Whilst organizational ethnographers have embraced the concept of self-reflexivity, problems remain. In this paper we argue that the prevalent assumption that self-reflexivity is the sole responsibility of the individual researcher limits its scope for understanding organizations. To address this, we propose an innovative method of collective reflection that is inspired by ideas from cultural and feminist anthropology. The value of this method is illustrated through an analysis of two ethnographic case studies, involving a 'pair-interview' method. This collective approach surfaced self-reflexive accounts, in which aspects of the research encounter that still tend to be downplayed within organizational ethnographies, including emotion, intersubjectivity and the operation of power dynamics, were allowed to emerge. The approach also facilitated a second contribution through the conceptualization of organizational ethnography as a unique endeavour that represents a collision between one 'world of work': the university, with a second, that of the researched organization. We find that this 'collision' exacerbates the emotionality of ethnographic research, highlighting the refusal of 'researched' organizations to be domesticated by the specific norms of academia.Our paper concludes by drawing out implications for the practice of self-reflexivity within organizational ethnography.

This special issue of Management Learning on 'Writing Differently' builds on a groundswell of resistance to 'scientific' norms of academic writing. These norms are restrictive, inhibit the development of knowledge and excise much of what it is to be human from our learning, teaching and research. Contributors to the special issue explore how, released from these restrictions, it is possible to touch vulnerable flesh and invoke new political and ethical practices. Through changing our norms of writing, we explore different modes of learning and change how and what we teach. By bringing the previously excised vast hinterlands of life and lives to the fore, we create the intellectual space to engender new ideas as well as more collaborative forms of learning. In so doing, we foster alternative conversations as to how we might constitute new, highly ethical and humanitarian organisations. CallingFor most of my life I have written. As a teenager, I kept a daily account in hardback diaries, little notebooks, bits of paper, cards -whatever was to hand. The so-called 'quality' of the writing became immaterial; what was important was the heated physical pleasure of writing and thinking -for its own sake. As I grew older and as I write for an audience, this embodied pleasure has been replaced by a sense of being put in a Victorian corset.

This paper seeks to understand leaders as material presences. Leadership theory has traditionally explored leaders as sites of disembodied traits, characteristics and abilities. Our qualitative, mixed method study suggests that managers charged with the tasks of leadership operate within a very different understanding. Their endogenous or lay theory understands leadership as physical, corporeal and visible, and as something made manifest through leaders' material presence. This theory-inpractice holds that leadership qualities are signified by the leader's physical appearance: the good leader must look the part. Actors consequently work on their own appearance to present an image of themselves as leader. They thus offer a fundamental challenge to dominant exogenous, or academic, theories of leadership.To understand the unspoken assumptions that underpin the lay theory of leadership as material presence, we interrogate it using the new materialist theory of Karen Barad and the object relations theory of Christopher Bollas. This illuminates the lay theory's complexities and sophisticated insights. In academic terms it offers a theory of how sentient and non-sentient actors intra-act and performatively constitute leadership 2 through complex entanglements that enact and circulate organizational and leadership norms. The paper's contribution is thus a theory of leadership micro-dynamics in which the leader is materialised through practices of working on a corporeal self for presentation to both self and others.

The post-Cartesian ‘material turn’ in management and organization studies understands that bodies are far more than vehicles that enable work to be undertaken, but are agentive actors in the constitution of work and working selves. This leads to the need for more empirically-derived understanding of the agency of flesh in the performative corporealization of working, embodied selves. We met this challenge through adapting feminist, posthuman research methods for a study of the materialities and materialization of working bodies. The study takes forward Judith Butler’s and Karen Barad’s theories of performativity by reading them through each other, and introducing flesh as an agentive actor in each moment-to-moment move. In paying close attention to the speech of supposedly ‘dumb flesh’ we show how flesh resists its negation and itself imposes control on the worker. We coin the term ‘body/flesh’ and illuminate how bodies are active and agentive, constituting corporeal/izing working selves in somewhat unexpected ways.

Purpose -To explain how an organization has been able to use seismic changes in its wider external environment to transform its performance without the need for radical internal restructuring or coercive forms of leadership. Design/methodology/approach -This paper utilises a three year case study from elite sport, an under-represented sector in the management literature but one that offers a fascinating view of change.Findings -Whilst the change management literature typically emphasises dramatic and rapid coercive restructuring accompanying open-ended environment change, this study found that known routines and historical ways of working existed alongside innovation, risk-taking and learning; the paradoxical foundation upon which performance flourished. Research limitations/implications -Although the dangers of single cases are noted, difficulties regarding access and comparability with other similar organizations prevented a similar degree of focus on multiple cases. Future research either within elite sports teams or other organizations facing similar environmental change is needed to extend and enhance the asset maximization model presented here. Practical implications -This analysis and the development of an asset maximisation approach questions the traditional processual or design-based approaches towards managing change and argues for the capture and incorporation of business and strategic decision making within such accounts. Originality/value -The paper is a rare account of change within elite sports. The asset maximisation approach developed within this case study illustrates how holistic value creation in turbulent times is achieved. As such, its conclusions will have much to offer organizations as well as academics interested in the management of change.