Relaxing the Taboo on Telling Our Own Stories: Upholding Professional Distance and Personal Involvement

Scholars studying organizations are typically discouraged from telling, in print, their own stories. The expression “telling our own stories” is used as a proxy for field research projects that, in their written form, explicitly rely on a scholar's personal involvement in a field. (By personal involvement in a field, I mean a scholar's engagement in a set of mental activities that connect her to a field.) The assumption is that personal involvement is antithetical to maintaining professional distance. In this paper, I argue that the taboo against telling our own stories stems in part from an epistemological misunderstanding. Learning from the field entails upholding both distance and involvement; the two dimensions should not be conceptualized as opposite ends of a continuum. Moreover, I suggest that the taboo has become too extreme and stifles our collective capacity to generate new insights. To make this argument, I start by discussing the general taboo against telling one's own stories. Second, I focus on the rationale set forth to justify not only the taboo but also its limitations. Third, I examine what distance entails and how involvement, far from lessening distance, creates opportunities for generating potentially strong theoretical insight. Fourth, I showcase several areas of theoretical development that might benefit from revisiting the taboo. I conclude by reviewing key practical implications of such a shift for our profession and by arguing that organizational scholarship could gain a great deal from relaxing the taboo

In Search of the Self at Work: Young Adults’ Experience of a Dual Identity Organization

Purpose: Multiple forces that shape the identities of adolescents and young adults also influence their subsequent career choices. Early work experiences are key among these forces. Recognizing this, youth service programs have emerged worldwide with the hope of shaping participants' future trajectories through boosting future engagement in civically oriented activities and work. Despite these goals, past research on these programs' impact has yielded mixed outcomes. Our goal is to understand why this might be the case. Design/Methodology/Approach: We rely on interview, archival, and longitudinal survey data to examine young adults' experiences of a European youth service program. Findings: A core feature of youth service programs, namely their dual identity of helping others (i.e., service beneficiaries) and helping oneself (i.e., participants), might partly explain the mixed outcomes. We find that participants focus on one of the organization's identities largely to the exclusion of the other, creating a dynamic in which their interactions with members who focus on the other identity create challenges and dominate their program experience, to the detriment of a focus on the organization and its goals. This suggests that a previously overlooked feature of youth service programs (their dual identity) might prove both a blessing for attracting many diverse members and a curse for achieving desired outcomes. Originality/Value: More broadly, our results suggest that dual identity organizations might attract members focused on a select identity but fail to imbue them with a blended identity; thus, limiting the extent to which such organizations can truly "re-direct" future career choices

Collective Memory Meets Organizational Identity: Remembering to Forget in a Firm’s Rhetorical History

Much organizational identity research has grappled with the question of identity emergence or change. Yet the question of identity endurance is equally puzzling. Relying primarily on the analysis of 309 internal bulletins produced at a French aeronautics firm over almost fifty years, we theorize a link between collective memory and organizational identity endurance. More specifically, we show how forgetting in a firm's ongoing rhetorical history-here, the bulletins' repeated omission of contradictory elements in the firm's past (i.e., structural omission) or attempts to neutralize them with valued identity cues (i.e., preemptive neutralization)-sustains its identity. Thus knowing "who we are" might depend in part on repeatedly remembering to forget "who we were not.

There may be some truth to the ‘gay jobs’ stereotype

Gays and lesbians are likely drawn to certains types of occupations, argue Michel Anteby, Carly Knight and András Tilcsi

Markets, Morals, and Practices of Trade: Jurisdictional Disputes in the U.S. Commerce in Cadavers

This study examines the U.S. commerce in human cadavers for medical education and research to explore variation in legitimacy in trades involving similar goods. It draws on archival, interview, and observational data mainly from New York state to analyze market participants' efforts to legitimize commerce and resolve a jurisdictional dispute. Building on literature on professions, the study shows that how goods are traded, not only what is traded, proves integral to constructing legitimacy, thus suggesting a practice-based view of moral markets. The professionals, including a group of "gatekeepers," construct a narrative distinction between their own commerce and an implicitly less moral alternative and geographically insulate their trades from the broader commerce, creating in effect two circuits. Yet the professionals also promote specific practices of trade within their circuit to help them distinguish their own pursuit from an alternative course of action. The study's findings shed light on the micro-foundations of market legitimization and on the role of morals in sustaining professional jurisdictions

Who Donates Their Bodies to Science? The Combined Role of Gender and Migration Status Among California Whole-body Donors

The number of human cadavers available for medical research and training, as well as organ transplantation, is limited. Researchers disagree about how to increase the number of whole-body bequeathals, citing a shortage of donations from the one group perceived as most likely to donate from attitudinal survey data—educated white males over 65. This focus on survey data, however, suffers from two main limitations: First, it reveals little about individuals' actual registration or donation behavior. Second, past studies' reliance on average survey measures may have concealed variation within the donor population. To address these shortcomings, we employ cluster analysis on all whole-body donors' data from the Universities of California at Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Two donor groups emerge from the analyses: One is made of slightly younger, educated, married individuals, an overwhelming portion of whom are U.S. born and have U.S.–born parents, while the second includes mostly older, separated women with some college education, a relatively higher share of whom are foreign born and have foreign-born parents. Our results demonstrate the presence of additional donor groups within and beyond the group of educated and elderly white males previously assumed to be most likely to donate. More broadly, our results suggest how the intersectional nature of donors' demographics, in particular, gender and migration status, shapes the configuration of the donor pool, signaling new ways to possibly increase donations

The darker side of strong organizational cultures: looking forward by looking back

Organizational cultures encompass the norms, values, and beliefs that guide the thinking and actions of organizational members. In this chapter, we highlight the moral power and ambiguity of such cultures. We review early research on organizational culture, and showcase its historical roots in moral questions around ideological control. We then trace how an emphasis on strong culture and firm performance slowly eroded these moral underpinnings. We also highlight specific studies that have surfaced the oft-forgotten moral consequences of these strong cultures. Next, we illustrate our argument with two research streams (i.e., research on person-organization “fit” and research on the culture of business schools) that reveal a darker, more insidious side, of strong organizational culture. The darker moral side occurs when the moral repercussions of organizational culture are masked by good intentions from management, internalized by employees as beneficial, and lead to harmful consequences for workers, firms, and/or society. Finally, we discuss how increased public awareness of the moral dimensions of work necessitate a deeper understanding of the moral implications of organizational culture.Organizational cultures encompass the norms, values, and beliefs that guide the thinking and actions of organizational members. In this chapter, we highlight the moral power and ambiguity of such cultures. We review early research on organizational culture, and showcase its historical roots in moral questions around ideological control. We then trace how an emphasis on strong culture and firm performance slowly eroded these moral underpinnings. We also highlight specific studies that have surfaced the oft-forgotten moral consequences of these strong cultures. Next, we illustrate our argument with two research streams (i.e., research on person-organization “fit” and research on the culture of business schools) that reveal a darker, more insidious side, of strong organizational culture. The darker moral side occurs when the moral repercussions of organizational culture are masked by good intentions from management, internalized by employees as beneficial, and lead to harmful consequences for workers, firms, and/or society. Finally, we discuss how increased public awareness of the moral dimensions of work necessitate a deeper understanding of the moral implications of organizational culture.First author draf

Individuals’ Decision to Co-Donate or Donate Alone: An Archival Study of Married Whole Body Donors in Hawaii

Human cadavers are crucial to numerous aspects of health care, including initial and continuing training of medical doctors and advancement of medical research. Concerns have periodically been raised about the limited number of whole body donations. Little is known, however, about a unique form of donation, namely co-donations or instances when married individuals decide to register at the same time as their spouse as whole body donors. Our study aims to determine the extent of whole body co-donation and individual factors that might influence co-donation. Methods and Findings: We reviewed all records of registrants to the University of Hawaii Medical School's whole body donation program from 1967 through 2006 to identify married registrants. We then examined the 806 married individuals' characteristics to understand their decision to register alone or with their spouse. We found that married individuals who registered at the same time as their spouse accounted for 38.2 percent of married registrants. Sex differences provided an initial lens to understand co-donation. Wives were more likely to co-donate than to register alone (p = 0.002). Moreover, registrants' main occupational background had a significant effect on co-donations (p = 0.001). Married registrants (regardless of sex) in female-gendered occupations were more likely to co-donate than to donate alone (p = 0.014). Female-gendered occupations were defined as ones in which women represented more than 55 percent of the workforce (e.g., preschool teachers). Thus, variations in donors' occupational backgrounds explained co-donation above and beyond sex differences. Conclusions: Efforts to secure whole body donations have historically focused on individual donations regardless of donors' marital status. More attention needs to be paid, however, to co-donations since they represent a non-trivial number of total donations. Also, targeted outreach efforts to male and female members of female-gendered occupations might prove a successful way to increase donations through co-donations

The Shifting Landscape of LGBT Organizational Research

Over the past generation, sexual minorities—particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) persons—have gained increased visibility in the public arena. Yet organizational research has lagged behind in recognizing and studying this category of organizational members. This article offers a critical review of this growing body of research. More specifically, we identify and discuss four dominant scholarly frames that have informed LGBT organizational research from the late nineteenth century to date. The frames include a "medical abnormality," "deviant social role," "collective identity," and "social distinctiveness" view of sexual minorities. We argue that these frames have profoundly shaped the scope and range of organizational scholarship devoted to sexual minorities by showing that scholars using such contrasted frames have been drawn to very different research questions with respect to sexual minorities. We document and discuss the main and contrasted questions asked within each of these frames and show how they have both enabled and constrained LGBT organizational research. We conclude by calling not only for more attention to the frames organizational scholars adopt when studying sexual minorities, but also for more research on both minority and majority sexual orientations in organizations

Politics, Governance, and Leadership: What Can We Learn From the Academy of Management’s Response to EO13769?

Organization design seeks to balance potentially conflicting objectives while achieving a broader mission. EO13769 created a challenge for the president of the Academy of Management in leading through these conflicts, as President Anita McGahan describes: how to be true to her own moral values while leading an organization with well-established design constraints, and members with diverse opinions. This article shares the perspectives of 12 scholars on the lessons we can learn from Professor McGahan’s leadership of a constraining organization through a challenging time