Peripheral Vision

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 1037-1059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Stavrakakis
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Peripheral Vision ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Order Structure ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Negative Dialectic ◽  
Lacanian Theory

Psychoanalysis, and especially the work of Jacques Lacan, has not been adequately utilized within organization studies. This paper argues that Lacan's teaching has the potential to enrich discussions within this field and to suggest fruitful orientations for future research. Analysing some of the central concepts and theoretical logics introduced by Lacan (such as lack, desire, the symbolic, enjoyment and fantasy), it explores the desire behind identity construction (agency), the reliance of this desire on processes of subjection to the socio-symbolic order (structure), as well as the limits marking both these domains. It argues that Lacanian theory can illuminate the (negative) dialectic between subject and organized Other and account for obedience and attachment to organized frameworks of social life in two ways: first, by focusing on the symbolic presuppositions of authority and power; and, second, by exploring the role of fantasy and enjoyment in sustaining them and in neutralizing resistance.

Materiality and Identity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Watkiss ◽  
Mary Ann Glynn
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Organizational Identity Construction ◽  
The Relationship

We explore the relationship between materiality and the instantiation of organizational identity, focusing on three elements of materiality—products, artifacts, and practices—and their role in shaping collective understandings of “who we are” and “what we do” as an organization. We advance a theoretical framework that posits that these three elements of materiality operate via three mechanisms that function in categorization, symbolization, and repertoires for performance, respectively, to affect organizational identity construction. Using illustrations from Apple, Inc., we put forward ideas that forge these links and propose an agenda for future research into the role of materiality in instantiating organizational identity.

scholarly journals An Integrative Definition and Framework to Study Gossip

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Daniel Dores Cruz ◽  
Annika Nieper ◽  
Martina Testori ◽  
Elena Martinescu ◽  
Bianca Beersma
Keyword(s):  
Multidimensional Scaling ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Future Theory ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

The omnipresence of workplace gossip makes understanding gossip processes imperative to grasp social life in organizations. Although gossip research has recently experienced an upsurge across the social sciences, findings regarding the consequences of gossip are conflicting. A potential reason is that gossip is conceptualized in myriad different manners in the scientific literature, causing conceptual confusion and rendering theoretical integration impossible. In order to resolve this, we systematically reviewed 6114 scientific articles on gossip and identified 324 papers that define gossip. From the definitions we extracted two essential characteristics of gossip on which there seems to be good agreement within the literature, namely (1) that gossip is communication between humans involving a sender, receiver, and target, and (2) that the target is absent or unaware of the communicated content. These formed the basis of a broad, integrative definition of gossip: a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content. Furthermore, our review revealed that some definitions discuss characteristics on which there is less agreement: gossip valence (from negative to neutral to positive) and formality (from informal to intermediate to formal). We propose incorporating these characteristics in a multidimensional scaling framework that can guide future research. Our broad, integrative definition of gossip and the multidimensional scaling framework provide the building blocks for a systematic, integrated knowledge base on the role of gossip in human social life, which can foster future theory development and hypothesis testing, and thereby ultimately help organizations to manage gossip.

The Role of Trust in Social Life

2010 ◽  
pp. 421-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Dong
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Research Direction ◽  
Trust Model ◽  
Theory Model ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Future Research Direction ◽  
Organizational Settings

This chapter reviews the literature of trust in sociology and psychology. By introducing the conception, theory model and measurement of trust, we discuss trust in three important social contexts: interpersonal situation, organizational settings and Internet life. Furthermore, the author proposes a synthetic trust model with a multi-disciplinary approach as a future research direction and described its implications for trust study.

scholarly journals The absent follower: Identity construction within organisationally assigned leader–follower relations

Leadership ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doris Schedlitzki ◽  
Gareth Edwards ◽  
Steve Kempster
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
The Social

This article seeks to add to our understanding of processes of identity construction within organisationally assigned leader–follower relations through an exploration of the role of the absent, feminised follower. We situate our work within critical and psychoanalytic contributions to leader/ship and follower/ship and use Lacan’s writings on identification and lack to illuminate the imaginary, failing nature of identity construction. This aims to challenge the social realist foundations of writing on leader–follower constellations in organisational life. We examine our philosophical discussion through a reflective reading of a workplace example and question the possibility of a subject’s identity construction as a follower. If a subject is unable to identify him/herself as follower, he/she cannot validate others as leaders, rendering the leader–follower relationship not only fragile but phantasmic. We highlight implications of our exploration of the absence of follower/ship and endless, unfulfilled desire for leader/ship for future research and practice.

Advancing a Baradian perspective on the field of identity work

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Maria Hvid Dille
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Middle Management ◽  
Petri Dish ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Broad Field ◽  
Discourse Studies

Conceptualizing identity in processual terms as identity work has long been acknowledged within the broad field of critical management and organization studies. However, recent studies show that the process by which identities evolve is still under-explored. Although extant research has considered how discourse and other symbolic means play a part in this process, this article expands such perspectives by foregrounding the relationality of discourse-materiality in identity construction processes. Using the example of an empirical analysis taken from a case study within education in Denmark, the author examines the process of identity construction by considering the ways in which discourse-materiality works to perform identities. The author combines insights from new materialist thinking with organizational discourse studies in the development of an analytics to approach the process of identity construction – coined as identity intra-activity. In doing so, the article demonstrates how an informal middle-management positioning of selected teachers is performed within its organization. By advancing the notion of identity intra-activity, the findings enable an understanding of identity work as materialized by multiple discursive-material and embodied resources –  all enacted in/through the teachers’ practices – creating a petri dish for examining the co-constitutive role of discourse-materiality and enabling new ways of thinking about identity work.

scholarly journals Oxytocin and Social Bonds: The Role of Oxytocin in Perceptions of Romantic Partners’ Bonding Behavior

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (12) ◽  
pp. 1763-1772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara B. Algoe ◽  
Laura E. Kurtz ◽  
Karen Grewen
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Romantic Partners ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Psychological Responses ◽  
Pair Bonding ◽  
Adult Human

In this research, we tested hypotheses about the role of oxytocin in adult human bonding. Inspired by revisiting the research on pair bonding in microtine voles that fueled psychologists’ interest in the role of oxytocin in social life, we drew on recent theory from affective and relationship science to identify a well-defined bonding context for human romantic relationships. We then paired these behaviors and subjective psychological responses with a measure of naturally circulating oxytocin. In 129 romantically involved adults whose partner expressed gratitude to them in the lab, greater oxytocin over the prior 24 hr was associated with greater perceptions of the expresser’s responsiveness and gratitude, as well as greater experienced love, but not general affective reward. Moreover, in this one-time conversation, higher oxytocin acted like rose-colored glasses, attenuating the effect of a partner’s behaviorally coded expressive behavior on perceptions of the expresser’s responsiveness. These results justify future research on the role of oxytocin in psychological aspects of growth processes.

scholarly journals A review of Facebook research in the social sciences

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Edmund Wilson ◽  
Samuel D. Gosling
Keyword(s):  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Information Disclosure ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Naturalistic Setting ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Share Information

With over 800 million active users, Facebook is changing the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another and share information. A rapidly growing body of research has accompanied the meteoric rise of Facebook as social scientists assess the impact of Facebook on social life. In addition, researchers have recognized the utility of Facebook as a novel tool to observe behavior in a naturalistic setting, test hypotheses, and recruit participants. However, research on Facebook emanates from a wide variety of disciplines, with results being published in a broad range of journals and conference proceedings, making it difficult to keep track of various findings. And because Facebook is a relatively recent phenomenon, uncertainty still exists about the most effective ways to do Facebook research. To address these issues, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature search, identifying 412 relevant articles, which were sorted into 5 categories: descriptive analysisof users, motivations for using Facebook, identity presentation, the role of Facebook in social interactions, and privacy and information disclosure. The literature review serves as the foundation from which to assess current findings and offer recommendations to the field for future research on Facebook and online social networks more broadly.

Anchored in the Past

2020 ◽  
pp. 585-601
Author(s):  
Yiannis Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
National Identities ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organizational Identities ◽  
Employee Resistance ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Individual

This chapter starts with an exanimation of the emotion of nostalgia drawn from different fields, including psychology, politics, and organization studies and identifies some current points of agreement as well as disagreement. After a brief discussion of current conceptualizations of identity, especially in relation to emotions, the author looks at the literature that seeks to link nostalgia to identity both as a group phenomenon and as an individual experience. The chapter examines in turn nostalgia in relation to individual identity, organizational identities, and more broadly social and national identities. It is argued that nostalgia aims to maintain a sense of continuity in the face of discontinuity and disruption, both at the individual and group levels. It is an emotion that can strengthen communal bonds but can also assume aggressive forms against ‘othered’ social groups that are cast in the role of wreckers or disruptors. Within organizations, nostalgia can support employee resistance against modernizing forces, but can also be appropriated by modernizing management regimes to legitimize changes ostensibly aimed at restoring desirable qualities of the past. The chapter concludes by proposing that nostalgia can be viewed as an anchor to the past, one that stops identities from drifting or being overwhelmed or wrecked by a changing world and offers some reflections for future research.

A Framework for Exploring the Sense of Community and Social Life in Residential Environments

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Mahmoudi Farahani ◽  
Mirjana Lozanovska
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Community Studies ◽  
Residential Environments ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
City Centres

Sense of community and social life are two key concepts related to social cohesion, which have been the subject of extensive studies in several disciplines including sociology, psychology and built environment. Social life studies have been mostly conducted in the built environment discipline focusing on city centres; while sense of community studies were mostly the target of sociologists and psychologists focusing on neighbourhoods. As a result, the role of the built environment on the sense of community and social life of neighbourhoods is considered as a missing gap in the literature. This paper, through defining the concepts of social life and sense of community, aims to develop a conceptual framework for further implementation in future research. Accurate implication and interpretation of the concepts show that neighbourhoods can include the sense of community in the residential environment and the social life in the commercial environment. This is because residential environments are where residents’ requirements can be met through their commitment to the community and commercial environments are the fulcrum of interaction and communication.

scholarly journals An Integrative Definition and Framework to Study Gossip

2021 ◽  
pp. 105960112199288
Author(s):  
Terence D. Dores Cruz ◽  
Annika S. Nieper ◽  
Martina Testori ◽  
Elena Martinescu ◽  
Bianca Beersma
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Dimensional Scaling ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Future Theory ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

The omnipresence of workplace gossip makes understanding gossip processes imperative to understand social life in organizations. Although gossip research has recently increased across the social sciences, gossip is conceptualized in disparate ways in the scientific literature. This conceptual confusion impedes theoretical integration and providing practical advice. To resolve this, we systematically reviewed 6114 scientific articles on gossip and identified 324 articles that define gossip. From these definitions, we extracted two essential characteristics of gossip on which there seems to be agreement within the literature, namely, (1) that gossip is communication between humans involving a sender, a receiver, and a target, and (2) that the target is absent or unaware of the communicated content. These two characteristics formed the basis of a broad, integrative definition of gossip: a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content. Furthermore, some definitions include characteristics on which there is less agreement: gossip valence (from negative to neutral to positive) and formality (from informal to intermediate to formal). We incorporate these characteristics in a dimensional scaling framework that can guide future research. Our broad, integrative definition of gossip and the dimensional scaling framework provide the building blocks for a systematic, integrated knowledge base on the role of gossip in human social life in general as well as in organizations. This can foster future theory development and hypothesis testing, ultimately helping organizations to manage gossip.

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