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.

Modeling the Evaluation Process in a Public Controversy

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 651-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Emanuel Dionne ◽  
Chantale Mailhot ◽  
Ann Langley
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Orders Of Worth ◽  
Major Increase ◽  
Over Time

Public controversies have attracted increasing attention in the organization studies literature. They emerge when critical issues are not defined and understood in the same way by different stakeholders, influencing the way they evaluate the worth of other actors, objects, and situations. In this paper, we show how the “orders of worth” perspective of Boltanski and Thévenot may throw light on the evolution of an evaluation process occurring during a public controversy. In particular, we study the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012 that followed a proposed major increase in higher education tuition fees. We conducted an in-depth case study based on media coverage of the actions and discourses of the major actors to examine how objects and actions associated with a controversy are successively defined, redefined, and evaluated over time through a series of tests of worth. Our article contributes to the organizational literature on public controversies by drawing attention to the role of six types of evaluative moves in situations of controversy, and by offering an abductively developed model for understanding the evaluation process as it evolves over time. We suggest that actors, through these evaluative moves, may displace the object of a test, and therefore the foci for evaluation, through actions intended to bolster their positions.

The role of the officers’ mess in inclusive military leader social identity construction

Leadership ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 174271502110636
Author(s):  
Edward Gosling
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Leadership Identity ◽  
Leader Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Shared History ◽  
Integral Feature

Leadership is fundamentally a social phenomenon, and a leader’s legitimacy in personal and social terms is determined partly by how effectively they incorporate the prototypical leader identity. Using the historical British officers’ mess as a case study, this article presents a conceptual examination of the function place can perform in the construction of collective leader identities and the interconnected influence shared history, materiality and social interaction can have in encouraging inclusivity in leadership. Leadership identity is an integral feature of military life which has historically drawn on complex cultural and legal traditions to underwrite the individual’s right to command. This article will argue that social places such as the officers’ mess have been utilised as a means of cultivating cohesion in the past and that they may have an application in furthering inclusive collective leader identities in the future.

scholarly journals Invoking Alphonse: The founder figure as a historical resource for organizational identity work

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (12) ◽  
pp. 1685-1708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joëlle Basque ◽  
Ann Langley
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Dynamic Perspective ◽  
Identity Markers ◽  
Organizational Identity Construction

There has been growing interest in the rhetorical use of history to express organizational identity claims. Yet the evolving role of the founder figure in managerial accounts has not so far received specific attention. In this study, we examine how the founder figure is used to articulate, enact, stretch, preserve or refresh expressions of organizational identity, drawing on an 80-year magazine archive of a financial cooperative. We identify five modes of founder invocation, and show how distance from founding events leads to increasing abstraction in linkages between the founder and organizational identity claims. The paper offers a dynamic perspective on the mobilization of the founder in organizational identity construction as well as an understanding of how and why founders may remain established identity markers long after their demise.

scholarly journals Unravelling the role of green entrepreneurs in urban sustainability transitions: A case study of China’s Solar City

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (14) ◽  
pp. 2901-2917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Yu ◽  
David Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Solar Water Heater ◽  
Sustainability Transitions ◽  
Water Heater ◽  
Solar Water ◽  
Institutional Contexts

This paper aims to understand the role of green entrepreneurs in urban sustainability transitions. We propose an analytical framework combining transition approaches and green entrepreneurship from a relational lens. It includes four processes: emergence of green entrepreneurs, multi-scalar interest coordination, empowering through anchoring, and struggling with the regime at the urban scale. This framework is illustrated through an empirical analysis of the role of green entrepreneurs in the development of the solar water heater industry in China’s Solar City. The analysis unravels how the local institutional contexts and multi-scalar relations empowered local green entrepreneurs to become system builders for urban transitions.

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.

scholarly journals NOVAS TECNOLOGIAS E CONFIANÇA NAS ORGANIZAÇÕES: UM ESTUDO DE CASO NO CONTEXTO HOSPITALAR

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Carolina S. Queiroz ◽  
Daniel Augusto Moreira
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Private Health Care ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Complexity ◽  
New Challenges

<p align="justify">The rate by which the implementation of new technologies has grown in all sectors of the economy increased organizational complexity and uncertainty. As a result, companies and their members now face a number of new challenges. This paper analyzes one case study that contemplates the implementation of new technologies in a radiotherapy unit of a large private health care organization. Its main objective is to analyze the growth in social complexity, which derives from the use of technologies and to verify its implications for organization. Furthermore, it intends to investigate the role of trust as a variable of adjustment of the organization to the external environmental needs. </p><p align="justify">Key words: Organization Studies. Innovation. New Technologies. Trust.</p>

Making sense of the square: Facing the touristification of public space through playful protest in Barcelona

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Bruttomesso
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Urban Tourism ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Urban Intervention ◽  
Urban Contexts

Drawing from assemblage thinking, this article explores the complexity of urban tourism conflicts. The case study of a playful urban intervention in Barcelona exhibits the connections that link place-based activism, local identity construction and sense of place in relation to the tourism development. The productive case study, called Fem Plaça (Let’s make the square), highlights the more proactive rather than merely reactive role of inhabitants. Moreover, it allows for a better understanding of protest as a series of relational, processual practices of empowerment, overcoming the efficiency rhetoric that values a process only for its final success. Finally, this study strives to expand the tourist analysis to the performance and performativity of the local people’s disaffection in urban contexts to ensure a broader comprehensiveness in the tourist academic field.

The Role of Middle Managers in Knowledge Transfer

2007 ◽  
Vol 06 (04) ◽  
pp. 297-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Carty ◽  
Siobhan Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Middle Managers ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Middle Management ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Knowledge Loss ◽  
A Company

This paper examines the causes of knowledge loss in a company undergoing a process of radical change. Using a methodology based on a single case study, the research highlights the critical role of middle managers in facilitating knowledge transfer. Middle managers facilitate both socialisation mechanisms for knowledge transfer and the maintenance of knowledge transfer systems based on information technology. The findings of the research suggest that eliminating layers of middle management will inevitably lead to knowledge loss, with consequential implications for competitive advantage. Based on the findings, a typology linking knowledge transfer to organisational forms is proposed.

scholarly journals The Reputation Effect: A Case Study of Credit Contracts in Transition Economies

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Lionel Artige ◽  
Rosella Nicolini
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Transition Economies ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Investment Project ◽  
Estimation Technique ◽  
Investment Projects ◽  
Credit Contracts ◽  
Available Information

<p><em>This paper proposes an empirical analysis of the role of memory in determining the size of credits granted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) during 1991–2003. We first build an original database from information associated with the number and contract types granted by clients, after which we develop an empirical strategy for capturing the role of memory, namely by defining three different indicators to approximate each client’s reputation. These indicators rely on the client’s identity and, when available, information associated with previous EBRD-financed investment projects. With the fixed-effects estimation technique, our results unambiguously show that the value of the first investment project financed by the EBRD, as a proxy for reputation, is the most effective indicator for established clients to determine the size of the credits they receive to finance further investments.</em></p>

scholarly journals Work as affective experience: The contribution of Christophe Dejours’ ‘psychodynamics of work’

Organization ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parisa Dashtipour ◽  
Bénédicte Vidaillet
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Leadership Motivation ◽  
Work Tasks ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

Psychoanalytic perspectives (such as the Kleinian/Bionian and Lacanian literature) have made significant contributions to the study of affect in organizations. While some have pointed out the affects involved in work tasks, most of this literature generally focuses on the affects linked to organizational life (such as learning, leadership, motivation, power, or change). The center of attention is not on affects associated with the work process itself. We draw from the French psychodynamic theory of Christophe Dejours—who is yet to be known in English language organization studies—to make the following contributions. First, we show the relationship between affect and working by discussing Dejours’ notions of affective suffering, the real of work, the significance of the body, and ‘ordinary sublimation’. Second, we advance critical research in organization studies by demonstrating the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject. Third, the article reinterprets Menzies’ well-known hospital case study to illustrate how Dejours’ theory extends existing psychoanalytical approaches, and especially to point to the significant role of the work collective in supporting workers to work well. We conclude by suggesting that if the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject is acknowledged, it follows that resistance strategies, and work collectives’ struggle for emancipation, should focus on reclaiming work.

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