Tag: Storytelling

CfP on Diversity and Business Storytelling

Steph

Call for Papers on `Diversity and Business Storytelling’

 As part of the series “A World Scientific Encyclopedia of Business Storytelling” (edited by David Boje and Regents Professor), contributions are sought for a proposed volume on Diversity and Business Storytelling (with a submissions delivery date of January 15, 2021).

In the words of David Boje, the overall series seeks “to extend new theories of prospective sensemaking, quantum storytelling (how humans are connected to the environment, not separate), and the relation of narrative-counter narrative dialectics to dialogic webs of multiplicity.” To that end, the series seeks “new business story paradigms that go beyond mere social constructivism, short-term shareholder wealth maximization, and disembodied textual narratives to the work in embodiment, critical accounts for the voiceless and marginalized, socioeconomic storytelling for socially responsible capitalism, and true storytelling principles as an alternative to fake news and fake leadership that infects the old business storytelling paradigm.” Boje and Rosile (in press) are attempting to bring together a critical ‘Storytelling Science’ paradigm.

At first sight it may appear that business and storytelling are two very different endevours; one involving a series of activities to produce services, products, profits, etc., and the other involving the use of tales to explain and make sense of innumerable social activities (Weick, 1995). More often than not, the two are aligned as those involved in business activities seek to explain and support those activities. Examples at the individual level include stories of the `self-made’ man (sic), the characteristics of the successful entrepreneur (Weber, 1967), the transformational leader (Mittal & Dhar, 2015), etc. At the company level examples include corporate histories of successful activities that explain how the company has remained in business over time and the use of artefacts of the past to lend a sense of history to the company’s operations (Corke, 1986; Gunn, 1985). At the industry (or field) level there are accounts that serve to explain such things as the link between strategy (Chandler, 1977), other practices (Pugh & Hickson, 1976; Woodward, 1958) and organizational survival, legitimacy, efficiencies, etc., (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). And at the overall socio-economic level there are numerous accounts valuing the economic, political, and philosophical outcomes of capitalism (Burnham, 1941; Chandler, 1984; Drucker, 1939, 1942; Fukuyama, 2006) and post-colonial relationships (Banerjee & Linstead, 2001).

Although not uncontested, these various tales of business have collectively served over time to privilege for-profit organizations (Donaldson, 1985; McQuaid, 1994) as the model of economic organization, philosophy, and politics (Drucker, 1947); as the primary and favoured form of organizing economic life (Drucker, 1939); as the main or only legitimate form of organization control and management (Hayek, 1944). In the process business and capitalism became interwoven in ways that cast owner (Marx, 1999), manager (Burnham, 1941), employee (Jacques, 1996) and the market (Burns & Stalker, 1961) as central forms of organizational activity and thought (Bendix, 1974). It has not also shaped the character of business activity but the characters at the heart of those activities, namely, white, upper-class, Western men (Acker, 1990; Jacques, 1997; Prasad, 2012).

Beneath, in tandem with, and/or a reflection on, tales from the field of business there has been another formidable set of stories that has helped to shape the notion of business; namely, the field of business studies (Khurana, 2007). Arguably, the development of business studies as a field of enquiry not only reproduced tales from the field but drew on it to define business studies as a specific area of scientific enquiry; one linked to the professionalization of the business manager (Khurana, 2007). In the process, the field of business studies largely excluded alternative modes of organizing (Foster, Mills, & Weatherbee, 2014; Parker, 2002; Weick, 1995).  Paradoxically, in the quest for scientific legitimacy (Khurana, 2007), one of the most successful attempts to teach business studies has been the advent of the Harvard University case study method (Copeland, 1958; McDonald, 2017). Here we have an essentially fictional account of a business problem written in a way that is presented to the reader (the potential manager) as a `real life’ situation with scientifically established behavioural outcomes. Regardless of how it was intended, the central character is more-often-than-not presented as a white male who is primarily interested in profitability, efficiency and the bottom line (Nkomo, 1992). In other words, it is not only scenarios that are constructed but people who are privileged, ignored and/or marginalized. It is to the processes of marginalization, ignorance and alternative accounts that this volume turns.

We are seeking contributions that explore the various ways that images of the other are developed, presented, and accounted for through powerful and dominant narratives. We are looking for papers that, collectively, help us to understand, resist, and provide strategies of change through various analyses of how business narratives come to develop, get written, are legitimized, are challenged, and get changed over time.

This volume on ‘Diversity and Business Storytelling’ will provide insights into stories fostering the idea and characterization of diversity, including, but not limited to:

  • Cyborgs and other narratives (Haraway, 2006)
  • Network activities and discriminatory tales (Hartt, Durepos, Mills, & Helms Mills, 2017)
  • The role of history and the past in gendered tales of the present (Williams & Mills, 2017)
  • Revisiting classic tales (Acker & Van Houten, 1974)
  • Business narratives and voices from the South (Prasad, 2003)
  • Antenarratives  (Boje, 2010)
  • Case studies as gendered narratives (Godwin, 2017)
  • Business storytelling and gendered narration (Calás & Smircich, 1996)
  • Archival silences and other narratives of marginalization (Decker, 2013)
  • Boundary narratives and decolonizing thought (Mignolo, 1991)
  • Deconstructing organizational stories through a postcolonial lens (Said, 1978)
  • Business storytelling and intersectional characterizations (Brah & Phoenix, 2004)
  • Going Against the Grain and other alternative narratives of business (Prasad, 2012)
  • Dominant narratives and the voices of the Subaltern (Spivak, 1988)
  • Voices of the South and new perspectives of business theory (Faria, Ibarra-Colado, & Guedes, 2010)
  • Reframing Diversity Management (Faria, 2015)
  • Stories of self and resistance (Katila & Merilainen, 2002)

 

Chapters should explore stories/narratives used in the process of producing ideas of diversity. There is no methodological preference for this chapter and authors may use any forms of method ranging from liberal to transnational feminist approaches (Calás & Smircich, 2006).    

Submissions should be no more than thirty pages, double spaced, times new roman 12 font, with one-inch margins.  All questions regarding chapters should be directed to Jean Helms Mills, volume editor (jean.mills@smu.ca). 

Proposals for chapters should be no more than three double spaced pages and are due on May 22, 2019.   

 

Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 139-158.

Acker, J., & Van Houten, D. R. (1974). Differential recruitment and control: the sex structuring of organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 9(2), 152-163.

Banerjee, S. B., & Linstead, S. (2001). Globalization, multiculturalism and other fictions: Colonialism for the new millennium? Organization, 8(4), 683-722.

Bendix, R. (1974). Work and Authority in Industry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Boje, D. M. (2010). Narrative Analysis. In A. J. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Sage Encyclopedia of Case Study Research (Vol. II, pp. 591-594). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Brah, A., & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 75-86.

Burnham, J. (1941). The Managerial Revolution. New York: Putnam.

Burns, T., & Stalker, G. (1961). The Management of Innovation. London.: Tavistock.

Calás, M. B., & Smircich, L. (1996). Not Ahead of her Time: Reflections on Mary Parker Follett as Prophet of Management. Organization, 3(1), 147-152. doi:10.1177/135050849631008

Calás, M. B., & Smircich, L. (2006). From the ‘Woman’s Point of View’ Ten Years Later: Towards a Feminist Organization Studies In S. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. Lawrence, & W. Nord (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies. London: Sage.

Chandler, A. D. (1977). The Visible Hand. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chandler, A. D. (1984). The emergence of managerial capitalism. Business History Review, 58(Winter), 473-503.

Copeland, M. T. (1958). And Mark An Era. The Story of the Harvard Business School. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Corke, A. (1986). British Airways. The Path to Profitability. London: Frances Pinter.

Decker, S. (2013). The silence of the archives: business history, post-colonialism and archival ethnography. Management & Organizational  History, 8(2), 155-173.

DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. (1983). The Iron cage revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147-160.

Donaldson, L. (1985). In Defence of Organization Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drucker, P. F. (1939). The end of economic man : a study of the new totalitarianism. New York: The John Day Co.

Drucker, P. F. (1942). The future of industrial man. New York,: The John Day company.

Drucker, P. F. (1947). Big business : a study of the political problems of American capitalism. London , Toronto: W. Heinemann ltd.

Faria, A. (2015). Reframing Diversity Management. In R. Bendl, I. Bleijenbergh, E. Henttonen, & A. J. Mills (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Diversity in Organizations (pp. 127-149). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Faria, A., Ibarra-Colado, E., & Guedes, A. (2010). Internationalization of management, neoliberalism and the Latin America challenge. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 6(2/3), 97-115. doi:10.1108/17422041011049932

Foster, J., Mills, A. J., & Weatherbee, T. G. (2014). History, field definition and management studies: the case of the New Deal. Journal of Management History, 20(2), 179-199.

Fukuyama, F. (2006). The end of history and the last man (1st Free Press trade pbk. ed.). New York: Free Press ;.

Godwin, M. (2017). Hugh Connerty and Hooters: what is successful entrrpreneurship. In E. Raufflet & A. J. Mills (Eds.), The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business (pp. 36-51). London: Routledge.

Gunn, J. (1985). The defeat of distance : Qantas 1919-1939. St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press.

Haraway, D. J. (2006). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. In J. Weiss, J. Nolan, J. Hunsinger, & P. Trifonas (Eds.), The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments (pp. 117-158): Springer Netherlands.

Hartt, C. M., Durepos, G., Mills, A. J., & Helms Mills, J. (2017). Performing the Past: ANTi-History, Gendered Spaces and Feminist Practice. In A. J. Mills (Ed.), Insights and Research on the study of Gender and Intersectionality in International Airline Culture. Bradford: Emerald Books.

Hayek, F. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge.

Jacques, R. (1996). Manufacturing the Employee: Management Knowledge from the 19th to 21st Centuries. London: Sage.

Jacques, R. (1997). The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Reflections of a Pale, Stale Male. In P. Prasad, A. J. Mills, M. Elmes, & A. Prasad (Eds.), Managing the Organizational Melting Pot: Dilemmas of Workplace Diversity (pp. 80-106). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Katila, S., & Merilainen, S. (2002). Self in research: hopelessly entangled in the gendered organizational culture. In I. Aaltio & A. J. Mills (Eds.), Gender, Identity and the Culture of Organizations (pp. 185-200). London: Routledge.

Khurana, R. (2007). From Higher Aims To Hired Hands. The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Marx, K. (1999). Capital: a critical analysis of capitalist production (Abridged ed.). London: Oxford University Press.

McDonald, D. (2017). The Golden Passport. New York: Harper-Collins.

McQuaid, K. (1994). Uneasy Partners. Big Business in American Politics 1945-1990. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

Mignolo, W. D. (1991). The Idea of Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell.

Mittal, S., & Dhar, R. (2015). Transformational leadership and employee creativity. Management Decision, 53(5), 894-910.

Nkomo, S. (1992). The emperor has no clothes: rewriting “race in organizations”. Academy of Management Review, 17(3), 487-513.

Parker, M. (2002). Against management : organization in the age of managerialism. Cambridge: Polity.

Prasad, A. (Ed.) (2003). Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement. London: Palgrave.

Prasad, A. (Ed.) (2012). Against the Grain. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press.

Pugh, D. S., & Hickson, D. J. (1976). Organisational Structure in its Context: the Aston Programme I. London: Saxon House.

Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Weber, M. (1967). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). London: Allen & Unwin.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. London, UK: Sage Publications Inc.

Williams, K. S., & Mills, A. J. (2017). Frances Perkins: gender, context and history in the neglect of a management theorist. Journal of Management History, 23(1), 32-50. doi:10.1108/jmh-09-2016-0055

Woodward, J. (1958). Management and Technology. London: HMSO.

 

CfP on History and Business Storytelling

Steph1 Comment

Call for Papers on History and Business Storytelling

Volume Editor: Albert J. Mills (albert.mills@smu.ca)

  As part of the series “A World Scientific Encyclopedia of Business Storytelling” (edited by David Boje and Regents Professor), contributions are sought for a proposed volume on History and Business Storytelling (with a submissions delivery date of January 15, 2021).

In the words of David Boje, the overall series seeks “to extend new theories of prospective sensemaking, quantum storytelling (how humans are connected to the environment, not separate), and the relation of narrative-counter narrative dialectics to dialogic webs of multiplicity.” To that end, the series seeks “new business story paradigms that go beyond mere social constructivism, short-term shareholder wealth maximization, and disembodied textual narratives to the work in embodiment, critical accounts for the voiceless and marginalized, socioeconomic storytelling for socially responsible capitalism, and true storytelling principles as an alternative to fake news and fake leadership that infects the old business storytelling paradigm.” Boje and Rosile (in press) are attempting to bring together a critical ‘Storytelling Science’ paradigm.

At first sight it may appear that business and storytelling are two very different endevours; one involving a series of activities to produce services, products, profits, etc., and the other involving the use of tales to explain and make sense of innumerable social activities (Weick, 1995). More often than not, the two are aligned as those involved in business activities seek to explain and support those activities. Examples at the individual level include stories of the `self-made’ man (sic), the characteristics of the successful entrepreneur (Weber, 1967), the transformational leader (Mittal & Dhar, 2015), etc. At the company level examples include corporate histories of successful activities that explain how the company has remained in business over time and the use of artefacts of the past to lend a sense of history to the company’s operations (Corke, 1986; Gunn, 1985). At the industry (or field) level there are accounts that serve to explain such things as the link between strategy (Chandler, 1977), other practices (Pugh & Hickson, 1976; Woodward, 1958) and organizational survival, legitimacy, efficiencies, etc., (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). And at the overall socio-economic level there are numerous accounts valuing the economic, political, and philosophical outcomes of capitalism (Burnham, 1941; Chandler, 1984; Drucker, 1939, 1942; Fukuyama, 2006).

Although not uncontested, these various tales of business have collectively served over time to privilege for-profit organizations (Donaldson, 1985; McQuaid, 1994) as the model of economic organization, philosophy, and politics (Drucker, 1947); as the primary and favoured form of organizing economic life (Drucker, 1939); as the main or only legitimate form of organization control and management (Hayek, 1944). In the process business and capitalism became interwoven in ways that cast owner (Marx, 1999), manager (Burnham, 1941), employee (Jacques, 1996) and the market (Burns & Stalker, 1961) as central forms of organizational activity and thought (Bendix, 1974). It has not also shaped the character of business activity but the characters at the heart of those activities, namely, white, upper-class, Western men (Acker, 1990; Jacques, 1997; Prasad, 2012).

Beneath, in tandem with, and/or a reflection on, tales from the field of business there has been another formidable set of stories that has helped to shape the notion of business; namely, the field of business studies (Khurana, 2007). Arguably, the development of business studies as a field of enquiry not only reproduced tales from the field but drew on it to define business studies as a specific area of scientific enquiry; one linked to the professionalization of the business manager (Khurana, 2007). In the process, the field of business studies largely excluded alternative modes of organizing (Foster, Mills, & Weatherbee, 2014; Parker, 2002; Weick, 1995).  Paradoxically, in the quest for scientific legitimacy (Khurana, 2007), one of the most successful attempts to teach business studies has been the advent of the Harvard University case study method (Copeland, 1958; McDonald, 2017). Here we have an essentially fictional account of a business problem written in a way that is presented to the reader (the potential manager) as a `real life’ situation with scientifically established behavioural outcomes. Regardless of how it was intended, the central character is more-often-than-not presented as a white male who is primarily interested in profitability, efficiency and the bottom line. In other words, it is not only scenarios that are constructed but people who are privileged, ignored and/or marginalized.

In much of these accounts of business, history – either implicitly or explicitly – is drawn on for support and legitimacy (Rowlinson & Hassard, 1993). This ranges from corporate histories of selected businesses (Smith, 1986) or classes of business (Wilkins, 1974) through to histories of the field (George, 1968; Khurana, 2007; Urwick, 1956; Wren, 1972). Over recent years there have been calls not only for more historical analyses in management and organization studies (Clark & Rowlinson, 2004) but also for greater discussion of historical methods (Booth & Rowlinson, 2006; Bowden, 2016, 2018), opening up possibilities for new narratives of business (Cummings, Bridgman, Hassard, & Rowlinson, 2017; Durepos & Mills, 2012; Williams & Mills, 2017).

This volume on ‘History and Business Storytelling’ will provide insights into stories fostering the idea of business, including, but not limited to:

  • the relationship between historical methods and business storytelling (Cummings et al., 2017)
  • the processes through which certain business stories are developed  (Durepos, 2015)
  • revisiting classic tales (Hassard, 2012)
  • re-envisioning the field through alternative narratives (Foster et al., 2014)
  • uses and abuses of storytelling in business (Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010)
  • business narratives and voices from the South (Prasad, 2003)
  • Historical methods as business narratives (White, 1987)
  • Antenarratives  (Boje, 2010)
  • Case studies as narratives of business (Raufflet & Mills, 2009)
  • Business studies as tales of the field (Van Maanen, 1988)
  • Business storytelling and gendered narration (Calás & Smircich, 1996)
  • Business storytelling and intersectional characterization (Brah & Phoenix, 2004)
  • Narratives as organization (Czarniawska & Gagliardi, 2003)
  • Business archives as storytelling cache’s (Decker, 2013)

 

Chapters should explore stories/narratives used in the process of producing the idea of business. There is no methodological preference for this chapter and authors may use any forms of method ranging from positivist (Bowden, 2018)  to postmodernist (Boje, 1995).      

Submissions should be no more than thirty pages, double spaced, times new roman 12 font, with one-inch margins.  All questions regarding chapters should be directed to Albert J. Mills, volume editor (albert.mills@smu.ca). 

Proposals for chapters should be no more than three double spaced pages and are due on May 22, 2019.   

 

Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 139-158.

Bendix, R. (1974). Work and Authority in Industry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A Postmodern Analysis of Disney as “Tamara-Land”. The Academy of Management Journal, 38(4), 997-1035.

Boje, D. M. (2010). Narrative Analysis. In A. J. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Sage Encyclopedia of Case Study Research (Vol. II, pp. 591-594). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Boje, D. M.; Rosile, G. A. (in press). Download at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bd297r9f6lhgjeh/AAChF7KdZH7hvz3aGIySrTJwa?dl=0

Booth, C., & Rowlinson, M. (2006). Management and organizational history: Prospects. Management & Organizational History, 1(1), 5-30.

Bowden, B. (2016). Editorial and note on the writing of management history. Journal of Management History, 22(2), 118-129. doi:10.1108/jmh-02-2016-0009

Bowden, B. (2018). Work, Wealth, & Postmodernism. The intellectual conflict at the heart of business endeavour. London: Palgrave.

Brah, A., & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 75-86.

Burnham, J. (1941). The Managerial Revolution. New York: Putnam.

Burns, T., & Stalker, G. (1961). The Management of Innovation. London.: Tavistock.

Calás, M. B., & Smircich, L. (1996). Not Ahead of her Time: Reflections on Mary Parker Follett as Prophet of Management. Organization, 3(1), 147-152. doi:10.1177/135050849631008

Chandler, A. D. (1977). The Visible Hand. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chandler, A. D. (1984). The emergence of managerial capitalism. Business History Review, 58(Winter), 473-503.

Clark, P., & Rowlinson, M. (2004). The Treatment of History in Organization Studies: Toward an “Historic Turn”? Business History, 46(3), pp.331-352.

Copeland, M. T. (1958). And Mark An Era. The Story of the Harvard Business School. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Corke, A. (1986). British Airways. The Path to Profitability. London: Frances Pinter.

Cummings, S., Bridgman, T., Hassard, J., & Rowlinson, M. (2017). A New History of Managment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Czarniawska, B., & Gagliardi, P. (Eds.). (2003). Narratives We Organize By. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Decker, S. (2013). The silence of the archives: business history, post-colonialism and archival ethnography. Management & Organizational  History, 8(2), 155-173.

DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. (1983). The Iron cage revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147-160.

Donaldson, L. (1985). In Defence of Organization Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drucker, P. F. (1939). The end of economic man : a study of the new totalitarianism. New York: The John Day Co.

Drucker, P. F. (1942). The future of industrial man. New York,: The John Day company.

Drucker, P. F. (1947). Big business : a study of the political problems of American capitalism. London , Toronto: W. Heinemann ltd.

Durepos, G. (2015). ANTi-History: toward amodern histories. In P. G. McLaren, A. J. Mills, & T. G. Weatherbee (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Management and Organizational History (pp. 153-180). London: Routledge.

Durepos, G., & Mills, A. J. (2012). ANTi-History: Theorizing the Past, History, and Historiography in Management and Organizational Studies. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing

Foster, J., Mills, A. J., & Weatherbee, T. G. (2014). History, field definition and management studies: the case of the New Deal. Journal of Management History, 20(2), 179-199.

Fukuyama, F. (2006). The end of history and the last man (1st Free Press trade pbk. ed.). New York: Free Press ;.

George, C. S. (1968). The History of Management Thought. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Gunn, J. (1985). The defeat of distance : Qantas 1919-1939. St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press.

Hassard, J. (2012). Rethinking the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric research in its social, political and historical context. Human Relations, 65(11), 1431-1461. doi:10.1177/0018726712452168

Hayek, F. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge.

Jacques, R. (1996). Manufacturing the Employee: Management Knowledge from the 19th to 21st Centuries. London: Sage.

Jacques, R. (1997). The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Reflections of a Pale, Stale Male. In P. Prasad, A. J. Mills, M. Elmes, & A. Prasad (Eds.), Managing the Organizational Melting Pot: Dilemmas of Workplace Diversity (pp. 80-106). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Khurana, R. (2007). From Higher Aims To Hired Hands. The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Marx, K. (1999). Capital: a critical analysis of capitalist production (Abridged ed.). London: Oxford University Press.

McDonald, D. (2017). The Golden Passport. New York: Harper-Collins.

McQuaid, K. (1994). Uneasy Partners. Big Business in American Politics 1945-1990. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

Mittal, S., & Dhar, R. (2015). Transformational leadership and employee creativity. Management Decision, 53(5), 894-910.

Parker, M. (2002). Against management : organization in the age of managerialism. Cambridge: Polity.

Prasad, A. (Ed.) (2003). Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement. London: Palgrave.

Prasad, A. (Ed.) (2012). Against the Grain. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press.

Pugh, D. S., & Hickson, D. J. (1976). Organisational Structure in its Context: the Aston Programme I. London: Saxon House.

Raufflet, E., & Mills, A. J. (Eds.). (2009). The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business. Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing.

Rowlinson, M., & Hassard, J. (1993). The invention of corporate culture – A history of the histories of Cadbury. Human Relations, 46(3), 299-326.

Smith, P. (1986). It Seems Like Only Yesterday: Air Canada –  The first 50 Years. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited.

Suddaby, R., Foster, W. M., & Trank, C. Q. (2010). Rhetorical History as a Source of Competitive Advantage. Advances in Strategic Management, 27, 147-173.

Urwick, L. (Ed.) (1956). The Golden Book of Management: A Historical Record of the Life and Work of Seventy Pioneers. London: Newman Neame Limited.

Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the Field. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Weber, M. (1967). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). London: Allen & Unwin.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. London, UK: Sage Publications Inc.

White, H. (1987). The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. London: John Hopkins University Press.

Wilkins, M. (1974). The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise. American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Williams, K. S., & Mills, A. J. (2017). Frances Perkins: gender, context and history in the neglect of a management theorist. Journal of Management History, 23(1), 32-50. doi:10.1108/jmh-09-2016-0055

Woodward, J. (1958). Management and Technology. London: HMSO.

Wren, D. A. (1972). The Evolution of Management Thought. New York: The Ronald Press Co.

 

Job advert: AHRC funded Studentship at Leicester University

Steph

Re-evaluating the 1980s and 1990s Through Life Histories: Politics, Privatisation and the Culture of Government Research

This project, based on oral history fieldwork, will consider how changes in the workplace that were driven by the politics of the period were linked to more general social and cultural change during the 1980s and 1990s. The specific focus will be on the working lives and careers of government scientists, whose workplace environments were transformed by commercialisation and privatisation.

This project is an AHRC funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with the British Library, where the student will be based.

Closing Date for Applications: 1 Dec 2015

Start Date: January 2016

Informal Enquiries

Dr Sally Horrocks, T: 0116 252 5070 E: smh4@le.ac.uk

Further details available http://tinyurl.com/re-evaluating-studentship

CfP for 11th Organization Studies Summer Workshop & Special Issue

Steph

Spirituality, Symbolism, and Storytelling

19-21 May 2016, Mykonos, Greece
www.os-workshop.com
St John Hotel Resort, Mykonos, Greece http://www.saintjohn.gr/

Conveners:

  • Marianna Fotaki, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
  • Yochanan Altman, Kedge Business School, Middlesex University Business Schoo and Teesside University
  • Juliette Koning, Business School, Oxford Brookes University

Confirmed keynote speakers

About Organization Studies Workshops

The Organization Studies Workshop is an annual activity, originally launched in June 2005, to facilitate high-quality scholarship in organization studies. Its primary aim is to advance cutting-edge research on important topics in the field by bringing together a small and competitively selected group of scholars, who will have the opportunity to interact in depth and share insights in a stimulating and scenic environment. Since 2010 the OS Workshop has been sponsored by Sage in order to help attract talented scholars from diverse regions of the world, consistent with the editorial mission of Organization Studies. The OS Workshops are usually linked to a special issue of Organization Studies on the same topic.

 Introduction

The global crises of the past decade – economic, financial, food, energy, health, migration and security – have called into question extant institutional and organizational configurations. These crises have also exposed the weaknesses of the dominant imaginaries underpinning such configurations and symbolic norms they come to represent. The necessity to mobilize collective abilities of organizations to pursue pathways challenging currently dominant modes of representation and meaning is more relevant than ever. The turn to ecological visions, cultural myths and spiritual narratives, as well as to philosophy, theology and anthropology as foundation disciplines and to ethnography and storytelling as base methodologies, marks the search for new ways and approaches to re-think and re-imagine, re-write and re-examine the role of organizations, organizing and managing in society – past, present and future.

The objectives of this workshop are to critically and reflexively appraise and spearhead some of these developments, with an aim to stimulate debates around a variety of topics while offering alternative, radical and creative ways forward. The questions we pose are how can we rethink and rewrite ‘organizations’ through drawing on the spiritual, symbolic/imaginary and mythical to rediscover/devise old/new languages to think, imagine and create in organizations?

Different axial cultures, most profoundly the Greek antiquity (Marini, 1992; Solomon, 2004), but also ancient Hebrew, Buddhist, Confucian (Bellah and Joas, 2012) heritage have informed our worldviews in deep and lasting ways. Accounting for these traditions is particularly important given the diversity of the globalized workforce and the composition of the student body in our classrooms; and it could provide new valuable insights for organizational development, e.g. by promoting new forms of leading, managing and organizing, drawing from the well of ancient wisdoms; or evoking the distinction between ‘sacred and profane’ (Belk, Wallendorf and Sherry, 1989) in everyday contexts (Harvey, 2013).

This raises the question to what extent organization studies recognizes and acknowledges that people from different life worlds can, and often have, quite different ways of ‘seeing’ the world and being in the organization. New beliefs and religious movements led to the upsurge of the meaning of ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ in everyday life that has not as yet been registered in research on organizations and organizing (King, 2008; Tracey, 2012).

Besides mapping and registering all these developments, we would also like to problematize the potential consequences of calls for an increased role of spirituality in management and leadership that are often heard, in terms of their harnessing and distortion for instrumental purposes (Case and Gosling, 2010), while being alert to the ensuing debate about faith in the workplace (e.g. Mittroff and Denton, 1999) or on Post-Secularism (Calhoun, Mendieta and VanAntwerpen, 2013) and searching for non-judgmental ways to engage with this important growing phenomenon (Lips-Wiersma and Mills, 2014).

In the management literature, vision is defined as a strong belief about the right course of action, particularly when operating under situations of uncertainty and ambiguity (van Den Steen, 2005). But institutional rules often function as myths that organizations incorporate in order to gain legitimacy, resources, stability, and enhance their survival prospects (Meyer and Rowan, 1977), which are then reproduced through organizational metaphors (Tsoukas, 1991), and organizational storytelling (Czarniawska, 1997; Gabriel, 2000; Boje, 2014).

Last but not least, the turn to holistic narratives with their utopian aspirations yet all too often dystopian implications, raises once more the issue of the so-called ‘legitimacy’ of modernity and of the conditions for a reflexive critical discourse capable to deconstruct the existing alienating institutional imaginaries (Wright et al. 2013; Komporozos-Athanasiou and Fotaki, 2015) while providing the means for enabling healing, growth, prosperity and well-being.

We argue it is time to explicitly engage with these issues in the context of contemporary organizations. Some potential topics and/or areas of interest might include the following indicative (not exclusive) questions:

  • How can we evoke the sacred, קָדוֹשׁ(kadósh) in its historical biblical meaning: whole, separate, above and beyond (in addition to its contemporary meaning of ‘holy’ or ‘Saint’) to engage with everyday organizational lived experience (sacred vs. profane) as well as key issues of mission, strategy and ethics?
  •  What language, imaging and frameworks of the wisdom traditions of axial civilizations may inform current debates on managing and organizing?
  •  How could we draw on the broad range of spiritual traditions and cultural myths to provide insights and guidance during times of uncertainty and crisis? How could they be used in practice by organizational actors in times of uncertainty?
  • What are the opportunities, challenges and risks of elevating spirituality in management and organization studies? How can critical discourse help us avoid these dangers?
  • What options of organizing and managing that existed in the past but have been forgotten or sidelined, and/or that we can draw on from ‘classical’ anthropological studies on reciprocity, kinship, taboo, exchange, symbols and cultural systems, rites of passage may offer us solutions to contemporary problems including the challenges emerging within the context of the global financial crisis and its current management in Europe and beyond?
  • How can the gap between distant past and present be bridged and the parallax between pre-modern and modern (and post-modern and hyper-modern) be reflexively rethought and recast? Are the effects of such moves a priori positive or could they involve the danger of reintroducing appealing but deeply problematic pre-modern constructs to resolve modern or post-modern deadlocks?
  • What is the role of stories in organizational settings? How do stories organize and who is doing the telling?

Submissions

The 11th Organization Studies Workshop will take place on19th-21st May 2016, in Mykonos, Greece. Interested participants must submit an abstract through the following link: http://os-workshop.com/abstractsubmitform.html. The abstract should be of no more than 1,000 words for their proposed contribution by December 7th, 2015.

Authors will be notified of acceptance or otherwise by January 15th, 2016. Full papers must be submitted by April 30, 2016. The venue of the workshop is St. John Hotel Resort, Mykonos, Greece (http://www.saintjohn.gr/). The Workshop venue, comfortable, beautiful, and situated by the sea, will provide an ideal setting for participants to relax and engage in authentic and creative dialogues. Further details on the logistics of the workshop will be published through the OS Workshop Website (www.os-workshop.com).

Following the workshop, a Special Issue will be announced in Organization Studies. To be considered for publication, papers must be submitted via the OS website at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies  by November 30, 2016. There you can also find guidelines for submission and information on the review procedures. Please note that participation in the workshop is highly recommended (but not a prerequisite) if you intend to submit a paper to the Special Issue.

References

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  • Belk, R. W., Wallendorf, M., & Sherry Jr, J. F. The sacred and the profane in consumer behavior: Theodicy on the odyssey. Journal of consumer research, 1989, 1-38.
  • Boje, D. M. Storytelling Organizational Practices: Managing in the Quantum Age. London: Routledge, 2014.
  • Case, P. and Gosling, J. The spiritual organization: Critical reflections on the instrumentality of workplace spirituality. Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, 2010, 7, 4, 257-282.
  • Czarniawska, B. Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
  • Calhoun, C., Mendieta, E. and VanAntwerpen, J. (Eds.) Habermas and Religion Cambridge: Polity, 2013.
  • Gabriel, Y. Storytelling in organizations: Facts, fictions, and fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Harvey, G. Food, Sex & Strangers: Understanding Religion as everyday Life. Durham: Acumen, 2013.
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  • Komporozos-Athanasiou, A. and Fotaki, M. A theory of imagination for organization studies using the work of Cornelius Castoriadis’, Organization Studies, 2015, 36, 3, 321-342.
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  • Tracey, P. Religion and organization: A critical review of current trends and future directions. The Academy of Management Annals, 2012, 6, 1, 87-134.
  • Tsoukas, H. The missing link: A transformational view of metaphors in organizational science. Academy of Management Review, 1991, 16, 566–585.
  • Van den Steen, E. Organizational beliefs and managerial vision. The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 2005; 21, 1, 256-282.
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