269 research outputs found
Creativity out of chaos
Creativity is said to be highly desired in post-modern and post-industrial organizations Creativity and anarchy on the one hand, and managerialism, on the other, can be seen as different forms of knowledge, two opposed ideals. In many organizational as well as societal reforms we currently observe it is the managerialist ideal that wins over the anarchic. In this paper, we wonder if people fear anarchy? We reflect on the possible reasons for the fear, and we also try to explain why we believe that anarchic organizing should not be avoided or feared
The possibilities and perils of critical performativity: learning from four case studies
The relevance of academic research to organizational practice is increasingly a concern for management scholars (Currie, Knights, & Starkey, 2010; Starkey & Madan, 2001), and wider social scientists (Chatterton, Hodkinson, & Pickerill, 2010). In particular there have been calls for "engaged scholarship" (Van de Ven, 2007) to "bridge the relevance gap" (Rynes, Bartunek, & Daft, 2001) and create meaningful knowledge that is relevant and useful for practice (for a debate see Boyer, 1997; Deetz, 2008; Learmonth, Lockett, & Dowd, 2012; Van de Ven, 2007; Zundel & Kokkalis, 2010). Such concerns about relevance have also become prevalent within critical management studies (CMS), with regular calls for critical academics to intervene in organizational practice (see for instance Alvesson & Spicer, 2012; Clegg, Kornberger, Carter, & Rhodes, 2006; Koss Hartmann, 2014; Voronov, 2008; Walsh & Weber, 2002; Willmott, 2008; Wolfram Cox, Voronov, LeTrent-Jones, & Weir, 2009). Recently this has been labelled the "performative turn" (Spicer, Alvesson, & Kärreman, 2009) in which critical scholars seek make their work more relevant to organizations (Wickert & Schaefer, 2014, p. 19). Yet, despite the regularity of these calls for intervention, there have been few actual examples of engagement by critical scholars directly into management practice. Without such examples, our understanding of the possibilities of engagement by critical scholars into practice is thus limited, and CMS is left susceptible to the criticism that it is more comfortable discussing radicalism than actually intervening (Koss Hartmann, 2014)
The spiritual organization: critical reflections on the instrumentality of workplace spirituality
Authors' draft of article. Final version published by Routledge in Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14766086.aspThis paper offers a theoretical contribution to the current debate on workplace spirituality by: (a) providing a selective critical review of scholarship, research and corporate practices which treat workplace spirituality in performative terms, that is, as a resource or means to be manipulated instrumentally and appropriated for economic ends; (b) extending Ezioni’s analysis of complex organizations and proposing a new category, the ‘spiritual organization’, and; (c) positing three alternative positions with respect to workplace spirituality that follow from the preceding critique. The spiritual organization can be taken to represent the development of a trajectory of social technologies that have sought, incrementally, to control the bodies, minds, emotions and souls of employees. Alternatively, it might be employed to conceptualize the way in which employees use the workplace as a site for pursuing their own spiritualities (a reverse instrumentalism). Finally, we consider the possible incommensurability of ‘work organization’ and ‘spirituality’ discourses
Death and organization: Heidegger’s thought on death and life in organizations
Mortality has not been given the attention it deserves within organization studies. Even when it has been considered, it is not usually in terms of its implications for own lives and ethical choices. In particular, Heidegger’s writing on death has been almost entirely ignored both in writing on death and writing on organizational ethics, despite his insights into how our mortality and the ethics of existence are linked. In this paper, we seek to address this omission by arguing that a consideration of death may yield important insights about the ethics of organizational life. Most important of these is that a Heideggerian approach to death brings us up against fundamental ethical questions such as what our lives are for, how they should be lived and how we relate to others. Heideggerarian thought also reconnects ethics and politics, as it is closely concerned with how we can collectively make institutions that support our life projects rather than thwart or diminish them
Crafting organization
The recent shift in attention away from organization studies as science has allowed for consideration of new ways of thinking about both organization and organizing and has led to several recent attempts to \u27bring down\u27 organizational theorizing. In this paper, we extend calls for organization to be represented as a creative process by considering organization as craft. Organizational craft, we argue, is attractive, accessible, malleable, reproducible, and marketable. It is also a tangible way of considering organization studies with irreverence. We draw on the hierarchy of distinctions among fine art, decorative art, and craft to suggest that understanding the organization of craft assists in complicating our understanding of marginality. We illustrate our argument by drawing on the case of a contemporary Australian craftworks and marketplace known initially as the Meat Market Craft Centre (\u27MMCC\u27) and then, until its recent closure, as Metro! ‡ Stella Minahan was a board member and then the Chief Executive Officer of the Metro! Craft Centre.<br /
Institutional assessment as an instrument of rationalization back to the school as a formal organisation
O papel central da avaliação, da avaliação institucional e dos
processos de garantia da qualidade de escolas e universidades
nas políticas educacionais é objeto de discussão, também
considerando a reforma do Estado. As teorias da nova gestão
pública e as perspectivas gestionárias são consideradas como
algumas das principais fontes de inspiração e de legitimação no
contexto dominante de uma educação contábil. Dados empíricos
preliminares resultantes do processo de avaliação externa de
escolas básicas e secundárias portuguesas são apresentados
e interpretados de acordo com os principais conceitos e
representações organizacionais de escola presentes nos relatórios
externos. Examinando algumas das imagens e dos significados de
escola, cultura de escola, autonomia, objetivos, liderança e eficácia
presentes nos relatórios de avaliação, o autor releva a importância
das imagens formais, racionais e burocráticas de escolas. Várias
questões de investigação são apresentadas tendo por base aquilo
a que o autor chama o processo da hiperburocratização das
organizações educativas. Algumas dimensões do conceito de
burocracia de Max Weber são revisitadas, em articulação com
perspectivas neocientíficas de garantia da qualidade e com as
tecnologias da informação e comunicação. O autor sugere que
maior relevância deve ser atribuída aos modelos formais e racionais
de interpretação das organizações educativas, pois os processos de
avaliação e de garantia da qualidade estão a contribuir para a
formalização de escolas e universidades e para a intensificação do
seu processo de racionalização, isto é, para a emergência de uma
imagem analítica das escolas como hiperburocracias.The central role of evaluation, institutional assessment and quality
assurance processes of schools and universities in education policy
is object of discussion also considering the reform of the state. New
Public Management theories and managerialist perspectives are
considered some of the main sources of inspiration and legitimation
in the dominant context of an audit education. Preliminary
empirical data from external assessment of Portuguese primary and
secondary schools are introduced and interpreted according to the
main concepts and organizational representations of school found
in external reports. Examining some of the central organizational
images and meanings of school, school culture, autonomy, goals,
leadership and effectiveness included in the external reviews, the
author stresses the importance of formal, rational and bureaucratic
images of schools. Several new research questions are presented
for further inquiry based on the hypothesis of what it is called by
the author the process of hyperbureaucratization of educational
organizations. Some of the main dimensions of the concept of
bureaucracy as presented by Max Weber are revisited in close
relation with neo-scientific approaches of quality assurance and
taking in consideration the use of information and communication
technologies. Accordingly the author suggests that much more
importance must be given to formal and rational models of
interpreting educational organizations because assessment and
quality assurance procedures are contributing to the formalization
of schools and universities and to the intensification of their process
of rationalization, i. e., to the emergence of an analytic image of
schools as hyperbureaucracies.(undefined
Researching Effective Strategies to Improve Insulin Sensitivity in Children and Teenagers - RESIST. A randomised control trial investigating the effects of two different diets on insulin sensitivity in young people with insulin resistance and/or pre-diabetes.
The ethical nature of critical research in information systems.
Critical research in information systems is based on and inspired by
ethics and morality. In order to support this proposition, this paper will suggest
a way of classifying critical research that differs from definitions common IS
research. According to the current definition, research is critical when it is motivated
by the intention to change social realities and promote emancipation. Based
on this critical intention, critical research is furthermore characterized by critical
topics, critical theories, and critical methodologies. Using these criteria of critical
research, the paper argues that critical research is ethical in nature. To support
this view, the paper introduces the concepts of ethics and morality by analysing
two traditions of moral philosophy, here called the ‘German tradition’ and the
‘French tradition’. Using three examples of current critical research in information
systems, the paper will show that ethics and morality strongly influence critical
intention, topics and theories. Having thus established the ethical nature of critical
research, the paper concludes by discussing the weaknesses of critical research
from the point of view of ethics and morality
Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome
The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead
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