Vintage vinyl can tell us about Cold War tensions and cultural diplomacy

As we face the potential for a 21st century version of the Cold War, Jonathan Schroeder and Janet Borgerson take a close look at how cultural conflicts from the 20th century version spilled over into American life – specifically into vinyl LPs. They write that such albums featured attractive images of the American lifestyle, subtle elements of the ideological struggles of the Cold War era

Witnessing and Organization: Existential Phenomenological Reflections on Intersubjectivity

This article draws in particular on existential-phenomenological notions of “witnessing.” Witnessing, often conceived in the context of testimony, obviously involves epistemological concerns, such as how we come to know through the experiences and reports of others. I shall argue, however, that witnessing as a mode of intersubjectivity offers understandings that involve questions about how people come to be. More specifically, I want to consider the positive potential of “witnessing” to disrupt intersubjective completeness or closure, particularly as this relates to work on organizing subjectivities, as well as, in the field of organization studies

Cruel optimism: the stories of entrepreneurial attachments

Drawing on Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism, the chapter explores entrepreneurial attachment to success ethics (a system of legitimation that prioritizes norms and actions consistent with institutionalized notions of success) generated by a cluster of promises afforded by the enterprise culture. Based on 12 life stories of entrepreneurs who had first-hand experience of bankruptcy, this chapter aims at gaining a more nuanced understanding of why the uniformity and orthodoxy of identities around an entrepreneurial ideal persist and grow in the context of entrepreneurial failure. The chapter is motivated by an interest in the human consequences of bankruptcies and focuses on exploring how the appropriation and internalization of social norms propounded by the enterprise culture might fix life narratives. To understand participants’ attachment to extremely stressful and, often traumatic, entrepreneurial lives and their propensity to promulgate and reproduce the entrepreneurial ideal not only do we need to think about social norms related to the entrepreneurial ideal as aspirational but also as redeeming and reassuring about the present and future experience of social belonging that can be lived in affective transactions that take place alongside the more instrumental ones

An ethics of representation for international marketing

Pre-print; authors' draft originally issued as working paper in 2004. Final published version available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/This paper offers an ethical analysis of visual representation that provides criteria for and sheds light on the appropriateness dimension of marketing communications. It provides a theoretically informed framework for recognizing and understanding ethical issues in visual representation. An interdisciplinary conceptual review and analysis focuses on four representational conventions, synthesizing ethical concerns, to provide a broader context for recognizing and understanding ethical issues in marketing representation: face-ism, idealization, exoticization and exclusion. This framework is discussed and applied to marketing communications. It argues that valuations of communication appropriateness must be informed by an awareness of the ethical relationship between marketing representations and identity. It is no longer satisfactory to associate advertising solely with persuasion, rather advertising must be seen as a representational system, with pedagogical as well as strategic functions. We conclude by discussing the theoretical, research, and managerial implications that arise from an ethics of visual representation. Urges moving beyond an advertising = persuasion model to encompass representation and culture in marketing communication studies. Contributes to understanding the ethical implications of marketing communication. Challenges marketers and researchers to broaden their conception of marketing communication to one more consistent with an image economy

To manage knowledge by intranet

Identification, generation, transfer, storage and efficient integration of knowledge occupy today’s corporate managers, and there is increasing interest in different strategies for managing knowledge. Many strategies correspond to different kinds of information technology, for example, intranet. An intranet can be regarded both as an information and strategic management tool in the context of knowledge management. A lack of reflexivity in intranet use is based on the assumption that an intranet is a tool in its masters ’ hands. Key elements in managing an intranet (such as, activity level and information input) are not just tools to control the transportation of information and knowledge in a convenient and efficient way. Rather, as constituents, these elements create the intranet. Several empirical examples suggest how information presented in an intranet – and knowledge about the information – is co-created in the process of using an intranet. A Foucauldian vision of knowledge as discursive practices, including representation, extends the overly static realist version of knowledge found in much KM. Furthermore, if highest demand for intranet activity levels were met, professional investment managers would be forced to become generalist

Ethical issues of global marketing: avoiding bad faith in visual representation

This paper examines visual representation from a distinctive, interdisciplinary perspective that draws on ethics, visual studies and critical race theory. Suggests ways to clarify complex issues of representational ethics in marketing communications and marketing representations, suggesting an analysis that makes identity creation central to societal marketing concerns. Analyzes representations of the exotic Other in disparate marketing campaigns, drawing upon tourist promotions, advertisements, and mundane objects in material culture. Moreover, music is an important force in marketing communication: visual representations in music promotions are also explored as data for inquiry. Offers an alternative to phenomenologically based approaches in marketing and consumer research scholarship that use consumer responses to generate data. Contributes additional insight into societal marketing and places global marketing processes within the intersection of ethics, aesthetics and representation