Organization current issue

Analysing, Accounting for and Unmasking Domination: On Our Role as Scholars of Practice, Practitioners of Social Science and Public Intellectuals

Golsorkhi, D., Leca, B., Lounsbury, M., Ramirez, C. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

Over the last 30 years, there has been an increasing interest in organizational analysis for the work of Pierre Bourdieu. However, the consequent body of literature often lacks an integrated comprehension of Bourdieusian theory and therefore fails to fully exploit its potentialities. In this essay, we argue for a more systematic engagement with the work of Bourdieu by organizational scholars and emphasize the opportunity to develop cumulative research on domination within and between organizations. The means by which systems of domination are reproduced without conscious intention by agents is a central issue for Bourdieu and arguably the primary reason for the development of his theoretical framework. It is thus through the study of domination that one can acquire a panoramic vision of Bourdieusian concepts that have been otherwise too often tackled separately. Moreover, domination is also a key entry to the understanding of how social scientists produce their own knowledge and of their role as members of society. We emphasize that as scholars, we have a moral responsibility to be reflexive about our practice and the social worlds we study in order to ultimately use the knowledge we produce to inform and direct social progress.

The Role of Domination in Newcomers' Legitimation as Entrepreneurs

De Clercq, D., Voronov, M. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

Drawing on Bourdieu’s social theory, we theorize two facets of legitimacy bestowed upon newcomers entering a field: institutional legitimacy, which represents the extent to which newcomers conform with the field’s current power arrangements (‘fit in’) and innovative legitimacy, which pertains to the extent to which newcomers challenge these arrangements (‘stand out’). We conceptualize newcomers’ ability to be endowed with these two facets of legitimacy by field incumbents as a necessary condition to be legitimized as ‘entrepreneurs’ and highlight the forces of domination inherent in this process. We further discuss the intricate and possibly conflicting relationship between incumbents’ expectations about the need for newcomers to fit in and stand out and how newcomers can artfully navigate between these two demands by artfully managing the meaning associated with their and others’ activities. Finally, we discuss the relationship between newcomers’ endowment with legitimacy and the reproduction or transformation of the field’s power arrangements.

The Hysteresis Effect as Creative Adaptation of the Habitus: Dissent and Transition to the 'Corporate' in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Kerr, R., Robinson, S. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

How might Bourdieu’s concept of the hysteresis effect be operationalized in order to understand dissent from, and compliance with, domination in a specific period of social and organizational transition? We employ the Bourdieusian concepts, in particular ‘forms of capital’, ‘hysteresis effect’ and ‘habitus’ to examine the production and reproduction of domination within a British international organization (the ‘Corporation’) operating in transitional post-Soviet Ukraine. Our argument is that the communist-era dissident habitus was better adapted to the changed socio-economic circumstances of postcommunism and was able to creatively adapt to the Corporation through identifying homological processes of domination and adopting homological dissident strategies. The hysteresis effect might therefore provide an explanation of how workers make sense of their new environment based on their habitus, on their capacity to decipher homologies between the previous context and the new one, and on how the dominated that dissent reuse or adapt their strategies in and to this new context. This article makes contributions to the study of domination in organizational contexts at three levels. At the theoretical level, through organizational-based empirical work we build on and develop Bourdieu’s concept of the hysteresis effect by demonstrating the role of the hysteresis effect in the creative reproduction of dissent as a habitus. Our substantive contribution adds a new perspective to the literature on ‘transition’, providing a fine-grained study of how domination was produced within the Western organization in post-Soviet Ukraine.

Domination in Organizational Fields: It's Just Not Cricket

Wright, A. L. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

This article demonstrates how deep engagement with Bourdieu’s theory of the field enriches scholarly understanding of institutional processes. A historical narrative of institutional formation and change in firstclass County cricket in England as a field of restricted cultural production is presented. The narrative illustrates how focusing attention on the position of agents within the field, the relations of production within the field, and the social context, which includes social class, provides a path for analysis of institutional processes which is dynamic, multi-level and nuanced. Bourdieu’s conception of fields as a struggle for capital between agents strategizing to improve field position illuminates the importance of social class to institutional processes, an effect that has been under reported by the most popular approaches to institutionalization in the extant literature.

The Endless Fields of Pierre Bourdieu

Friedland, R. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

Laying out the logic of Bourdieu’s approach to institutional fields, this essay argues that Bourdieu’s theorization of the logic of practice is a generic contest for domination in a plurality of homologously organized fields. Bourdieu aligns all practices through the logic of domination, which allows him to homologize group relations in every field. This homologization depends on a homogenization of fields, the sociological effacement of their cultural specificity. The essay then contrasts Bourdieu’s model of the practical logic of fields to Friedland’s understanding of the institutional logic of practice.

Book Review: Thinking the Art of Management: Stepping into 'Heidegger's Shoes' , David M. Atkinson. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2007. 272 pp., {pound}55.00, ISBN 139780230553743 (hbk)

Dunne, S. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

Review: Organizations: Management Without Control, Howard P. Greenwald. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2008. 528pp., $62.95, ISBN: 9781412942478 (pbk)

Scott, C. R. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

Review: Finding Feminized Economics: A Postcapitalist Politics, J. K. Gibson-Graham, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. 316 pp., ISBN 0816648042 (pbk)

Schaefer, Z. A. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT

Call for Papers--Special Issue on Capitalism in Crisis: Organizational Perspectives

Morgan, G., Froud, J., Quack, S., Schneiberg, M. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:36:57 PDT