Subjectivity and power are important concepts for understanding corporate culture engineering in critical organization studies. Although recent research indicates that many workers do identify with the organization as a result of these management strategies, they have also shown that some workers resist through dis-identification, in particular cynicism. Managerialist literature views cynicism as a psychological defect that needs to be `corrected', while a radical humanist approach constructs cynicism as a defence mechanism, a way of blocking the colonization of a pre-given self. We highlight a third and increasingly dominant perspective that suggests cynicism is a process through which employees dis-identify with cultural prescriptions, yet often still perform them. Cynical employees have the impression that they are autonomous, but they still practice the corporate rituals nonetheless. We label this the `ideology' interpretation because in dis-identifying with power, it is inadvertently reproduced at the same time. We argue that this approach to cynicism raises significant implications for key concepts in organization studies: those of power, subjectivity and resistance. The implications we pursue are that cultural power may work through dis-identification (rather than just identification), subjectivity may be radically `external' (rather than something `within') and thus what counts as disruptive resistance must be re-evaluated.
This paper presents an integrated framework for studying organizational spaces. It suggests that existing research can be classed into three categories: studies of space as distance; studies of space as the materialization of power relations; and studies of space as experience. These approaches are drawn together using Henri Lefebvre's theory of spatial production to argue that an adequate understanding of organizational spaces would investigate how they are practised, planned and imagined. Moreover, an adequate theory of space would account for multiple spatial levels, or scales. To illustrate the potential of the synthetic framework, a reading of three exemplary studies of multiple organizational spaces, from social anthropology and economic geography, is presented. The paper concludes by presenting a research agenda that indicates how data collection and analysis in established fields such as employee relations and international business might become more 'space sensitive' by integrating such theorized cross-scale analysis.
We explore how transitory management fashions become institutionalized. Based on the concepts of institutional entrepreneurship and institutional work, we postulate that fashionable management practices acquire permanence when they are anchored within field-wide institutions. The building of such institutions requires various types of institutional work, including political work, technical work and cultural work. Based on a review of the empirical literature on various management fashions, we identify the actors engaging in these different types of works, and their skills. Our results suggest that the institutionalization effect is stronger if more types of institutional work are deployed and if the skill sets of the involved actors vary. We also argue that institutional construction in the case of management fashions is likely to take the form of decentralized 'partaking' rather than being led by a single dominant institutional entrepreneur. We conclude with implications for the study of management fashions and the role of agency in institutionalization.
This article takes stock of the discourse on 'political CSR' (PCSR), reconsiders some of its assumptions, and suggests new directions for what we call 'PCSR 2.0'. We start with a definition of PCSR, focusing on firms' contribution to public goods. We then discuss historical antecedents to the debate and outline the original economic and political context. The following section explores emerging changes in the institutional context relevant to PCSR and reconsiders some of the assumptions underlying Habermas' thesis of the postnational constellation. This highlights some neglected issues in previous works on PCSR, including the influence of nationalism and fundamentalism, the role of various types of business organisations, the return of government regulation, the complexity of institutional contexts, the efficiency of private governance, the financialization and digitalization of the economy, and the relevance of managerial sensemaking. Finally, we discuss the contributions to this special issue and relate them to the newly emerging research agenda.
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AbstractThis paper reviews and evaluates the concept of power in management and organization science. In order to organize the extant literature on this topic, we develop a framework that identifies four faces of power (i.e., coercion, manipulation, domination and subjectification) and four sites of power (i.e., power enacted 'in', 'through', 'over' and 'against' organizations). This allows us to evaluate assumptions both shared and contested in the field. Building on the review, the paper then points to potentially novel areas of research that may extend our understandings of organizational power in management and organization science.
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