Research In Organization Studies Research Articles

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? How corporations maintain hegemony by using counterinsurgency tactics to undermine activism

This article contributes to critical theory building in relation to political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) by conceptualizing the underlying processes and practices through which corporations seek to counter threats posed by activist groups. We argue that the problematic nature of PCSR is entangled not only in its state-like aims, but also in its covert deployment of military tactics towards the maintenance of corporate hegemony. We illuminate how corporations use counterinsurgency tactics to undermine the ability of activists to hold them accountable for their wrongdoing. Building on the work of Gramsci, we propose that counterinsurgency tactics combine elements of force and persuasion that enable corporations to maintain hegemony (i.e., secure consent over time). We ask: How are counterinsurgency tactics used by corporations to neutralize activist pressures and maintain corporate hegemony? We draw upon historical sources regarding the Nestlé infant milk boycott case to undertake a genealogical analysis that exposes counterinsurgency tactics enabling corporations to counter activists and sustain their hegemony. We find that Nestlé deployed four key counterinsurgency tactics to nullify activist pressures (suppressing external support, isolating the activist(s), capturing the dialogue, and covert intelligence gathering). From our analysis, we propose the term corporate counterinsurgency and theorize the historic use of corporate counterinsurgency tactics as an example of a hegemonic strategy that enables corporations to covertly undermine activist pressures. We conclude by calling for further reflexivity in organizational studies research on the military origins of PCSR, and by outlining how activist organizations might mobilize against corporate counterinsurgency tactics.

Analysis of Organizational Culture and Climate

Integrating culture and climate in analyzing organizational profiles has become a major area of research in organizational studies. Building on this discussion, this pilot study aims to combine two instruments of cultural and climate assessment (OCAI and OCQ) to identify how a less typical family business needs to change to ensure its success. This article concludes by examining the implications of combining the two instruments, as well as by offering insights into possible future changes that managers can implement.

Systems dynamics research in management and organization studies: Overview and research agenda

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the systems dynamics (SD) research landscape, drawing on 2,091 documents from Scopus and Web of Science. This research employs bibliometric techniques to explore the evolution of the scientific community over the past 50 years and assess research productivity and impact. Through network analysis, the study further reveals the field's social and conceptual structures. This approach revealed four pivotal thematic clusters, which were discussed based on content analysis: (1) operations research and strategy formulation, (2) behavioral studies and collaborative approaches, (3) dynamic performance management, and (4) systems thinking for sustainable development. The findings reveal a diverse and interdisciplinary trajectory of SD research, reflecting its integration into a broad array of fields and its potential to inform both theoretical and practical applications. The paper concludes by providing targeted recommendations for future SD research, with a particular emphasis on enhancing management and organizational studies through the incorporation of SD methodologies. This includes the potential for SD to influence the design of adaptive strategies, the use of SD in participatory policymaking, and the application of SD tools in promoting organizational learning and sustainability.

Experiencing communality in collective activity: Four ways to generate sameness in differences

In this introductory article of the special issue ‘Experiencing communality and togetherness at work: Phenomenologies of a shared existence’, we suggest exploring the issue of sameness and differences at stake in collective activity. In a post-pandemic world of work, a weak sense of co-presence is fostered by hyper-individualization, fragmentation, liquidity, geo-political tensions and a widespread distrust of social institutions. In this context, communality is less than ever a given. In this context, we ask the following question: How can we experience communality together in collective activity while acknowledging our often profound differences? This essay and special issue address this question by investigating how sameness can be experienced in and through difference. Specifically, we do so by focusing on commons and the process of communalization as it has been explored in Management and Organization Studies. We propose a typology in which we specify four perspectives shedding light on four experiences of communality in collective activity through and beyond differences. This typology offers a lens to present the articles selected for this special issue, as well as generating implications for research and education in Management and Organization Studies.

The Importance of Human Rights for Management and Organization Studies

AbstractBusiness and human rights (BHR) scholarship examines the role of business in human rights violations as well as business responsibilities to respect human rights and to provide remedy where needed. BHR scholarship has been thriving over the last several decades, but it is at a turning point that begs for increased cross‐disciplinary exchange. We argue that dealing systematically and explicitly with a human rights perspective in management and organization studies provides BHR scholarship with a new impetus as well as with alternative perspectives on how to understand and further advance human rights obligations on businesses. We advance two BHR conceptualizations that will provide guidance for integrating human rights in management with organization studies research and thereby enlarge the cross‐disciplinary conversation on BHR: BHR as Global Governance and BHR as Sensemaking. This paper expands existing management and organization studies constructs, invites management and organization studies scholars to provide their insights into this important research domain, and discusses the implications of human rights for the firm.

Best practices for weight at work research

AbstractPopular and influential social commentators have called organizations complicit in perpetuating weight-based bias and mistreatment. Although our field has advanced our understanding of the economic consequences of being fat at work (e.g., salary; job performance; and promotions), we urgently need more research on the interpersonal experiences of this swath of workers so that we can appropriately advise organizations. In this article, we describe how organizational psychology researchers can answer this call to do more research on weight at work (a) even while feeling uncomfortable with a topic that can feel personal, medicalized, and/or overly intertwined with other DEI-based topics; (b) by incorporating insightful research from outside disciplines that centers weight controllability and weight-based mistreatment deservedness; and, critically, (c) while approaching weight at work research with a respectfulness that conveys an understanding of the complexities intertwining weight, health, and personal agency. In culmination, this article offers to our field a flexible, living document entitled Best Practices for Weight-Based Research in Organizational Studies.

What is the real perversity of racism?

AbstractRacism is inscribed onto the mind of the racialized subject. This essay represents my attempt at making sense of the psychological costs levied by the racism that materializes from living in a culture of hegemonic whiteness. My analysis is informed by Frantz Fanon's writings and, particularly, his concept of corporeal malediction. Corporeal malediction captures the unique reality of the racialized subject—one that is different from the systemic discrimination and violence encountered by other socially disenfranchised groups. Theoretically framed by Fanon's “postcolonial” thought, and anecdotally informed by my own experiences as well as my past research on race and racism in organizations, I pose the question: What is the real perversity of racism? I argue that the real perversity of racism is to be found in the psychological damage that it poses on the ontology of the racialized subject. This psychological damage on the racialized subject unfolds through myriad trajectories, three of which I identify in this essay: (1) the (dis)coloring of social reality, (2) the impossibility of assimilation, and (3) the hybrid identity problematic. While management and organization studies researchers have expended much energy in unraveling the institutional and the organizational paths through which racism is enacted, there has been a dearth of scholarly research on its devastating impact on the psychology of the individual. This essay aims to flesh out this corporeal phenomenon.

Feeling clumsy and curious. A collective reflection on experimenting with poetry as an unconventional method

AbstractIn this paper, we offer a collective, multi‐vocal reflection on using poetry for research purposes. These were reflections on an online sub‐plenary session organized as a workshop, which was held at the European Group for Organization Studies conference in 2021. During this workshop, the first three authors presented a step‐by‐step method for doing poetic inquiry and invited participants to apply it to their own empirical data or research praxis. The method was created in response to the marginalization of affect and embodiment in mainstream research in organization studies. Poetic inquiry aims to formulate specific practices of “writing differently” that assist researchers in their attempts to analyze and articulate their findings in embodied and affective ways. In this paper, we describe the method and bring together multi‐vocal reflections from the participants and organizers of the workshop on the affects of poetic inquiry and the (ethical) questions that it poses.

Organizations and migrant integration: Towards a multiparadigm narrative approach

This paper explores the potential of conducting multiparadigm research within and beyond cross-cultural management, using narratives to examine how organizations shape migrant integration experiences and trajectories. It highlights the strengths of paradigmatic multiplicity in research with examples of three illustrative studies respectively using functionalist, interpretive and critical perspectives, while also considering the boundaries of these individual approaches. The paper proceeds to explore the potential of adopting a multiparadigm approach within a research strategy that places narratives at the centre of enquiry. It identifies the scope and focus of future research for a socially and politically important area of enquiry; it evaluates the application of diverse paradigm-driven methodological perspectives including the challenges involved in using them alone and in combination; and it develops a transferable framework to guide research in cross-cultural management, organization and migration studies that helps to assure procedural and conceptual rigour, and to generate practicable insights that facilitate successful integration outcomes.

Empresas e ditadura civil-militar brasileira: os editoriais do jornal Folha de S. Paulo em uma perspectiva histórica

Abstract In alignment with historical organizational studies (Decker, Hassard, & Rowlinson, 2021; Maclean, Harvey, & Clegg, 2016) and seeking a geographical (re)orientation, more to the Global South, to historical research in organizational and management studies (A. S. M. Costa & Wanderley, 2021; Wanderley & A. Barros, 2019), the article aims to understand the ideological positioning and the political-discursive performance of the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo in the early period of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985). A theoretical framework was built, supported by two historiographical currents (Business and Dictatorship; History and Press) and by the concepts of discourse, ideology, and power articulated by critical discourse analysis. In terms of documental sources, 112 daily editorials were collected, published from January to June 1964, and available in the historical archive of the researched company. The theoretical and methodological contribution of Norman Fairclough’s (2016) three-dimensional model and its proposed use by J.B. Thompson’s (2011) model of analysis of strategies of ideological constructions were used. As a result, it was possible to identify three different moments in the discursive trajectory of the positioning of the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper concerning the military coup of 1964 in Brazil: (1) significant contribution to the destabilization of the democratic government of President João Goulart, (2) strong alignment with the military coup and its immediate unfoldings; and (3) support for the subsequent Castelo Branco government, but already with the enunciation of some reservations. Finally, it is possible to affirm that this journalistic organization acted strongly not only as an instrument of information but mainly as a producer and reproducer of specific discourses in favor of a particular social group and its subsequent dictatorial acts. Against this background, historical research into the political and socio-economic relations between business, government, and society over time and their unfolding today is becoming increasingly necessary.

The employee experience (EMX) framework for well-being: an agenda for the future

PurposeThis conceptual review paper aims to extend the human resource (HR) management literature by introducing a holistic employee experience (EMX) framework to conceptualize the relationship between EMX entities and employee well-being. Thus, the EMX framework stimulates future research in HR and organizational studies by incorporating a transformative impact of experiences designed by organizations on the overall well-being of their employees.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on the customer experience literature in the marketing literature and reviews the existing conceptualizations of the EMX construct in HR management studies, along with other disciplines through an extensive and in-depth analysis of the academic and business literature that examines EMX.FindingsThe EMX framework provides a comprehensive outlook on the relationship between EMX and well-being, where the latter is considered both a driving force and an outcome of the overall EMX. EMX is a multilevel model offering a big-picture view of how the three entities – personal, social and cultural – of the organization referring to different levels of the EMX can affect employees' well-being in terms of their functional, emotional, hedonic and eudaimonic needs.Research limitations/implicationsThe EMX framework utilizes a richer definition of the EMX and highlights the need for research that bridges other disciplines and paradigms outside of and within HR management. This research develops the understanding of each component of the EMX framework with the ultimate goal of moving the field towards the EMX approach. This research identifies some unanswered questions related to a new management tool that enhances employee well-being, improves the delivered customer experience and contributes in making the current body of knowledge on the EMX more organized. The analysis of the different issues addressed by the literature suggests avenues for future research.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the HR literature and the emerging research on the EMX by presenting a comprehensive framework that incorporates a holistic understanding of the concept in the HR field. The paper offers scholars and organizations that struggle with engaging employees, a modern and practical perspective – one that helps organizations develop an in-depth understanding of today's workplaces in a globalized context to implement successful and engaging customer and EMXs.

Gift-Giving as a Conversion Device in Online Marketplaces

The social foundations of the platform economy stand at the forefront of academic research in economic sociology, communication, and organization studies. Can a study of patterns of gift-giving in online marketplaces further our understanding of the social ties and normative structures underpinning trade? This study suggests that the answer is in the affirmative. Studies of gift-giving in offline markets assert that gifting is predicated on reciprocity and social obligation, and enables the constitution and reproduction of social ties that facilitate trade. This article presents a three-pronged theoretical argument. First, it extends the argument that gifting creates a social space that is open to manipulations and interpretations. Second, it asserts that gift-giving in the online marketplace should be viewed as a particular type of “market device,” an object that guides market actors how to make sense of their socio-economic actions. Third, the article argues that gifting operates as a “conversion device” providing buyers and sellers with a flexible material and symbolic resource that allows them to oscillate and convert between distinct moral frameworks that co-exist within the socio-cultural institution of gift-giving. Based on 54 in-depth interviews, this study finds that gifting flourishes around reputation systems, pointing to their central role in the platform economy. The role of gift-giving as a conversion device is developed and discussed, and the way sellers employ it to convert the normative framework depicting reputation systems as rational and calculative, into a framework highlighting reciprocity and obligation.

Repensar “Organizações e Sociedade” a partir das Escrevivências: por uma Gestão das e nas Lacunas

Abstract This is not a conventional manuscript that follows the established norms of research in organizational studies, but it does not give up the scientificity required by academia. It is yet another way of doing and writing, as it occurs with the practices developed by those who have been secluded from the prevailing way of organizing in Brazil. Therefore, we propose to rethink the forms of management from the experiences of lacunar subjects and knowledge forms, from the social-historical perspective on the formation of the boundaries of this scientific field. To do so, we adjust our lenses to frame what lies outside the privileged enunciative locus of the instrumental rationality ruling the field and come across Carolina Maria de Jesus and her escrevivências1 about a reality that has been unnoticed by management practices according to the success model of this form of rationality. Therefore, we present a theoretical and scientific article, in which literature is employed as source material to outline the proposed reflections and reframe “organizations and society” from the know-how of those who have been underprivileged by dominant reason.

The bright side and the dark side of top management support in Digital Transformaion –A hermeneutical reading

In information systems (IS) research, top management support is typically seen as an exclusively positive phenomenon that is key to any successful digital transformation including IS implementation and associated organizaational, operational and startegic chnage. . Surprisingly, this view contrasts with the findings of organization studies research, which reveal a “dark side” of top management support. We propose that this chasm in the research findings may result from: (1) IS research taking a single-sided view of a dialectic phenomenon; or (2) IS implementation being a phenomenon within which top management support can only ever play a positive role. This study examines these propositions by employing a hermeneutical analysis of a published case study on the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The findings support the first proposition, revealing that senior management “hyperopia” and overconfidence could lead to significant operational confusion and a costly implementation. The study contributes to IS research by revealing that the style and approach of top management support are key to determining the impact of that support and whether it is positive and/or negative. It also extends management research on the dark side of top management to the domain of IS implementation and organizational change, in addition to providing a thorough application of hermeneutical analysis.

Birth order revelations about managers

PurposeThis paper aims to reveal the effects of birth order in decision-making style, conflict handling style and propensity for participative decision-making. The intention is to open the perspective of birth order research in organizational studies, as an important individual difference of managers.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted with 230 managers from different industries in Kosovo. Self-report measures were used for decision-making style, conflict handling style and participatory decision-making constructs.FindingsResults indicate that only children are more avoidant and spontaneous decision-makers. Firstborns are rational in decision-making and prefer problem-solving in conflict handling. Middleborns are intuitive decision-makers and use compromising in conflict handling. Lastborns make decisions rationally and use both compromising and problem-solving in conflicting situations. In addition, lastborns appeared to have a more positive attitude toward participative decision-making, followed by middleborns, firstborns and only children.Research limitations/implicationsBirth order affects managers’ behaviors in decision-making and conflict situations. Relationship dynamics in sibships are reflected in organizational settings, affecting how people behave in decision-making and conflict handling.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to attest how birth order influences the ways managers make decisions, handle conflicts and involve others in decision-making. As birth order cannot be changed, such knowledge is critical.

Anticipation and Organization: Seeing, knowing and governing futures

Anticipation is part of organizational attempts to manage their future affairs and shape their surroundings. Still, the ways in which organizations engage in anticipation have not been sufficiently conceptualized in the field of organization and management studies. This article conceptualizes organizational ways of shaping and orchestrating futures by engaging insights from Foucauldian scholarship that highlight the intersection between what we can see, know and govern. We highlight the importance of processes of knowledge production in governance efforts, and articulate how anticipatory governance is crafted through intricate combinations of resources such as narratives, numbers and digital traces. The main contribution is a conceptual typology outlining four different templates for anticipatory governance in organizational settings that we term ‘indicative snapshots’, ‘prognostic correlations’, ‘projected transformations’ and ‘phantasmagoric fictions’. We posit anticipatory governance as a knowledge-based, performative phenomenon that addresses potential and desirable futures in and between organizations. Such anticipatory activities gauge and guide organizational processes and modes of thinking and acting along different temporal orientations, and have governance effects that makes anticipation performative by its very nature. This understanding of anticipatory governance, we suggest, offers both conceptual contributions and empirical avenues for research in organization and management studies.

Complex Times, Complex Time: The Pandemic, Time‐Based Theorizing and Temporal Research in Management and Organization Studies

Complex Times, Complex Time: The Pandemic, Time‐Based Theorizing and Temporal Research in Management and Organization Studies

Accounting for management and organizational history: strategies and conceptions

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to answer the question of where the course of the collective efforts in historical research on business and organizations has taken this discipline. By raising two key contributions that have sought to reshape the contours of management and organizational history, the authors trace the work of their field since their inception and, in doing so, critique the utility of these typologies as representative of diverse historical knowledge in management and organization studies (MOS).Design/methodology/approachDrawing on elements of an integrative review that seeks to critically appraise the foundation of knowledge built in a scholarly field, the authors interrogate the historical knowledge that has been (and is being) produced in three leading management and organizational history journals by synthesizing the posture history takes as an object and subject of study in MOS. Over 400 articles were closely examined and categorized using Rowlinsonet al.’s (2014) research strategies in organizational history and Maclean et al.’s (2016) four conceptions of history. Then, this research was used to examine the integrity of these two typologies and their practice by management historians.FindingsThe bulk of the work our field has produced mirrors an analytically structured history feel – where “doing history” straddles careful divide between data analysis and narrative construction. Narrating as a conception of history used in organization studies research remains the most subscribed representation of the past. It was found that while some work may fit within these typologies, others especially those considered peripheral of mainstream history are difficult to confine to any one strategy or conception. The authors’ examination also found some potential for a creative synthesis between the two typologies.Research limitations/implicationsBecause only three management history journals are used in this analysis, bracketed by the choice of the periodization (between 2016 and 2019 inclusive), this study must not be viewed as being wholly representative of all historical research on business and organizations writ-large.Practical implicationsThis research attempts to demonstrate the recent direction management and organizational historians have taken in crafting history. The authors embrace the opportunity to allow for this paper to act as a tool to familiarize a much broader audience to understand what has been constituted as historical research in MOS to-date and is especially useful to those who are already contributing to the field (e.g. doctoral students and junior scholars who have demonstrable interest in taking up historically inspired dissertations, articles, chapters and conference activities).Originality/valueThe research conducted in this article contributes to the debates that have sought to define the scholastic character of management and organizational history. The authors build on recent calls to take part in creating dialogue between and among each other, building on the collective efforts that advance history in both theory and practice.

So far and yet so near: The emerging characteristics, forms and configurations of organizational proximity in the context of digitalization

BACKGROUND: The current pandemic crisis evidences the importance of questioning and reconsidering the evolution of organizational proximity and the crucial role of digitalization in the emergence of new characteristics, forms and configurations of organizational proximity. OBJECTIVE: This article presents a conceptual study aimed at analyzing the evolution of organizational proximity in the context of digitalization. METHODS: Adopting a systemic-cognitive approach inspired by existing studies on management cognition and the biology of cognition, this article first presents an analytical review of existing research in organizational studies and proposes a taxonomy of proximity based on the forms and characteristics identified in the organizational context. Second, it introduces the notion of a proximity unit, based on which a conceptual framework for analyzing organizational proximity is conceived. RESULTS: Based on the proposed framework, this article analyzes the new characteristics and forms of organizational proximity and identifies possible configurations of organizational proximity by pointing out the emergence of substituted proximity propelled by digitalization and formulating six propositions. CONCLUSIONS: The article ends by arguing that it is important for organizations to conceive a composite proximity strategy by taking into account the effect of substituted proximity, driven by digitalization, in the configuration of organizational proximity.

Rolling with the punches: receiving peer reviews as prescriptive emotion management

ABSTRACT Although Collier’s [2002. “The Changing University and the (Legal) Academic Career – Rethinking the Relationship between Women, Men and the Private Life of the Law School.” Legal Studies 22: 1–32] ‘emotional economy’ of academia is well travelled in management and organization studies research, this literature is predominantly informed by Hochschild’s [1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press] original formulation of emotional labour as mandated by management for commercial reasons. Equally, there is little analysis of research and even less of receiving peer reviews. Nonetheless, authors can find peer review emotionally challenging, especially when they receive rejections or caustic reviews. Qualitative interviews with management and organization studies academics indicate an understanding of the receipt of peer reviews as properly governed by Bolton’s [2005. Emotion Management in the Workplace. London: Palgrave, 2009. “Getting to the Heart of the Emotional Labour Process: A Reply to Brook.” Work, Employment and Society 23: 549–60; Bolton and Boyd 2003. “Trolley Dolly or Skilled Emotion Manager? Moving on from Hochschild’s Managed Heart.” Work, Employment and Society 17: 289–308] prescriptive feeling rules. This suggests such emotion work demands private processing to underpin public displays, even though these are anonymized and written. It may mean authors choose not to appeal to editors about reviewing outcomes except where due process has been breached, as well as involving proxy work by editors to forestall potential hurt to authors.