Search results

Organizational analysts have long questioned the ways in which professional knowledge becomes powerful. The purpose of this paper is to extend that enquiry by examining two professional groups in the UK – doctors and veterinarians.

The paper examines a selection of social interactions, tensions and disagreements between practitioners and non‐medical actors and draws on a range of qualitative research methods, particularly structured interview and participant observation, to analyse and interpret these as “epistemological conflicts”.

Hospital doctors and veterinary surgeons share a common belief that “truth” and “facts” are at the core of their clinical and surgical work. This positivist paradigm underpins a range of practical engagements with bodies and diseases and lends them a sense of ontological security when dealing with people from outside their professions, especially those without medical training. This paper examines the practical effects that such ontological tensions can have. In exposing some of these effects, this paper questions the often taken‐for‐granted divisions between science and arts, religion and medicine, and takes a more heterdox approach in analyzing social interactions.

The paper advocates philosophical, methodological and theoretical heterodoxy. The findings are viewed through a number of different theoretical lenses; from actor network theory and sociology of technology and science (STS) to deconstruction, frame theory and semiotics. The paper makes no attempt to choose between these approaches and instead argues that a “messy” and multiple understanding, both of theory and practice, is needed to gain insights into the tricky politics of knowledge and its effects in practical settings.

Although alienation as a concept has a rich history, it has suffered relative neglect in organizational studies and one possible reason for the same is its conceptual ambiguity vis‐à‐vis popular and long‐standing concepts of commitment/identification, satisfaction and engagement, that represent the positive experience of work and which have sometimes been equated as the opposite of work alienation. Similarly, the negative experience of work has traditionally been captured by concepts such as burnout/cynicism and counterproductive work behaviours/deviance. The purpose of this paper is to argue for refocusing attention on the concept of work alienation in management studies as distinct from other related concepts.

The methodology integrated research from both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Through the analysis of the concept of alienation, along with other related concepts, the conceptual space for the study of alienation in organizational studies is pointed out. By examining the definition, and the antecedents and consequences of commitment, satisfaction, engagement, burnout and workplace deviance, the overlaps and points of differences are highlighted.

The paper offers a conceptual level analysis and builds the argument for refocusing attention on the study of work alienation. The juxtaposition of the related concepts clarifies that alienation has a unique contribution to make towards understanding the link between experience at work and employee‐related outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to call for an in‐depth reflection on Weber's research approach based on the notions of adequate causation and objective possibility.

The paper illustrates the main characteristics and premises of the research approach. It further exemplifies its application through a qualitative study that investigates “How” and “Why” knowledge integration occurs in the creative processes of teams spanning over time and space. In so doing, it argues that Weber's epistemology could remain a valid point of reference to shift from the generation of empirical propositions through qualitative research to the quantitative analysis of empirical regularities recurring into a large number of empirical cases.

This paper shows how Weber's research approach could assist researchers in overcoming the dichotomy between rigour and relevance in qualitative research within organization and management studies.

The work offers new ways of looking at established ideas within organization and management studies, through new lenses as alternative ways of knowing social phenomena available to scholars, to produce theoretical knowledge relevant for and applicable into practice.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the methodological self‐understanding of the emerging field of organizational space and architecture by employing concepts and frameworks from multi‐paradigm and mixed methods research.

The paper presents a methodological re‐reading of a recent research process that analyzed the spatial and architectural dynamics in a Finnish university organization.

While the analysis of architectural meanings is often grounded in researcher‐participants auto‐ethnographic experiences, triangulating personal insights with other methods is important for the validity and richness of the subsequent description of spatial dynamics and its outcomes. Especially, the incorporation of architectural visions and representations into the analysis is argued to enhance our understanding of the emergence of particular social‐material collectives.

Although there is a steady stream of empirical studies on the meanings of organizational space and architecture, rigorous accounts of the methodological challenges of spatial analyses have so far been scarce. This paper aims to partially fill this gap.