The emotional organization and the problem of authenticity: The romantic, the pedagogic, the therapeutic and the ludic as liminal media of transition

Stenner, Paul; Andersen, Niels Åkerstrøm

doi:10.1002/sres.2687

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Framed in this way, a key role of the school leaders is to manage the liminality that is summoned through their interventions. We show that the management of liminality is in large part a question of managing the volatile feelings that are typical of liminal situations and that we call liminal affectivity (see Greco & Stenner, 2017, Stenner & Andersen, 2020. In Staunaes' terminology, the increased affective intensity and quality in liminal situations calls for forms of 'affective leadership' whereby the affectivity is strategically cultivated and managed (Staunaes, 2011).…”

Section: Flexible Timetablesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Producing and managing continuous change in an educational context: liminal affective technologies and leadership

Bjergkilde

Stenner

2021

Subjectivity

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Currently, municipal schools in Denmark face reforms and political demands for organizational change (EVA, 2015). The perception is now commonly held that it is necessary to radically rethink the entire set up of the institutional school towards a more flexible, adaptable and co-operative organization (Irgens & Jensen, 2008). This paper explores an empirical case, where a school is implementing a device called 'flexible timetables' in an attempt to depart from former fixed structures and private teaching practices. By combining process thought and liminality theory, the paper offers a theoretical framework for understanding some of the dynamics and unintended consequences of this transformation process. In so doing the paper calls attention to some important limits to the vision of flexibility and openness that informs this program of organisational change and subjectivity. Flexible timetables are conceptualized as a liminal affective technology (Stenner & Moreno-Gabriel, 2013), designed to disrupt structures supporting former institutional practices, and to engender circumstances that are describable in terms of liminal experience. We use the concept of liminal affectivity to describe the collective atmosphere of ambivalence and volatility that is summoned through the intervention. We also draw attention to certain unexpected side effects, as when the participants experience themselves both paralysed by the ensuing paradoxes, and captured in dynamics of polarisation (Greco & Stenner, 2017). The paper proposes the concept liminal affective leadership wherein the use of the technology is framed as a continuously sensitive balancing of the volatile liminal affectivity that it induces.

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Section: Flexible Timetablesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Producing and managing continuous change in an educational context: liminal affective technologies and leadership

Bjergkilde

Stenner

2021

Subjectivity

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“…, 2018). From the organization's perspective, passion fosters creativity, heightens performance, builds loyalty and unitizes the organization (Stenner and Andersen, 2020). In modern organizations, passion can unleash the flow of creative ideas, leading to the organization's success and goals achievement (Cardon et al.…”

Section: Literature Review and Hypotheses Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…, 2020). When the organization and employees share the same core passion and are connected to achieve the organization's objectives, employees feel more empowered (Stenner and Andersen, 2020).…”

Section: Literature Review and Hypotheses Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling employees' passion and work-related outcomes through the lens of cross-cultural examination: a two-wave empirical study

Mehmood

Jabeen

Hammadi

et al. 2022

IJM

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PurposeDrawing on the self-determination theory, this cross-cultural study aims to examine the associations between the dualistic framework of work passion and work outcomes (job satisfaction, job engagement and workaholism).Design/methodology/approachUsing data from a time-lagged design with two-waves, service organizations employees of the UAE (n = 150) and Canada (n = 154) participated in the study. Hierarchical regression analysis is used to analyze the associations among the variables.FindingsThe study results support the harmonious and obsessive passion relationships with the identified work outcomes. In both the UAE and Canada, harmonious and obsessive passion predicted all three hypothesized work outcomes (workaholism, job satisfaction and job engagement). The study also acknowledged various culture-specific work passion effects.Research limitations/implicationsThe study encompasses the dichotomy of the work passion paradigm to compare between East and West. The examination of the work passion results offers a precise method to examine in what manner the two types of passion is linked to different work outcomes. Harmonious and obsessive passion is associated with negative (workaholism) and positive (job satisfaction and job engagement) outcomes. Accordingly, the findings strengthen the conceptual outline of the passion construct. Moreover, the research highlighted the importance of enriching the organization's environment with passionate human capital. This study shall help the decision-makers to formulate the suitable strategies to imbibe passion within the work culture.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by being the first to compare the influence of harmonious and obsessive passion on work outcomes between the East and West cultures. Also, in this study, we draw upon the self-determination theory to investigate how work passion affects employees' work outcomes in a cross-cultural setting.

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“…That is, both in the “near world” (Luhmann, 1999, p. 380 our translation) of the organization’s members and in their distant contacts, one is increasingly confronted with psychic systems which one first and foremost does not care about as persons. The generalized expectation of this indifference towards the others will hardly be deniable, despite all contemporary attempts to reinstate the respective semantics (Stenner and Åkerstrøm Andersen, 2020) [6].…”

Section: Organization and Moralitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The demoralization of society and the proliferation of organization

Rachlitz

Grossmann-Hensel

Friedl

2021

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PurposeIn this paper, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between organization and society. They argue that the proliferation of organization in modernity has not yet been properly understood in light of the absence of organization in premodern times. The authors therefore ask: Why do organizations proliferate? Why do they proliferate in such manifold organizational forms? And how can these heterogeneous forms nevertheless be related to a common problem to which organizations provide a solution? A comparative historical analysis based on the theory of social systems reveals that organizations fill a gap which the decline of morality as an integrative success medium created.Design/methodology/approachThe paper develops a conceptual framework focusing on the theory of media within Luhmann’s theory of social systems as a point of departure. The authors discuss the concept of “interpenetration” to assess the relation between morality and organization. They raise several follow-up questions for future empirical research, most prominently pertaining to the relationship between organization and digitalization.FindingsThe main finding is that morality can be conceptualized as a specific success medium (alongside religion and symbolically generalized communication media) which used to structure premodern societies by means of social and interhuman interpenetration at once. Modern society instead employs two differentiated forms of interpenetration: Social interpretation through organizations and interhuman interpenetration through love relationships. These centripetal counterforces help to mediate the centrifugal forces unleashed by the full development of modern success media. Modern society critically depends on the proliferation of organizations.Originality/valueThis paper examines the relationship between morality and organization not from the perspective of interaction or organization, but from the perspective of society. This approach provides novel insights in that it opens up promising avenues of comparison between organization and other social forms. Understanding the distinctively modern “success story” of organization as a social form makes it possible to ask about corresponding potentials and limitations, but also alternative possibilities. In doing so, the authors depart from most studies of organizations grounded in social systems theory as the authors primarily focus on Luhmann’s theory of media (as opposed to the theory of differentiation).

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The emotional organization and the problem of authenticity: The romantic, the pedagogic, the therapeutic and the ludic as liminal media of transition

Cited by 9 publications

References 42 publications

Producing and managing continuous change in an educational context: liminal affective technologies and leadership

Producing and managing continuous change in an educational context: liminal affective technologies and leadership

Disentangling employees' passion and work-related outcomes through the lens of cross-cultural examination: a two-wave empirical study

The demoralization of society and the proliferation of organization

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