15 research outputs found
What comes around, goes around: how neo/normative control accidently enables its own resistance
No full textPurpose - The paper discusses how the management of a sports and fashion company, which we refer to as NULMA, successfully applied the neo/normative control technology “karma organisation” and gained employee engagement. Whereas other studies have documented employee resistance to organisational cultures when used for managerial control, our case demonstrates resistance to management practices that employees find inconsistent with the dominant karma culture. Design/methodology/approach - The study is based on a six-year longitudinal organisational at-home ethnography conducted by one of the authors using methods of both participant and non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and collaborative production of secondary data in the case organisation. Findings - While our research shows that management can successfully apply neo/normative control which employees accept and support, we further show that employees mobilise the same values to resist management when it fails to deliver on the commitments and promises of the organisational culture. Originality/value - The study contributes to the literature on organisational culture and, in particular, neo/normative control by theorising employee resistance as being by “accident”, by which we mean an inherent negative potentiality co-invented and released by managers establishing a “karma organisation”. Our theorising culminates in a discussion of the study’s implications for research and practice
From individual to organizational bias: A norm-critical proposition for unconscious bias intervention in organizations
No full textIt is generally accepted in organization and management studies that individuals are implicitly biased, and that biased behavior has organizational consequences for diversity, equality, and inclusion. Existing bias interventions are found not to lead to signifi cant changes in terms of eliminating individual bias, reducing discrimination, or increasing the numbers of underrepresented minorities in organizations. This article links the absence of positive change to a lack of engagement with the structural-organizational contexts, processes, and practices that reproduce bias. We identify three concrete shortcomings in the literature: that interventions are: 1) largely ignorant of broader societal power structures; 2) detached from specifi c organizational contexts; and 3) decoupled from concrete organizational action. By combining insights from unconscious bias research with norm critique and design thinking, we develop a proposition for a new intervention model that forgoes the individualization of unconscious bias and extends to a structural understanding of bias as embedded in organizational norms. The article draws on data from an action research project that included a workshop series developed and organized in three Scandinavian countries over one year. The data provide the basis for an empirically grounded conceptualization of the organizational bias intervention advanced by the authors.It is generally accepted in organisation and management studies that individuals are implicitly biased, and that biased behaviour has organisational consequences for diversity, equality and inclusion. Existing bias interventions are found not to lead to significant changes in terms of eliminating individual bias, reducing discrimination or increasing the numbers of underrepresented minorities in organisations. This article links that absence of positive change to a lack of engagement with the structural-organisational contexts, processes and practices that reproduce bias. We identify three concrete shortcomings in the literature: that interventions are 1) largely ignorant of broader societal power structures, 2) detached from specific organisational contexts and 3) decoupled from concrete organisational action. By combining insights from unconscious bias research with norm critique and design thinking, we develop a proposition for a new intervention model that forgoes the individualisation of unconscious bias and extends to a structural understanding of bias as embedded in organisational norms. The article draws on data from an action research project which included a workshop series developed and organised in three Scandinavian countries over the course of one year. The data provides the basis for an empirically grounded conceptualisation of the organisational bias intervention advanced by the authors
Sara Ahmed:A Return to Emotions
No full textSara Ahmed’s work on affect and emotion is gaining growing attention from organization scholars. This chapter considers some of Ahmed’s main concepts as analytical tools for engaging with affect and emotion in organization studies. Looking backward as well as forward, it discusses the theoretical influences that have inspired her work on affect and asks what Ahmed’s conceptual work allows us to do within organization studies. The chapter concludes with an invitation, or demand even, to question our own orientations, attunements, and affective commitments as scholars and members of organizations, namely academic institutions. Two main points are put forth: First, the authors highlight Ahmed’s contribution in the fields of feminist, anti-racist, and queer studies to argue that her scholarship links normativity and emotion, which makes it possible to investigate affect in relation to organizational norms and power structures. Second, her work is discussed as a (re)turn to emotion rather than part of an affective turn, critically emphasizing a potential implication of the affective turn, namely that it creates a distinction that privileges affect at the expense of emotion. To assume their separation, and then claim novelty in a turn toward affect, would imply a problematic mind-body dichotomy, which Ahmed’s work avoids by understanding affect and emotion as mutually implicated. The chapter accordingly highlights Ahmed’s focus on how emotions circulate socially: what they do rather than what they are
Productive Tensions of Corporate Pride Partnerships:Towards a Relational Ethics of Constitutive Impurity
No full textBased on a qualitative study of Copenhagen 2021 WorldPride, this article explores collaboration between the local organiser and its corporate partners, focusing on the tensions involved in this collaboration, which emerge from and uphold relations between the extremes of unethical pinkwashing, on the one hand, and ethical purity, on the other. Here, pinkwashing is understood as a looming risk, and purity as an unrealizable ideal. As such, corporate sponsorships of Pride are conceptualized as inherently impure—and productive because of their very impurity rather than despite it. Analytically, we identify and explore three productive tensions where the first involves emergent normativities for what constitutes good, right, or proper corporate engagement in Pride, the second revolves around queer(ed) practices and products that open normativities, and the third centres on the role of internal LGBTI+ employee-driven networks whose activism pushes organisations to become further involved in Pride, developing aspirational solidarity. Reading across literatures on corporate activism and queer organisation, we introduce Alexis Shotwell’s notion of constitutive impurity to suggest that the potential for ethical corporate Pride partnerships arises when accepting the risk of pinkwashing rather than seeking to overcome it.Based on a qualitative study of Copenhagen 2021 WorldPride, this article explores collaboration between the local organiser and its corporate partners, focusing on the tensions involved in this collaboration, which emerge from and uphold relations between the extremes of unethical pinkwashing, on the one hand, and ethical purity, on the other. Here, pinkwashing is understood as a looming risk, and purity as an unrealizable ideal. As such, corporate sponsorships of Pride are conceptualized as inherently impure—and productive because of their very impurity rather than despite it. Analytically, we identify and explore three productive tensions where the first involves emergent normativities for what constitutes good, right, or proper corporate engagement in Pride, the second revolves around queer(ed) practices and products that open normativities, and the third centres on the role of internal LGBTI+ employee-driven networks whose activism pushes organisations to become further involved in Pride, developing aspirational solidarity. Reading across literatures on corporate activism and queer organisation, we introduce Alexis Shotwell’s notion of constitutive impurity to suggest that the potential for ethical corporate Pride partnerships arises when accepting the risk of pinkwashing rather than seeking to overcome it
Stairway to Heaven:LGBTQ+ Gatherings as Civil-Religious Rituals
No full textThis paper applies ritual theory to study public LGBTQ+ gatherings, including Pride parades, silent vigils, and commemorative litanies. The analysis of public LGBTQ+ rituals has often focussed on Pride parades and their carnivalistic exuberance. We call instead for more attention to the whole nexus of public rituals that this movement consists of, and we argue that these rituals are central to LGBTQ+ community building and meaning-making in this social movement. Using participant and non-participant observation, as well as publicly available data, the paper studies assembly forms, ritual scripts, symbolic interactions, sites, and objects that link the various public rituals within the LGBTQ+ movement. We find that, over the last five decades, these ritual elements have coalesced to provide members of the LGBTQ+ community access to the sphere of transcendence. Our findings suggest that this community might be slowly changing its character from social (protest) movement to becoming a viable civil religion
Disconnective action:Online activism against a corporate sponsorship at WorldPride 2021
No full textDisconnective action, this article argues, is an important supplement to the logic of connective action, which enables social movements to organize informally online. Through the (threat of) disconnection, members may (re)assert their agency in relation to social movement organizations. In conducting a case study of LGBTI+ community members’ protests of a corporate sponsorship of WorldPride 2021, we establish disconnective action as a particular form of within-movement activism that relies both on social media affordances and the conditions of possibility of hybrid media ecologies. Thus, we explore how individual members of the LGBTI+ community were able to influence the formal organization of WorldPride 2021, as the threat of community members’ disconnection from the event led the organizers to terminate a corporate sponsorship. On this basis, we conceptualize disconnective action as a central means for individual activists to shape the movements of which they are part.Disconnective action, this article argues, is an important supplement to the logic of connective action, which enables social movements to organize informally online. Through the (threat of) disconnection, members may (re)assert their agency in relation to social movement organizations. In conducting a case study of LGBTI+ community members’ protests of a corporate sponsorship of WorldPride 2021, we establish disconnective action as a particular form of within-movement activism that relies both on social media affordances and the conditions of possibility of hybrid media ecologies. Thus, we explore how individual members of the LGBTI+ community were able to influence the formal organization of WorldPride 2021, as the threat of community members’ disconnection from the event led the organizers to terminate a corporate sponsorship. On this basis, we conceptualize disconnective action as a central means for individual activists to shape the movements of which they are part.</p
