Management and Marketing - Research Publications
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ItemBridging Practice and Process Research to Study Transient Manifestations of Strategy(Wiley, 2018-03-01)Research Summary: At the intersection of Strategy Process (SP) and Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) research lies the focal phenomenon they share – strategy, which manifests itself in a variety of ways: intended, realized, deliberate, emergent, unrealized, and ephemeral strategy. We present a methodology comprised of three stages that, when integrated in the manner we suggest, permit a rich operationalization and tracking of strategy content for all manifestations. We illustrate the utility of our methodology for bridging SP and SAP research by theorizing practices that are more likely to give rise to unrealized and ephemeral strategy, identifying their likely consequences, and presenting a research agenda for studying these transient manifestations. MANAGERIAL SUMMARY Managerial Summary: Managers know well that, sometimes for good reasons and other times with negative consequences for organizations, not all aspects of strategic plans are implemented with fidelity, resulting in unrealized strategy; and not all bottom-up projects receive the middle-management support they need to become realized, resulting in ephemeral strategy making. Surprisingly, however, these transient manifestations of strategy receive little attention in the scholarly literature. Our paper addresses this gap by presenting a methodology for tracking all six manifestations of strategy (intended, realized, deliberate, emergent, unrealized, and ephemeral strategy), highlighting the interdependent relations among them. It also describes strategy making practices that are likely to give rise to the two transient manifestations, i.e. unrealized and ephemeral strategy, as well as their consequences for subsequent strategy making.
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ItemLa Resistance: Plus ca Change, Plus c'est la Meme Chose(SAGE Publications, 2016-01-01)Courpasson’s reflections on resistance raise a number of points that I would like to explore by comparing his contemporary example of resistance through an Internet blog with the “classic” example of French Resistance to the German Occupation during the Second World War. The term resistance comes from the French word résistance, and its use often conjures up images of French résistants fighting their occupiers. Jackson (2001) argues that “creating resistance involved creating the idea of the Resistance” (p. 365). It is this very act of creation—or, to be more precise—the countless acts of co-construction from which the French Resistance emerged, that makes it relevant to contemporary resistance. I will first provide a brief summary of key developments associated with Resistance in France, and then compare them with the experience of the bloggers to highlight the diverse nature of resistant identities, the precarious nature of the resistant organization, and the ambiguous meaning of resistance.
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ItemReframing resistance to organizational change(ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2011-09)
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ItemManaging Organizational Change: Negotiating Meaning and Power-Resistance Relations(INFORMS, 2011-01-01)Theoretical developments in the analysis of organizations have recently turned to an “organizational becoming” perspective, which sees the social world as enacted in the microcontext of communicative interactions among individuals through which meaning is negotiated. According to this view, organizational change is endemic, natural, and ongoing; it occurs in everyday interactions as actors engage in the process of establishing new meanings for organizational activities. We adopt this approach to study how meanings were negotiated by senior and middle managers in a workshop held as part of a culture change program at a telecommunications company. Our study identifies two very different patterns in these negotiations, constituted by the particular communicative practices adopted by participants. We discuss the implications of these patterns for organizational change in relation to generative dialogue and power-resistance relations between senior and middle managers.
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ItemHow Institutions Communicate; or How Does Communicating Institutionalize?(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2011-02)
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ItemWHERE ARE THE NEW THEORIES OF ORGANIZATION? INTRODUCTION(ACAD MANAGEMENT, 2011-04)
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ItemSubjects of Inquiry: Statistics, Stories, and the Production of Knowledge(SAGE Publications, 2012)Statistics and stories are often equated with different types of knowledge in contemporary western societies: statistics are associated more with the authority of objective, disinterested experts while stories are able to encapsulate subjective, personal experience. In this paper, we explore how both genres were used to produce knowledge in the context of a public inquiry on the problems facing older workers in securing and maintaining employment. Drawing on the concept of power/knowledge relations we examine how statistics and stories were used in different inquiry texts and trace their use across texts over time. Our findings show that to establish their authority as a valid form of knowledge representing the subject of inquiry, statistics and stories both had to be embedded in the appropriate discursive conventions. In the case of statistics, knowledge had to be expressed through discursive conventions that conveyed distance from the subject of inquiry, i.e. independent, objective research. In contrast, stories produced knowledge through discursive conventions that established proximity to the older worker – by being or knowing an older worker. The study shows the effects of these discursive conventions on how knowledge is institutionalized through processes of textual re-inscription, as well as the way in which they constructed a marginalized older worker subject.
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ItemReaders beware: Provocation, problematization and...problems(SAGE Publications, 2012)In their recent Human Relations article and subsequent rejoinder to three commentators, Alvesson and Kärreman make a number of assertions concerning the development of organizational discourse analysis and the current state of research in this area. We believe their emphasis on provocation results in an unsatisfactory problematization of discourse-based work with the result that there are significant problems with both their analysis of the literature and their solutions to the shortcomings that they believe exist. We discuss a number of reasons why we believe that readers should be wary of what they read about organizational discourse analysis in Alvesson and Kärreman’s work. Drawing on our critique of their article and rejoinder, we propose some ideas that we believe will be more useful in developing studies of organizational discourse than those put forward by these authors.
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ItemOrganizing Processes and the Construction of Risk: A Discursive Approach(Academy of Management, 2013)This study examines the organizing processes through which products “become” risky. Drawing on a case study of chemical risk assessment and management processes in Canada and comparing two chemicals, it identifies a series of enacted practices that bundle into two forms of social ordering: “normalizing” and “problematizing.” By bringing the past to bear differently on organizing processes, these two forms of social ordering structure the discursive work of actors in both their attempts to stabilize and their attempts to destabilize and change meanings of risk objects. As a result, objects “become” risky or safe in different ways.
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ItemStrategy, Discourse and Practice: The Intensification of Power(WILEY, 2014-03)Abstract We adopt a Foucauldian approach to discourse to show how power relations shape the constitution of strategy. By exploring two particular discourses associated with the strategy of a global telecommunications company, our study shows how the power effects of discourses are intensified through particular discursive and material practices, leading to the production of objects and subjects that are clearly aligned with the strategy. In this way, our study contributes to understanding: the mechanisms whereby discourse bears down on strategy through intensification practices; different forms of resistance; and the way in which strategy objects and subjects reproduce (or undermine) discourse.