Search results

This paper seeks to address the need for a comprehensive theoretical reference underlying the concerns of social complexity. The shortcomings of a very powerful yet cognitively biased theoretical model like Luhmann's theory of social systems especially call for the integration of the whole person into conceptualising social complexity. The paper aims to question what the conditions are for the possibility to successfully conceptualise social complexity.

Based on field research to explore the practical challenges of dealing with social complexity, the paper comprises discourse analysis and literature review. Luhmann's theory of social systems proved to be a fruitful starting point to integrate the latter research in neurosciences in a systemic way.

The paper finds that embedded mind thinking and holonic evolution of organism, psyche and society emerged out of the research as powerful thought figures. They allow for an improved practical and theoretical navigation on the ocean of social complexity.

The results implications for how we conceptualise social complexity and the ways we approach ourselves, how we govern, teach, heal, coach, learn, train, create, improve and innovate. Increasing our capabilities to meet social complexity will improve management, change, governance and project performance.

Addressing Luhmann's theory of social systems in the broader context of social complexity and neurosciences allowed for a reintegration of the whole person into the field of social complexity based not only on meaning but on feeling as well.

Why has the reporting of scandal in sport been increasing? This paper focuses on the commercialisation of sport and changes in the media landscape. A case study of the Australian Rugby League competition and its long-running series of scandals concludes that scandal is inevitable in sport, and that marketing strategies must incorporate this. The authors propose a new strategy - embracement - as an effective way of mitigating scandal and leveraging for sponsor market position.

The tenth Fawley lecture of the University of Southampton was given by Professor Sir Willis Jackson, F.R.S., on the subject of ‘Scientific, Technological and Technical Manpower’. As one would expect from Sir Willis, the argument had a directness, cogency, and one might almost say inevitability, about it — inevitability in the sense that one knew one would end up convinced that what he said was both right and important.

In times of organizational change leaders often tell stories that justify publicly the directions in which organizations move. Such stories are always political in nature and often reflect the motives of the storyteller. We observe how leaders in high‐tech organizations use the story of technological determinism in organizational settings as a discursive practice through which they invoke the “inevitability” of technology to justify managerial decisions to the public. Rather than taking ownership of certain actions, managers are able to use this story to claim that certain organizational changes are inevitable, and to eliminate alternative stories. We examine this strategy as it appears in the public discourse produced during two mergers in the high‐tech and telecommunications industries occurring from 1998 to 2002: US West and Qwest, and AOL and TimeWarner. Finally, we demonstrate that the story of technological determinism performs discursive closure around each merger.

Scholars have wandered the earth seeking community and resources for practising their art. It has only been for the last 500 years that universities have provided such a cloistered environment. A confluence of circumstances has broken this intellectual hegemony, threatening the sinecure, and forcing the institutions and the academics, themselves, to confront a past that never was while building towards a future that never will be.

This paper aims to focus on the re-presentation of the cultural phenomena hygge in Denmark and fika in Sweden in destination branding and address the inevitability of their essentialization through the branding process.

Three relevant semi-structured interviews with destination marketing organisation’s employees were conducted, as well as a content-based analysis of three social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). A total of 465 posts in total were analysed (140 Facebook posts, 109 Twitter posts, 216 Instagram posts).

This study demonstrates how, when communicated through social media, intangible cultural assets are transformed into tangible elements. It explains why the re-presentation and place branding processes necessarily simplify and essentialize the destination.

Destination branding scholars have traditionally criticised the flattening and essentialization of culture in destination branding and have called for a more nuanced approach to presenting a destination. This paper situates destination branding as a process that necessitates the manipulation of the presentation of the destination, which inevitably essentializes the place; this is intended. Critical destination branding researchers need to rethink their criticisms and acknowledge the inherent essentialization goal of destination branding.

This paper utilizes the concept of innovation as a form of methodological starting-point in order to analyse the gendered meanings of marketization in Swedish universities. The purpose of the paper is to scrutinize how the concept of innovation is produced in Swedish universities, and how these versions of innovation are gendered and related to different understandings of gender equality.

The analysis departs from a critical perspective to studies of gender equality and is anchored in a critical policy analysis approach – the “what's the problem represented to be? Approach” developed by Bacchi. This approach is used in the analysis of interviews with top-level leaders at two Swedish universities and how they perceive innovation. The results are related to a governmentality framework in order to explain the gendered innovation discourse in academia.

One of the main results is that innovation is represented in a broad way when discussed at a more abstract level. However, when the discussion becomes more concrete and also related to a gendered understanding of the researchers actually turning their research results into innovations, this broad representation of innovation shrinks. The analysis also shows how a governmentality framework both explains the inevitability of innovation and the difficulties of working for political change for women in the academy.

In analysing innovation as produced instead of taken for granted, this article puts forward a critical understanding of innovation, both in relation to gender and to the inevitability of de-politicisation processes of the neo-liberal audit culture in academia.

Building on the enactment perspective and past work on the self‐fulfilling prophecy, this paper explores how organizational decline can be enacted through self‐fulfilling prophecies of decline. We present two self‐fulfilling prophecy‐based models of organizational decline, one in which decline is enacted unintentionally through the predictions of an organization's managers, and a second in which decline is enacted unintentionally through the predictions of external constituencies. We articulate propositions that capture the dynamics of each model and that are intended as a platform for future empirical research. We also discuss the implications of our theoretical framework for future theory development on the causes of organizational decline, and offer suggestions for managers who wish to avoid organizational decline.