More than prefigurative politics? Redefining institutional frames to reduce precarity under neoliberal capitalism

This paper responds to the emergent calls for recovering the role of contentious politics in prefigurative communities to more effectively transform capitalist institutions. Theoretically drawing on the work of Judith Butler, our paper points to the importance of addressing the institutional frames that demarcate who will be (mis)recognized in the public space and which are at the core of politics. Our analysis of the Coop case, shows how prefigurative and contentious politics are not incompatible, but can rather strengthen each other in a virtuous circle. When articulated to redefine existing institutional frames, they can reduce precarity. Through this articulation an assembly is constituted where a redefined subject can emerge outside the precarizing frames of neoliberalism. At the same time, our analysis suggests that Coop’s political practices do not completely redefine the individualized, calculative neoliberal subject. Project workers embraced the assembly only to the extent that it helped them reduce their self-responsibility and advance their professional and life projects. Overall, these insights advance the literature on grassroots organizations by showing the importance of contentious politics in attempting to redefine the institutional frames, as opposed to solely relying on prefigurative politics outside institutions. Yet they simultaneously confirm the difficulty to redefine the precarious neoliberal subject through collective emancipatory projects.

How digital fantasy work induces organizational ideal reversal? Long-term conditioning and enactment of digital transformation fantasies at a large alternative bank (1963–2019)

Digitalization, that is, organizational renewal through new information and communication technologies, has long been invested with a fantasmic logic of affording alternative organizational ideals – democratic and not-for-profit rather than hierarchical and for-profit. Responding to calls to study the darker side of Silicon Valley inspired utopia, this paper investigates how and when organizational work on digitalization fantasies undermines organizational ideal renewal. In particular, this paper draws on the extended case of Alternative Bank (1963–2019) to shed light on how the long-term co-evolution of fantasy sublogics and power types in successive digital transformation projects induces organizational ideal reversal. I provide a theoretical model of how organizational ideal reversal comes about through the co-evolutionary conditioning of ‘have your cake and eat it’ affordances, mimetic neglect of real ethical affordances, and structural transgression of the ideal in the name of market and technical discipline. Ideal reversal occurs through consecutive phases of unwitting ideal transgression, followed by increasingly cynical and instrumentalizing transgression, and finally a cathartic moment of liberating ideal reversal. I advance several theoretical propositions on how digital fantasy work induces organizational ideal reversal, situating the dark side of fantasy work within a larger societal critique.

Reflexive learning and performative failure

In this article, we emphasize the importance of context for student learning. Based on reflective logs and interview data, we explore how students learn outside of the classroom as they undertake an experiential dissertation project. We identify three different forms of reflexive learning and critique, all triggered by some form of performative failure; scholarly critique, engaged critique and engaged action. Drawing on Butler’s theory of performativity, we illustrate how reflexivity is not purely the action of any individual student, rather it is a practice that is co-created within a certain context. As such, we contest individualistic understandings of reflexivity and encourage a careful consideration of the places students and managers are encouraged to be reflexive.

Politicizing the Body in the Anti-Mining Protest in Greece

Although organization and management scholars are beginning to research opposition and dissent emerging in response to the global financial crisis, there are few accounts or feminist analyses of social movements and women’s mobilizations as an important part of these movements. We address this gap by considering a case of women activists opposing extractivist mining in Chalkidiki, Greece, to demonstrate their crucial role in initiating and organizing resistance within their communities. Drawing theoretical inspiration from social reproduction theory and the literature on embodied protest as a form of political action, we argue that women use diverse means to promote the politics of visibility, erasing public and private distinctions as they defend their communities’ right to live in unpolluted environments. By way of contribution, we enhance understanding of the role of affective embodiment as a foundation for activist feminist practices; develop a theory of the protesting body altering spatial relations as a means to oppose the neoliberal assault on life and environment; and suggest how this might prefigure new political practices in the context of social movements. We identify the implications of this theorization and call for academics’ deeper sustained engagement in activism.

Affective and effective truths: Rhetoric, normativity and critical management studies

In an era of Brexit, Trump and the detritus of post-truth politics, this article calls upon critical management scholars to reflect upon the efficacy of their critique. We examine the post-truth critiques of public relation firms working for tobacco corporations in the 1960s, before discussing contemporary examples of the Flat Earth Society and the growing community of climate change deniers. In doing so, we note similarities to the intellectual tactics and strategies of the critical management community in terms of problematizing truth(s), broader aims to counter mainstream discourses of science and the various attempts to provide alternative perspectives on the world. In learning from these post-truth communities, we argue that the critical community should be wary of falling back onto a rational, logical and potentially elitist platform of Socratic critique and conversely should not refuse dialogue as in cynical critique. Instead, we argue for more agonistic forms of critique that use salient exemplars to develop affective relationships within communities alongside the discussion of facts, ethics and politics.

Voicing researched activists with responsive action research

Purpose

What it is like to experience being the subject of the research process when you are an actor within a new social movement organization? And what lessons can be learned for researchers engaging with members of New Social Movements? Debates on engagement and the relationship between the researcher and the researched so far have taken the perspective solely of the researcher. Based on insights gained by full participation in a horizontal worker cooperative, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the facilitation of more fruitful, mutually engaging research relations between organizational theory scholars and members of New Social Movement organizations by voicing the researched in this debate.

Design/methodology/approach

After providing some accounts from the researched point of view, the paper focuses on crafting an appropriate research process based on participatory action research (PAR) ethos and experience.

Findings

Since the research findings suggest that PAR combines elements that both trouble and inspire research participants, namely, workload/availability and relevancy/contribution in practice, the authors introduce and provide a case study of responsive action research that emphasizes adaptation and responsiveness in the research process instead of shared governance.

Originality/value

The originality of this paper lies in voicing the research participants with the aim to aid both scholars and social movements adopt appropriate research designs for the mutual benefit of both theory/action and researchers/researched (even when researchers are already active in the field).

Collective leadership with power symmetry: Lessons from Aboriginal prehistory

This article draws upon Australian Aboriginal knowledge in traditional law stories and anthropological studies of contemporary African bands. It applies the DAC ontology ( Drath et al., 2008 ) to analyse two collective leadership models developed by forager peoples: one egalitarian ‘upside-down hierarchy’ and one power-symmetric model. Their existence has several implications for leadership research. Firstly, it encourages shared/distributed leadership scholars to shift their current reactive stage toward building theory of collective leadership on its own terms. This may require exploration of alternatives outside the mainstream both in terms of ontology and cases, and this article attempts to show the value in doing so. Secondly, it highlights the importance of power; the concept needs to be considered more explicitly in collective leadership theory. Finally, it shows that collective leadership is not a recent phenomenon confined to modern organizations – but rather a form for achieving conjoint action in human groups, developed by the first peoples on Earth, and still practised.

Organizing for Individuation: Alternative Organizing, Politics and New Identities

Organization theorists have predominantly studied identity and organizing within the managed work organization. This frames organization as a structure within which identity work occurs, often as a means of managerial control. In our paper our contribution is to develop the concept of individuation pursued through prefigurative practices within alternative organizing to reframe this relation. We combine recent scholarship on alternative organizations and new social movements to provide a theoretical grounding for an ethnographic study of the prefigurative organizing practices and related identity work of an alternative group in a UK city. We argue that in such groups, identity, organizing and politics become a purposeful set of integrated processes aimed at the creation of new forms of life in the here and now, thus organizing is politics is identity. Our study presents a number of challenges and possibilities to scholars of organization, enabling them to extend their understanding of organization and identity in the contemporary world.

Drafting “foot soldiers”: The social organization of the war for talent

The “global war for talent” refers to the increasing competition among organizations and regional governments for top employees. The concept of “war” in this context acts as a powerful metaphor, heightening the intensity with which organizational and regional leaders mobilize their efforts to create, attract, and retain “top talent.” However, this article argues that the “war for talent” is not a distant practice articulated between corporate and state spheres of action but a set of activities directly connected to those in higher education institutions. Framed through the theoretical and methodological approach of Institutional Ethnography, this study tracked students’ activities and experiences with a university’s economic development initiative, Generation Now, showing how the students’ experiences are connected to the global war for talent, how they become its foot soldiers, and with what consequences. More generally, tracing these connections is critical for making sense of contemporary modes of organizing in university classrooms, furthering class hierarchies and neoliberal rationales not necessarily related to students’ educational expectations in the conventional sense. Specifically in this case, experiences derived from classroom activities drafted and differentiated students for a war not of their making while naturalizing their “rightful” places in the global economy.

Doing Free Jazz and Free Organizations, “A Certain Experience of the Impossible”? Ornette Coleman Encounters Jacques Derrida

Many scholars have attempted to make jazz relevant to an organizational audience. We seek to extend this literature by considering a more radical version of improvisation associated with the jazz musician Ornette Coleman. Inspired by an encounter between Coleman and the philosopher Jacques Derrida, we juxtapose the radical collective responsibility associated with Coleman’s Free jazz improvisation and Derridean deconstruction. We especially emphasize a phrase used by Derrida, “a certain experience of the impossible,” as an expression for a particular experience of doing management. The overall contribution of the article is to explore the possibility of responding to issues within organizations in more participative and improvisational ways, without losing an appreciation of the inherent impossibility (perhaps even absurdity) of the managerial condition.

Non-domination, contestation and freedom: The contribution of Philip Pettit to learning and democracy in organisations

This article provides a reading of the civic republican ideas of the political philosopher Philip Pettit in order to make new contributions to learning within organisational life. Our aim is to achieve non-domination in the workplace, and we suggest how Pettit’s work, through the provision of a democratic constitution and development of the resources of individuals and groups, might inspire eminently practical ways in which to increase freedom and minimise asymmetries of power at work. Such asymmetries have long been an ingrained feature of organisations, confounding even the most progressive attempts to increase opportunities to learn and act within organisations. We do not, therefore, underestimate the problems involved. Nevertheless, we advance our arguments as new – but practicable – contributions to progressive forms of management learning.

The Finnish Team Academy model: Implications for management education

This article explores an innovative model of management education, the Team Academy based in Finland, in which teams of learners create and operate real enterprises, supported by coaches. The contributions of the article are to provide insights into how the Team Academy works, and to review its implications for theories of management learning and educational design. Based on a case study of the Team Academy model, we argue that management education programmes need to be construed as artificially created learning environments, and specifically as ‘micro-cultures’ – local contexts in which pedagogical and cultural practices coalesce. The concept of a micro-culture can bring together four main attributes of learning environments, namely, social embeddedness, real-worldness, identity formation, and normative. Construing learning environments in this way has likely important implications for the theory and practice of management learning and education, since a micro-culture is a complex, emergent phenomenon that is not necessarily controllable or transferable.

‘You have to choose a novel’: The biopolitics of critical management education

In this article, we engage empirically with the biopolitical nature of pedagogic practice in critical management education. We do so through considering the effects of employing literary fiction in an introductory management and organization module taught to master’s degree students in a UK business school. We see the deployment of fictional literature in teaching as a way of consciously intervening in this biopolitical predicament. By urging students to work with fictional literature that has been part of their personal past, we encourage them to develop a ‘care of the self’. In the analysis, we first discuss the pedagogic process of the module, reflecting on our own presumptions and behaviours. Second, on the basis of students’ assignments, we analyse the outcome of their learning. In the concluding discussion, we argue that the fact that critical management education is already biopolitical does not preclude the possibility for it to renew educational practice. We suggest that as a result of the potential for creative self-formation offered by the use of literary fiction, transformation of both students and educators is possible.

The production of educational space: Heterotopia and the business university

This article responds to recent calls for rethinking management education and fostering a spatial understanding of educational practices. We propose to introduce Foucault’s notion of heterotopic space and the spatial thought of Lefebvre into the debate about the current and future state of business schools. In particular, we conceptually and empirically discuss the potential for understanding space in a way that addresses its productive force, its multiplicity and its inherent contradictions. Using the example of an experimental teaching project dedicated to the conception and physical design of a city of the future, we reflect upon the possibility of the emergence of ‘other’, heterotopic spaces within an institution of management learning. Our findings suggest that spatial interventions facilitate critically affirmative engagement with the business school by offering an imaginative approach to management education.

Death and Organization: Heidegger’s Thought on Death and Life in Organizations

Mortality has not been given the attention it deserves within organization studies. Even when it has been considered, it is not usually in terms of its implications for own lives and ethical choices. In particular, Heidegger’s writing on death has been almost entirely ignored both in writing on death and writing on organizational ethics, despite his insights into how our mortality and the ethics of existence are linked. In this paper, we seek to address this omission by arguing that a consideration of death may yield important insights about the ethics of organizational life. Most important of these is that a Heideggerian approach to death brings us up against fundamental ethical questions such as what our lives are for, how they should be lived and how we relate to others. Heideggerarian thought also reconnects ethics and politics, as it is closely concerned with how we can collectively make institutions that support our life projects rather than thwart or diminish them.