scholarly journals Neither Colony Nor Enclave: Calling for dialogical contextualism in management and organization studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 263178771987970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Hamann ◽  
John Luiz ◽  
Kutlwano Ramaboa ◽  
Farzad Khan ◽  
Xolisa Dhlamini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Systematic Biases ◽  
Organizational Scholarship ◽  
Complementary Spaces

We express our unease with one-sided invitations into the Northern mainstream, as well as with Southern critics’ retreat into indigenous enclaves of organizational scholarship. We use this dichotomy to theorize the role of context in organizational theorizing by linking scholarly conversations on context, analogical reasoning, and problematizing assumptions. This creates the opportunity to more carefully consider how not just our theoretical backgrounds but also our contextual life-worlds provide the assumptions and analogies we bring into our theorizing. We use this platform to consider in more detail systematic biases in both the Northern mainstream (erasing and imposing biases) and the Southern critique (scapegoating and valorizing biases). These biases have in common that they essentialize context. To address this risk and to facilitate contextual reflexivity, we propose a form of dialogical scholarly engagement to generate complementary spaces to fruitfully question our contextually embedded assumptions.

Modeling the Evaluation Process in a Public Controversy

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 651-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Emanuel Dionne ◽  
Chantale Mailhot ◽  
Ann Langley
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Orders Of Worth ◽  
Major Increase ◽  
Over Time

Public controversies have attracted increasing attention in the organization studies literature. They emerge when critical issues are not defined and understood in the same way by different stakeholders, influencing the way they evaluate the worth of other actors, objects, and situations. In this paper, we show how the “orders of worth” perspective of Boltanski and Thévenot may throw light on the evolution of an evaluation process occurring during a public controversy. In particular, we study the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012 that followed a proposed major increase in higher education tuition fees. We conducted an in-depth case study based on media coverage of the actions and discourses of the major actors to examine how objects and actions associated with a controversy are successively defined, redefined, and evaluated over time through a series of tests of worth. Our article contributes to the organizational literature on public controversies by drawing attention to the role of six types of evaluative moves in situations of controversy, and by offering an abductively developed model for understanding the evaluation process as it evolves over time. We suggest that actors, through these evaluative moves, may displace the object of a test, and therefore the foci for evaluation, through actions intended to bolster their positions.

scholarly journals What makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’? The de-scription of anthrozootechnical agencements

Organization ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 761-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Doré ◽  
Jérôme Michalon
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Performance Test ◽  
Dairy Farm ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Human Animal

Questions concerning animals’ role in society have received little attention from Organization Studies. This article develops and tests some theoretical and methodological propositions aimed at contributing to the elaboration of an analytical framework for interpreting our organized relations with animals and furthering our understanding of what makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’. First, examining the role of animals in the ‘non-human turn’ that has been emerging, especially with the Actor–Network Theory and the Symmetrical Anthropology project, it adresses the limits of the ‘non-human’ category to analyze situations of coordination of collective action involving animals. It then develops the concept of anthrozootechnical agencement to envisage the role of animals in the course of action through the lens of their relational properties and applies the notion of script to propose an operational formulation of the specifically organizational trials to which these particular agencements are subjected. Based on three case studies (the role of the leash in the organization of human–dog relations, the management of wolves’ return to France, and the production of milk on a dairy farm), this article shows that two main types of operation make human–animal relations ‘organizational’: first, the organization of anthrozootechnical relations is constituted by and constitutive of the combination of three types of specifically organizational test to which these particular agencements are subjected (the performance test, the coherence test, and the dimensioning test); second, the work of organizing anthrozootechnical relations then consists in elaborating, executing, and transforming heterogeneous scripts that are never strictly indexed on the nature (human, animal, technique) of the entities they concern.

scholarly journals The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sverre Raffnsøe ◽  
Andrea Mennicken ◽  
Peter Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organizational Scholarship ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second Wave

Since the establishment of Organization Studies in 1980, Michel Foucault’s oeuvre has had a remarkable and continuing influence on its field. This article traces the different ways in which organizational scholars have engaged with Foucault’s writings over the past thirty years or so. We identify four overlapping waves of influence. Drawing on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, the first wave focused on the impact of discipline, and techniques of surveillance and subjugation, on organizational practices and power relations. Part of a much wider ‘linguistic’ turn in the second half of the twentieth century, the second wave led to a focus on discourses as intermediaries that condition ways of viewing and acting. This wave drew mainly on Foucault’s early writings on language and discourse. The third wave was inspired by Foucault’s seminal lectures on governmentality towards the end of the 1970s. Here, an important body of international research investigating governmental technologies operating on subjects as free persons in sites such as education, accounting, medicine and psychiatry emerged. The fourth and last wave arose out of a critical engagement with earlier Foucauldian organizational scholarship and sought to develop a more positive conception of subjectivity. This wave draws in particular on Foucault’s work on asceticism and techniques of the self towards the end of his life. Drawing on Deleuze and Butler, the article conceives the Foucault effect in organization studies as an immanent cause and a performative effect. We argue for the need to move beyond the tired dichotomies between discipline and autonomy, compliance and resistance, power and freedom that, at least to some extent, still hamper organization studies. We seek to overcome such dichotomies by further pursuing newly emerging lines of Foucauldian research that investigate processes of organizing, calculating and economizing characterized by a differential structuring of freedom, performative and indirect agency.

Organizational access in qualitative research

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Nathan Alexander ◽  
Anne D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Primary Analysis ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Management Journal ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Systematic Assessment ◽  
Gain Access ◽  
Administrative Science

Purpose While organizational access is central to much qualitative research, little is known about how researchers secure it. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic assessment of this critical methodological step. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review was conducted to establish how researchers gained access to organizations for qualitative research. Access type was identified and explanatory indicators were inductively developed to illuminate how access was obtained in a sample of 216 qualitative articles published in Administrative Science Quarterly and Academy of Management Journal between 1986 and 2013. A supplemental review of 306 articles published in Organization Studies over the same period augmented the primary analysis with a broader view of published accounts of access. Findings Learning prior to entering organizations, researchers’ backgrounds, organizational insiders, and outside contacts facilitated access. The role of these factors, which served as indicators of legitimacy, varied with the type of access. In addition, the authors found that many articles provide little information about how the researchers gained access, regardless of a publication’s domicile. Originality/value This study furthers the understanding of how researchers gain access to organizations to conduct qualitative research and discusses the implications of the limited access accounts in published studies. In addition, this research provides practical guidance for authors, editors, and reviewers.

Islamic Law and International Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 86-124
Author(s):  
Emilia Justyna Powell
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Role Of Religion

This chapter explores in considerable detail differences and similarities between the Islamic legal tradition and international law. It discusses in detail the historical interaction between these legal traditions, their co-evolution, and the academic conversations on this topic. The chapter also addresses the Islamic milieu’s contributions to international law, and sources of Islamic law including the Quran, sunna, judicial consensus, and analogical reasoning. It talks about the role of religion in international law. Mapping the specific characteristics of Islamic law and international law offers a glimpse of the contrasting and similar paradigms, spirit, and operation of law. This chapter identifies three points of convergence: law of scholars, customary law, and rule of law; as well as three points of departure: relation between law and religion, sources of law, and religious features in the courtroom (religious affiliation and gender of judges, holy oaths).

The role of non-corporeal Actant theory in historical research

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Hartt ◽  
Albert J. Mills ◽  
Jean Helms Mills
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The New Deal

Purpose This paper aims to study the role of non-corporeal Actant theory in historical research through a case study of the trajectory of the New Deal as one of the foremost institutions in the USA since its inception in the early 1930s. Design/methodology/approach The authors follow the trajectory of the New Deal through a focus on Vice President Henry A. Wallace. Drawing on ANTi-History, the authors view history as a powerful discourse for organizing understandings of the past and non-corporeal Actants as a key influence on making sense of (past) events. Findings The authors conclude that non-corporeal Actants influence the shaping of management and organization studies that serve paradoxically to obfuscate history and its relationship to the past. Research limitations/implications The authors drew on a series of published studies of Henry Wallace and archival material in the Roosevelt Library, but the study would benefit from an in-depth analysis of the Wallace archives. Practical implications The authors reveal the influences of non-corporeal Actants as a method for dealing with the past. The authors do this through the use of ANTi-History as a method of historical analysis. Social implications The past is an important source of understanding of the present and future; this innovative approach increases the potential to understand. Originality/value Decisions are often black boxes. Non-Corporeal Actants are a new tool with which to see the underlying inputs of choice.

scholarly journals In and Between Societies: Reconnecting Comparative Institutionalism and Organization Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 647-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasper Hotho ◽  
Ayse Saka-Helmhout
Keyword(s):  
Organization Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Scholarship ◽  
Cross Fertilization ◽  
Comparative Institutionalism

Recently, the state and future of organization theory have been widely debated. In this Perspectives issue, we aim to contribute to these debates by suggesting that organizational scholarship may benefit from greater understanding and consideration of societal institutions and their effects on the collective organizing of work. We also illustrate that the literature on comparative institutionalism, a strand of institutional thought with a rich tradition within Organization Studies, provides useful insights into these relations. We highlight several of these insights and briefly introduce the articles collected in the associated Perspectives issue of Organization Studies on comparative institutionalism1. We end with a call for greater cross-fertilization between comparative institutionalism and organization theory at large.

scholarly journals Systematic biases in disease forecasting – The role of behavior change

Epidemics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 96-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceyhun Eksin ◽  
Keith Paarporn ◽  
Joshua S. Weitz
Keyword(s):  
Behavior Change ◽  
Disease Forecasting ◽  
Systematic Biases
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