i.e. an archetype of the unconscious domain. Individuals and organizations create a shadow as a side effect of attempts at control and ordering of their identity. The article presents stories based on ethno-graphically inspired field studies of experience economy events to show how staged experience produces an experiential shadow side. The process is problematized and reflected upon as a shadow producing side effect of identity production and management in experience economy settings. The possibilities for the integration of the shadow into the normal operation of experience economy organizations are considered with the help of images of the carnival and the archetype the fool. The acceptance of the paradoxical and strange side of such events they may be better understood and their dark side integrated.

Never Employable Enough: The (Im)possibility of Satisfying the Boss's Desire

Cremin, C. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:16:53 PDT

Lacan refers to an excessive or mad desire of the subject to overcome its alienation in the world, to be at one with it, as the drive conditioning its existence. The mad desire for surplus profit is the drive of the capitalist as the condition for its existence. In this article, it is argued that subjective desire and capitalist desire enter into a dialectical synthesis, an enjoyment derived from improving employability. This is the conceptual framework for an analysis of employability as a condition that can never be fulfilled. The argument is developed through Slavoj Zizek’s notion of false disidentification. This concept is utilized to show how subordination to capital (the material fact of labour) is defused by the sense we have of our independence from the employer (an identification that is not associated with the act of labour). Employability is augmented through the use values we derive from the ‘life outside of the job’ (spatial disidentification) that we willingly commit to the employer in order to improve prospects for employment (temporal disidentification). The critical purchase of the concepts of surplus value, surplus enjoyment and false disidentification are demonstrated against the background of Boltanski and Chiapello’s leading analysis on the ideology of employability.

The Generalized Social Body : Distance and Technology

Cooper, R. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:16:53 PDT

The social context of the human body is discussed as a generalized field of energy and action in which the body reflects and transmits itself as a living part of its wider field of social and cultural action. A definitive feature of the generalized social body is action at a distance. All human action finds its source in the making present and immediate of that which is distant and faraway. Distance is discussed as an immanent absence which keeps human action forever on the move. Distance moves the generalized social body as a field of continuous dispersal and dissemination. The human body is thus viewed as an incomplete part which is forever trying to complete itselfin a generalized field that continually recedes from human appropriation. The generalized social body also means that the conventional boundaries between the individual and its context dissolve in a fluctuating field of continuous movement. The ancient meaning of technology is discussed as a means by which the human body translates the mute and anonymous (i.e. distant and remote) matter of the world into meaningful human forms and objects. Technology in this sense is disclosive rather than simply instrumental: it reveals the mute and mutable matter of the world as a distant source of infinite potential. Significantly, the human agent is an ongoing product of this process.

Organizational Atmospheres: Foam, Affect and Architecture

Borch, C. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:16:53 PDT

This article discusses the contribution of Peter Sloterdijk’s theory of spheres to organization theory. Specifically, I apply Sloterdijk’s sphereological notion of foam to obtain a new perspective on organizations. It is argued that a foam-theoretical approach provides a simultaneous focus on organizational dynamics of affective imitation, on the spatial and architectural dimensions of organizations and, finally, on the politics of organizational atmospheres. The article opens with a brief introduction to Sloterdijk’s sphere theory and then proceeds by applying his notion of foam to organizations. This includes a comparison between the foam-theoretical angle and existing perspectives in organization theory. Next I discuss Sloterdijk’s analyses of the spatiality of foam. In the final part of the article, I argue for taking seriously the politics and management of organizational atmospheres.

Strategy-as-Power: Ambiguity, Contradiction and the Exercise of Power in a UK Building Society

McCabe, D. — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:54:19 PDT

‘Strategy-as-practice’ (s-a-p) scholars have urged us to attend to the messy realities of strategy so as to increase the relevance of research for practititoners. This article, whilst recognizing the need to focus on what managers do, develops a critique of this literature. It argues that the s-a-p approach (Whittington, Jarzabkowski, Johnson, Balogun) and the earlier ‘Power School’ (Mintzberg, Pettigrew, Pfeffer) share much in common as both present power as the possession of management. This overstates the ability of managers to control others whilst understating the scope for resistance. Second, it asserts that both approaches would benefit from greater sensitivity towards the unequal context through which strategies emerge and that they serve, in part, to reproduce. Third, the article provides an empirical study of strategy in a UK Building Society. It attends to how power is exercised in ambiguous and contradictory ways that both supports and thwarts managerial endeavours. Through considering the uncertainty that results from this, the case reflects on the possibilities for resistance. The central argument is that if we explore practice only from management’s per-spective, then we are in danger of not only reinforcing the status quo but also of being irrelevant to practitioners and wider constituents.

Defending the Network Organization: An Analysis of Information Warfare With Reference to Heidegger

Munro, I. — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:04:26 PDT

It is now a commonplace notion in management thinking that information and communication networks can be used as a tool for productive purposes and for innovation. However, such networks can also be used as a weapon for destructive and defensive puproses, which has been characterized by the phrase ‘information warfare’. As yet, there has been relatively little theoretical elaboration of the sociological implications of this phenomenon beyond the initial work pioneered by researchers of the RAND Corporation. This article will adapt concepts taken from Heiddeger’s philosophy of Being, and use them for increasing our understanding of information warfare with specific reference to a diversity of real world exemplars of network organizations.