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Book part
Publication date: 9 July 2010

Mahmoud Ezzamel and Hugh Willmott

This chapter explicates the theoretical basis and contribution of poststructuralism to the study of strategy and strategic management. More specifically, it focuses upon…

Abstract

This chapter explicates the theoretical basis and contribution of poststructuralism to the study of strategy and strategic management. More specifically, it focuses upon Foucauldian analysis which is contrasted to rationalist and interpretivist studies. Foucauldian analysis is not regarded as a corrective but as an addition to these established approaches to studying strategy. Notably, Foucault's work draws attention to how discourse constitutes, disciplines and legitimizes particular forms of executive identity (‘strategists’) and management practice (‘strategizing’). We highlight how Foucault's poststructuralist thinking points to unexplored performative effects of rationalist and interpretivist studies of strategy. Foucault is insistent upon the indivisibility of knowledge and power, where relations of power within organizations, and in academia, are understood to rely upon, but also operate to maintain and transform, particular ‘discourses of truth’ such as the discourses of ‘shareholder value’ and ‘objectivity’. Discourse, in Foucauldian analysis, is not a more or less imperfect, or ineffective, means of representing objects such as strategy. Rather, it is performative in, for example, producing the widely taken-or-granted truth that ‘organization’ is separate from ‘environment’. In turn, the production of this distinction is seen to enable and sanction particular and, arguably, predatory forms of knowledge, in which the formulation and application of strategy is represented as neutral, mirror-like and/or functional.

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The Globalization of Strategy Research
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-898-8

Book part
Publication date: 14 October 2010

John Brocklesby

In examining what role autopoietic theory might play in furthering the agenda of process-based organizational research, it is worth noting that the biological notion of…

Abstract

In examining what role autopoietic theory might play in furthering the agenda of process-based organizational research, it is worth noting that the biological notion of autopoiesis and derivative concepts have already achieved limited recognition in the broad organization studies field. A perennial debate has evolved around the question of whether organizations can and/or should be considered autopoietic (see Luhmann, 1986; Zeleny & Hufford, 1992; Mingers, 1992; Robb, 1989; Kay, 2001). Beyond that, the general approach seems to involve taking some defined aspect of autopoiesis and employing this to shed light on some defined aspect of organizational life. Thus, Krogh and Roos (1998) use the concept of autopoiesis to expound, discuss, and illustrate a distinctive perspective on organizational knowledge; Luhmann (1990) and Teubner (1984) use autopoiesis to create awareness of how the circularity and self-referentiality of legal, and social systems more generally, can prevent renewal and lead to a failure in adapting to problems in society. Autopoiesis has been used to enhance our understanding of how the functioning of computers relate to the evolution of human language, thought and action, (Winograd & Flores, 1987). In management, the concept of autopoiesis has been used, largely in a metaphorical sense, to understand the firm as a living evolving system that is characterized by “flux and transformation” (Morgan, 1986). In the therapeutic professions, various writers use autopoiesis to show how circular sets of self-reinforcing conversations can create severe dysfunctions with individuals (Efren, Lukens, & Lukens, 1990), in families and in other tightly knit social groups (Dell, 1982, 1985; Hoffman, 1988; Goolishian & Winderman, 1988). Elsewhere in organization studies, Kay (1997) applies autopoiesis to the facilitation of organizational change, and Beer (1981) uses the term “pathological autopoiesis” in understanding threats to organizational viability.

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Advanced Series in Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-833-5

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Stem-Professional Women’s Exclusion in the Canadian Space Industry
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-570-2

Book part
Publication date: 20 September 2021

Suze Wilson

The ongoing global pandemic poses significant challenges for researchers, personally and professionally, as it does for all people. However, even if we cannot safely leave our…

Abstract

The ongoing global pandemic poses significant challenges for researchers, personally and professionally, as it does for all people. However, even if we cannot safely leave our home to gather qualitative data by directly meeting with people, opportunities abound for engaging in discourse analysis. After all, people have not stopped talking or writing, even if much of that is now via Zoom, social media or some other technology platform rather than face to face. What people are talking and writing about at this time matters greatly because language use profoundly shapes how people interpret reality, perceive themselves and others and act. Quite literally, then, the discourse people engage in and are influenced by during the pandemic may help to save or imperil lives and livelihoods. While there are many possible approaches to discourse analysis, this chapter focuses on some key insights French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault offers for such endeavors. It offers an introductory account of his key concepts and methods, followed by a brief case study to demonstrate their application to discourses that reject scientific knowledge and advice about COVID-19.

Book part
Publication date: 5 April 2012

Steven P. Vallas and Andrea Hill

The question of power, long indispensable to organizational analysis, remains the elusive but essential key to understanding the employment relation within the contemporary…

Abstract

The question of power, long indispensable to organizational analysis, remains the elusive but essential key to understanding the employment relation within the contemporary capitalist context. Taking up this question, this chapter critically examines two of the more prevalent approaches toward work organizations – neo-institutionalist theory and labor process analysis – and engages a third, less widely utilized approach: Foucault's theory of governmentality. By weighing the strengths and weaknesses of familiar analytical traditions and providing insight into an emergent theoretical approach, we offer some observations and suggestions that might enrich the study of work, power, and organizations in the coming years.

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Rethinking Power in Organizations, Institutions, and Markets
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-665-2

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Book part
Publication date: 31 December 2003

Stewart R Clegg and Martin Kornberger

Modernism and postmodernism may be thought of as either moments or movements. We argue for thinking of them as moments, essentially related to each other, rather than movements…

Abstract

Modernism and postmodernism may be thought of as either moments or movements. We argue for thinking of them as moments, essentially related to each other, rather than movements that literally have historical specificity. From this perspective what is modern and what is postmodern is always shifting, such that their nature is problematic, essentially contested and shifting. Rather than use contemporary examples to make these points, we prefer to refer to quite historical examples, because the modalities become much sharper and can be seen in clearer focus. Hence, we discuss Machiavelli and Caravaggio as precursors of the postmodern and Hobbes and Boyle as precursors of the modern. Obviously, there is an irony in our intent: given the claims to currency of the debates with which we frame the paper then reference to some classical sources serves to hose down debate and fix it in a sharper, cleaner form. While it will become evident that our sympathies are not with “modernism”, it should become equally clear that we hold much of the representation of “postmodernism” to be as much at error as we do the fixing of the modern in the frame of the empiricist, the positivist, and the scientific. For us, all these terms are equally problematic, and have been so ever since we began to first think we might be modern – whether in art, social science or science. We conclude by addressing why, in the present, these classical debates should have migrated to the study of organizations.

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Post Modernism and Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-573-4

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Organization Theory
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-946-6

Book part
Publication date: 22 July 2014

Libby Schweber

The UK government’s support for sustainable construction involves an explicit attempt to introduce a new institutional logic into the construction sector, while the use of…

Abstract

The UK government’s support for sustainable construction involves an explicit attempt to introduce a new institutional logic into the construction sector, while the use of Building Research Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) as a preferred policy mechanism exemplifies neoliberal use of voluntary self-regulation to promote policy goals. This paper uses the case of BREEAM to examine the role of science and scientific expertise in the exercise of neoliberal governance. More specifically, it combines a neo-institutional analysis of change with Foucault’s theory of governmentality to explore the effect of BREEAM on eight construction projects. The concepts of visibility, knowledge, techniques, and identity provide an analytic grid to explore the effect of BREEAM on understandings and practices of “green building.” Appeals to science and scientific authority are found to be most important in those instances where institutional logics clash and the legitimacy of BREEAM as a carrier of sustainable construction is challenged. From a theoretical perspective, the case studies highlight the role of instruments in the micro-dynamics of institutionalization. Empirically, it underlines the limited, but nonetheless significant, effect of weakly institutionalized neoliberal policy mechanisms.

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Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-668-2

Book part
Publication date: 14 September 2010

S. Karin Amos

Against the background of a changing relation between the state and “its” education system, the present contribution focuses on two concepts that can be used as tools in order to…

Abstract

Against the background of a changing relation between the state and “its” education system, the present contribution focuses on two concepts that can be used as tools in order to explain the current transformations. “Governance” is more concerned with technical issues: with instruments and modes, procedures and actors, and with their constellations and forms of cooperation. It focuses research on questions such as: who provides educational services or what is the connection between public and private education. It has been employed to investigate the relation between the various levels of analysis and has proven particularly useful in creating an adequate theoretical understanding of the role of international organizations in shaping educational policies. Sociology and political science are the two disciplines most prominently associated with elaborating the concept under various perspectives. Governmentality, although sharing many characteristics with governance, is a Foucauldian term concerned with the generation of different subjectivities and collectivities through techniques and modes of ruling and guiding in an encompassing sense. A governmentality perspective thus focuses investigations on the typical Foucauldian knowledge/power nexus. While “governance” may be said to be more descriptive, more concerned with the “how” of current transformations, “governmentality” may be drawn on to argue that the changes are related to a reworking of the very modern Weberian notion of rationality, thus stressing the morphodynamics but not the reinvention of education. At stake is the increase of effectivity in order to augment and increase the “usefulness” and thus the value of the population.

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International Educational Governance
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-304-1

Book part
Publication date: 12 October 2011

Jeb Sprague

It has been over a decade since the publication of Michael Hardt and Antoni Negri's widely read Empire, a book that claimed humanity had entered a qualitatively new era in the…

Abstract

It has been over a decade since the publication of Michael Hardt and Antoni Negri's widely read Empire, a book that claimed humanity had entered a qualitatively new era in the organization of power. How do critical sociological studies that also theorize global capitalism depart from or share affinities with Hardt and Negri's Foucauldian-inspired notion of empire? The two most important shared insights is the notion of a new epoch in the history of world capitalism and the conceptualization of a global system that moves beyond the idea of U.S. imperialism solely as behind its fundamental structure. However, overpowering Hardt and Negri's framework are some fundamental problems: the vague and nondialectical idea of multitude, the lack of the role of the state, their confusing and contradictory idea of constitutionalism, and a misapprehension of immaterial labor.

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The Diversity of Social Theories
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-821-3

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