Journal articles by Johanna Moisander
Journal of Management Studies, 2023
This paper offers an understanding of how hybrid models of corporate social responsibility (CSR)-... more This paper offers an understanding of how hybrid models of corporate social responsibility (CSR)-models combining society-centric mandatory (implicit) and business-centric voluntary (explicit) approaches to CSR-are communicatively constructed through institutional struggles over the roles and responsibilities of business in society, in the context of a Nordic welfare state. We develop a model of hybridization as a dialectical process of communicative activity, framing and counter-framing, in which conflict and contestation over normative understandings about CSR drive the process. The model explains the emergence of hybrid models of CSR in terms of gradually evolving issue development and frame changes that are driven by discursive struggles over moral obligations of business in society, appropriate configuration of legitimacy relationships, and appropriate institutional arrangements for CSR governance. In contrast to prevailing accounts, which tend to theorize hybridization as resulting from isomorphic, mimetic, and normative pressures, our account explicitly attends to the politics of hybridization.
Human Relations, 2023
Are organizational projects for refugee and migrant inclusion always trapped with the logic of ex... more Are organizational projects for refugee and migrant inclusion always trapped with the logic of exclusion and inequality that they seek to dismantle? Existing literature on critical diversity and inclusion studies has demonstrated how the "doing" of inclusion in organizations tends to come with paradoxical effects: well-intended efforts to include migrants and refugees construct them as vulnerable, non-autonomous subjects who need help, within a hierarchical order that is taken for granted. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores how three civil society organizations (CSOs) navigate these paradoxical effects and the unduly constraining power relations involved through practices that we theorize as counter-conduct against the pastoral government of a national refugee and migrant integration regime. The analysis identifies three practices of counter-conduct through which organizations "do inclusion differently": contesting constraining categorizations, problematizing hierarchical power relations, and questioning the assimilationist goals and principles of the integration regime. We argue that through continuous critique and renegotiation of the ways in which boundaries of
Culture & Organization, 2022
How can artistic intervention facilitate empathic engagement with workrelated uncertainty in post... more How can artistic intervention facilitate empathic engagement with workrelated uncertainty in postgraduate management education? To examine this, we theorize artistic intervention as creating an interspace of temporarily suspended organizational norms through which empathy as relational knowing can emerge between participants. Drawing on an ethnographic study entitled Becoming in Academia, a nine-month artistic intervention conducted by a group of doctoral students in a Nordic business school (NBS), this paper highlights how an interspace for empathic engagement with work-related uncertainty was created by the participants through three intervention activities: aligning oneself to the other, narrating a collective validation, and acknowledging the agency of the other. In contributing to arts-based management education research, the paper theorizes and empirically elaborates on empathic knowing as emerging from activities of artistic intervention, opening an interspace, and providing new insight into arts-based methods as means for engaging with uncertainty within management education.
Journal of Media Business Studies, 2019
This paper advances knowledge of the productive, strategically important roles that media consume... more This paper advances knowledge of the productive, strategically important roles that media consumers play in brand co-creation in the empirical context of multichannel media outlets. Based on a qualitative study, the paper shows how a media company leverages the power of communities and networks in its strategic brand management to engage its consumers in brand co-creation by authoring, contesting, and circulating narratives about the brand and their relationship with the brand in the course of their identity work as individuals and members of the online community of the brand. The paper concludes that in the contemporary co-creative media culture, media managers might need to develop new practices and approaches to brand management that stimulate and motivate brand co-creation all the while preserving the brand's essence.
International Journal of Consumer Studies
Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and... more Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online contexts. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines how and for what reasons consumers challenge marketer legitimacy—the perceived appropriateness of marketers and their activities—in the empirical context of Reddit, a popular social news and community website. The study suggests that consumers challenge or accept marketer legitimacy in online communities based on particular, community and situation specific, legitimacy criteria that reflect and reproduce the values and norms of the community. In doing so, it is argued, consumers play a role as legitimating agents—consumer-citizens that have the power to confer or deny legitimacy in the context of business-society relations. Overall, the study advances knowledge in the field of consumer studies in two ways. Firstly, it builds a symbolic interactionist perspective on consumer-citizens as legitimating agents who enact their active citizenship role in the marketplace by assessing and constructing marketer legitimacy in online communities. Secondly, it offers an empirically grounded account of how and for what reasons consumer-citizens challenge or accept the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online communities.
Human Relations, 2017
In the contemporary conditions of neoliberal governmentality, and the emerging 'gig economy,' sta... more In the contemporary conditions of neoliberal governmentality, and the emerging 'gig economy,' standard employment relationships appear to be giving way to precarious work. This article examines the mechanisms of biopower and techniques of managerial control that underpin—and produce consent for—precarious work and nonstandard work arrangements. Based on an ethnographic study, the article shows how a globally operating direct sales organization deploys particular techniques of government to mobilize and manage its precarious workers as a network of enterprise-units: as a community of active and productive economic agents who willingly reconstitute themselves and their lives as enterprises to pursue self-efficacy, autonomy, and self-worth as individuals. The paper contributes to the literature on organizational power, particularly Foucauldian studies of the workplace, in three ways: (1) by building a theoretical analytics of government perspective on managerial control that highlights the nondisciplinary, biopolitical forms of power that underpin employment relations under the conditions of neoliberal governmentality; (2) by extending the theory of enterprise culture to the domain of precarious work to examine the mechanisms of biopower that underpin ongoing transformations in the sphere of work; and (3) by shifting critical attention to the lived experience of precarious workers in practice.
This paper focuses on the dynamics and interplay of meaning, emotions, and power in institutional... more This paper focuses on the dynamics and interplay of meaning, emotions, and power in institutional work. Based on an empirical study, we explore and elaborate on the rhetorical strategies of emotion work that institutional actors employ to mobilize emotions for discursive institutional work. In an empirical context where a powerful institutional actor is tasked with creating support and acceptance for a new political and economic institution, we identify three rhetorical strategies of emotion work: eclipsing, diverting and evoking emotions. These strategies are employed to arouse, regulate, and organize emotions that underpin legitimacy judgments and drive resistance among field constituents. We find that actors exercise influence and engage in overt forms of emotion work by evoking shame and pride to sanction and reward particular expedient ways of thinking and feeling about the new institutional arrangements. More importantly, however, the study shows that they also engage in strategies of discursive institutional work that seek to exert power—force and influence—in more subtle ways by eclipsing and diverting the collective fears, anxieties, and moral indignation that drive resistance and breed negative legitimacy evaluations. Overall, the study suggests that emotions play an important role in institutional work associated with creating institutions, not only via “pathos appeals” but also as tools of discursive, cultural-cognitive meaning work and in the exercise of power in the field.
This paper takes a critical perspective on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and examines the... more This paper takes a critical perspective on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and examines the ways in which an industry organization discursively manages the relationship between the industry and its stakeholders in a situation where the legitimacy of the industry is called into question. Drawing on the literature on organizational narcissism and sensemaking the paper develops the construct of narcissist CSR orientation and empirically elaborates on three defensive rhetorical strategies through which the organization makes sense of the accountability and responsibility of the industry for the negative societal effects of their business. The paper advances knowledge in the field of critical CSR by proposing a new framework for critically examining organization-stakeholder relationships and organizational responses to stakeholder demands in contexts where the interests of organizations are in conflict with the public good.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-014-2298-1
Based on a case study, this paper elaborates on the psychological regimes of truth that organize ... more Based on a case study, this paper elaborates on the psychological regimes of truth that organize and regulate male parenting and partly constitute the conditions of possibility for male identity and subjectivity both as fathers and employees. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the discursive-cultural constraints that western managers and employees—males in particular—may face when trying to pursue a better work/life balance. Based on an empirical analysis of expert literature on male parenting, the paper argues that prevalent psychological regimes of truth about fathers and fathering do not necessarily render enactable the sorts of identities that enable both men and women to achieve a better work/life balance.
"This paper takes a strategy-as-practice perspective on the study of strategy tools and the theor... more "This paper takes a strategy-as-practice perspective on the study of strategy tools and the theory-practice gap in strategic management research. Based on a case study, the paper argues that differences in epistemic culture may complicate communication and co-operation between academics and practitioners. These differences may also result in management scholars producing knowledge and strategy tools that lack practical pertinence for corporate actors, particularly in the context of modernist management scholars and contemporary post-bureaucratic knowledge organizations (PBOs). In PBOs, where flexibility, participative management style and consensus building dialogue are emphasized, modernist strategy tools designed for rational problem solving by individual decision-makers may be inadequate. In PBOs, practical strategy work calls for tools that support collective knowledge production, promote dialogue and trust, and function as learning tools. Overall, the paper concludes that the development of strategy tools that actually support practical strategizing calls for a more social model of knowledge and strategy work.
Key Words: epistemic culture • management tools • sociology of technology • strategic management • strategy as practice"
Please cite this article as: M.-L. Niinikoski, J. Moisander (2014) Serial and comparative analysis of innovation policy change, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change, 85, 69–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2013.07.011
Much of the existing literature on innovation policy analyzes policy change as an outcome of rati... more Much of the existing literature on innovation policy analyzes policy change as an outcome of rational, cognitive processes, where the availability of new information prompts policy-makers to rethink and revise their policies. This paper aims to broaden this perspective by building a new methodological approach, Serial Comparative Analysis (SCA), to the analysis of policy change. SCA is proposed as an analytical perspective that sheds light on the social and political complexities of policy-making, and thus allows for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of policy change. SCA builds on the archaeological approach to discourse and basic methodological principles of ethnographic inquiry. By conceptualizing a policy domain as a discursive formation, SCA provides insights into the socio-historical conditions under which a specific policy emerges, forms and transforms. Whilst other methodological approaches may adopt the presumption that policy change is a causal outcome of new information used in policy-making, SCA views policy change as something that is discursively constructed and negotiated in specific institutional and historical settings. In doing so, SCA brings to light the rules that organize the truth-values of policy discourses in particular contexts, and elucidates how changes in these rules bring about changes in policy.
"This paper focuses on eco-communes as sites of resistance and political activism. Based on a pos... more "This paper focuses on eco-communes as sites of resistance and political activism. Based on a post-structuralist narrative analysis of interview materials, this paper elaborates on the ways in which life in a commune is narrated and represented as an identity project with a mission to bring about social change. The environmentalists studied make sense of their choice to live in an eco-commune as something that was triggered and facilitated by important crossroads and fateful moments that they had encountered in their past life. They also work on their identity as eco-communards by discursively problematizing their personal relation to themselves (self) and to others (spouse and family), as well as by constructing new forms of subjectivity, intimacy, and relatedness through communal life. Life in the eco-commune thus represents a form of resistance and political struggle that Michel Foucault has referred to as politics of self; it represents not only direct opposition against the social order of contemporary Western consumer society but also more subtle resistance against the normalized forms of subjectivity that it entails.
Keywords: resistance; communal living; family; gender; subjectivation; environmentalism"
"Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to discuss and illustrate how contemporary market discourse... more "Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to discuss and illustrate how contemporary market discourses rearticulate socio-political relationships and identities, including the rights, duties, and opportunities of individuals and categories of individuals as citizens. More specifically, the aim is to analyze how “economic citizenship” is articulated and negotiated in the intersection of (Nordic) welfare state ideals and shareholder-oriented market discourses. We further elaborate on how different identity markers, especially gender and class, intersect in these articulations and contribute to exclusionary practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper approaches the articulation of economic citizenship through an empirical study that focuses on business media representations and online discussions of a major factory shutdown in Finland. Drawing from discourse theory and the notions of representational intersectionality and translocational positionality, we analyze how gender and class intersect in the construction of economic citizenship in the business media.
Findings
The study illustrates how financialist market discourses render citizenship intelligible in exceedingly economic terms, overriding social and political dimensions of citizenship. The business media construct hierarchies of economic citizens where two categories of actors claim full economic citizenship: the transnational corporation and the transnational investor. Within these categories, particular systems of privilege intersect in similar ways, rendering them masculine and upper middleclass. Whether interpreted as hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, the financialist discourses rearticulate the social hierarchies and moral landscape in Finnish society.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to critical/feminist management studies by elaborating on the role of the business media as an important site of political identity work, positioning, and moral regulation, where neoliberal ideas, based upon and reproducing masculine and elitist systems of privilege, appear as normalized and self-evidently valued. "
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956522110000588, 2011
The paper introduces a marketing-as-practice –approach to the domain of corporate brand managemen... more The paper introduces a marketing-as-practice –approach to the domain of corporate brand management and presents findings from an empirical study that illustrates this approach in the context of a large transnational corporation. Conceptualizing corporate branding as something that occurs within and as part of a field of socially instituted practices, the paper focuses on the patterns of routinized activity through which corporate brands are built in organizations. By means of a five-year-ethnographic study, the aim is to identify a set of trans-subjective organizational practices that govern the praxis of brand building as well as to analyze the steering effects that these practices may have on the collaborative production and delivery of the brand promise in the day-to-day of organizational activity.
Reference information:
Järventie-Thesleff, Rita, Johanna Moisander and Pikka-Maaria Laine (2011) Organizational dynamics and complexities of corporate brand building – a practice perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 27, 196—204
International Journal of Media Management
This paper continues and extends the emerging scholarship of strategic media management by examin... more This paper continues and extends the emerging scholarship of strategic media management by examining the day-to-day challenges that media managers face when managing strategic renewal in traditional print-oriented media firms. The aim, in particular, is to shed light on the tensions and paradoxical situations that middle managers need to deal with in contexts where taken-for-granted industry recipes and well-established business practices have become problematized as a result of industry-wide technological and cultural change. Based on an empirical case study, the paper identifies and elaborates on three interconnected paradoxes, rooted in the history of the company and past decisions of its top-management: (1) balancing employees’ needs for stability with organizational needs for change; (2) bridging employees’ needs for security and tradition and the organizational need for learning and taking risks; as well as (3) reconciling employees’ needs to ‘focus on themselves’ with organizational needs to collaborate for collective success. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the literature by working towards a new paradox perspective on managing strategic renewal in media organizations. This theoretical perspective is offered as an interpretive framework for empirically exploring and critically examining the dynamics and complexities of strategic media management in the continuously changing business environments of the industry.
Malmelin, Nando and Johanna Moisander (2014) Brands and branding in media management – towards a research agenda. International Journal of Media Management, 16 (1), 9-25., Apr 28, 2014
""This article provides a systematic overview and conceptual analysis of existing research on bra... more ""This article provides a systematic overview and conceptual analysis of existing research on brands and branding in the literature on media management. The aim is to advance knowledge in the field by mapping out the different ways in which brands are understood and conceptualized in the literature. In doing so, the article identifies overlooked research areas and works towards a research agenda for future scholarly research on the topic. Overall, it is argued that the further development of the area calls for a more systematic theoretical analysis of the nature of media brands and the specific features and complexities of the media field as a strategic business environment where brands are built and managed. The development of the research area would seem to be crucially important not only for scholarly reasons but also because strong brands seem to be gaining strategic value and importance in today’s changing and highly competitive media markets.
Citing information: Malmelin, Nando & Johanna Moisander (2014) Brands and Branding in Media Management—Toward a Research Agenda. The International Journal on Media Management, 16:9–25
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/.U44Mfxb9_wI
International Journal of Media Management, 2014
This paper focuses on the complexities of managing multi-platform strategies in the complex and h... more This paper focuses on the complexities of managing multi-platform strategies in the complex and highly dynamic environments of contemporary media markets. Based on a comparative case study of two Nordic media organizations, the paper identifies and articulates two sets of practices through which strategy is managed in the continuously changing print and online environments. While the practices that guide strategy development of print publishing tends to be content driven, brand constrained, commercially steered, and top-down monitored, strategizing for online platforms tends to be more technology driven, brand inspired, interactive, and entrepreneurial. For multi-platform media organizations this type of situation is challenging because the incremental and radical innovations that they pursue are platform specific, instead of aiming at exploitation and exploration on both platforms. To succeed in the market, the paper thus argues, multi-platform media organizations need to develop strategies and organizational practices that allow them to be truly ambidextrous—to pursue both incremental and radical change—on all platforms.
International Journal of Consumer Studies
This paper takes a practice-based approach to consumer studies and focuses on the strategic and p... more This paper takes a practice-based approach to consumer studies and focuses on the strategic and productive roles that consumers play as immaterial labor or consumer workers in the converging media markets. Based on a case study of a print media organization and its customers, the aim is to discuss the collaborative practices through which value is created in the market. By means of a textual analysis of online and interview data, three value-creation practices are abstracted and illustrated: constructing a sense of belonging and collective identity, mutual helping and peer support, and building pride and self-respect. Overall, the paper suggests that in global media environments, consumer-customers are playing increasingly significant strategic roles in the practices and processes through which value is co-created in the market. It is therefore concluded that the idea of consumers, and media audiences in particular, as recipients of communication and targets of marketing activities needs to be problematized and the dynamic strategic roles that consumers currently play in the market need to be acknowledged and actively incorporated into the business praxis of media corporations.
International Journal of Consumer Studies, Jan 1, 2007
This paper elaborates on the motivational complexity of green consumerism using a simple model of... more This paper elaborates on the motivational complexity of green consumerism using a simple model of motivation as an analytical tool. The objective is to provide insights into the challenges that environmentally concerned ‘green consumers’ may face in the markets, as well as to illustrate the limitations of framing and targeting environmental policy measures in terms of individual motivation and morally responsible decision making. On the whole, the paper argues that as a private lifestyle project of a single individual, ‘green consumerism’ is much too heavy a responsibility to bear. Therefore, the author joins the growing number of scholars who argue that in environmental policy the focus on individual consumers is limited and thus needs to be problematized
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Journal articles by Johanna Moisander
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-014-2298-1
Key Words: epistemic culture • management tools • sociology of technology • strategic management • strategy as practice"
Keywords: resistance; communal living; family; gender; subjectivation; environmentalism"
The purpose of the paper is to discuss and illustrate how contemporary market discourses rearticulate socio-political relationships and identities, including the rights, duties, and opportunities of individuals and categories of individuals as citizens. More specifically, the aim is to analyze how “economic citizenship” is articulated and negotiated in the intersection of (Nordic) welfare state ideals and shareholder-oriented market discourses. We further elaborate on how different identity markers, especially gender and class, intersect in these articulations and contribute to exclusionary practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper approaches the articulation of economic citizenship through an empirical study that focuses on business media representations and online discussions of a major factory shutdown in Finland. Drawing from discourse theory and the notions of representational intersectionality and translocational positionality, we analyze how gender and class intersect in the construction of economic citizenship in the business media.
Findings
The study illustrates how financialist market discourses render citizenship intelligible in exceedingly economic terms, overriding social and political dimensions of citizenship. The business media construct hierarchies of economic citizens where two categories of actors claim full economic citizenship: the transnational corporation and the transnational investor. Within these categories, particular systems of privilege intersect in similar ways, rendering them masculine and upper middleclass. Whether interpreted as hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, the financialist discourses rearticulate the social hierarchies and moral landscape in Finnish society.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to critical/feminist management studies by elaborating on the role of the business media as an important site of political identity work, positioning, and moral regulation, where neoliberal ideas, based upon and reproducing masculine and elitist systems of privilege, appear as normalized and self-evidently valued. "
Reference information:
Järventie-Thesleff, Rita, Johanna Moisander and Pikka-Maaria Laine (2011) Organizational dynamics and complexities of corporate brand building – a practice perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 27, 196—204
Citing information: Malmelin, Nando & Johanna Moisander (2014) Brands and Branding in Media Management—Toward a Research Agenda. The International Journal on Media Management, 16:9–25
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/.U44Mfxb9_wI
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-014-2298-1
Key Words: epistemic culture • management tools • sociology of technology • strategic management • strategy as practice"
Keywords: resistance; communal living; family; gender; subjectivation; environmentalism"
The purpose of the paper is to discuss and illustrate how contemporary market discourses rearticulate socio-political relationships and identities, including the rights, duties, and opportunities of individuals and categories of individuals as citizens. More specifically, the aim is to analyze how “economic citizenship” is articulated and negotiated in the intersection of (Nordic) welfare state ideals and shareholder-oriented market discourses. We further elaborate on how different identity markers, especially gender and class, intersect in these articulations and contribute to exclusionary practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper approaches the articulation of economic citizenship through an empirical study that focuses on business media representations and online discussions of a major factory shutdown in Finland. Drawing from discourse theory and the notions of representational intersectionality and translocational positionality, we analyze how gender and class intersect in the construction of economic citizenship in the business media.
Findings
The study illustrates how financialist market discourses render citizenship intelligible in exceedingly economic terms, overriding social and political dimensions of citizenship. The business media construct hierarchies of economic citizens where two categories of actors claim full economic citizenship: the transnational corporation and the transnational investor. Within these categories, particular systems of privilege intersect in similar ways, rendering them masculine and upper middleclass. Whether interpreted as hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, the financialist discourses rearticulate the social hierarchies and moral landscape in Finnish society.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to critical/feminist management studies by elaborating on the role of the business media as an important site of political identity work, positioning, and moral regulation, where neoliberal ideas, based upon and reproducing masculine and elitist systems of privilege, appear as normalized and self-evidently valued. "
Reference information:
Järventie-Thesleff, Rita, Johanna Moisander and Pikka-Maaria Laine (2011) Organizational dynamics and complexities of corporate brand building – a practice perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 27, 196—204
Citing information: Malmelin, Nando & Johanna Moisander (2014) Brands and Branding in Media Management—Toward a Research Agenda. The International Journal on Media Management, 16:9–25
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/.U44Mfxb9_wI
This is the authors original version. Published in: Eräranta, Kirsi, Johanna Moisander & Visa Penttilä (2019) Reflections on the marketization of arts in neoliberal capitalism. In Ekström, Karin (Ed.) Museum marketization: Cultural institutions in the neoliberal era. London: Routledge, 19-33.
Keywords: institutional theory, legitimacy, social media, marketing communication