Ethnography in Organization Research

Classic organizational theory was built on ethnographic studies. These studies, which rely on immersion in everyday organizational life, adopting the native’s perspective, and an openness to emergent phenomena, have helped illuminate the complexities and nuances of organizations that were otherwise invisible to outsiders. Today, organizational scholarship boasts of drawing on a wide range of theoretical traditions and diverse methodologies, particularly in quantitative methods that lend generalizability and scientific precision to organizational theory. As such, the role of ethnography has also evolved over the years; its validity has been criticized and defended, its ontological and epistemological foundations reflected on, and its place among other traditions clarified. Besides its critical role in establishing organizational study as a discipline in its own right, ethnographic work is now generally recognized and appreciated in the scholarly community, in what has been termed its Golden Age, for its contributions to new intellectual territories across multiple subfields of organizational theory.

Leadership as a Life Skill in Strengthening the Culture of Educational Institutions

Leadership is regarded as the prime factor for making improvements in educational institutions effectively and also facilitates the achievement of desired goals and objectives and making improvements in the system of education. It is one of the main factors linked with the achievement and failure of any organization. Leadership style is the way in which people are directed and motivated by a leader to attain organizational goals. Life skills are defined as “a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner. This study is based on the impact of leadership as a life skill in educational institutions. With the viewpoint of the school, the leadership of the principal is very important. His role and duties will affect all aspects of school organizational life. At the school organizational level, leadership of the principal is the main determinant which act as a link between the individual lives with the outlooks of any organization in the future. This study aims to how leadership as a life skill impacts the performance of educational institutions. This paper is a conceptual based paper which gives theoretical verification to support the idea. The results of the paper suggest that the leadership style is a strong element in enhancing the performance of any institution as it enhances the culture of the organization and the employees’ values in the organization.

Distinctly lonely: how loneliness at work varies by status in organizations

Purpose This paper aims to study the differing pathways to loneliness in managers and their employees. Literature on emotions in organizational life, organizational management and leadership and loneliness are explored to develop and test hypotheses regarding the differential prototypical scripts that can be generative of loneliness in managers and employees. Design/methodology/approach A total of 28 managers and 235 employees from a horticultural company based in Mexico were surveyed, using measures of perceived connection quality, loneliness and meaningful work to test three hypotheses. Findings Data from 28 managers and 235 staff indicate that while loneliness scores do not significantly differ between managers and their subordinates, the predictors of loneliness differ between managers and employees, with emotional connection and mutuality predicting loneliness in employees but not in managers. Originality/value This paper adds specification to the literatures on workplace loneliness, the loneliness associated with management roles, emotions in organizational life and emotions and leadership. The findings are discussed in relation to the literature on manager-subordinate relationships.

The Diversity Paradox

The diversity paradox is an organizational emphasis placed upon one potential understanding of diversity which, paradoxically, deemphasizes alternative expressions of individual difference. An organizational focus on representations of gender, for instance, synchronously moves the focus away from sexual orientation; an focus on sexual orientation synchronously moves the focus away from age; and so on. The diversity paradox commonly manifests via six interrelated tenants. First, organizational discourses promote a fractionated understanding of what it means to be a diverse organization, resulting in a visible hierarchy of difference and the sense of false attainment among its leadership. Among organizational members, this false attainment results in neglected representation for certain minorities, as well as diminished alternatives for organizational life and an increased level of potential tokenism. The present article explores the diversity paradox in more detail, including its background, six primary tenants, and future recommendations.

Health and Wellbeing as Appreciative Inquiry in a Private University in Mexico

Appreciative inquiry (AI) has been used to promote positive change in different areas of organizational life. It is based on the 4D cycle which includes four distinct stages: discover, dream, design, and destiny. Organizational wellbeing is both a strategy and a responsibility, especially in recent times, when the line between work and life seems to be blurring, and there has been an increased concern about the role that work plays in the health and wellbeing of employees. AI is substantially different from other institutional analysis methodologies because it is not focused on solving problems, but on the positive aspects of organizational life and culture. This chapter presents the case of a private university in Puebla, Mexico, which has been promoting holistic programs to improve employees' wellbeing and happiness, reducing stress and other potential health problems through appreciative inquiry on what members dream, long for, and aspire in terms of better overall health. It is a descriptive study that presents a specific case.

Meeting technologies and recordkeeping: a preliminary study

Purpose The purpose of this study is to raise awareness of the benefits and drawbacks involved in using digital technologies for business meetings, and identify key concerns. The shift from in-person to virtual meetings has multiple consequences, some of which impact recordkeeping. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on research from records management, anthropology, organizational theory and computer science, this study establishes the norms of physical meeting spaces and recordkeeping and explores how these norms are challenged as meetings become virtual. Findings Virtual meetings allow for collaboration to work across time and space and offer multiple affordances that do not exist in on-site meetings; however, they also involve the additional barrier of technical access and reduction in user attention. Virtual meetings also enable the creation, capture and sharing of increased contextual data, and this increased documentation challenges traditional recordkeeping models. Meeting technologies are also worryingly invasive. This study shows that concerns over privacy have been dismissed in the design of virtual meeting spaces, and therefore the authors recommend their more thorough consideration. Originality/value Meetings are a pervasive feature of organizational life whose significance has been overlooked in the recordkeeping literature. By bringing together research about in-person and virtual meetings in a novel and necessary way, the authors started to fill a gap and hope to inspire further studies.

A Systemic View of Future Mobility Scenario Impacts on and Their Implications for City Organizational LCA: The Case of Autonomous Driving in Vienna

Autonomous vehicles (AV) are expected to significantly reshape urban mobility. Whether advancements at vehicle level also translate into positive environmental outcomes at city level is still uncertain. We investigate under which conditions a city could enable low emission AV mobility and what challenges are to be expected along the way from an environmental point of view. We build upon our recent environmental performance study of Vienna and combine city organizational life cycle assessment (city-OLCA) with AV transport models from literature for three AV use cases: an own AV, a shared AV, and a shared AV ride service. Most cases lower Vienna’s passenger capacity (by up to 28%) and increase motorized road traffic by a maximum of 49% (own AVs). Traffic relief is observed for shared AVs (−40%) if accompanied by a conventional car ban. This case reduces transport related GHG emissions compared to both Vienna’s current baseline (−60%) and a future electrified transportation system (−4.2%). These transformations have also shifted emission responsibility to the public level. While Vienna’s total GHG emissions could be reduced by 12%, the city’s emission responsibility increases from 25% to 32%. Efficient mass transit, the electrification of the mobility sector and grid decarbonization are key to reducing transport emissions in Vienna. The direction of GHG emission development will be determined by the extent to which these conditions are promoted. AV mobility probably will not be a main contributor.

Monologue and Organization Studies

In this essay, we propose that recent work in management and organization studies is typically inclined to understand organization and organizing as dialogic in form. Dialogicity is characterized by dynamic interlocution on the part of active human sense-makers and, in our critical reading, evokes a romanticized social landscape that fails to reflect the more prosaic features of organizational life. To address what we see as certain limitations of the dialogic view, we introduce a complementary point of reference: that of monologic organization. This perspective provokes reflection on those situations in which meanings are predetermined at the outset and communication consists of the strictly controlled, routine reproduction of formal scripts. We draw on the works of Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Serres to reclaim monologic as a pertinent view of organization and its processes. Finally, we provide micro, meso and macro level examples to illustrate and discuss the heuristic potential of a monologic view.