Search results

The authors introduce a recurrent section for the Journal of Organizational Ethnography which scrutinizes the various manifestations and roles of failure in ethnographic research.

The authors peruse a wide body of literature which tackles the role of failure in ethnographic research and draw on the experiences to argue for a more sustained and in-depth conversation on the topic.

“Failure” regularly occurs in ethnographic research, yet remains under-examined. Increased discussion on the topic will enrich debates on methodology and fieldwork in particular.

While various scholars have commented on the role of “failure” in ethnographic research, an in-depth and sustained examination of the topic is lacking.

This paper aims to reflect on how Lacanian psychoanalysis might inform management studies, and discuss limitations and consequences of adopting this particular framework for doing research in organizations.

The authors integrate existing literature on the topic, and try to articulate what Lacanian psychoanalysis contributes to the study of organizations and management; what its conceptual premises are; and which methodological consequences these premises have. Special attention is paid to the epistemological position of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and to potential pitfalls in using Lacanian theory.

The authors highlight the danger of Lacanian theory functioning as a dogmatic interpretative frame, and suggest countering this tendency by accentuating both the spirit of investigation fostered by Lacan and the ethical stakes of psychoanalytic intervention. The authors equally contend that Lacanian psychoanalysis problematizes the underpinnings of scientific discourse in general, with the epistemological foundations of the social sciences being called into question. Finally, they note that the scientific character of Lacanian psychoanalysis is itself open to contestation if approached from a positivistic point of view. Addressing these objections, the authors argue for the possibility of a promising epistemological convergence between psychoanalysis and management studies.

Overall, the authors' point is that Lacanian theory is unique in its systematic study of the dimension of the excluded and that it is in the study of this dimension that the benefit for organization and management research is to be found.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the participant in narrative research. Rather than a passive and static element, the participant often adds a vibrant, evolving and independent dimension to the process.

The focus of this type of methodology is creative and unpredictable. Featured in the paper is the use of ethnographic fiction to examine and represent themes emerging from the data.

The participant’s contribution to narrative research introduces an unexpected quantity to the findings, which can redefine how questions, perspectives and direction of the research are framed.

The research process can be viewed as a reciprocal event, a space where both researcher and participant co-exist, redefine understandings and contribute to findings in collaboration. This process relies heavily on relationships, and may be impaired if participant and researcher do not develop a suitable rapport.

This particular methodology can be unpredictable. As a creative process that depends on the development of sound personal relationships between participant and researcher, reliance on the researcher’s insight, ingenuity and resourcefulness is essential.

This paper focuses on the participant as equal protagonist in the research process. It seeks to view the research process differently, highlighting how and why narrative research can be a significant journey of growth and discovery for the participant as well as for the researcher.

Arts-based methodologies in qualitative research are still in a phase of exploration. The use of fiction writing in narrative research is a powerful way to explore issues in a way that connects researcher, participant and audience in meaningful discourse.

Principals’ leadership has become a subversive activity that is carried out strategically to challenge and disrupt the status quo and resist policies and practices that are counterproductive to their work. The purpose of this paper is to reveal subversive tactics principals use in pursuit of justice and equity in schools and identify challenges and risks associated with their subversive leadership practices. Power tactics were used as a conceptual framework to guide the analysis of subversive activities by school principals.

This qualitative study focuses on 18 elementary and secondary school principals from six district school boards in the Metro Vancouver area who participated in the semi-structured interviews on their practices that epitomize different tactics in response to increasing demand and accountability.

The power tactics identified in this study illuminate many of the dilemmas principals face in their work and demonstrate the various ways principals exercise their political acumen to “act strategically to determine which tactics to use, when, and with whom.” In exercising ethics of subversion and critique, participants are more likely to use soft, rational, and bi/multilateral rather than hard, non-rational, and unilateral power tactics. Such tendency reveals their concern about causing relational harm and shows their strategic avoidance of direct confrontation.

Considering the limitations on the sample size and the research context, more research is needed to examine to what extent subversive practices are exercised and how they play out in different contexts.

The study shows that leadership involves upholding morals and values, even if this means having to use subversive practices to ensure inclusive, equitable, and just outcomes.

In the novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers probes the American malaise through the longings of a young adolescent girl. Twelve‐year‐old Frankie no longer sees the world as round and inviting as a school globe. No, the world is huge and cracked and turning a thousand miles an hour. Indeed, the world seems separate from herself. In the midst of chaos, Frankie sees her brother's upcoming wedding as a chance to feel connected, to feel that she matters. The story focuses on Frankie's efforts to be a “member of the wedding,” as she recognizes, “they are the we of me.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the representations of male and female social actors within the subversive gendered discourse of “equal opportunities for men and women” in Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks.

From the methodological perspective, this study fused van Leeuwen’s (2003) “Social Actor Network Model” and Sunderland’s (2004) “Gendered Discourses Model”.

Data obtained from this study showed the subversive gendered discourse of “equal opportunities” was supported through such representations within a narrow perspective in line with dominant gender ideologies in Iran. The findings suggest the resistance against such subversive gendered discourse in Iranian EFL textbooks underpins gender norms and religious ideologies existing in Iran.

Such representations of male and female social actors in school textbooks show inclusive education and the discourse of “equal opportunities” have yet to be realised in education system of many countries, including Iran.

Traditional approaches to organizational change are of little use in the bid for increased innovation as they reinforce top‐down predictability. An alternative approach is through the creation of pockets of good practice which act as role models of change. These pockets need to be subversive of existing practices but simultaneously deliver organizational success criteria. The success of this approach is dependent upon managers developing a critical perspective about organizational control systems. Contrary to received wisdom the foundation for this critical perspective may be most usefully developed from the manager’s own cynical experience of organizational life. In building this critical perspective management development may begin to fulfil a wider educational role in society.

This article aims to explore how mainstream popular cinema, usually a vehicle of effortless and accessible entertainment, produces or reproduces prevailing discursive constructs about managers, management and corporate firms and provides a cultural reading of organizations. Using a post-structuralist framework, it seeks to deconstruct the representations of managers in several popular films. It aims to propose that the analysis of this representation allows complex questions about the nature of power in organizations and the “opportunity costs” of resistance to be addressed.

This article focuses on the discursive formation of managers and employees in popular films. The films were chosen using a popularity measure on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and treated as “visual narratives”. A variation of Rose ' s discourse analysis method was used. To critically view the films, a post-structuralist perspective was adopted, in which questions of power, gender and sexuality are seen as fundamental. Gender is a discursive practice that becomes material through the power and resistance subjectified by the human body while “truth” is referenced through specific words and images – so constructed by the “reality” of popular culture.

The analysis reveals two seemingly competing discourses surrounding the representations of managers that encompass both a description of power and the resistance to this power. In this sense, although popular films position subjects – managers and those managed – in very specific ways, at the same time their construct of power is highly contextual and open to change. This finding leads to, first, a Foucauldian understanding of power and, second, a reconceptualization of power and resistance as one and the same construct, power/resistance, that may help address the “where”, “who”, and “why” of resistance that has previously been ignored.

The article brings popular culture to center stage in organization studies and argues that by not paying attention to its power to inform, society is cut off from valuable knowledge about how management is “done”. The article also reveals that although on surface the representations of managers in films seem to reinforce the dominant discourse of the “macho” manager, at the same time, a second representation – the bright, eager, usually working-class employee who wants to emulate the boss but then “sees the light” and becomes a “hero” – is offering a critique of this construct, making popular culture potentially subversive.