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1 – 10 of over 1000
Article
Publication date: 12 August 2014

Sander Merkus, Jaap De Heer and Marcel Veenswijk

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of performative struggle through the use of an interpretative case story focussed on a strategic decision-making process…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of performative struggle through the use of an interpretative case story focussed on a strategic decision-making process concerning infrastructural development. Performativity is about “world-making” (Carter et al., 2010), based on the assumption that conceptual schemes are not only prescriptions of the world, for the practices flowing from these abstract ideas bring into being the world they are describing. The focus on agency and multiplicity in the academic debate on performativity in organizational settings are combined, resulting in the conceptualization of a multitude of performative agents struggling to make the world.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodological approach of this paper is based on an interpretative analysis of contrasting narratives that are told by political-executives in a strategic decision-making process. These narratives are based on in-depth interviews and participant observation. The interpretative case story, exhibiting the strategic decision-making practices of Aldermen, Delegates and Ministers – focusses on the moments of performative struggle based on strategic narrative practices.

Findings

The interpretative case story will exhibit the way in which a multiplicity of agents reflects on the performative dimension of the decision-making process, anticipates on its performative effects and attempts to manipulate the strategic vision that is actualized into reality. Moreover, the agents are not primarily concerned with the actualization of a specific infrastructural project; they are more concerned with the consequences of decision making for their more comprehensive strategic visions on reality.

Research limitations/implications

The notion of performative struggle has not yet been explicitly studied by scholars focussing on performativity. However, the concept can be used as an appropriate lens for studying meaning making within ethnographic studies on organizational processes such as for instance culture change intervention and strategy formation. The concept of performative struggle is especially useful for understanding the political dimension of meaning making when studying an organizational life-world through the use of ethnographic research.

Originality/value

The originality of this paper lies in the innovative conceptualization of struggle between a multiplicity of reflexive agents in the debate on performative world-making. Moreover, the incorporation of the perspective of performative struggle within organizational ethnographic research is valuable for the development of organizational ethnographic methodology.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 3 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 28 May 2019

Siri Boe-Lillegraven

We currently know little about how transferring can be accomplished when source- and target environments only have little in common. This chapter utilizes the case of EuroCo and…

Abstract

We currently know little about how transferring can be accomplished when source- and target environments only have little in common. This chapter utilizes the case of EuroCo and AsiaCo to account for how a transfer of interrelated routines across multiple boundaries unfolds. A pragmatic and flexible approach to transferring, where coordinating actors attended to replication and adaptation as means rather than ends, is illuminated. Notably, coordinators split their work into smaller chunks by focusing on artifacts, people, and actions. As pressures to progress the transfer increased, they conceived of new ideas for performances and put the ideas to use along three trajectories focused on embedding, embodying, and enacting routines. Eventually, they blended performances from each trajectory back together into a new overarching notion of what was to be transferred. In elaborating on and discussing these findings, the chapter contributes to literature on routine transfer. Boundary conditions and avenues for future research are discussed.

Details

Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-585-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 28 May 2019

Léa Kiwan and Nathalie Lazaric

Members of an organization facing change often struggle to adapt and may create new routines. Drawing on insights from a case study of bariatric robotic surgery, the authors…

Abstract

Members of an organization facing change often struggle to adapt and may create new routines. Drawing on insights from a case study of bariatric robotic surgery, the authors illustrate how a new ecology of space transforms the ostensive and performative aspect of a routine during the introduction of a new technological artifact. The authors discuss two types of space: experimental and reflective. The authors show that the reflective space through debriefings enables practitioners to discuss the new patterns of interdependent actions. Practitioners explore the different aspects of the performative struggle with new artifacts and try to integrate new actions and delineate the boundaries of this change during experimental performances. The findings of this study throw light on the role of the reflective space in addition to the experimental space in routine change, and suggest that socio-material ensembles can produce opportunities for reshaping routines.

Details

Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-585-2

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 November 2021

Tomas Ivan Träskman and Matti Skoog

The present study aims to address the emergence of platform-organized open innovation (OI). The research has the two main aims: the first is to increase the understanding of the…

Abstract

Purpose

The present study aims to address the emergence of platform-organized open innovation (OI). The research has the two main aims: the first is to increase the understanding of the performance of OI by investigating how the achievements of OI are measured in situated practices from a performative and strategic knowledge management (SKM) orientation. The methodological disadvantages of not pre-given case selection are partially counterbalanced by the second aim of the research, which is to extend existing SKM theory and examine how platforms create knowledge as they include actors and digital devices, thereby potentially redistributing relations of accountability.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on performativity theory, the paper studies how the achievements and knowledge created in OI are managed and evaluated in practice. The case description draws on different sources from a spiral case study, as openness is performed by platform, firm, crowd and innovation intermediaries.

Findings

The paper illustrates how a strategy of digitally enabled openness brings its own issues as platforms enable knowledge sharing and perform a redistribution of accountability. In the heterarchies studied through this research endeavor, managers and their team members were accountable not only to multiple units, or teams, across the organization, but also to the crowd. The case material demonstrates that the ecology of devices and their performative struggles create lateral accountability.

Research limitations/implications

While recent streams of research suggest that the context of OI (i.e. distributed sources of knowledge for innovation) shifts the unit of analysis of organization design from the individual firm to networks of actors organized on platforms, the authors find that the focal firm still remains a key conceptual parameter in SKM research, which, in turn, makes it difficult to capture the suggested radicality of OI.

Practical implications

The authors show, that in practice, the firm has to take into account the performance of the external crowd and at times put resources into its training and education. In heterarchy, distributed authority is assumed to be facilitated through lateral accountability, whereby the traditional principles of vertical authority no longer hold, but rather, managers and their team members can be accountable to multiple units, or teams, across the organization.

Originality/value

The paper develops a performative theory of openness. OI is a model, strategy and socio-material practice whereby digital designs create an ecology of devices that can enact all kinds of openness. Ultimately, the current paper proposes that SKM and OI theory need to consider how platforms perform relations of accountability beyond the boundaries of the single organization.

Details

Journal of Strategy and Management, vol. 15 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-425X

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 28 May 2019

Abstract

Details

Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-585-2

Article
Publication date: 10 April 2017

Demosthenes Akoumianakis and George Ktistakis

Online calendar services (OCS) are primarily used for temporal orientation and reminding. Nonetheless, calendar work may also entail generic activities such as scheduling…

Abstract

Purpose

Online calendar services (OCS) are primarily used for temporal orientation and reminding. Nonetheless, calendar work may also entail generic activities such as scheduling, tracking, archive and recall and retrieval which are not adequately supported by available systems. The purpose of the paper is to explore how online calendaring may be re-configured and re-aligned to alleviate these shortcomings, thus servicing accountability in team work and flexibility in organizational routines.

Design/methodology/approach

Following a design science research methodology, the authors review “justifiable failures” or deliberate non-use of OCS and establish the rationale for, design and evaluate a digital service that configures calendaring as an ecology of separate digital materials supporting file-, photo- and video-sharing services, online argumentation, project/task management and social bookmarking. The new service is a digital composite of materials that incrementally co-adapt and co-evolve to serve primary and secondary work-oriented activities. The authors assess the value of the digital composite in two empirical settings and discuss intrinsic features that create new possibilities for action.

Findings

The authors present the rationale, design, implementation and evaluation of a new digital composite calendaring service which is deployed in two empirical settings, namely group vacation planning and collective information management. Each case features different re-configurations of calendaring to serve human intentions. In vacation planning, the digital composite of the calendar operates as a mashup allowing peers to negotiate, schedule and track vacation options and archive, recall or retrieve digital memories of vacations. In the case of collective information management, the digital composite is further augmented so as to re-align performative and ostensive aspects of routines in a regional organic farming partnership.

Practical implications

Digital composites rely on the interdependent operation of different bounded systems and services to establish configured ecologies of (previously) separate digital artifacts. The practical implications of digital composites are that they can appropriate performative capacities which are already established and embedded across different settings. As a result, they enact complex digital assemblages which can re-align not only daily activities but also organizational routines. On the other hand, digital composites remain in flux, since their state, at any moment in time, is partly determined (even temporarily) by the state of their constituent parts.

Originality/value

Calendaring as presented in this paper defines a genre of digital artifacts that promote flexible and accountable collaborative work while exploiting material agency and resources distributed across digital settings. As such, it establishes a kind of meta-material that invokes collective social agency, thus re-aligning performative and ostensive aspects of organizational routines.

Details

Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 30 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0398

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 14 November 2022

Jessica Lütgens and Yağmur Mengilli

This chapter provides a critical analysis of a case study of a self-managed informal collective and leftist house project in Germany, the Political Cultural Centre (PCC), drawing…

Abstract

This chapter provides a critical analysis of a case study of a self-managed informal collective and leftist house project in Germany, the Political Cultural Centre (PCC), drawing on observations, group discussions and biographical interviews conducted between June and December 2016. Formed in 2015 by a group of art students and left-wing activists as an alternative space housed in an old building, the PCC consisted of about 30 young people, ranging in age from 18 to 40 years of age, with the majority between 20 and 25 years at the time of our research. This chapter analyses the group’s experiences of alternative-space life through the lens of (counter)politics, focusing on how these young people dealt with the challenges of self-performative contradictions through practices of coping. In so doing, this chapter reflects on the complexities that arise from the (counter-)hegemonic idea of the centre as a political project and reconstructs the power relations and the temporality of doing counter-hegemonic politics within a capitalist society. Based on this analysis, the chapter compares the PCC experience with case studies of other social movements, specifically the Manchester-based young feminists and socialists (Chapters 5 and 6, respectively).

Details

Reshaping Youth Participation: Manchester in a European Gaze
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-358-8

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Mark Vicars and Tarquam McKenna

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the drama space is a way of inquiry in its own right and as a complex “way of knowing” has a capacity to be a profitable location from…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the drama space is a way of inquiry in its own right and as a complex “way of knowing” has a capacity to be a profitable location from which to artfully thread and critically interrogate the performances of lives-as-lived.

Design/methodology/approach

The autoethnographic discussion has an overlay of histography as it brings the “real-life” word to the drama space and builds on naturalistic and experimental research moving the reader through transformational inquiry to what they name as drama as a post-foundational research method.

Findings

In using drama as artful practices, intra-reflexivity – interior focused – felt as artistic “process” leads “psyche” to an empathic space for acceptance of the fugitive selves and demonstrates “queerness” through the narratives as monologues.

Research limitations/implications

The vignettes presented as monologue attest to the authors’ life histories and their “fugitive” ways of being as gay men.

Practical implications

The authors consider how drama as methodological practice can re work the notion of text-to-life or life-to-text, as an expression of a will to knowledge, of the authors working dramatically with their participants and students to find a way to articulate experience and place at the centre of research an agentic voice in relation to psychological, socio-cultural and historical interpretations.

Originality/value

Drama, as a methodological approach, has, the authors suggest, the potential to move beyond disembodied and abstract mental processes and to draw out of the closets the interpersonal relationships that have historically been seen as dangerous or disturbing.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 22 August 2023

Ray Griffin

This chapter explores the question – where is the economy? In taking up this question, I explore the action of economists in making the economy, framed in the place of ‘place’ in…

Abstract

This chapter explores the question – where is the economy? In taking up this question, I explore the action of economists in making the economy, framed in the place of ‘place’ in the economy and how the politics of economic data and calculation and boundaries make economies. In this way, I argue for a performative understanding of regional economics where the economy can be said to be made, often out of real things such as hospitals, factories, shops and schools, and infrastructure, but also out of social practices that echo out of the field of economics into institutions and ways of thinking calculatedly.

To make this case of this approach, and to grasp the slippery fish of where the economy is, I introduce autoethnographic materials from my experience of being a regional economic commentator, holding forth on the Waterford economy. These empirics relay the everyday methods of economic analysis as a material and political practice, alighting on the data, calculations and boundaries that go into making the economy. Here the curious relationship between the economist and their economy, the dancer and the dance come into view and how people, including myself, call an economy into being.

Details

Urban Planning for the City of the Future
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-216-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 28 May 2019

Charlotte Blanche and Patrick Cohendet

In this chapter, the authors enter the world of ballet to be inspired by artistic teams. This original point of view proposes a complementary understanding of the dynamics of…

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors enter the world of ballet to be inspired by artistic teams. This original point of view proposes a complementary understanding of the dynamics of routines replication where preserving the authenticity of the project’s intent is emphasized over economic efficiency considerations.

The authors propose that analyzing the remounting of a ballet as an in-depth extreme case study provides an opportunity to learn more about other aspects that can be relevant in transfer stories: the importance accorded to the intent of the routine to be transferred; the existence of a dialogical dynamic that engages artifacts and memories of this intent; the existence of a meta-routine that structures and enables the transfer of sub-routines across geographical distance in another context. The authors will see that, in this case, routines replication is also made possible through sharing of a routine’s ostensive aspect which is embedded in a professional culture.

The overarching priority in remounting a show is strict respect for the choreographer’s original intent. As replicator and imitator teams encounter the consequences of a new location and its characteristics, the authors will examine how they face the replication dilemma, coordinate themselves, and use innovation to achieve replication.

Details

Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-585-2

Keywords

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