Sense and sensibility: How CEOs construct meaning through symbols in organizational change

This paper investigates the rational and emotional functions of symbols in organizational change and how collective sensemaking and acceptance of organizational changes are facilitated by the emotional functioning of executive symbolism. Evidence from archived data, news reports, reviews, and case studies are used to support our theoretical analysis. Our opinion is that the CEO can incorporate symbols into not only the rational calculation process to convey the benefits and losses of organizational changes but also the emotional identification process to create new emotional connections and reduce the resistance of the members to organizational changes. We describe why and when the implementation of symbolism will gain the acceptance of members toward organizational change and explain the scenarios that apply for the two functions.

Appropriating integrated performance management tools in healthcare: a sociomaterial work story

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper is to explore the appropriation of control rooms based on value-based integrated performance management tools implemented in all publicly funded health organizations in Quebec (Canada) as a form of legitimate sociomaterial work.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

Multi-site organizational ethnographic case studies in two Integrated health and social services centers, with narrative process analysis of triangulated qualitative data collected through non-participant observation (163 h), individual semi-structured interviews (N = 34), and document review (N = 143).

FINDINGS

Three types of legitimate sociomaterial work are accomplished when actors appropriate control rooms: 1) reformulating performance management work; 2) disrupting accountability work and; 3) effecting value-based integrated performance management. Each actor (tools, institutions and people) follows recurrent institutional work-paths: tools consistently engage in disruptive work; institutions consistently engage in maintaining work, and people consistently engage in creation work. The study reveals the potential of performance management tools as "effective integrators" of the technological, managerial, policy and delivery levels of data-driven health system performance and improvement.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

This paper draws on theoretically informed empirical insights to develop actionable knowledge around how to better design, implement and adapt tool-driven health system change: 1) Packaging the three agents of data-driven system change in health care: tools, institutions, people; 2) Redefining the search for performance in health care in the context of value creation, and; 3) Strengthening clinical and managerial relevance in health performance management practice.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

The authors aim to stimulate new and original scholarship around the under-theorized concept of sociomaterial work, challenging theoretical, ontological and practical conceptions of work in healthcare organizations and beyond.

Agency in compliance with institutions: The case of professional expert-organizations and politico-ethical agency

As contemporary organizational life is increasingly rule governed, organizational actors, most notably professionals, perform their work by complying with institutional rules, stemming from regulatory bodies external and internal to organizations. This begs a question of the role of agency in compliance with institutions that is largely ignored within organization theory. A weak form of agency in compliance is found in practice theory and practice-driven institutionalism, in terms of actors mindful enactments of institutions on the basis of mastering shared practices for applying institutional rules. These are characterized as first-order practices of compliance with institutions. Extending the Wittgensteinian-inspired philosophical foundation of practice theory, modes of compliance in so-called “hard cases,” where shared practices do not apply as a basis for agreement in following institutional rules, is conceptualized as second-order compliance practices, involving a strong mode of agency. In these cases, the aim is to reach agreement on how rules are to be applied beyond established first-order practices by engaging larger frameworks of shared forms of life and more open and explorative attitudes to move institutions forward for a common good. It is argued that second-order compliance can be understood as a politico-ethical mode of agency in the Kantian tradition, supplementing prevalent notions within organizational institutionalism of agency as primarily political.

Performance Analysis and Science Mapping of Institutional Entrepreneurship Research

Institutional entrepreneurship comprises the activities of agents who disrupt existing social institutions or create new ones, often to enable diffusion, especially of radical innovations, in a market. The increased interest in institutional entrepreneurship has produced a large number of scholarly publications, especially in the last five years. As a consequence, the literature landscape is somewhat complex and scattered. We aim to compile a quantitative overview of the field within business and management research by conducting bibliometric performance analyses and science mappings. We identified the most productive and influential journals, authors, and articles with the highest impact. We found that institutional entrepreneurship has stronger ties to organization studies than to entrepreneurship research. Additionally, a large body of literature at the intersection of institutions and entrepreneurship does not refer to institutional entrepreneurship theory. The science mappings revealed a distinction between theoretical and conceptual research on one hand and applied and empirical research on the other hand. Research clusters reflect the structure–agency problem by focusing on the change agent’s goals and interests, strategies, and specific implementation mechanisms, as well as the relevance of public agents for existing institutions, and a more abstract process rather than agency view.

The actor-network theory as a method in the analysis of Samarco disaster in Brazil

Purpose

The actor-network theory (ANT) has been understood as a method, as a way of engaging in the social world and also transform it. The purpose of this paper is to show the ANT methodological aspects, provide an empirical demonstration of this approach as a method, and promote a debate about the implications and importance of understanding it as a method and not just as a theory.

Design/methodology/approach

By analyzing the criticisms of ANT seminal concepts and its repercussions, the authors have offered an understanding of its methodological aspects and its implications for the practice of research. An empirical study conducted in Brazil is presented to exemplify the use of ANT as a method.

Findings

The methodological reflection of this approach starts from the recognition that the methods are part of the social world that they research; they are totally imbued with theoretical representations of this world; they are social because they also help to constitute this social world. As a method, ANT seeks to understand the process of stabilizing practices, negotiations and controversies that are established when such practices are in the process of being. In that sense, following the relational disputes that build a practice before their stabilization is the task to be accomplished for the researcher in the field.

Research limitations/implications

The paper offers relevant contributions to the understanding of ANT as a method. The authors encourage other researchers to venture into the development of this approach in future studies that further explore its methodological character.

Originality/value

There are not many studies on ANT as a method. If ANT is also a method, can we apply it to any research? The authors hope to bring this matter to discussion, understanding and questioning the use of this theoretical-methodological approach in the research fields.

Contractual and Relational Governance as Positioned-Practices in Ongoing Public–Private Partnership Projects

This article introduces a process framework based on the realist social theory for studying governing in ongoing public–private partnerships (PPPs). Contractual and relational practices are defined as activities enacted and re-created by virtue of actors’ dual positions: at both the partnership and the parent organizational levels. In PPPs, complementarities and contradictions between public, rule-bureaucratic logic and private, market-oriented logic define structural demands on actors. Nonpredictive and innovative governing activities emerge from the actors’ reflexive capacity to balance different demands. The framework allows the examination of the complex interplay of relational and contractual practices, illustrated in a PPP Dutch case.

Managerial Ideologies Dividing the Corporate Elite: A process study of the rise and fall of a counter-ideology

In this paper we refocus attention on managerial ideology. We analyze the dynamics of an ideological conflict among members of the transnational corporate elite in a large multinational corporation. Specifically, we trace the rise and fall of a counter-ideology. We identify the discursive, cognitive and social mechanisms driving ideological change and provide a model for ideological contestation inside the organization. Such multidisciplinary explanations have been missing in extant literature, which has either focused on more reductionist explanations of ideological change or on how ideological hegemony is maintained. We contribute a method to ‘excavate’ ideology – a deep sensemaking structure – from narratives. We conclude that managerial ideology is a useful, but often overlooked, concept for understanding how the ambiguity of managerial decision-making can lead to polarization and conflict.

Realist studies of oppression, emancipation and resistance

This article introduces two papers in a special section of this journal. It explains why realist studies of oppression, emancipation and resistance are needed. We trace the development of studies in this area, noting their Marxist roots, divergence with post-structural theorising and more recent critical realist advancements. We conclude by highlighting the weaknesses in studies of this area and by arguing that progress is important for understanding how emancipation from oppression might be possible.

The Adoption of Management Ideas and Practices

The adoption of new management ideas and practices has become an important and substantial area of study and debate within organizational studies, often under the label of management fads. However, there has been little critical reflection on the range of theoretical approaches used and their problems and possibilities. Moreover, while there has been some overlap with broader issues of management knowledge and learning, debates and literatures remain largely distinct. By way of an overview and as a way of furthering the existing multi-disciplinarity of debates on learning, this article selectively constructs and assesses six broad perspectives on the adoption of management ideas. Rational views are initially contrasted with various psychodynamic, dramaturgical, political, cultural and institutional approaches. However, it is argued that existing perspectives and classifications tend to be dualistic and either idealize or marginalize managerial rationality. This leads to empirical neglect and the possibility for approaches where rational management is acknowledged as necessarily bounded and emotional.

Knowing the Unknowable? A Discussion of Methodological and Theoretical Issues in Emotion Research and Organizational Studies

Emotion is only just beginning to be incorporated into organizational studies and relatively little attention has been given to methodological and related theoretical issues. These present considerable challenges, not least because emotion is considered to be especially elusive-private, intangible, transient, unmanageable, and even `unknowable-and is a complex that spans disciplinary divides and attention. At the same time, these characteristics and its relative novelty in organizational studies present the prospect of contributing to debates in critical social theory which both challenge and develop rationalistic and dualistic analyses which separate reason from emotion, private from public and body from culture, for example. The article explores some of these issues through a discussion of different claimed characteristics of emotion and associated methodological approaches and dilemmas. It is also shown how emotion research can draw attention to more general political and moral research issues as well as the emotional nature of producing knowledge. In addition to raising specific possibilities for research methods and topics, different broad theoretical directions for emotion research in organizational studies are outlined. This points to the prospects of enriching existing theoretical streams and/or constructively challenging the broader disciplinary theories from which they are derived.

Theorizing Contemporary Control: Some Post-structuralist Responses to Some Critical Realist Questions

The paper explores how control in organizations is analysed by counterposing a poststructuralist reading and critique against what is identified as a critical realist account of its nature and significance. Drawing primarily upon Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, it argues that critical realist analysis exemplifies a position in which science is privileged and dualism is defended, in contrast to Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory where dualism is refused and there is a stronger commitment to emancipation. These differences between these versions of critical analysis are related to the more familiar terrain of organizational analysis examined in Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis ; and, more specifically, in their discussion of the challenge posed by ethnomethodology to more established, commonsensical forms of analysis. The problematizing of commonsense found in ethnomethodological studies, it is suggested, has affinities with the deconstructive impulse of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory but, crucially, the former lacks the latter’s politicoemancipatory intent (see also Pollner, 1991). In Burrell and Morgan’s terms, Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory is more radical than radical humanism (e.g. Critical Theory) in rejecting the latter’s ontology as well as refusing the sociological regulationism attributed to interpretivist analysis. The paper closes with a series of reflections upon the relevance of discourse theory for theorizing contemporary control.

Managing Subjectivity and the Dialectic of Self-Consciousness: Hegel and Organization Theory

This article presents the work and ideas of the German philosopher G. WF Hegel as a means of addressing recent debates concerning the management of employee subjectivity within contemporary work organizations. Drawing primarily upon his writings on the phenomenological development of `self-consciousness' and the concept of `ethical life' as a state of realized subjectivity, the authors argue that they provide a meta-theoretical framework within which the processual ontology of organizational (inter)subjectivity can be both addressed and critically appraised. This is then illustrated by a discussion of the role corporate culturalism plays in the mediation of this process, with particular attention being paid to its impact on the embodied dimension of the subject.

Actors and Networks or Agents and Structures: Towards a Realist View of Information Systems

Actor-network theory (ANT) has achieved a measure of popularity in the analysis of information systems. This paper looks at ANT from the perspective of the social realism of Margaret Archer. It argues that the main issue with ANT from a realist perspective is its adoption of a `flat' ontology, particularly with regard to human beings. It explores the value of incorporating concepts from ANT into a social realist approach, but argues that the latter offers a more productive way of approaching information systems.

Agency and Change: Re-evaluating Foucault's Legacy

Michel Foucault's work marks an important break with conventional ontological dualism, epistemological realism and rationalist and intentional notions of individual action and human agency. In these respects his ideas have had an enormous influence on postmodern organization theory and analysis, as well as related forms of social constructionism. In particular, Foucault's ideas have led to a rejection of agency-structure dichotomies and a move towards process-based ontologies of `organizing/changing', that create new problematics of agency as discourse, talk, text or conversation. While this ontological shift toward nominalism has often provoked a counter-reaction against the `death of the subject' and the corrosive influence of postmodernism, there have been few attempts to explore how Foucault's decentring of agency is related to new, more positive and potentially emancipatory discourses that redefine the relationship between agency and change, resistance and power in organizations and society. Here it will be argued that Foucault's legacy can be re-conceptualized as a theorization of the decentring of agency consisting of four key components: discourse, power/ knowledge, embodiment and self-reflexivity. Redefined within Foucauldian organizational discourses, decentred agency can lead to new possibilities for the exploration of agency as discourse and the broader dispersal of agency in organizations. It will be concluded, however, that Foucault's concept of agency fails as a theorization of change: it breaks the link between the voluntary choice or desire to `act otherwise' and the moral, political and practical possibilities of `making a difference'.

If Ethics is the Answer, You are Asking the Wrong Questions. A Reply to Martin Parker

In OS Volume 20/1 Martin Parker contributed an article, `Capitalism, Subjectivity and Ethics: Debating Labour Process Analysis', in which he examined two camps within the UK labour process debate, and suggested the differences within both camps could be overcome by moving the debate on the labour process into the realm of moral philosophy. The two camps he identified broadly fall into materialists and post-structuralists. We have been identified as the principle exponents of the former group, and David Knights and Hugh Willmott the latter. Parker's misinterpretation of our contribution to writing on the labour process over the last decade, and our involvement with the International Labour Process Conference held in the UK over the last 17 years, requires that we try and set the record straight. The editor of OS has kindly allowed this to happen. We have tried to elucidate Parker's position as clearly as possible before indicating our objections, but readers may wish to read our reply alongside the original article

Moving Management: Theorizing Struggles against the Hegemony of Management

How do groups resist the apparently all-encompassing discourse of management? Rejecting current theories of resistance as `re-appropriation' or `micro-politics', we argue that resistance may be thought of as a hegemonic struggle undertaken by social movements. We identify four major resistance movements that engage with management: unions, organizational misbehaviour, civic movements and civic movement organizations. We argue that these forms of resistance differ in terms of location (civil society or workplace) and strategy (political or infra-political). We chart out the possible interconnections between these different modes of resistance and detail how these interconnections are established. By doing this, the paper provides a framework for understanding the many forms of resistance movements that seek to disrupt the hegemonic discourse of management.

Discontinuity and After: the Social Dynamics of Technology Evolution and Dominance

While there has been much discussion of the social dynamics of technology evolution within the technology management literature, this has made relatively little use of work done by sociologists on similar issues. In this article, the potential of sociological research to inform our understanding of technology evolution and dominance is explored, focusing in particular on the contribution of actor network theory. The bringing together of questions posed by technology management theorists and insights offered by social theorists provides new insights on technology evolution, and generates several important implications for both research and practice.

Challenges in Conducting Empirical Work Using Structuration Theory: Learning from IT Research

Giddens’s structuration theory is increasingly used as an alternative approach to studying numerous organizational phenomena. However, the applicability of Giddens’s concepts is not without difficulties because of two main challenges. First, structuration theory is complex, involving concepts and general propositions that operate at a high level of abstraction. Second, structuration theory is not easily coupled to any specific research method or methodological approach, and it is difficult to apply empirically. Arguing that structuration theory is a valuable framework for a rich understanding of management, organization and related subjects of inquiry, this paper aims to improve the application of structuration theory in empirical work by drawing on the experience in information technology (IT) research. It identifies patterns of use of Giddens’s theory in publications in the domain of IT, and then describes how IT researchers have attempted to address its major empirical challenges. The paper presents a repertoire of research strategies that might guide students of organization in dealing with three elements that are central to structuration theory: duality of structure, time/space and actors’ knowledgeability.

Domination, Self-Determination and Circular Organizing

The emergence of self-organizing forms of control, based on the idea of self-determination, have challenged traditional forms of control based on the concept of domination. As such, self-determination has been put forward as an alternative rather than as a complement to domination. This paper describes and explores the circular forms of organizing that have been emerging in several parts of the world, viewing them as a possible synthesis of two existing archetypical concepts of power-self-determination and domination. In particular, the emergence of circular organizing in the Dutch company Endenburg Elektrotechniek is documented and interpreted. This case illustrates how a circular structure can be superimposed on the administrative hierarchy, with the latter continuing to play a substantial role in controlling and managing work processes. In the absence of a single ultimate authority, organizational control is exercised through feedback rather than power. As a result of this study, circularity of power is shown to be an interesting theoretical and instrumental concept.

Implications of Self-Reference: Niklas Luhmann’s Autopoiesis and Organization Theory

This article reviews the potential of Niklas Luhmann’s autopoiesis as a contribution to organization theory. We consider organization theory to consist of three epistemological foundations, which we label equilibrium-based theory, process-based theory and recursivity-based theory. We review critically Luhmann’s autopoietic theory in relation to each of these three foundations. We suggest that whereas it deviates radically from equilibrium-based theory and deviates significantly from process-based theory, it holds potential in its complementarity with Giddens’s structuration theory in providing a promising basis for recursivity-based organization theory.

Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations: The Failure of Foucauldian Studies?

This paper examines the promise of Foucault as a vehicle for addressing subjectivity and organizations. It questions the supposed non-essentialism and nondualism of Foucauldian work, and argues that such work has difficulties in theorizing agency, and the relation between self and discourse. Though the paper is critical of previous attacks on the anti-materialistic stance of Foucauldian work, it nevertheless suggests that Foucauldian studies have been unable to adequately theorize 'material' relations, and that they have so far provided an inadequate basis by which to develop an ethics of either individual or collective change. In developing this critique, the paper largely focuses on Foucauldian work rather than the text of Foucault himself, though some attention is paid to Volumes 1 to 3 of The History of Sexuality. Feminist work is also employed in order to illustrate the limitations of Foucault in theorizing the self and subjectivity.

Distinguishing Adoption and Entrenchment of Management Practices: A Framework for Analysis

This paper distinguishes two stages of management practices in organizations initial adoption and institutional entrenchment. Adopted practices that are not yet entrenched are referred to as fads, and entrenchment is defined as the embedding of practices such that they are likely to endure and resist pressure for change. Next, the paper proposes five bases that give rise to both adoption and entrenchment: modelling, culture, education, regulation, and technical rationality. Modelling is seen to be operative mostly in the initial adoption phase, while culture and education are characteristic of the entrenchment stage. Based on these, a framework is offered to help researchers assess the extent to which a practice is a fad or has been entrenched. The framework is used in an abbreviated example to illustrate the differences between quality circles (a practice popular in the early 1980s) and total quality management (a complex set of practices indicative of institutionalization). The evidence, once organized within the framework, shows that TQM is indeed considerably more entrenched than quality circles were at similar stages in their usage in organizations. The paper ends with some suggestions for future research of which the key is that a clear distinction between mere adoption and entrenchment is vital to the development of institutional theory.

The Ties that Bind: Strategic Actions and Status Structure in the US Investment Banking Industry

We applied Giddens' (1979, 1984) structuration theory to investigate the US investment banking industry and found support for the notion that industry network structure impacts the strategic actions of the firms embedded in it, and that the status hierarchy component of the industry structure is reproduced by the dyad-level interactions of firms in this industry. Investment banks conform to the homophily phenomenon — they tend to transact with others in the industry of similar status. Status ranking also enables high-status banks to maintain an extensive exchange relationship with other banks, while status ranking constrains low-status banks to transact repeatedly with banks with which they have previously transacted.

Exploring the Empty Spaces of Organizing: How Improvisational Jazz Helps Redescribe Organizational Structure

This paper uses jazz as a metaphoric vehicle for redescribing (Rorty 1989) the concept of organizational structure in ways that fit within the emerging vocabulary of organization studies. It begins with a description of some basic elements of jazz performance soloing, comping, trading fours, listening and responding, groove and feel and builds on these to redescribe organizational structure as ambiguous, emotional and temporal. In reflexive fashion, the paper not only demonstrates the concepts it engages, but presents a jazz-like performance of Rorty's method of redescription via metaphor.

Feline politics in organization: The nine lives of Olly the cat

The appearance of ‘Olly the cat’ on the doorsteps of a major UK international airport provides occasion to reconsider the role of the animal in organization and offers suggestive insight into how we might have to learn new ways of being within extended multi-species or interspecies ontologies. Olly is found to lead multiple lives that cannot be reduced to the status of object or media of human intentionality. Her increasing political involvement in the management and organization of the airport challenges orthodox understanding of agency and organizational action. As the ethnography becomes progressively more implicated in the entanglements between human and animal, the concept of ‘feline politics’ is proposed and deployed. This allows research to retain focus on actions and behaviour and modes of thinking that would ordinarily be occluded by conventional modes of organizational representation. In these ways the ethnography moves beyond the interpretative and symbolic treatment of organization analysis and finds resource in the recent ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences. Embracing what is the inevitable participation of the social sciences in the reflexive and recursive enactment of its phenomena, the ethnography discovers new potentialities and new capacities for action as emergent properties of ‘the human’ and ‘the animal’ were mutually learnt, exchanged and acquired. This article adds to what we know about the limits of management as it confronts a radical undecidability characterized by the co-existence of multiple and interacting ontological becomings.

The Meaning of Organizational Learning

This conceptual article focuses on organizational learning (OL), which is broadly defined as a learning process within organizations that involves the interaction of individual and collective (group, organizational, and inter-organizational) levels of analysis and leads to achieving organizations’ goals. This article explores a largely uncharted route of looking at OL through the lenses of several research paradigms and developing a meta-paradigm framework of this construct. The meta-paradigm framework accounts for the complexity of OL, as well as connections between its levels of analysis that have not been explained in the literature. The meta-paradigm framework of OL includes the definition of organization, the definition of OL, its ontology and epistemology, as well as its implications for human resource development (HRD) research and practice.

Agent-Based Modeling and Organization Studies: A critical realist perspective

The method of agent-based modeling raises philosophy of science issues that modelers have yet to resolve in a way that reconciles their work with that of other management and organization researchers. As a result, agent-based modelers have made only modest contributions to advancing organization theory and empirical research. In response, this study proposes critical realism as a philosophical perspective to understand and orient agent-based modeling research. A critical realist perspective clarifies the nature and purpose of agent-based modeling and indicates the potential complementarity between agent-based modeling and other approaches to theory building and testing in the field of management and organization studies. Key emphases within critical realism on mechanismic explanations, emergence, simplifying assumptions, and abductive reasoning support agent-based modelers’ practices. Critical realism carries implications for specifying models, clarifying ontology, evaluating model outcomes, validating models, triangulating, and identifying the limits of agent-based modeling. This study provides practical guidance from a critical realist perspective—to modelers and nonmodelers—to advance the contribution of agent-based modeling to management and organization research.

An evaluation of the practice based approach to understanding the adoption and use of information systems

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the value and limitations of a practice-based approach (PBA) to studying the adoption and use of information systems, through a summary of the theory and exploration of empirical data about the use of collaborative software.

Design/methodology/approach

– A selection of theoretical resources from the practice-based approach, namely, its view of routine and change, socio-materiality, relational thinking and knowing are introduced. They are employed to analyse the adoption of a collaborative technology in a corporate setting. The empirical data is 30 interviews with human resource (HR) professionals involved in a project in a large Mexican University.

Findings

– The adoption and use of the collaborative technology is shaped by collective, historical, social and contextual factors that permeate the HR practices being supported by the information system. Among the factors that shaped participation are the interconnection of HR practices to other practices of the University; the existence of habits and the sense of routinisation reflected in HR practitioners’ patterns of interaction and media use; the concern of practitioners that participation in the community did not fit the way HR practices are performed; and the political manoeuvring taking place between actors to persuade potential users to participate in the community.

Research limitations/implications

– The strength of the analysis using key tenets from a PBA is to deepen our understanding of context as shaped by collective and historical conditions. The sociology of translation can be used to further increase understanding of the political process around the adoption of the collaborative technology. Remaining issues point to a major issue with the theoretical resources from the PBA used in this study, namely the adequacy of its treatment of structural power.

Originality/value

– The paper reports research of significance to those interested in information systems by providing an alternative perspective that sheds light on contextual, social and historical factors affecting the adoption and use of information technologies. The paper is also valuable in suggesting how the PBA can benefit from Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This will be relevant to the field of praxeological studies.

Foucault beyond Fairclough: From Transcendental to Immanent Critique in Organization Studies

This article presents the case that while Foucault’s ideas have been the subject of much debate, the distinctive transformative potentials of his immanent thought have tended to have been overlooked in the field to date. In making this case, critical realism provides an important counter-example, as a transcendental orientation to critical practice with significant influence in contemporary organization studies. In drawing out the difference between these contrasting orientations to critique, Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analytic (CDA) framework is evaluated here as an approach to organization studies that took early inspiration from Foucault’s work, while having looked towards critical realist ideas in recent years. Fairclough’s writings on discourse and university ‘marketization’ provide a useful empirical focus to explore the distinctive styles of problem-posing that follow from these different critical orientations; contrasting the distanced normativity of critical realist-informed transcendentalism with the situated, transformative potentials of Foucault’s immanent thought. Through these investigations, the article offers a reappraisal of existing lines of debate on Foucault and critical realism in organization studies, and of the value of Foucault’s ideas to the field more broadly.

In the Loop: A Realist Approach to Structure and Agency in the Practice of Strategy

This paper introduces and illustrates a critical realist approach to the practice of strategy, combining Archer’s stratified ontology for structure, culture and agency with her work on reflexivity, to provide strategy-as-practice with an innovative theoretical lens. By maintaining the ontic differentiation between structure and agency this approach renders the conditions of action analytically separable from the action itself, thereby facilitating the examination of their interplay, one upon the other, at variance through time, in strategy formation and strategizing. It therefore offers the field a fruitful methodological means of exploring the increasingly complex empirical implications of some practice theoretical claims.

Can Sociological Paradigms Still Inform Organizational Analysis? A Paradigm Model for Post-Paradigm Times

The Burrell and Morgan model for classifying organization theory is revisited through meta-theoretical analysis of the major intellectual movement to emerge in recent decades, post-structuralism and more broadly postmodernism. Proposing a retrospective paradigm for this movement, we suggest that its research can be characterized as ontologically relativist, epistemologically relationist and methodologically reflexive; this also represents research that can be termed deconstructionist in its view of human nature. When this paradigm is explored further, in terms of Burrell and Morgan’s assumptions for the ‘nature of society’, two analytical domains emerge – normative post-structural and critical post-structural. Assessing the types of research developed within them, and focusing on actor-network theory in particular, we describe how post-structural and postmodern thinking can be classified within, rather than outside, or after, the Burrell and Morgan model. Consequently we demonstrate not only that organizational knowledge stands on meta-theoretical grounds, but also how recent intellectual developments rest on a qualitatively different set of meta-theoretical assumptions than established traditions of agency and structure.

Bringing Back the Bank: Local Renewal and Agency through Community Banking

This paper presents findings from an in-depth case study of a bank that has drawn on an anti-globalization discourse and the idea of the “local in opposition to the global” to create a niche for itself in the highly consolidated Australian retail banking market. The paper explores why, despite the contradiction inherent in its discourse, the bank has been able to garner the funds and volunteer effort of locals to establish and extend its branch network. In exploring what motivated the volunteers involved in the establishment of the local bank the paper shows how seemingly impersonal abstract processes of globalization are embedded in local places and worked out through localized practices of agency. These agentic practices were experienced as being connected, authentic, and in control. Yet as always the paradox of agency came into play and throughout the case study we see how these practices of agency are both enabled and constrained by “being local”. By highlighting processes of globalization at the local level these findings move us beyond overarching and overly “neat narratives of globalization” (Maurer, 2003). So that rather than invitations and invocations to “act locally” being seen as “anti-globalization” they should be understood as embedded processes of globalization.

Structuration Theory’s Relevance to HRD

Post-positivist methods are common in Human Resource Development (HRD) theory and research, however some argue that this perspective limits analysis, and there is opportunity for more alternative paradigmatic approaches in this discipline (Callahan, 2007; Deetz, 2001; Elliott & Turnbull, 2005; Fenwick, 2004; Githens, 2007; Lynham, 2000; Rigg, Stewart, Trehan, 2004, 2007; Sambrook, 2004, 2008; Stewart, 2007, Valentin, 2006). Structuration theory (ST) is a viable option, as it provides a means for organization analysis and initiation of change interventions, but does so from an alternate paradigm perspective. ST, formulated by Anthony Giddens (1984), provides a framework for understanding the interplay between individuals and organizations and how this interplay develops and provides opportunity for organizational change. The purpose of this article is to illuminate ST as an alternative approach to HRD that does not draw from the post-positivist tradition and provide suggestions for how one might apply this theory toward research.

Situated learning theory and agentic orientation: A relational sociology approach

The orthodox literature on situated learning has favoured a conception of agency which is linked to habitual action and as a consequence it emphasizes learning as routinized enactment based on social cohesion. To highlight the contested nature of situated learning we draw on the case study of situated learning during organizational change and we employ a relational sociology perspective. The latter views agency as a process encompassing iterative, projective and practical evaluative dimensions which unfold in relation to the temporal and structural contexts within which situated learning is embedded. The evidence illustrates situated learning as an emergent process shaped by the diverse modes in which actors—operating in a context imbued with ambiguity—connected with a seemingly shared set of principles informing their practice.

Embracing essentialism: A realist critique of resistance to discursive power

This article argues that, contrary to its detractors, essentialism is a necessary concept in understanding resistance to managerial discourses. The article first suggests that essentialism, under a critical realist framing, need not suffer from the reductionism or determinism found in many 19th and 20th Century essentialized accounts of the self, arguing instead that the concept adds analytical power to explanatory theorizing. Next, taking three common post-Foundational presentations of resistance to managerialist discourses, the article proposes that, despite protestations to the contrary, each relies on essentialist representations of both discourse and the self. The article then seeks to tackle the ‘problem’ of essentialism head-on by showing its potential for both framing resistance and building bridges between the post-Foundational, realist and natural worlds.

Actor-Network Theory, ANTi-History and critical organizational historiography

The article describes what we have come to call ANTi-History, which entails the development of actor-network theory (ANT) as a critical approach to organizational historiography. It proceeds through four sections: 1) a review of the call for critical organizational historiography to establish the need for ANTi-History; 2) an overview of ANT to identify its potential to contribute to critical organizational historiography; 3) a development of ANT insights into an ANTi-History, through engagement with cultural theory historiography, and the sociology of knowledge; and 4) an account of the potential contribution of ANTi-History to critical management studies.

Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Drawing Lines in Organization Studies

We argue that when considering questions of ontology in organization studies, much can be gained by issuing reminders of the normative conditions by which meanings are fixed. In attempting to fix meaning and the conditions of meaning epistemologically, however, critical realist and social constructionist positions tend to eschew such normative considerations and assert instead how the fixity of meaning is related to causal powers on the one hand, or to discursive habit on the other. In both cases there is an urge to extend from, and somehow complete, organizational experience by drawing what we call general lines. The critical realists do this by distinguishing the necessary from the contingent, the social constructionists by arguing language goes all the way through making such a distinction impossible. Enlisting arguments and concepts from Heidegger and Wittgenstein, as well as discussing the illustrative case of the rights and wrongs of cigarette production, we suggest an alternative normative framing for questions of meaning in which necessity and contingency cohabit, something we liken to the drawing of local lines.

Actor-Network Theory, organizations and critique: towards a politics of organizing

In recent years the approach to social theory known as Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has been adopted within a range of social science fields. Despite its popularity, ANT is considered a controversial approach in that it appears to promote a sociological perspective that lacks substantive political critique. This is argued to be particularly true in ANT’s ‘translations’ in management and organization studies (MOS). In this article, we argue that the ‘ANT and After’ literature offers the potential to develop such a political critique. In particular we suggest it presents the opportunity to develop an approach that de-naturalizes organization(s), has the ability to deliver critical performativity, and at the same time offer a reflexive approach to management and organizational knowledge. Using organizational examples, we argue that ANT and After can offer insights relevant to the development of a critical perspective on MOS, notably through its advocacy of a ‘political ontology’ of organizing.