47,012 research outputs found

    Situating organizational action: the relational sociology of organizations

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    This paper advances a relational sociology of organization that seeks to address concerns over how organizational action is understood and situated. The approach outlined here is one which takes ontology seriously and requires transparency and consistency of position. It aims at causal explanation over description and/or prediction and seeks to avoid pure voluntarism or structural determinism in such explanation. We advocate relational analysis that recognizes and engages with connections within and across organization and with wider contexts. We develop this argument by briefly reviewing three promising approaches: relational pragmatism, the social theorizing of Bourdieu and critical realism, highlighting their ontological foundations, some similarities and differences and surfacing some methodological issues. Our purpose is to encourage analysis that explores the connections within and between perspectives and theoretical positions. We conclude that the development of the field of organization theory will benefit from self conscious and reflexive engagement and debate both within and across our various research positions and traditions only if such debates are conducted on the basis of holistic evaluations and interpretations that recognize (and value) difference

    An Ontological Approach to Representing the Product Life Cycle

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    The ability to access and share data is key to optimizing and streamlining any industrial production process. Unfortunately, the manufacturing industry is stymied by a lack of interoperability among the systems by which data are produced and managed, and this is true both within and across organizations. In this paper, we describe our work to address this problem through the creation of a suite of modular ontologies representing the product life cycle and its successive phases, from design to end of life. We call this suite the Product Life Cycle (PLC) Ontologies. The suite extends proximately from The Common Core Ontologies (CCO) used widely in defense and intelligence circles, and ultimately from the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), which serves as top level ontology for the CCO and for some 300 further ontologies. The PLC Ontologies were developed together, but they have been factored to cover particular domains such as design, manufacturing processes, and tools. We argue that these ontologies, when used together with standard public domain alignment and browsing tools created within the context of the Semantic Web, may offer a low-cost approach to solving increasingly costly problems of data management in the manufacturing industry

    The perks and downsides of being a digital prosumer: optimistic and pessimistic approaches to digital prosumption

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    The recent evolution of users’ position and agency in digital environments absorbs the attention of several scholars in different fields of study. Users’ new ontological status as prosumers, simultaneously producers and consumers, and their role regarding productive paradigms has raised a lot of contrasting opinions. Different discursive techniques are employed to investigate production practices in digital worlds and are often crafted with the conventions of utopian and anti-utopian approaches. Nevertheless, the adoption of optimistic or pessimistic analytical and rhetorical strategies appears to be prejudiced towards the study of emerging online practices. In reality, the analysis of positive and negative approaches to productive paradigms in digital environments results in the detection of their limitations in reaching a comprehensive understanding of the investigated phenomena. Therefore, the adoption of a more neutral perspective is suggested, one that could potentially foster a holistic approach and therefore a broader and deeper comprehension of the analyzed phenomena

    Contingent support: exploring ontological politics/extending management

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    This paper is located within the critical management tradition of management education/development. The paper seeks to introduce the neglected area of Actor Network Theory and Mol’s anti-foundationalist ontological politics and demonstrates their potential to developing alternative critical pedagogy and management practice. Following a discussion of problem-based learning, the paper goes on to introduce the emergent pedagogic practice termed contingent support. Through a series of vignettes drawn from fieldwork collected from a second year undergraduate decision making module, the paper discusses carefully how the practice termed contingent support is informed by Actor Network Theory and ontological politics in particular. The paper goes onto reveal the significance of contingent support sensibilities of materiality, situatedness and performance and shows how they can give a new vigour to educators interested in developing more responsible management. Finally, the paper considers contingent support’s transformational potential and sets an agenda for future researc

    Untangling the Conceptual Isssues Raised in Reydon and Scholz’s Critique of Organizational Ecology and Darwinian Populations

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    Reydon and Scholz raise doubts about the Darwinian status of organizational ecology by arguing that Darwinian principles are not applicable to organizational populations. Although their critique of organizational ecology’s typological essentialism is correct, they go on to reject the Darwinian status of organizational populations. This paper claims that the distinction between replicators and interactors, raised in modern philosophy of biology but not discussed by Reydon and Scholz, points the way forward for organizational ecologists. It is possible to conceptualise evolving Darwinian populations providing the inheritance mechanism is appropriately specified. By this approach, adaptation and selection are no longer dichotomised, and the evolutionary significance of knowledge transmission is highlightedPeer reviewe

    A knowledge development lifecycle for reflective practice

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    Reflective practice is valuable because of its potential for continuous improvement through feedback and learning. Conventional models of knowledge practice however do not explicitly include reflection as part of the practice, nor locate it in a developmental cycle. They focus on modelling in a knowledge plane which itself is contextualised by active knowing processes, and ignore the influence of power in their activity models. Further, many models focus on either an artefact or a process view, resulting from a conceptual disconnect between knowledge and knowing, and failure to relate passive to active views. Using the idea of higher order loops that govern knowledge development processes, in this paper we propose a conceptualisation of a reflective Knowledge Development Life Cycle (KDLC). This explicitly includes the investigator and the organisation itself as dynamic components of a systemic process and is suited to either a constructivist or realist epistemological stance. We describe the stages required in the KDLC and discuss their significance. Finally we show how incorporation of reflection into process enables dynamic interplay between the knowing and the knowledge in the organisation

    Doing, being, becoming: a historical appraisal of the modalities of project-based learning

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    Any pedagogy of media practice sits at the intersection between training for employment and education for critical thinking. As such, the use of projects is a primary means of structuring learning experiences as a means of mirroring professional practice. Yet, our understanding of the nature of projects and of project-based learning is arguably under-theorised and largely taken for granted. This paper attempts to address this issue through a synthesis of the literature from organisational studies and experiential learning. The article aims to shift the debate around project-based learning away from an instrumentalist agenda, to one that considers the social context and lived experience of projects and re-conceptualises projects as ontological modalities of doing, being and becoming. In this way, the article aims to provide a means for thinking about the use of project-based learning within the media practice curriculum that draws on metaphors of discovery, rather than of construction

    Sustaining entrepreneurial business: a complexity perspective on processes that produce emergent practice

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    This article examines the management practices in an entrepreneurial small firm which sustain the business. Using a longitudinal qualitative case study, four general processes are identified (experimentation, reflexivity, organising and sensing), that together provide a mechanism to sustain the enterprise. The analysis draws on concepts from entrepreneurship and complexity science. We suggest that an entrepreneur’s awareness of the role of these parallel processes will facilitate their approaches to sustaining and developing enterprises. We also suggest that these processes operate in parallel at multiple levels, including the self, the business and inter-firm networks. This finding contributes to a general theory of entrepreneurship. A number of areas for further research are discussed arising from this result

    Standardization Framework for Sustainability from Circular Economy 4.0

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    The circular economy (CE) is widely known as a way to implement and achieve sustainability, mainly due to its contribution towards the separation of biological and technical nutrients under cyclic industrial metabolism. The incorporation of the principles of the CE in the links of the value chain of the various sectors of the economy strives to ensure circularity, safety, and efficiency. The framework proposed is aligned with the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development regarding the orientation towards the mitigation and regeneration of the metabolic rift by considering a double perspective. Firstly, it strives to conceptualize the CE as a paradigm of sustainability. Its principles are established, and its techniques and tools are organized into two frameworks oriented towards causes (cradle to cradle) and effects (life cycle assessment), and these are structured under the three pillars of sustainability, for their projection within the proposed framework. Secondly, a framework is established to facilitate the implementation of the CE with the use of standards, which constitute the requirements, tools, and indicators to control each life cycle phase, and of key enabling technologies (KETs) that add circular value 4.0 to the socio-ecological transition

    Insights into the development of strategy from a complexity perspective

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    This paper provides an account of an ongoing project with an independent school in the UK. The project focuses on a strategy development intervention which, from the start, was systemic in orientation. The intention was to integrate simple systems concepts and approaches into the strategy development process to: address power relations in actively engaging a wide range of stakeholders with the school’s strategy-making process; generate a range of good ideas; and make the strategy-making process transparent in order to inspire stakeholder confidence in, and commitment to, it and its outcomes. This paper describes how seeking to meet these aims entailed a series of workshops during the course of which an awareness of the relevance, in our interpretation, of Complex Adaptive Systems concepts grew
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