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Article
Publication date: 25 May 2018

W. David Holford

This paper aims to show agential realism as the basis for a pertinent framework with regard to the entwined, on-going and interpretative aspects of knowledge.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to show agential realism as the basis for a pertinent framework with regard to the entwined, on-going and interpretative aspects of knowledge.

Design/methodology/approach

The knowledge flow phenomenon in the form of entanglement and agential “cuts” within the workplace is studied and described across a phenomenological ethnographic case study of two workgroups within an aircraft engine manufacturing context.

Findings

The boundary construction phenomenon is a key process helping us to depict knowledge entanglement (tacit and explicit) across dialogue and non-verbal actions. Dialogue brings forth the aspect of knowledge as interpretations or “cuts.” A phenomenological analysis allows us to identify and describe various levels of tacit–explicit knowledge entanglement depending on the mode of coping at hand. Also highlighted was the importance of heuristics carried out by knowledge experts, often in the form of abduction (i.e. leading to rules of thumb).

Research limitations/implications

It is acknowledged that the relatively narrow context of the empirical work limits the ability to generalize the findings and arguments. As such, additional work is required to investigate the validity of the findings across a wider spectrum of workgroup contexts.

Practical implications

Agential realism allows for the analysis of organizations as a world of practice and actions, whereby long-established categories can be requestioned and challenged with the aim of sharing the full richness and benefit of embodied knowledge between human actors.

Originality/value

Ethnographic descriptions of the entwined nature of tacit and explicit knowledge, the embodied and activity-based dimension of knowledge and learning, as well as the characteristic of knowledge as possession, correspond well to an agential realist concept of phenomenon, entanglement and cuts. Furthermore, agential realism offers the opportunity to view the workplace as individuals (or groups) who act out embodied tacit-explicit knowledge in conjunction with non-human entities (such as objects, as well as communication and information technologies), with the latter acting as enhancers of knowledge creation and sharing.

Details

Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 22 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1367-3270

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 July 2020

Erin B. Stutelberg

This paper aims to engage nine women English teachers in exploring their personal memories centered around the perception of their raced, classed and gendered teacher bodies, and

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to engage nine women English teachers in exploring their personal memories centered around the perception of their raced, classed and gendered teacher bodies, and led them to conceptualize teaching as invasion.

Design/methodology/approach

The process of collective memory work (CMW), a qualitative feminist research method, was used to structure collaborative sessions for the nine women English teachers. In these sessions, the group took up the CMW process as the memories were written, read, analyzed and theorized together.

Findings

The analyses of two memories from our group's work builds understanding of how the use of new materialism and a conceptualization of emotions as social, collective and agentic, can expand the understanding of the teacher bodies and disrupt normalizing narratives of teaching and learning. The post-humanist concept of intra-action leads one to better understand the boundaries in the teacher – student relationships that is built/invaded, and to see the ways materials, humans, emotions and discourses are entangled in the teaching encounters.

Originality/value

This study demonstrates how sustained and collective research methodologies like CMW can open space for teachers to more fully explore their identities, encounters and relationships. Further, unpacking everyday classroom moments (through the framework of literacy-as-event) can yield deep and critical understanding of how bodies, emotions and non-human objects all become entangled when teaching becomes an act of invasion.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 19 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 October 2015

Leonore van den Ende, Alfons van Marrewijk and Kees Boersma

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of sociomateriality to exhibit how the social and material are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice in a…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of sociomateriality to exhibit how the social and material are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice in a particular organization of study.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conduct an ethnographic case study of the North-South metro line project in Amsterdam and use the methods of participant-observation, in-depth interviewing and a desk study.

Findings

The authors showcase the process of sociomaterial entanglement by focussing on the history and context of the project, the agency and performativity of the material and sociomaterial (re)configuration via ritual performance. The authors found the notion of performativity not only concern the enactment of boundaries between the social and material, but also the blurring of such boundaries.

Research limitations/implications

Sociomateriality theory remains difficult to grasp. The implication is the need to provide new lenses to engage this theory empirically.

Practical implications

The authors provide a multi-layered lens for organization researchers to engage sociomateriality theory at a contextual, organizational and practice level.

Social implications

Insights from a historical and contextual perspective can help practitioners to become aware of the diverse and dynamic ways in which social and material entities are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice.

Originality/value

The authors provide a unique empirical account to exhibit the entanglement and (re)configuration between the social and material in a particular organization of study. This paper studies a tangible organizational setting whereas prior research in sociomateriality mainly focussed on routines in IT and IS. Finally, the authors suggest the ethnographic method to study sociomaterial entanglement from a historical and contextual perspective.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 4 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 7 October 2019

Carol A. Taylor

This chapter puts “new” material feminist theory to work to re-think curriculum practices in undergraduate higher education. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad and her elaboration…

Abstract

This chapter puts “new” material feminist theory to work to re-think curriculum practices in undergraduate higher education. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad and her elaboration of agential realism, the chapter explores the following questions: how can thinking with new material feminism help develop and support new modes of curriculum design? How does new material feminism facilitate the development of innovative teaching and learning practices? And how does new material feminism expand the means by which knowledge is produced? The chapter utilizes Barad’s notion of diffraction to illuminate how curriculum-making can be done via a patterned activity of creative interference. Empirically grounded in a module on an undergraduate BA Education Studies degree, the discussion employs practical examples of how new material feminist thinking and doing activates different ways of thinking about the body, materiality, affect, space, places, and objects in the undergraduate curriculum. More broadly, the chapter speaks into long-standing concerns about how feminist theory might support innovative teaching and learning, and how it might promote new modes of relation between our students and us as educationalists. The chapter is written from the point of view of the tutor’s reflexive insights on the module as a novel curriculum instantiation of material feminist practice.

Details

Theory and Method in Higher Education Research
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-842-5

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 November 2020

Beata Segercrantz, Annamari Tuori and Charlotta Niemistö

Drawing on a performative ontology, this article extends the literature on health promotion in organizations by exploring how health promotion is performed in care work. The focus…

Abstract

Purpose

Drawing on a performative ontology, this article extends the literature on health promotion in organizations by exploring how health promotion is performed in care work. The focus of the study is on health promotion in a context of illness and/or decline, which form the core of the studied organizational activities. The paper addresses the following question: how do care workers working in elderly care and mental health care organizations accomplish health promotion in the context of illness and/or decline?

Design/methodology/approach

The article develops a performative approach and analyses material-discursive practices in health promoting care work. The empirical material includes 36 semi-structured interviews with care workers, observations and organizational documents.

Findings

Two central material-discursive health promoting practices in care work are identified: confirming that celebrates service users as residents and the organizations as a home, and balancing at the limits of health promotion. The practices of balancing make the limitations of health promotion discernible and involve reconciling health promotion with that which does not neatly fit into it (illness, unachievable care aims, the institution and certain organizing). In sum, the study shows how health promotion can structure processes in care homes where illness and decline often are particularly palpable.

Originality/value

The paper explores health promotion in a context rarely explored in organization studies. Previous organization studies have to some extent explored health promotion and care work, but typically separately. Further, the few studies that have adopted a performative approach to material-discursive practices in the context of care work have typically primarily focused on IT. We extend previous organization studies literature by producing new insights: (1) from an important organizational context of health promotion and (2) of under-researched entanglements of human and non-human actors in care work providing a performative theory of reconciling organizational tensions.

Details

Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, vol. 16 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5648

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 6 June 2019

Marita Svane

The focus of this chapter is quantum dialectical storytelling and its contribution to generate anticipatory knowledge of the future through the intra-play between the…

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is quantum dialectical storytelling and its contribution to generate anticipatory knowledge of the future through the intra-play between the ante-narrative and the anti-narrative. The theoretical framework on quantum dialectical storytelling is based upon Boje’s triad storytelling framework interfused with Hegelian dialectics and Baradian diffraction. Through the inspiration of Judith Butler’s performative theory, Riach, Rumens, and Tyler (2016) introduce the concept of the anti-narrative as a critical reflexive methodology. By drawing on Hegel’s work on the dialectical phenomenology of critical reflexive self-consciousness, a dialectical pre-reflexive and reflexive framework emerges as intra-weaving modes of being-in-the-world toward future.

Details

The Emerald Handbook of Management and Organization Inquiry
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-552-8

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1999

David Rooney and Greg Hearn

We argue that change management has become ideological and that by selective use of complexity research has used the imperative for change to further political and economic…

Abstract

We argue that change management has become ideological and that by selective use of complexity research has used the imperative for change to further political and economic agendas. We seek to redress this situation by developing a critical perspective on change and a new metaphor, the zone of entanglement, to assist critical analysis of change. Central to our argument is that a dynamic of change is non‐change. In this vein, we show that there are deep, robust and persistent structures that dampen change and which, if recognized, may help in achieving organic change, resulting in positive social transformations.

Details

Foresight, vol. 1 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-6689

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1966

K. Sachs, C.W. Tuck and J. Barlow

TWO nickel‐bearing commercial steels were oxidised in the range 1100°–1250°C for up to 8 hr. in air and CO2. The increase in thickness of the scale and the inner layer with…

Abstract

TWO nickel‐bearing commercial steels were oxidised in the range 1100°–1250°C for up to 8 hr. in air and CO2. The increase in thickness of the scale and the inner layer with embedded metal particles was followed in detail. A distinction is made between filaments which retain continuity with the base metal and discrete particles. The continuous filaments may be of practical importance in holding the scale to the metal in hot rolling, leading to surface defects on hot‐rolled products.

Details

Anti-Corrosion Methods and Materials, vol. 13 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0003-5599

Article
Publication date: 27 July 2012

Muhammad A. Ayub, Ruziyati Tajuddin and Michael R. Jackson

In the garment industry, web lace fabric material must be tensioned and placed at the right position and orientation prior to the cutting process. In order to avoid a bottleneck…

Abstract

Purpose

In the garment industry, web lace fabric material must be tensioned and placed at the right position and orientation prior to the cutting process. In order to avoid a bottleneck, the speed of material handling must be relatively fast compared to the laser cutting speed so that the use of a laser for rapid prototyping of two‐dimensional (2D) cutting shapes is feasible. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a novel gripping system for handling flexible web materials.

Design/methodology/approach

The manner in which this intelligent material handling system operates will be discussed in this paper. This includes its system configuration, errors that may occur during the web handling operation, and sequential operations of web distortion control. The material handling system uses a machine vision system coupled with a self‐tuning motion control strategy to assist the material handling system in controlling the web tension, adjusting the web deformation parameters and transporting the web materials.

Findings

The online image analysis and a novel mechanical design concept, coupled with the motion controller, are the key issues in the mechatronic integration of this intelligent web‐based material handling system.

Originality/value

The paper presents a novel approach to designing and realizing an intelligent gripping system, which has not previously been attempted.

Details

Assembly Automation, vol. 32 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-5154

Keywords

Abstract

Details

When Reproduction Meets Ageing
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-747-8

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