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This paper outlines and exemplifies the use of a method for analysing power relations based on the work of French social theorist, Michel Foucault. The overall research aim of genealogical analysis is to produce “a history of the present”, a history which is essentially critical with its focus on locating forms of power, the channels it takes and the discourses it permeates. Research combining Foucauldian theorisation and method necessarily involves a selective search for injustice and subjection to reveal plausible alternatives to more pervasively modernist histories, which tend to revere progress. Salient features of a genealogical research method are detailed in the context of an actual research project previously conducted by the authors and reproduced here for the purposes of exemplification explicitly as a genealogy.

The analysis of organizations has a debt vis-à-vis the sociologist Max Weber who built its theoretical foundations. The concept of limited rationality was later proposed by Herbert Simon and then followed by sociologists of organizations. This paper tries to go beyond that approach. It uses a psychoanalytical perspective based on Jacques Lacan's work and on the case studies of two high-tech companies. We focus on signifiers and the role of the unconscious process inside organizations. We then propose an alternative model of interpretation of organizational dynamics different from the mainstream, which is dominated by the reference to instrumental rationality.

The financial crisis of 2007/2008 has caused many to question the basic premises of the current business system. Porter and Kramer suggest that the purpose of the corporation needs to be redefined. They posit that the corporation, rather than merely pursuing financial value creation set out to pursue shared value creation. They further declare social entrepreneurs the paragons of said shared‐value creation. The purpose of this paper is to explore that claim.

This paper critically analyzes the pathway of shared‐value creation in three leading social enterprises employing a genealogical perspective.

It is found that very innovative shared‐value creating ventures opted out of balance‐oriented, shared‐value creation strategies and embraced either financial or social‐value primacy strategies over time. The findings thus question the power of the shared‐value creation notion when viewed as balance orientation.

The paper presents a new concept, a new methodology, and interesting case studies.

A key component of evolutionary models in economics and organizational research, the notion of organizational selection is rarely the object of inquiry. It generally suggests instead a neutral and unquestioned process, a mechanism explaining organizational success and survival. In this chapter, we explore the variation of selection; we problematize the notion of selection and do an exercise in conceptual genealogy. We differentiate between three patterns of firm selection: Darwinian, strategic, and institutional and define the associated “embedded rationalities” that buttress those different selection patterns. We illustrate how selection differed and evolved through time by exploring two empirical cases – France and the United States. Building upon our empirical exploration, we stress some important contributions for three theories familiar to strategy scholars – resource-based view, population ecology, and institutional theory. We also point to some consequences for empirical research and suggest new directions for future work on the dynamics of organizational action.

This chapter offers a selective review of the emerging Indigenous Pacific educational research from 2000 to 2018. The Pacific region is home to many and various cultural groups, and this review is an opportunity to celebrate the consequent diversity of thought about education. Common threads are used to weave this diversity into a set of coherent regional patterns. Such threads include the regional value to educational research of local metaphor, and an emphasis on relationality or the state of being related as a cornerstone of education, both in research and as practice. The relationship between indigenous educational thought and formal education in indigenous contexts is also addressed. The review pays attention to educational research centered in home islands and that which focuses on the education of those from Pacific Islands in settler societies since connections across the ocean are strong. Because of the recent history of the region, developments are fast paced and ongoing, and this chapter concludes with a sketch of research at the frontier. Set within the context of an area study, the chapter concludes by suggesting what challenges the region has to offer in terms of re-thinking the field of international and comparative education.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on the non-essence of accounting by focusing on financial accounting’s distinct technology: financial statements. Complementing the genealogical perspective on accounting’s changing socio-historical settings, it proposes a semiotic perspective on the accounting statement.

The paper takes an interdisciplinary approach in the theoretical framing of IFRS recognition and measurement principles that underlie the statement of financial position. It mobilises Saussure and Barthes’ sign theory – semiology, as it provides a meaningful delineation of financial accounting, bringing out its distinct numerical-linguistic knowledge-construction operation.

In addition to the justification of employing semiology as a parent discipline for accounting, it is shown how IASB’s recognition and measurement procedures manifest the interrelated non-essentialist semiological principles of reciprocal articulation and value constellation. Accounting entries (“expression”) are not representations of pre-existing economic resources (“content”), but rather both are mutually constituted by delimiting the resource/asset from its broader category. Such judgment-based articulation results with value constellations, where asset value is merely a relational product of other values.

To the long-established critique that accounting has no essence, the paper adds a formulation of a non-essentialist semiotic logic: the financial statement’s semio-logic. It further sheds light on the role of such logic as an epistemological presupposition to the accounting – society reciprocity, where accounting is a malleable product of, and is used to exert power over, its social surroundings.

The purpose of this paper, drawing mainly on insights from Foucault and Wittgenstein, is to conceptualise intellectual capital (IC) in very generalist terms as both language game and power in order to initiate a critical understanding of IC.

IC is viewed as knowledge about knowledge, knowledge creation and how such processes might be leveraged into value. It is argued that a critical understanding of IC requires a historical, contextual and linguistic understanding of how IC has emerged and how IC is used. Perceiving IC as language game and power is one way of initiating such critical understanding.

IC is perceived as a social construction and the genealogical focus is on how actors, positions and interests influence this process of social construction.

The paper offers concepts and methods that facilitate historical and contextual research on how IC emerges and how IC is used. Further historical studies are necessary in order to reflect upon and improve extant IC concepts and methods

The paper offers a critical understanding of IC by introducing concepts from the organisational discourse literature. Further it offers practical methodological guidelines for conducting critical genealogical research.

Managing internal supply chains is becoming increasingly complex, requiring managers to balance diverse needs. As a result, managers continuously face the need to change how they organize their internal supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to examine this phenomenon by addressing why multinational supply chain management organizations (SCMOs) change their designs, as well as how managers respond to pertinent change phenomena using complementary theoretical perspectives.

Qualitative data, collected from 50 executives within 24 multinational manufacturers, is used to develop an understanding of the organizational design change phenomena. A theory elaboration approach is taken to illustrate how various theoretical perspectives explain organizational design change.

This study identifies and elaborates organizational design change phenomena in the context of multinational SCMOs, including internal and external drivers of design change. Managers also discussed key supply chain management capabilities that were developed in order to meet perceived changes in business needs.

This study contributes to academic understanding of organizational design issues affecting SCMOs. Four theoretical perspectives are elaborated upon to illustrate their applicability for examining SCMO organizational design issues.

This study provides managerial application of several organizational design change theories by elaborating principles for framing, interpreting, and implementing design change initiatives in internal SCMOs.

This is one of the first studies to investigate organizational design change in multinational SCMOs. This research highlights the complexity and evolving nature of SCMO organizational design decisions by describing the adaption, integration, and reconfiguration of firm resources and competencies in changing environments.

This study aims to analyze the exemplary historic case of Ms Viola Turner – an African-American insurance executive in the early 1900s to gain insights into how individuals negotiate the tension between intersecting identities and moral foundational values over time.

This study uses a mixed research design and a genealogical-pragmatic approach to analyze this exemplary case. This study uses computer-aided textual analysis software to analyze interviews conducted with Ms Turner, generating quantitative insights. This study qualitatively codes the interviews to aid in establishing the behavioral patterns across Ms Turner’s lifespan.

This study found that Ms Turner altered her underlying configurations of moral foundations to better align with her intersecting identities. This study also revealed cross-level interactions of intersecting identities, life stages and social contexts. Individuals manage and cope with power imbalances through these identity-value alignments.

The findings shed light on how intersectional history contributes to understanding the ways in which individuals deal with power relationships embedded in intersecting identities over time.

This chapter explores to what extent the Quantified Self, and in general the self-tracking culture, could be considered as a ‘technology of the self’: hermeneutical apparatuses generating new processes of subjectivation. Quantified Self, described by Wolf as a ‘self-consciousness through numbers’ (Wolf, 2010), refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with devices and to a community of creators and users of self-tracking technologies. In this context, the author considers mainly the first aspect of this phenomenon and examines how its uses are diffused throughout the social mainstream. The author begins with the author’s own personal experience using self-tracking devices, then the author considers the phenomenon of self-tracking in relation to its historical context described by Floridi as the era of the ‘4^th Revolution’ (Floridi, 2014). The second part of the chapter deals with the theoretical framework. The author discusses the Quantified Self from the perspective of the Material Engagement Theory (Malafouris, 2013) in order to outline the genealogical and anthropological perspectives of the relationship between man and technology. The author concludes that man and technology have always had a biunivocal relation; man shapes technologies that shape man, both materially and cognitively. In the final part of the essay and through the lens of Foucault’s and Agamben’s theories, the author discusses the Quantified Self as a ‘technology of self’ to underline the ambiguous nature of the phenomenon and its social and biopolitical implication in the age of transparency (Han, 2015) and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019).