Developmental papers
Developmental Papers
Become the Best Version of Yourself Corporate performance culture in a Swedish sportswear company (239)
Author/s: Torkild Thanem
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: N/A
Abstract: While corporate performance cultures involve us in extensive systems of lofty stretch goals, continuous feedback and elaborate support schemes, they are nothing without dreams and desire. They promise us that the future is wide open that there are no limits; that, as long as you do what it takes, the impossible is possible. In this paper, I will draw on my ethnographic fieldwork in the medium sized Swedish sportswear company Bjorn Borg to discuss how performance cultures thrive on a libidinal economy of dreams and desires to maximize employee commitment and performance. In such work regimes, task specific goal achievement is framed as a mere partial ingredient of the job. Increasing emphasis is put on personal goals set to help employees realise their dream and become the best version of themselves not just more productive, but smarter, fitter, stronger, better, and more likeable. As this framing and exploitation of lust and dreams and the future comes to replace and co exist with conventional notions of duty and responsibility, I conclude by asking what this may hold for the future of work and capitalism.
Insurrection as Recognition: Urban Riots for Love, Rights, and Solidarity (286)
Author/s: Didier Chabanet Jessica Lichy Tony Wall
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: insurrection, resistance, riots, recognition, Axel Honneth
Abstract: Social unrest has become an increasingly visible approach to collective resistance to sustainable development issues such as poverty, inequalities and climate change. Here, riots are theorised as a form of insurrection, and are typically narrated through nonconformity, social injustice and immigration. However, this perspective often denies riots as having a political message or form i.e. they are pure violence without claim, and rioters as having affirmative needs or qualities i.e. they are primitive rebels. This study draws on publically available narratives and deploys the relational ontology of Axel Honneth to re cast riots and rioters as responding to violations in basic human need for recognition, that is, as expressed through love, rights and solidarity. As such, this paper contributes an alternative perspective on theorising and organising in around insurrection grounded in affirmative relationality that values justice, humanity and empathy for building and sustaining performance.
Colour Of Crisis Conveying Financial Crisis Events In Colour And Affect As Aesthetic Force And Power (321)
Author/s: Amee Kim
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: colour, affect theory, financial crisis, media, Korea
Abstract: The paper aims to scrutinise the signification of how colour affects peoples perception to convey financial crisis events from economic magazine coverages in Korean financial crisis 2007 to 2013. Although colour in economic magazines is regarded as a neglected subject of investigation, it is obvious to see that financial crisis events are well presented within economic magazines and how particular colours affect in conveying crisis narratives. A survey of 748 Korean economic magazines related colour and affect to financial crisis events on 2007 to 2013. The study carried out a quantitative analysis based on principal coordinates to interpret what affect colours have from the perspective of culturally distinctive features of colour in economic magazine coverages. It further analysed colour use from the perspective of Korean cultural semiotics. The five most popular and frequently used colours black, blue, red, yellow, and white published in Korean economic magazines were identified. Results show that some colours are associated with more less favourable affective forces and with more less conveyance of crisis moments through Yin Yang harmony. It is further shown that peoples preferences for different colours and colour combinations are positively or negatively related to conveying crisis stories and affect. This evidence suggests that colour may not occupy neutral effects in economic magazine communication, but that the way in which they affect people is culture related. If future studies in different cultural settings can corroborate this as a phenomenon then the implications may be far reaching for economic magazine journalists, designers, analysts, and users.
Managerialism, Stratification And Hybridisation Within Healthcare Public Sector: Problematising Recognition, Redistribution And Political Representation (383)
Author/s: Erik Persson
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: managerialism, stratification, hybridisation, NPM, CMS
Abstract: This developmental paper explores the relationship between managerialism, professional hybridisation and the intensification of internal inequalities and forms of subordination and exclusion, taking the medical profession as an archetypal example. It is argued that hybridism appears to impact on professionals intersubjectivity and individual identity formation, affects the ways in which economic resources and wealth are distributed through the reorganisation of the division of labour and level of occupations, and redefines power relations as well as the professionals influence and political representation in decision making processes. We then propose a conceptual framework for the analysis of the implications of hybridisation for the intersubjective constitution of professional s subjectivity, identity, behaviour, interests, assets and participation in terms of recognition, redistribution and political representation. We aim to reinvigorate the debate on NPM reforms, professional stratification and hybridisation by deepening the dialogue between public management and Critical Management Studies.
The Language of Hatred: A Political Ontology (653)
Author/s: Ron Kerr Martyna Sliwa
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: Political ontology, violence, deniability
Abstract: We frame the paper as being about organising hatred in relation to contemporary right wing discourse and politics.
Conceptually, we draw on the idea of political ontology, taking inspiration from Bourdieus arguments about Heideggers philosophy being underpinned by right wing views and a negative stance towards foreigners, and the link between the supposedly innocent language of Heidegger and others, and the terrible consequences this language and that whole way of thinking it disguised the particular political ontology underlying it had for the world such as racism, Nazism, the holocaust, WWII. We consider the similarities and differences between Heideggers philosophy Nazism nexus and the contemporary right wing discourse in relation to physical violence against foreigners nexus.
Developing A Discursive Practice Perspective To The Study Of Strategy Implementation In A Local Government Setting (727)
Author/s: Lesley Ann Martin
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: Strategy Implementation, Translation, Discourse, Inclusive Growth, Local Government
Abstract: Diverse commentators have drawn attention to the inequitable consequences of the dominant economic system and the need for new and more inclusive models of economic growth.
My central research question is how the Scottish Governments stated priority of inclusive growth, treated here as an emerging discourse, is translated into local government practices through the medium of local economic strategies.
I aim to Explore how strategy implementation can be studied as translation, applying translation theory to the study of policy travel from central government, to local government, to local practices Expand the range of possibilities for the Strategy as Practice field through study within the politicised environment of local government Contribute to the emerging critical perspectives on inclusive growth and its relation to other discourses. With a multiplicity of interpretive frameworks available, my developmental challenge is to construct a sound methodology.
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University Challenge (941)
Author/s: Marco Mongiello Katarzyna Zdunczyk
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: Higher Education, Teaching Excellence Framework, habitus, equality of opportunities, performance management
Abstract: The paper addresses the debate on performance management in higher education with reference to the Teaching Excellence Framework TEF. We develop a conceptual framework of the value of higher education, using Bourdieus 1998 1984 concept of habitus. We then assess the predictive power of TEF in identifying the value of HEIs by comparison with that of reputable rankings and with the verdict of the market as represented by the institution choices of the best informed segment of the population. We identify significant discrepancies between the TEF and both the Times Higher Education ranking and the Institute for Fiscal Studies data. We also find that the TV programme University Challenge is a better predictor than TEF. We conclude that TEFs flawed assumptions about what represents excellence in higher education create misinformation that will disproportionately affect candidates from the lower socio economic background.
Looking at Trendy Creative Offices as a Form of Control (956)
Author/s: Annika Johanna Blomberg
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: Creativity, physical space, control
Abstract: This study looks at creative offices as a form of control. The analysis at the moment is preliminary and focuses on the question of what kind values and behaviours are symbolically enforced by the spatial design, and what kind of worker subjectivities are assumed or imposed in consequence. The analysis focuses on two aspects of creative physical space in particular the politics of transparency and visibility and the politics of non spatiality. By the visual analysis of the pre existing photographs, the paper exposes darker sides of organizational efforts aimed at promoting creativity and high performance. Openness and transparency subject employees to an inescapable gaze, while the spatial solutions still seem to guard and protect the organizational boundaries. Non spatiality disguises references to the workplace as workplace, filling it with various, often simultaneous references to cafes, nature, kitchen, and other places usually visited during leisure time. On the other hand, there are also spatial references to classrooms or even factories with assembly lines, which have positive connotations such as learning and effectiveness, but also negative connotations, such as inferiority, subordination and standardization. By bringing up the value laden ideas and assumptions enforced by the contemporary design of creative offices, the aim is to expose them to be critically and openly discussed and questioned.
Thinking Management and Organisations through Badious philosophy of truths (1049)
Author/s: Charles Barthold David Bevan
Track: Critical Management Studies
Paper Type: Developmental Papers
Keywords: Badiou, truth, organisation
Abstract: In this developmental paper, we will explore Badious philosophy of truths in order to contribute to the debate in management and organisation studies about truth and post truth. The four truth procedures conceptualised by Badiou in art, science, politics and love will be analysed and applied to organisational life. This will allow us to reflect on the idea that truth can exist beyond power relations in organisations. Finally, we will discuss implications of the former from the perspective of democracy and pluralism.