Forum
Military and Organization/Management Studies 8 Replies
Started by Angela Hope in Uncategorized. Last reply by ken long Aug 24.
Appreciative Inquiry 1 Reply
Started by Ted R. Chambers in Sample Title. Last reply by ken long Aug 18.
Book review
Started by rodolphe Ocler in Sample Title Apr 11.
Notes
New book by S. Magala: The Management of Meaning in Organizations
Slawek Magala
Created by Dariusz Jemielniak May 3, 2009 at 2:55am. Last updated by Dariusz Jemielniak May. 3, 2009.
Calls for papers, articles, or else
Welcome! To view all notes, click here. Continue
Created by Dariusz Jemielniak Apr 10, 2009 at 3:38am. Last updated by Dariusz Jemielniak Apr. 10, 2009.
Photos
Groups
-
Critical psychiatry
2 members
-
Qualitative Research in…
2 members
-
Critical finance studies
1 member
-
Critical strategy
2 members
-
Critical organization th…
10 members
Standing Conference for Management and Organizational Inquiry
Executive Board
David Boje, Chair
Donna Carlon, Program Co-Chair
Carolyn Gardner, Secretary of the Corporation and Program Co-Chair
Kenneth Ehrensal, Treasurer and Local Arrangements Chair
Grace Ann Rosile, Member at Large
Alexis Downs, Member at Large
Advisory Board
Dariusz Jemielniak, Webmaster and all things Virtual
Rita Durant, Critical Cultural Perspective
Marja Flory and Lorraine Warren, In a Different Voice
Robin Matthews and Frits Schipper, Philosophical Guidance
Helene Fine, from Theory to Action and Activism
Kenneth Jorgensen, International Perspectives
Slawek Magala, associated journal editors
14 - 16 April 2011
sc'MOI 2011 (20th Anniversary) Twenty Years of Storytelling and sc'MOI: A Celebration
Holiday Inn Independence Mall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Future Dates for sc'MOI
2011 Philadelphia 14-16 April
2012 TBA 12-14 April (tentative)
2013 Alexandria 11-13 April (tentative)
2014 Philadelphia 10-12 April (tentative)
2015 TBA 9-11 April (tentative)
2016 Alexandria 7-9 April (tentative)
ACADEMIC REFLEXIVITY: Oxymoron and Vertigo
Position paper by David M. Boje October 13, 2009
Academic Reflexivity is an oxymoron. Academics are not expected to be reflexive. We are indoctrinated into a non-reflexivity. Yes, there is a reflexive praxis, since Socrates, reinvented by Argyris and Schon, then again by Cunliffe and Shotter.
Our keynote speaker Steven Linstead will have something to say about the ethos of Academic Reflexivity, perhaps its genealogy, and its refusal to stare into the abyss.
Academic Reflexivity has been reinvented by the Academy of Management (AOM) and the AASCB. Their project is to colonize the planet with a set of American academic standards, a normalized global managerialism. Once upon a time, AACSB switched from laundry lists to mission, and now it has morphed again into AOL (Assurance of Learning). The Brits have their version of accreditation, one that results in musical academic chairs, and ever-changing addresses of faculty recruited elsewhere to influence the research stats. And in Australia, its all about doing research the government approves. Each nation does it differently. But AACSB and AOM seek to rule all with AOL.
If ever an academic did ‘reflexivity,’ we would be staring into such an abyss, that vertigo would surely result. I used to teach at UCLA and every dissertation was reflexivity done according to Argyris and Schon, and somehow it has been absorbed by managerialism is one more community of practice. I think it all has to do with too much AACSB, to much AOM.
AACSB is a group of deans turned towards software and hard-core curriculum consulting. Each year I enter everything I write, do, and teach, every event of my life into some AACSB dean’s software for my annual performance review. It spits out a standardized resume of my work for my department head, the necessary review committees, and tabulates all my work and life into the requisite AACSB metrics.
One of their consultants gave us instruction on how to do AOL so AACSB would sign our reaccreditation. When we raise the issue that Heidegger as well as all those in Critical Pedagogy (from Freire to Schor) do not believe that learning is measureable, that outcome assessment displacing input assessment (test scores & such) was weak enough education theory, but to do AOL was preposterous and foolish. What were we told? “To resist AACSB is futile.” Of course, AOL is ridiculous. Just do it! Just create assessments that do not measure anything, and then change the curriculum to reflect the celebration of continuous improvement. And we ask, “Does that lead to standardized pedagogy, with standardized modules.” And the answer is shorter, not really even a word, “dahh!”
If we actually did Academic Reflexivity, then we would be face to face with a mirror. We would look into the mirror, and the mirror would crack, or is it our self that is fragmented into a million pieces.
Ethos, pathos, and logos have collapsed, so that reflexivity is just rhetorical maneuvering to get to the ‘yes’ from the master, AACSB. To be of good character is to be accredited. To be emotionally passionate is OK here and there. To have one logos fits all is a guaranteed ‘yes’ to re-accreditation.
The voice of the academic storyteller has switched off. All reflexivity has been banished by the administrative regime of AACSB and AOL. We are now practicing a pathos well known at Disney, just faculty being smiling robots, saying ‘yes master.’
And Critical Academic Reflexivity would introduce such vertigo, such a horrid image as to crack the mirror and us. We would see Kafka’s cockroach staring back at us in the fragments. Such a metamorphosis, that Academic Reflexivity could never happen anymore.
There is of course Managerial Reflexivity. We can enter a world of fiction, a world where consensus rules, where the administered order is the only logic, the emotional pathos, and the ethos is so very instrumental while appearing at surface to be so magnanimous.
I would offer Dorothy Smith, her standpoint theory as a way of Academic Reflexivity. She follows Marx in looking to material conditions and Garfinkel in developing an ethnomethodology, but this time for academics and their theorizing. See, Myers’ application of Smith’s work to how academic women frame success, and are framed by higher education processes. Academic reflexivity could be about being answerable (in Bakhtinian ethical sense) for ones standpoint. As Nietzsche declares, there is no neutral place to stand.
If our Academic Reflexivity standpoint is on the edge of the abyss, or falling into the abyss while staring back at those who pushed us, or even at our own leap, then we have a vertigo experience. We are dizzy, unsteady, and lightheaded.
I have said that there is some kind of difference between retrospective sensemaking and reflexivity on our now-ness and presentness. I think this has to do with noticing non-linear time shapes, and non-flat spatialities.
I join a long list of scholars who admit to multiple chronicities, simultaneous and interactive to one another (Bakhtin, Bennett, de Certeau, Derrida, Heise, Prigogine & Stengers, and so forth).
Antenarrating means noticing multiple bets on the future, and multiple now-choices before the narrative managerial, administered order of a standardized mechanical time, and a global spatial colonizing occurs as the only antenarrative potentiality. If there is a multiplicity of temporalities interacting with a multiplicity of specialties, then we get more vertigo from such Academic Reflexivity.
It’s not about communities of reflexive practice. I follow Walter Benjamin in declaring the death of the storyteller. Its the end of competencies in sensemaking because the communities where we learned such practices of reflexivity have been splintered by division of labor, by hierarchy, by the administrative order of complies to non-sense reaccreditation. We have communities of reflective practice that are more and more about ‘all resistance is futile.’
If Socrates, Aristotle, Newton or Einstein would engage in Academic Reflexivity after years of regiment in AACSB and AOM table of instructions, they would achieve greatness. It’s not about greatness anymore.
We claim to teach our students reflexive practice, without engaging in it ourselves. I think that is because if we stared in the mirror, our complicity in the university turned into an asylum, into a prison, would be so overwhelming, we would just fall into such an endless abyss, we could not recover.
We who claim to be against the administered order, to be critical management scholars, live a dual life. We work in flatland, in linear time shapes, and develop our illusion we are bringing about some kind of dynamic time-space, some alternate chronotope that is all about non-linear dynamics, about far-from-equilibrium. Perhaps we just repeat standard pedagogical programs, and standard review cycles for our manuscripts, and standard recitals at the podium. We spin the wheel, in the rat’s cage, expecting the cheese to come soon.
As a critical postmodern storyteller, there are multiple plots lines, some plot cycles, and some alternative times shapes. I am wondering about spirals and rhizomes. We are at the mercy of AACSB accreditation and reaccreditation cycles, and cycles of classroom schedules, and cycles conference presenting, and cycles of rejection, and sometimes get into revise and resubmit cycles. Our life is so cyclic, just stage after stage of standard cycles, so fit for training students in the corporate life of quarterly returns.
Multiple spatialities would include Tamara, web, maze, labyrinth, rhizomatic assemblage, cyberspace, and some networks the morph.
There could be a revival of a storytelling practice that admits to multiplicity of chronotopes, to multiple temporal and spatial frames that interplay. This would pull cause and effect apart, making it only relevant in near-to-equilibrium situations. The more complexity and chaos situations of far-from-equilibrium would necessitate this storytelling of multiplicities where chance, coincident and accident are commonplace. Such Academic Reflexivity would crack our time-space consciousness.
For me, I like to contemplate the spiral. I make spiral pens, and art object out of baling wire, off the hay bales, that accumulate in our small horse ranch. A spiral puts ethos, pathos, and logos in different relationship. Deleuze looks at spirals in Differences and Repetition. The spiral repetition is not a cycle. It makes what Bennett calls a ‘swerve.’ For me, swerves are those ‘wow moments’ when our living story twists and turns away from linearity and away from recurrent cycles. A spiral is a non-recursive antenarrative time-space shape…As Heise puts it “the cyclical or spiral patterns of history and the recurrence of archetypes that many modernist texts foreground are designed to resist the linearity and mechanicity of standardized time” (1997: 36).
When Academic Reflexivity can storytell the spirals, we will leave normalization of AOM and AACSB to their linear obsession.
References
Argyris, Chris; & Schon, Donald. 1974. Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The dialogical Imagination: Four Essays. M. Holquiest (ed), trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bennett, Jane. 2001. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics.
Cunliffe, Ann L. 2002.Reflexive dialogical practice in management learning. Management Learning, 33 (1): 35-61.
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. Practices in Everyday Life. Translated by Steven F. Rendall. Berkeley/London: University of California Press
Deleuze, Giles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. NY: Columbia University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and DifferAnce. London: Routledge & Kean Paul.
Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Seabury Press.
Heise, Ursula K. 1997. Chronoschims: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism. Literature, Culture, Theory 23. Mass: Cambridge University Press.
Linstead, Steven. 2006. The comedy of ethics: The New York fout, the du of care and organizational bystanding. In R. Westwood and C. Rhodes (Eds.) Humour, Work, and Organizaiton. London: Routledge, pp. 203-31.
Morin, E. (2008). On complexity. Translated by Robin Postel. Hampton Press, Inc. Cresskill, NJ.
Myers, Martina H. 2009. Institutional Ethnography: How Tenured Academic Women Talk about Success. University of New Mexico doctoral dissertation.
Prigogine, Ilya; & Stengers, Isabelle. 1984. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with nature. Shambhala/Boulder & London: New Science Library.
Shotter, John. 1993. Conversational Realities: Constructing Life through language. London: Sage.
Shotter, John; & Cunliffe, Ann L. 2002. Managersa as practical authors: Everyday conversations for action. In D. Holman and R. Thorpe (Eds.), Management and Language: The manager as Practical author. London: sage, pp. 15-37.
Smith, Dorothy. E. 1990. The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
www.scmoi.org is the main address
JOIN THE GENERAL GROUP if you want to follow the email discussion list.
Read about our logo
The older version of the website is located here
The Standing Conference for Management and Organizational Inquiry, Inc.
c/o Kenneth Ehrensal, Treasurer
Old Main 472, Kutztown University
Kutztown, Pennsylvania, 19530, USA
Telephone: +1 610 683 4599
E-mail: scmoi.ke@me.com
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
SCMOI, Inc. neither endorses the products or organizations whose advertisements are placed on this page by Google nor receives direct financial benefit from these advertisements.
Events
Looking for something to read?
Liquid Terrorism: Altruistic Fundamentalism in the Context of Liquid Modernity
Liquid life is the name that Zygmunt Bauman gives to the experience of life within ‘liquid modernity’ — a form of modernity in which social frameworks and institutions experience a process of accelerating liquefaction. On the basis of a narrative analysis of martyr videos recorded by the 7 July 2005 London bombers and eight men who stood trial in the United Kingdom for planning to bomb transatlantic airliners with home-made liquid explosives, a core set of altruistic motivations were found to emerge. Liquid modernity appears to have no space for martyrs who reject the instant survival-and-gratification consumerism for other longer term communal goals. Such a stance is incomprehensible and irrational for the liquid moderns. Fundamentalism rooted in a form of Durkheimian altruism provides confidence, trust and self-assurance to people who would otherwise be stripped of human dignity and humiliated in the face of consumer revelry.
The elephant in the room: Critical management studies conferences as a site of body pedagogics
This article explores conferences as an inter-corporeal space wherein body pedagogics are enacted, enabling the acquisition of techniques, skills and dispositions that allow newcomers to demonstrate their proficiency as members of a culture. The bodies of conference participants constitute the surface onto which culture is inscribed, these normalizing practices enabling academic power relations to be constructed and identities internalized. An autoethnographic analysis of critical management studies (CMS) conferences forms the basis for identification of the bodily dispositions of control and endurance which characterize the proficient CMS academic. The article considers the potential silencing effects associated with these practices that generate a between-men culture that excludes difference and reinforces masculine values. It concludes by reviewing the implications of body pedagogics for understanding how other organizational cultures are constructed.
How Did It Feel for You? Emotion, Narrative, and the Limits of Ethnography
ABSTRACT In this article, I present the case for a narrative approach to emotion, identifying conceptual and presentational weaknesses in standard ethnographic approaches. First-person and confessional accounts, increasingly offered as a corrective to the distancing and typifying effects of cultural analysis, are shown to be unreliable; shared experience turns out to be an illusion. Instead, I suggest we look to literary examples for lessons in how to capture the full significance of emotion in action. Here, however, we reach the limits of ethnography.Contesting National Identity During Crisis: The Use of Patriotism in Israeli Advertisements
Globalization processes have been accelerating since the early 1990s, and Israeli society is undergoing significant changes. Within these changes, symbols, beliefs, and new values are adopted to replace the old ones. Evidence of the Americanization of Israeli society can also be found in advertising, where the dominance of the American narrative has been notable since the 1990s. Over the years a significant increase has occurred in the use of American scenery, values, and heroes, along with the use of English. In this article, we seek to examine whether this extensive use of American motifs in Israeli advertising is also evident during times of national crises in the first decade of 2000.Contester l’identité nationale en temps de crise : l’usage du patriotisme dans les publicités israéliennesAnat First & Eli AvrahamLes processus de mondialisation s’accélèrent depuis le début des années 1990 et la société israélienne vit de profonds changements. Dans le cadre de ces transformations, des symboles, des croyances et de nouvelles valeurs sont adoptés afin de remplacer les anciens. Des preuves de l’américanisation de la société israélienne peuvent aussi être vues dans les publicités, où la domination du narratif américain se remarque depuis les années 1990. Au fil des ans, le recours à des paysages, des valeurs et des héros américains, ainsi que l’usage de l’anglais, ont augmenté de façon importante. Dans cet article, nous cherchons à examiner si cet usage considérable de thèmes américains dans les publicités israéliennes est également visible lors de périodes de crises nationales, au cours des années 2000.Luchando por la Identidad Nacional Durante las Crisis: El Uso del Patriotismo en la Publicidad IsraelíAnat First & Eli AvrahamSchool of Communication, Netanya Academic College, Netanya, IsraelUniversity of Haifa, Haifa, IsraelResumenLos procesos de globalización se han ido acelerando desde los principios de 1990, y la sociedad Israelí está sufriendo cambios significativos. Dentro de estos cambios, los símbolos, creencias, y nuevos valores son adoptados para reemplazar los antiguos. Evidencia de la Americanización de la sociedad Israelí puede ser encontrada también en la publicidad, donde el domino de la narrativa Americana ha sido notable desde 1990. A través de los años un incremento significativo ha ocurrido en el uso de la escenografía Americana, los valores, y los héroes, además del uso del inglés. En este artículo buscamos examinar si este uso extensivo de los motivos Americanos en la publicidad Israelí es evidente también durante los tiempos de crisis nacionales en la primera década del 2000.Expatriate stories about cultural encounters—A narrative approach to cultural learning processes in multinational companies
Publication year: 2010Source: Scandinavian Journal of Management, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 5 July 2010
Martine Cardel, Gertsen , Anne-Marie, Søderberg
This article focuses on the cultural encounters and learning processes that take place in the context of multinational companies. First, it argues that a narrative approach to expatriation and cultural encounters may enlighten us to the ways in which these phenomena are understood and constructed as part of the social reality of those who experience them. Second, it presents analyses of expatriates’ narratives about critical incidents that evoked emotions, challenged the storytellers’ established understandings, and made them reflect upon and cope with cultural encounters in new ways. Finally, the article outlines how researchers and practitioners could work with narration as...
Expatriate stories about cultural encounters—A narrative approach to cultural learning processes in multinational companies
Publication year: 2010Source: Scandinavian Journal of Management, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 5 July 2010
Martine Cardel, Gertsen , Anne-Marie, Søderberg
This article focuses on the cultural encounters and learning processes that take place in the context of multinational companies. First, it argues that a narrative approach to expatriation and cultural encounters may enlighten us to the ways in which these phenomena are understood and constructed as part of the social reality of those who experience them. Second, it presents analyses of expatriates’ narratives about critical incidents that evoked emotions, challenged the storytellers’ established understandings, and made them reflect upon and cope with cultural encounters in new ways. Finally, the article outlines how researchers and practitioners could work with narration as...
Worker agency and trade union renewal: the case of Poland
Contrary to predictions of continued weakness of the union movement in post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, in recent years Polish trade unions have undertaken various revitalisation attempts, including campaigns to organise unions in the private sector. Although the existing literature accounts for this internal union transformation by referring to macrosocial and institutional factors, this article suggests that the emerging potential of union renewal is linked with the new forms of union activism and worker agency. This asser tion is based on an exploratory empirical study using 45 biographical narrative interviews with company-level union representatives in Poland.The analysis reveals the existence of ‘transitional’ and ‘reinvented’ patterns of union activism. The article concludes that new unionism in Poland does not resemble an economic unionism or broad social movement unionism as suggested by other authors. On the contrary, it follows a path that combines the reinvented union ethos with market-oriented strategies.
Child accounting and ‘the handling of human souls’☆
Publication year: 2010Source: Accounting, Organizations and Society, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 4 August 2010
Stephen P., Walker
Child accounting texts published in the US during the early to mid-20th century are utilised to reveal the potency of Foucauldian analyses of accounting as a disciplinary technology. It is contended that child accounting – a voguish technique for recording, monitoring and governing the school pupil – provides a compelling illustration of Foucault’s emphasis on individualisation as a foundation for the exercise of disciplinary power. Further, child accounting encompassed mundane practices which could activate disciplinary power such as continuous hierarchical surveillance and normalising judgment. Centred on the child in the place of instruction rather than the employee in the corporation,...
The cosmology of accounting in mid 19th-century Thailand
Publication year: 2010Source: Accounting, Organizations and Society, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 4 March 2010
Nooch, Kuasirikun , Philip, Constable
In recent years it has been increasingly recognised that accounting cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of the social and political contexts in which it operates. Religious values and ethical codes form important aspects of the social and political frameworks of most societies. Using the social theory of Marx, Weber, Foucault and Durkheim, accounting researchers have debated the ways and extent to which accounting has been influenced by religion. By analyzing the indigenous accounts of mid 19th-century Siam/Thailand, this article contributes to this debate by demonstrating how accounting was determined by the interaction of socio-religious, economic and political practice....
The cosmology of accounting in mid 19th-century Thailand
Publication year: 2010Source: Accounting, Organizations and Society, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 4 March 2010
Nooch, Kuasirikun , Philip, Constable
In recent years it has been increasingly recognised that accounting cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of the social and political contexts in which it operates. Religious values and ethical codes form important aspects of the social and political frameworks of most societies. Using the social theory of Marx, Weber, Foucault and Durkheim, accounting researchers have debated the ways and extent to which accounting has been influenced by religion. By analyzing the indigenous accounts of mid 19th-century Siam/Thailand, this article contributes to this debate by demonstrating how accounting was determined by the interaction of socio-religious, economic and political practice....
Narrative of a Worker: Havatzelet Ingbar and the Atzmaout Textile Factory Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, 2000
Management, Women and Gender Capital
A generation of women have sustained careers in senior management. We use Bourdieu's concepts of field together with contemporary feminist interpretations of embodied cultural capital to analyse a group of such women's narratives of their own managerial experiences. We extend feminist analyses of gender capital and argue it may be an important cultural resource by which women develop and sustain their careers in senior management. Drawing on selected findings of an empirical study of senior managers in Australian organizations and a recent theoretical analysis of women's narratives using Bourdieu and feminist interpretations of Bourdieu, we examine whether women wield gender capital in the management field. We propose that gender capital, as articulated in contemporary feminist theory, provides an unexplored but potentially powerful explanatory mechanism for furthering our understanding of the complex and different ways the presence of women in senior managerial roles may shape contemporary management discourses and practices.Doing Case Study: Abduction Not Induction, Phronesis Not Theory
Distinctions between abduction and induction, and between phronesis and theory, are often elided in methodological discussion about case study. Making these distinctions clear offers a pathway for the better conduct of case study and for a less apologetic stance in its use. Owing its legitimacy to the experiential knowledge of phronesis rather than the generalizing power of induction and theory in explanation and prediction, case study can more unselfconsciously look to the anatomy of narrative for the justification of its processes and its conclusions. A look at this anatomy reveals a number of ways in which the valency of case study may be constructed.
Using Humor to Move Away From Abjection
The absence of discourses on death makes it difficult for those dealing with loss to communicate about their experiences. Our emotions vary even more when we see the corpse of a loved one at the funeral. It is overwhelming; a family member is gone, death, and you are faced with your own mortality, abjection. The author recently experienced the death of her grandmother and confronted her own abjection. The author writes this story as a third way of knowing. The author wants to share her experience by offering a narrative blueprint of how her family used humor to more effectively cope. In addition, this story fills a gap in the current literature; humor has been studied minimally in regard to dealing with death. Humor can be an effective way to ease tensions, reduce stress, and open lines of communication among family members when they are faced with death and abjection.
Towards a critical theory of value creation in cross-sector partnerships
This article develops a critical theory of value creation in cross-sector partnerships by recasting value creation from the standpoint of the beneficiary. We first explain how distinct combinations of principles, relations and relational processes set largely non-overlapping foundations for conceptualizing the role of the beneficiary in value creation within Marxist, pragmatist and Frankfurt schools of thought. We introduce the construct of beneficiary voice to delineate and illustrate three distinct roles that beneficiaries may play in value creation in cross-sector partnerships: voice-receiving, voice-making and voice-taking. We then focus on the generative tensions to bridge value creation arguments across these three critical theories and thus contribute an overtly socialized and explicitly relational foundation of value creation in cross-sector partnerships.
Portrait of a circus girl
Drawn from many months of ethnographic research with a classic European Circus in Switzerland, this narrative traces the author’s close contact and experience with one young circus woman over a 24-hour period. Through this brief portrait witnessing one particular individual’s story, larger themes — language, hierarchy, family, circus/town divides, belonging and exclusion, performance, gender roles, national identity, and more — all arise as key practices and performances for understanding the experience of European circus life. ‘Alessandra’ is a real person, a friend, and to those who know her in or out of the circus world, a compelling character. Not an explicit reflection on, nor analysis of, ethnographic experience, this ‘tale from the field’ is instead in-the-moment narration and commentary written to immerse the reader, engaging them in the ethnographic imagination, evoking lived experience, and inviting as many worthwhile questions as it may answer.
A little info about our visitors
Badge
Latest Activity
© 2010 Created by Dariusz Jemielniak.
Powered by 
.
