Affective boundaries: The power effects of objects of emotion in collaborative encounters

Organization studies has (re)turned to affect, a development that has brought affective tensions—build-ups of energy, or vitalities—to the fore of research. Previous studies on affect in organizations underline the organizational and transformational effects of affective milieus or atmospheres. I contribute to this research with a micro perspective on how affect shapes intersubjective relationships. I do so through an ethnographically inspired study of SusPens, a fin-tech start-up that uses algorithmic tools to screen sustainable investments. In the course of my empirical engagement, I identified recurring tensions in the collaboration between tech professionals and business professionals. I unpack these tensions in three collaborative encounters, focusing on how the algorithm functioned as a common reference point as well as a barrier for the collaboration. To conceptualize the observed tensions, the article builds on Sara Ahmed’s concept of objects of emotion and introduces affective boundaries as a theoretical construct for understanding the power effects of affective circulation. The article details how affective boundaries are installed through the affective misalignments that arise as the algorithm circulates as an object of emotion among the team members. The article concludes that the installment of affective boundaries delineates who is included in and who is excluded from the collaboration, pointing to how power works affectively in intersubjective relations, empowering some and disqualifying others.

‘Evolution from the inside out’: Revisiting the impact of (re)productive resistance among ultra-orthodox female entrepreneurs

How can resistance produce substantial social changes without becoming detrimental to those resisting? Drawing on qualitative study of diverse social and business Jewish-ultraorthodox female entrepreneurs (JUFE) in Israel, we demonstrate how JUFE’s resistance turned productive by advancing different issues related to women’s status and rights, leading to greater gender equality in their community. In struggling against their community’s patriarchal power, women’s resistance acts resulted in multilevel gendered social changes related to embodiment, home equality, economic well-being and women’s rights. JUFE’s resistance was intermingled with compliance, thus allowing them to engender change processes in an ultra-religious social environment while maintaining their community membership and belonging.

Our contribution is threefold: first, by uncovering resistance forms in social contexts subjected to authoritarian power regimes, we argue that religiosity serves as a resource for women not only in resisting gender power relations, but also in promoting broad, gendered social changes without becoming victimized as social outcasts. Second, we uncover the complex dynamics between diverse aspects of domination, the resistant acts invoked in response, the respective compliant practices intermingled with these acts and the perceived risks involved. Third, by demonstrating how JUFE’s resistance led to significant, evolutionary modifications in different aspects of an extant social order, while reproducing the hegemonic power relations and social circumstances it aims to modify, we highlight that resistance may become productive because it is reproductive of the social order it seeks to change, not despite it.

Who’s afraid of the senses? Organization, management and the return of the sensorium

Organization and management are the perpetual, and perpetually fraught and resisted, ordering of sense experience. However, banning the senses into the outside of thought, and of organizational analysis, was – and to a large degree still is – the default and mostly implicit and unquestioned mode of thinking and studying organization and management. Introducing the special issue on ‘The Senses in Management Research and Education’, this essay historicizes and contextualizes the neglect of the senses, dwells upon possible reasons for keeping the sensory at bay and discusses recent attempts to remedy this situation. The contributions to the special issue are introduced into this context. In conclusion, we speculate on what might happen next.

The atmospherics of creativity: affective and spatial materiality in a designer’s studio

Encounters between materials and bodies matter throughout the creative process. This paper contends that creative work depends on these encounters generating and filling the atmosphere with affect. Based on an in-depth ethnography within a fashion design studio, the article empirically traces such affective encounters and corresponding atmospheres. In the studio, designing is performed through artefacts as well as experimental and collaborative gestures that inspire affective reactions and spark creative work. The creative body is part of a complex and atmospheric space where materials, bodies, and external influences circulate via affective encounters and prompts. The analysis reveals the spatial and affective materiality of creativity and contributes to the recent interest in atmospheric organizational inquiry.