Introduction to the X and Organization Studies issue

Organization Studies, 2010

Gabriel, Y., 2010. Organization Studies: a space for ideas, identities and agonies. Organization Studies, 31 (6), pp. 757-775. Link to official URL (if available): http://dx.

In this piece, the author argues that Organization Studies, like other academic journals, is not a sovereign subject able to chart its own path and make sovereign decisions on its strategy and direction. Instead, the journal is seen as embedded in complex networks of institutions and practices over which the editorial team has limited control; chief among them are the conventions of peer review, the proliferation of academic journals, the escalating pressures on academics to publish and the ceaseless struggle to improve ranking and citations. A useful way of looking at the journal is as a place where, following different institutional practices, ideas arrive, settle and meet each other, sometimes fight it out, or, more often than not decide to coexist in a civilized and polite way. Like the spaces of large cities, journals too become spaces crucial for the formation of individual and group identities, something that is accompanied by much agonizing about quality, acceptance, purity, contamination and even annihilation. The paper concludes with some reflections on the ethic of rational critique, at once the bedrock of academic discourse but also capable of inflicting much damage and of prematurely closing promising lines of inquiry. The author proposes that this ethic must be complemented by an ethic of care which stems from a recognition of fallibility and limits to our rationality. An ethic of care must inform not only the interactions among a journal’s different stakeholders but may spread to an attitude of stakeholders towards the journal itself, an attitude that approaches the journal as a valued intellectual space to be nurtured and cared for. Keywords: journal strategy, academic publishing, academic identity, peer review, ethics of criticism, ethic of care

Organization Studies

We write this editorial at a time of transition for Organization Studies (OS). The journal has now moved to a model of overlapping terms for Editors-in-Chief (EICs). Trish Reay has been serving as EIC (together with Frank den Hond and Robin Holt) for two years, and at this time Daniel Hjorth has begun his term as EIC, coinciding with the conclusion of Robin's and Frank's terms. This model of shared editorship is now in place for the foreseeable future, setting up OS with a model of leadership that provides both continuity and ongoing potential for innovation. We (Daniel and Trish) see ourselves as both entrepreneurs and stewards of Organization Studies, and begin these two years of working together with both enthusiasm for the future and respect for the past. We know that we stand 'on the shoulders of giants' who have set high standards for stewardship and integrity. We also see that they have set the stage so that we can move entrepreneurially ahead. What we mean by 'moving entrepreneurially ahead' is that we will respect the well-developed highway of OS that has developed over time, and we will also engage with opportunities to explore the roads less travelled, and the roads that do not yet exist. Moving entrepreneurially thus means we are taken into new places, and that we will get there by creatively and collectively organizing how we move. Previous Editors have guided the journal with care, creativity and enthusiasm-consistently growing the readership, submissions and impact over the years. We see our mandate as continuing to reinforce the strong foundations built by others while also making modifications in novel ways. We will engage in creative developments that we believe will make a difference for Organization Studies by cultivating its entrepreneurial sides while remaining grounded in the long-standing principles of OS to focus scholarly attention to 'organizations, organizing and the organized in and between societies'. We see that we are engaged in a process of creative becoming that is relationally bound with this belonging (Massumi, 2002) to the long-standing profile and aims of OS. As part of this approach, we stress that an important element of OS's identity is its capacity and tendency to continuously invent new ways of becoming. We thus remain committed to the profile and aims of the journal as stated in similar ways by Editors before us. This means that OS should be seen as a leading journal that publishes papers that help to create engaging, relevant, insightful, bold and complex knowledge that deepens our understanding of organizations as social, cultural, historical and political phenomena in societies. OS papers are typically engaged in a broader social sciences and humanities agenda and therefore often draw on knowledge from other disciplines to enrich our focus on organizations, organizing and the organized. Questions of what organizations are, how they are created, how people organize in and through them, and how they are shaping and being shaped by societies are central to studies published in this journal. We believe OS should be early in tackling new questions as well as being a source of renewal in its approach and ways of addressing questions in daring and playful ways.

… Organization: point-counterpoint in …, 2003

I The Discourse of Organization Studies: Dissensus, Politics, and Paradigms Robert Westwood and Stewart Clegg INTRODUCTION: THE POWER AND POLITICS OF ORGANIZATION STUDIES AS A DISCOURSE To publish a book called Debating Organizations is a political ...

European Management Journal, 2013

2000

SOCIETY IN A NETWORK OF ORGANIZATIONS 12 "External society" and "internal society" Subjectivity and social integration Legal authority and modern organizations Managing organizations: the principles of the classical school An organization is modelled on a machine The organization as an agent of civilization Organizational networks and organizations without walls Organizations meet other organizations The notions of "loose coupling" and of the creation of the external environment Networks of inter-organizational relations The network of organizations The organization as a stable form of transaction The organization without walls Organization is a continuous process Further Reading 2 41 ORGANIZATIONS AS SOCIAL CONTEXTS 41 Theoretical paradigms and organizations as social contexts Researching organizations and paradigmatic pluralism The study of organizations as social contexts The schools of organizational thought The rational, interactionist, structural and compliance models The perspective of the rational, natural and open system The industrial, bureaucratic and organizational issues The emerging strands of organizational analysis The emerging organizational methodologies Metaphors for organizations Research programmes Paradigms in the study of organizations as social contexts Fragmentation, multiplicity and paradigmatic incommensurability Further Reading 3 80 WEAVING THE ORGANIZATION TOGETHER 80 The metaphor of construction The social construction of reality Constructivism and constructionism Organization as hypertext The metaphor of the hypertext Real organization and virtual organization An organization is an artefact The concept of texture of organizing The contextualist world of organizing Action and tacit knowledge The use of the concept of texture of organizing Further reading 4 101 THE ETHOS, LOGOS AND PATHOS OF ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE 101 Organizational actors Critical event and subjects Competence and/or productivity The community of practice and community memory Organization and occupational and professional communities The negotiation of rationality and organizational subjects Courses of action and the negotiated order Meaningful action and organizational interaction The organizational order and the structure-in-process Deontological, ontological and aesthetic dimensions Emotions in organizations Aesthetics in organizational life The continuity of organizational phenomena Further reading 5 123 THEMATIC CONTINUITIES AND NEW INSIGHTS 123 Thematic continuities Power and the negotiation of the organizational order Alienation and the governance of organizational structures Participation in organizational life Institution and organization Organizational decisions Emerging themes Gendered organizations Organizational space

PREFACE 6 PART ONE 11 THEMES AND PROBLEMS 11 1 12 SOCIETY IN A NETWORK OF ORGANIZATIONS 12 “External society” and “internal society” 15 Subjectivity and social integration 16 Legal authority and modern organizations 18 Managing organizations: the principles of the classical school 21 An organization is modelled on a machine 26 The organization as an agent of civilization 26 Organizational networks and organizations without walls 28 Organizations meet other organizations 29 The notions of “loose coupling” and of the creation of the external environment 30 Networks of inter-organizational relations 32 The network of organizations 34 The organization as a stable form of transaction 35 The organization without walls 37 Organization is a continuous process 38 Further Reading 39 2 41 ORGANIZATIONS AS SOCIAL CONTEXTS 41 Theoretical paradigms and organizations as social contexts 42 Researching organizations and paradigmatic pluralism 45 The study of organizations as social contexts 47 The schools of organizational thought 48 The rational, interactionist, structural and compliance models 51 The perspective of the rational, natural and open system 53 The industrial, bureaucratic and organizational issues 58 The emerging strands of organizational analysis 62 The emerging organizational methodologies 63 Metaphors for organizations 66 Research programmes 69 Paradigms in the study of organizations as social contexts 73 Fragmentation, multiplicity and paradigmatic incommensurability 77 Further Reading 78 3 80 WEAVING THE ORGANIZATION TOGETHER 80 The metaphor of construction 80 The social construction of reality 81 Constructivism and constructionism 82 Organization as hypertext 85 The metaphor of the hypertext 86 Real organization and virtual organization 88 An organization is an artefact 90 The concept of texture of organizing 92 The contextualist world of organizing 93 Action and tacit knowledge 94 The use of the concept of texture of organizing 96 Further reading 99 4 101 THE ETHOS, LOGOS AND PATHOS OF ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE 101 Organizational actors 102 Critical event and subjects 102 Competence and/or productivity 103 The community of practice and community memory 104 Organization and occupational and professional communities 106 The negotiation of rationality and organizational subjects 108 Courses of action and the negotiated order 112 Meaningful action and organizational interaction 113 The organizational order and the structure-in-process 114 Deontological, ontological and aesthetic dimensions 117 Emotions in organizations 118 Aesthetics in organizational life 119 The continuity of organizational phenomena 121 Further reading 122 5 123 THEMATIC CONTINUITIES AND NEW INSIGHTS 123 Thematic continuities 125 Power and the negotiation of the organizational order 125 Alienation and the governance of organizational structures 127 Participation in organizational life 128 Institution and organization 129 Organizational decisions 131 Emerging themes 135 Gendered organizations 135 Organizational space 137 Organizational time 144 The social construction of the study of organizations as social contexts 148 Understanding and/or managing organizations 148 The Anglo-Saxon dominance of organization theory 150 Further reading 152 PART TWO 154 RESEARCH AND METHODS 154 6 155 THE METHODS OF EMPIRICAL ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH 155 The research design 156 Observation of organizational phenomena 159 Structured observation in Mintzberg’s research 159 Immersion and detachment in participant observation 162 Interviews and conversations 165 The structured interview in Lawrence and Lorsch’s research study 167 The multiform character of the in-dept interview 169 The questionnaire 170 Information about organizations in Woodward’s study 171 The opinions of the subjects in Lawrence and Lorsch’s survey 172 The experience of working in organizations 173 The assessment of organizations in the research of Van de Ven and Ferry 175 Simulations of organizational life 176 Simulation and the garbage can decision-making model 177 Archive materials 182 Beliefs, labels and habits in methodological controversies 183 Further reading 186 7 188 THE PERVASIVENESS OF MEASUREMENT 188 The paradoxes of measurement 189 The measures of strong relations among organizational variables 193 Measuring the thoughts of organizational actors 198 The construction of causal maps 199 Aggregate measurement and global measurement 204 Further reading 208 8 210 QUALITATIVE METHODS AND THE COMPUTER 210 Analytical induction and grounded theory 211 Producing text 216 Ordering observations 218 Transcribing conversations 221 Choosing the text units 223 Interpretation as decision-making 227 Further reading 230 REFERENCES 231

The object of inquiry and organization studies, 2021

This essay argues for reinforcing the empirical stance within organization studies by more systematically presuming non-organization. The empirical stance within organization studies thereby comes to revolve around organization as a claim made in empirical inquiries. The presumption of non-organization takes the legal principle of presumption of innocence as its paradigm. It works by placing the burden of proof on the empirical inquiries to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that what is inquired into is an instance of organization (where organization may be understood in terms of organizing, organization of something, formal organization etc.). Organization scholars may assume organization — and often for good reasons— when making a restaurant, a market, or something else object of inquiry. However, adopting the presumption of non-organization requires organization studies to make explicit what is understood by organization as well as what findings are mobilized to establish the claim that organization, in the sense subscribed to, is found. Hereby the presumption of non-organization reinforces the empirical stance as ‘a recurrent rebellion against the metaphysicians’ (van Fraassen). Metaphysics is not cancelled out by empirical inquiry, but it may be part and parcel of assumptions that inform empirical inquiry, and the presumption of non-organization calls for a recurrent test of such assumptions.

2007

We gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments of OS guest editor Steve Maguire,

Organization Science, 2010