The sensory imperative

2021 ◽  
pp. 135050762110622
Author(s):  
Christina Juhlin ◽  
Robin Holt

With this essay, we identify and resist a sensory imperative in management and organizational research and beyond. We define the sensory imperative as an uncritical embrace of the idea that the senses offer a unique and attractive methodological and political position for studying managerial and organizational life and for challenging dominant forms of knowledge production. By falling in with this imperative, the turn to the senses in management and organization studies risks losing sight of its own mediations. We propose three ways of regaining sight of these mediations, which, we argue, come together as an analytical sensorisation – a study of, rather than with, the senses.

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (11) ◽  
pp. 1677-1698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Riach ◽  
Nicholas Rumens ◽  
Melissa Tyler

This paper is based on a series of ‘anti-narrative’ interviews designed to explore the ways in which lived experiences of age, gender and sexuality are negotiated and narrated within organizations in later life. It draws on Judith Butler’s performative ontology of gender, particularly her account of the ways in which the desire for recognition is shaped by heteronormativity, considering its implications for how we study ageing and organizations. In doing so, the paper develops a critique of the impact of heteronormative life course expectations on the negotiation of viable subjectivity within organizational settings. Focusing on the ways in which ‘chrononormativity’ shapes the lived experiences of ageing within organizations, at the same time as constituting an organizing process in itself, the paper draws on Butler’s concept of ‘un/doing’ in its analysis of the simultaneously affirming and negating organizational experiences of older self-identifying LGBT people. The paper concludes by emphasizing the theoretical potential of a performative ontology of ageing, gender and sexuality for organization studies, as well as the methodological insights to be derived from an ‘anti-narrative’ approach to organizational research, arguing for the need to develop a more inclusive politics of ageing within both organizational practice and research.


Author(s):  
Haridimos Tsoukas

When it comes to the field of organization and management theory, a philosophical perspective enables us to conduct organizational research imbued with the attitude of “wonder”; it helps researchers question dominant images of thought underlying mainstream thinking, and provides fresh distinctions that enable the development of new theory. In bringing together a collection of key essays by Haridimos Tsoukas, this volume explores fundamental concepts, such as organizational routines, that have gained currency in the field, as well as revisiting traditional concepts such as change, strategy, and organization. It discusses organizational knowledge, judgment, and reflection-in-action, and, at the meta-theoretical level, suggests complex forms of theorizing that seek to reflect the complexity of organizations. The conceptual attention throughout is on process and practice, underlain by performative phenomenology and an emphasis on agents’ lived experience. This provides us with the language to appreciate the dynamic character of organizational behaviour, the embeddedness of action, and the complexity of organizational life. The theoretical claims presented in this volume have important implications for scholarly practice, insofar as they help retrain our attention: from seeing structures and individuals, we can now appreciate processes, experiences, and practices. A phenomenological attitude makes organization theory more open, more creative, and more reflexive, and this book will be essential reading for researchers and students in the field of organization studies.


Organizational contradictions and process studies offer interwoven and complementary insights. Studies of dialectics, paradox, and dualities depict organizational contradictions that are oppositional as well as interrelated such that they persistently morph and shift over time. Studies of process often examine how contradictions fuel emergent, dynamic systems and stimulate novelty, adaptation, and transformation. Drawing from rich conversations at the Eighth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies, the contributors to this volume unpack these relationships in more depth. The chapters explore three main, connected themes through both conceptual and empirical studies, including (1) offering insight into how process theorizing advances understandings of organizational contradictions; (2) shedding light on how dialectics, paradoxes, and dualities fuel organizational processes that affect persistence and transformation; and (3) exploring the convergence and divergence of dialectics, paradox, and dualities lenses. Taken together, this book offers key insights in order to inform persistent, contradictory dynamics in organizations and organizational studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 263178772110203
Author(s):  
Yvonne Benschop

Feminist organization theories develop knowledge about how organizations and processes of organizing shape and are shaped by gender, in intersection with race, class and other forms of social inequality. The politics of knowledge within management and organization studies tend to marginalize and silence feminist theorizing on organizations, and so the field misses out on the interdisciplinary, sophisticated conceptualizations and reflexive modes of situated knowledge production provided by feminist work. To highlight the contributions of feminist organization theories, I discuss the feminist answers to three of the grand challenges that contemporary organizations face: inequality, technology and climate change. These answers entail a systematic critique of dominant capitalist and patriarchal forms of organizing that perpetuate complex intersectional inequalities. Importantly, feminist theorizing goes beyond mere critique, offering alternative value systems and unorthodox approaches to organizational change, and providing the radically different ways of knowing that are necessary to tackle the grand challenges. The paper develops an aspirational ideal by sketching the contours of how we can organize for intersectional equality, develop emancipatory technologies and enact a feminist ethics of care for the human and the natural world.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110344
Author(s):  
Bjørn Sletto ◽  
Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre ◽  
Alexandra Magaly Lamina Luguana ◽  
Davi Pereira Júnior

Post-representational cartography views maps as inherently unstable and unfinished, always in the making and thus singularly open for refolding and re-presentation. This perspective on maps calls for greater attention to the performances, negotiations, and contestations that occur during the ongoing production of maps, particularly in cases where maps are developed during collective, collaborative, and participatory processes in indigenous landscapes riven by conflict and struggle. In the following, we examine the role of walking for the continual (re)making of participatory maps, specifically engaging with work in indigenous methodologies to consider how an emphasis on performativity in map-makings may foster a post-representational perspective on indigenous cartographies. We understand walking as map-making, a form of knowledge production generated by performative and situated storytelling along paths and in places filled with meaning. Drawing on a critical understanding of ‘invitation’ and ‘crossing’, we build on our experiences from participatory mapping projects in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil to explore the ways in which the material, performative crossings of bodies through indigenous landscapes may inspire new forms of knowledge production and destabilize Cartesian cartographic colonialities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 278-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Robson

This article reviews a body of literature that relates to the use of aesthetic, specifically visual, methods in organizational research and management education. Visual methods are associated with a range of benefits for those studying management and organization, including the elicitation of emotional responses, support for reflection and self-reflexivity, making varied forms of knowledge explicit, and in supporting dialogue and collaborative learning. Key implications for management educators are outlined, which include the need to appreciate the nature of aesthetic-visual “knowing” and to evaluate methods with pedagogical criteria, to consider the type of visual “space” educators need to create, to build individuals’ capacities to use visual methods, and to facilitate visual encounters appropriately. A set of practical “starting points” are also identified for management educators, drawn from the author’s teaching practice.


Author(s):  
Ozge Can

In organizational research, growing attention has been given to the dynamic nature of workplace relationships and how such dynamic processes shape key behavioural outcomes. Experience sampling methodology (ESM) brings more opportunity than any other research option to examine such fluctuations and relevant causal relationships. ESM can be described as a quantitative method which allows individuals to assess discrete evaluative states on multiple events by combining three distinct elements; person, variables and occasion. Despite its increasing prevalence and popularity, however, there has been only a few attempts to investigate the most appropriate design, measurement and analysis choices for experience sampling data. Even though ESM has been utilized in organizational research for some time, systematic investigations regarding how these issues have been addressed and how the method has been applied to specific organizational topics are limited. This study provides a systematic and critical assessment of the use of ESM in current organizational research (2010‑2020) by reviewing a random sample of 50 ESM studies indexed in ISI Web of Science with the aim of identifying the current state of practice. The selected studies were analysed based on several methodological aspects including the type of ESM protocol applied, sample characteristics, data sources, specified interval and total duration of data collection, structure and properties of designated measures, analytic strategy, and the research model to be tested. Findings show that organization studies vary considerably based on how they design and implement ESM. Moreover, despite the availability of good practices, many studies fail to attain recommended standards about sample size, data collection procedures, data characteristics and measurement quality. As such, this paper offers several insights regarding how time‑based within‑person frameworks can be improved in future studies to account for dynamic organizational phenomena.


Author(s):  
Steve Case ◽  
Phil Johnson ◽  
David Manlow ◽  
Roger Smith ◽  
Kate Williams

This chapter examines the means by which different forms of knowledge are created in criminology and what it means to know about crime, with particular emphasis on the empirical research methods used by criminologists. It also discusses the complex interplay between subjectivity, supposition, and study in producing knowledge in criminology; the benefits and limitations of different research study methods on the creation of criminological knowledge; criminological theory as knowledge; and various research methods in criminology such as experiments, surveys, bservations, and secondary analysis. Finally, it considers how subjectivity, supposition, and study interact with, and impact on, understanding and knowledge production in criminology.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 454-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus F. Peschl

Purpose While many approaches in the field of unlearning aim at describing, understanding or explaining the “what” and/or “how” of unlearning, this paper aims to focus on the “where-to” and the goal of unlearning. In many cases, unlearning starts off with a specific result or goal in mind. This paper suggests that such an approach has to be challenged in the context of a highly complex and uncertain world and to introduce a mode of unlearning following a strategy of future-oriented open-endedness. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper draws on (both theoretical/philosophical and empirical) interdisciplinary evidence from a wide variety of fields, such as organization studies, organizational (un)learning, systems theory, cognitive science and innovation studies. Findings It turns out that open-endedness in unlearning processes plays a central role, especially if we are confronted with high levels of uncertainty and complexity. In such an environment, following a strategy of co-becoming with an unfolding environment and with an emergent goal seems to be more promising than aiming at a preconceived (un-)learning goal. Originality/value The unlearning literature provides various approaches to what unlearning is and how it can be executed. However, understanding the actual goals and outcomes of unlearning and how these goals are identified and determined is a rather under-researched field. In many cases, they are preconceived in advance finding their realization in new forms of knowledge, assumptions, belief systems, values or routines. This paper challenges this strategy and addresses the gap of how it is possible to unlearn toward an uncertain future. This has an impact on the process of unlearning itself; it has to be reframed and understood as an open-ended strategy for identifying emerging future potentials, purposes and goals in a process of co-becoming with an unfolding future.


Organization ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 135050842095632
Author(s):  
Emmanouela Mandalaki ◽  
Mar Pérezts

Dance with us, on the dance-floor and with words, as we reenact our individual and shared tango autoethnographic experiences to develop an understanding of field inter-corporeality as a phenomenological experience of nakedness empowered by the transformational potential of eros. We write as we dance to discuss how eroticizing through the other’s presence our embodied nakedness, beyond sexual stereotypes, pushes us to meta-reflect on ourselves as organizational ethnographers and writers to reinvent our field and writing interactions as inter-corporeally relational and intersubjective. We problematize the sexual gaze that traditionally associates nakedness with shame and objectified vulnerability to stress the capacity of eroticizing our academic nakedness to enable free, embodied knowledge stripped of the traits of the dominant masculine academic order. In so doing, we join burgeoning autoethnographic and broader debates in the field of organization studies calling for the need to further unveil the embodied, erotic, and feminine aspects of organizational research and writing. Shall we dance?


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