Working within the shadow: What do we do with 'not-yet' data?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities opened up by those messy, unclear and indeterminate data in research situations that may be described as being in the shadow and may as such remain in a state of vagueness and indeterminacy. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on the extant literature on shadow organizing and post-qualitative methodologies. It focuses attention on not-yet (or shadow data) in order to ponder over what researchers do to data when they are not (yet) black-boxed as such. At the same time, it investigates what it is that not-yet data do to researchers. Findings Four types of ‘not-yet’ data – illegible, wondrous and disorienting, hesitant, and worn out – are presented and discussed. Illegible data is when a researcher is in the position of not knowing how to interpret what is in front of her/him. A second illustration is constructed around wonder, and poses the question of the feelings of surprise and disorientation that arise when facing uncanny realities. In a third situation, not-yet data is narrated as hesitation, when a participant feels conflicting desires and the researchers hesitates in interpreting. The fourth illustration depicts not-yet data as data that have been corrupted, that vanish after time or are worn out. Practical implications Not-yet data belong to researchers practice but can also be found in other professional practices which are concerned with the indeterminacy of shadowy situations. It is argued that situations like these constitute opportunities for learning and for the moral and professional development, so long as indeterminacy is kept open and a process of ‘slowing down’ both action and interpretation is nurtured. Originality/value This paper is of value for taking the metaphor of shadow organizing further. Moreover, it represents a rare attempt to bring the vast debate on post-qualitative research/methodologies into management studies, which with very few exceptions seems to have been ignored by organization studies

‘Would you prefer not to?’ Resetting/resistance across literature, culture, and organizations

In this paper we put the concepts of reset, aprosdoketon and minor gesture to work in the context of organizational narratives. In particular we engage with two iconic characters of the genre of organizational fiction, Don Draper in the context of Mad Men TV series and the copyist, who is the main character of Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville. Through a series of textual and performative writings we explore the possibility of setting and resetting organizational narratives/genre. Moreover, we explore what happens when fictional characters from a TV series and a novel (Bartleby and Don Draper) meet us–three scholars working in an array of different fields (literary, methodology, education and organization studies) and how this meeting and interaction shapes our understandings of work, culture, and organizations

Survey on the perception of discriminations in the workplace by Italian homosexuals

Poster presentato al 30th International Congress of Psychology (ICP), Cape Town, 22-27 July 2012 , 201

Questioning data and data becoming: Rhizomatic data-trail experimentations with bridge/briging

In the current presentation, we pose a series of questions and share provocations on how qualitative researchers interact with data and how data traces research possibilities. We play – follow our ambitious wonderings about data – with researchcreation possibilities to interrogate how data may become in various forms and timespaces. In our work, we depart rhizomatically from the inspiration we had during past experiences of data trails, i.e., a specific mode of thinking and doing for research-creation possibilities. These experiences with experimentation make us question research practices and the discourses around them; they invoke us to ponder a series of ethical-onto-epistemological turns with data. In this presentation, we let the concept of “bridge/bridging” help us with this pondering. Additionally, we share and create provocations about data without any ambition to solve ‘the data question”. Rather, we approach the question about data and their functions as we propose a series of wonderings and data points with the hope of inspiring colleagues to debate about data. The session is, eventually, an offer for an alternative reading of data

Data Becomings: Bridge/Bridging Data-Trails in Qualitative Inquiry

This article plays with research-creation possibilities to interrogate data, data trails, and their becomings in qualitative inquiry. It arises through the inspiration of the authors’ experiences in experimenting with data-trails: a specific mode of thinking-doing for speculative research-creation possibilities. By placing these experiences alongside conventional discourses and protocols of research practice, the article ponders on a series of ethico-onto-epistemological questions about data becomings. We wonder about how qualitative researchers find and trace interconnected data? We approach this timeless question and adopt the concept of bridge/bridging to help us in considering the ontological sites that such data-trail research-creation possibilities afford

Trans people in the workplace: Possibilities for subverting heteronormativity

This article explores possible subversions of heteronormativity through trans gender performativity in the workplace. Drawing on insights from Judith Butler we focus on how employees construct (un)intelligible subject positions that can create ‘moments’ of subversion, which go against the disciplinary, powerful and normative gender binary. We explore this possibility through an analysis of qualitative material generated through encounters with 11 Italian trans workers. Our analysis shows that subversion manifests in diverse ways according to how individual performativities combine with organisational context. Within this diversity we highlight three moments of subversion: subversion through intrigue; subversion through incongruence; and subversion through betrayal. We argue that where trans gender identity contrasts strongly with gender norms, subversion is most intense. The subversion of strongly heteronormative working contexts is difficult as moments of subversion are unpredictable, varied and can come at personal cost, but are necessary in order to accommodate different gender identities

Improvising bags choreographies: Disturbing normative ways of doing research

Post-qualitative research-creation improvisations offer new possibilities to explore method/ology. In this article we question how bags, as seemingly mundane objects, work as ontologically lively matter – as active agencies – to choreograph human-nonhuman relations and heterogeneous materialities. Working from three questions – How might a bag become? What do bags do? What do bags enable and enact? – we discuss four research-creation improvisations and the insights they generated. The article maps how bags choreographies put affects, bodies and materialities into co-motional relations in order to disturb normative approaches to research both within conference sessions and through writing articles

Qualitative research in social and organizational psychology: the Italian way

Our paper provides a mapping of qualitative research in social and organizational psychology. This mapping was directed by the authors’ choices and this means that scholars from other perspectives are likely to offer different readings of the same topic. The first choice was to not consider the clinical and developmental psychological research, so to deepen our exploration of the two areas in which we work on, and on which we have a more articulated perspective. These two areas differ for some aspects, but they also present some relevant common elements, as it is demonstrated by the fact that scholars working in social and organizational psychology are part of the same academic recruitment field (“11/E3 Social psychology and work and organizational psychology”). The first section of the article consists of a short history of qualitative research in Italian psychology. To deepen the focus on the most recent developments, in the second section we present a review of the scientific articles published in the last five years

Disturbing the AcademicConferenceMachine: Post-qualitative re-turnings

Author 1: They say they want to disturb the AcademicConferenceMachine. Author 34: What is an AcademicConferenceMachine? Author 2: Please do not go in that direction. Ask, for example, what does an AcademicConferenceMachine do? Author 51: Ok, so what does it do? Author 6: AcademicConferenceMachines are becoming so regulated and standardized that they might lose the possibility to produce different knowledge and to produce knowledge differently. Author 227: Do you think they succeeded? Author 9999: I do not know