| 1. |
- Alvesson, Mats, et al.
(författare)
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Grandiosity in contemporary management and education
- 2016
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE Publications. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 47:4, s. 464-473
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Contemporary practitioner and academic discourses of organizations and management have developed a tendency to discuss everyday organizational phenomena in overblown and remarkable ways. It is now commonplace to view organizations in terms of visions, missions, strategies, charisma, entrepreneurship, best practice and so on. A hyped-up language is becoming endemic to ordinary discussions of ordinary organizations doing ordinary things. This calls for some critical attention. One way of capturing this tendency to hype is through the idea of grandiosity that is taking over the ways mundane organizational phenomena are constructed and debated. In this essay, we argue that grandiosity is the product of the narcissism of our times, reinforced by contemporary consumerism; we suggest that grandiosity not only affects adversely critical reflection of organizations and management, but more importantly that it undermines organizational performance and learning.
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| 2. |
- Borg, Elisabeth, et al.
(författare)
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Liminality competence : An interpretative study of mobile project workers’ conception of liminality at work
- 2015
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : Sage Publications. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 46:3, s. 260-279
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study focuses on individuals working under transient and mobile conditions and the specific competences that they develop to deal with such work conditions. The article examines a specific type of knowledge worker, namely, the mobile project worker who is employed by a technical consultancy but who performs work on various client projects together with members from client organizations. The overall aim of this article is to improve our understanding of the differences among people’s abilities to handle fluid and flexible work conditions. We elaborate on the notion of “liminality” to denote a particular element of flexible work conditions, which consists of continuous movement among assignments and of simultaneous engagement with several organizations. Based on qualitative and interpretative research involving a combination of interviews, diaries, and workshops, this article identifies three levels of specific “liminality competence” that mobile project workers develop to deal with liminality at work.
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| 3. |
- Buchanan, David A., et al.
(författare)
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Surviving a zombie apocalypse : Leadership configurations in extreme contexts
- 2019
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : Sage Publications. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 50:2, s. 152-170
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- What can the classic zombie movie, Day of the Dead, tell us about leadership? In our analysis of this film, we explore leadership behaviours in an extreme context - a zombie apocalypse where survivors face persistent existential threat. Extreme context research presents methodological challenges, particularly with regard to fieldwork. The use of films as proxy case studies is one way in which to overcome these problems, and for researchers working in an interpretivist perspective, 'social science fiction' is increasingly used as a source of inspiration and ideas. The contribution of our analysis concerns highlighting the role of leadership configurations in extreme contexts, an approach not previously addressed in this field, but one that has greater explanatory power than current perspectives. In Day of the Dead, we observe several different configurations - patterns of leadership styles and behaviours - emerging, shifting and overlapping across the phases of the narrative, each with radically different consequences for the group of survivors. These observations suggest a speculative theory of leadership configurations and their implications in extreme contexts, for exploring further, with other methods.
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| 4. |
- Crevani, Lucia, 1977-
(författare)
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Organizational presence and place : Sociomaterial place work in the Swedish outdoor industry
- 2019
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE Publications. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 50:4, s. 389-408
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of this article is to explore the relation between organizational presence and the place in which such a presence is enacted. To this end I mobilize Doreen Massey’s processual conceptualization of place as an event consisting of a bundle of trajectories. By following the presentification of a Swedish company, Fjällräven, in the natural environment in the North of Sweden during Fjällräven Classic, I show that the organization is not made present in place, but through place production. I propose the concept of place work to express the work done by representatives of the organization, but also by other humans and nonhumans, to make the throwntogetherness of the place result in a rather coherent and stable construction through which the organization is made present. Place work is therefore work through which organizational presence and place are recursively co-creating. The concept of place work expands what we can learn about the “where” of an organization when building on an ontology of performativity.
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| 5. |
- Crevani, Lucia, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Performative narcissism : When organizations are made successful, admirable, and unique through narcissistic work
- 2017
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE Publications Ltd. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 48:4, s. 431-452
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dramatic stories of corporate crises appear in newspapers and magazines all over the world; one explanation offered by scholars has been that the affected organization suffered (literally) from narcissism. As responsible, ethical, non-narcissistic behavior is claimed to be crucial for management, the purpose of this article is to advance our knowledge about narcissism in organizations by developing an understanding of which organizational work enacts organizations as successful, admired, and unique. The dominant use of narcissism as a pathological condition limits the possibility to learn about organizing processes since it provides simplistic explanations. By introducing the notion of performative narcissism, we re-focus attention from the pathological condition of organizations to potentially pervasive organizational practices. Thus, we see that narcissistic work is a sociomaterial process not limited to organizational borders, but connecting and enrolling people, artifacts, animals, and places into mutually dependent, shifting, and composite assemblages that emerge through practices reproducing the organization as successful and unique.
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| 6. |
- Czarniawska, Barbara, 1948
(författare)
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Reflexivity versus rigor
- 2016
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE Publications. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 47:5, s. 615-619
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although both rigor and reflexivity are counted among scientific virtues, following these virtues in practice—whether the practice of management or the practice of research—is more complex than it might seem. In what follows, I discuss some of those complexities. © 2016, © The Author(s) 2016.
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| 7. |
- Gherardi, Silvia, et al.
(författare)
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Caring as a collective knowledgeable doing : About concern and being concerned
- 2016
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 47:3, s. 266-284
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Care is not an innate human capacity; rather, it is an organizational competence, a situated knowing that a group of professionals enact while attending to their everyday tasks. We propose a post-humanist practice approach to reading care as a matter of concern for those producing care and for society at large. Care is framed as a collective knowledgeable doing', it is not an object or a quality that is added to work; rather, it is caring', an ongoing sociomaterial accomplishment. Through an ethnography in a nursing home for the elderly, we describe: (a) how caring was collectively performed in keeping a common orientation, (b) how caring was inscribed in a texture of practices, and (c) how a technological change in nutrition practice mobilized ethics as practice in situated decision-making. Since natural nutrition is being increasingly replaced by artificial feeding, we describe how the collective and organizational ethic of care with tube feeding is talked about in practice, in a front-stage situation and in the back-stage one. In this process, the duality of care as a matter of concern and as the process of being concerned by caring becomes visible.
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| 8. |
- Gherardi, Silvia, et al.
(författare)
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Imagine being asked to evaluate your CEO ... : Using the constructive controversy approach to teach gender and management in times of economic crisis
- 2015
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 46:1, s. 6-23
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article addresses the relationship between gender and management as intertwined discursive practices. Following a constructive controversial approach, we proposed to the students to complete a short story in which they have to give a feedback either to a fictitious female or to a male boss. The article has a dual aim since it offers a reflection on a teaching methodology suited to foster critical thinking in the classroom and analyzes the narratives so produced in search of what constitutes the students' idea of good management. In positioning men/women CEO within a narrative, students enact a moral order that evaluates management in society. Their narratives reveal how the economic crisis has undermined the positive image of the male manager, while femaleness is emphasized for its anti-managerial imaginary. Moreover, the idea of what constitutes good management is constructed around an idea of care for both male and female CEOs.
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| 9. |
- Gherardi, Silvia
(författare)
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One turn ... and now another one : Do the turn to practice and the turn to affect have something in common?
- 2017
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 48:3, s. 345-358
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The turn to practice has been prominent in the community of Management Learning and still occupies an important place in the debate that approaches practice from the standpoint of learning and knowing. On considering how the turn to practice contributes to the ongoing conversation on post-epistemologies, one notes a convergence with another turn'. The turn to affect started more or less in the same years as the turn to practice, but the conversation between the two has not yet been fully articulated. I argue that both share a concern for (1) a relational epistemology, (2) the body and (3) sociomateriality. To show how they may interact, three vignettes are presented to illustrate their commonalities and how they try to produce in the reader an affective reaction. This article is also the outcome of an experimentation conducted with a visual writer during the Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities conference in Milan, and it proposes a reflection on the limits of representationalism.
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| 10. |
- Gilmore, Sarah, et al.
(författare)
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Writing differently
- 2019
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Ingår i: Management Learning. - : SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD. - 1350-5076 .- 1461-7307. ; 50:1, s. 3-10
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This special issue of Management Learning on 'Writing Differently' builds on a groundswell of resistance to 'scientific' norms of academic writing. These norms are restrictive, inhibit the development of knowledge and excise much of what it is to be human from our learning, teaching and research. Contributors to the special issue explore how, released from these restrictions, it is possible to touch vulnerable flesh and invoke new political and ethical practices. Through changing our norms of writing, we explore different modes of learning and change how and what we teach. By bringing the previously excised vast hinterlands of life and lives to the fore, we create the intellectual space to engender new ideas as well as more collaborative forms of learning. In so doing, we foster alternative conversations as to how we might constitute new, highly ethical and humanitarian organisations.
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