Politics of place: the meaningfulness of resisting places

The meaningfulness of the physical place within which resistance is nurtured and enacted has not been carefully considered in research on space and organizations. In this article, we offer two stories of middle managers developing resistance to managerial policies and decisions. We show that the appropriation and reconstruction of specific places by middle managers helps them to build autonomous resisting work thanks to the meanings that resisters attribute to the place in which they undertake resistance. We contribute to the literature on space and organizations by showing that resistance is a social experience through which individuals shape physical places and exploit the geographical blurring of organizations to develop political efforts that can be consequential. We also suggest the central role played by middle managers in the subversion of these meaningful places of resistanc

Réinvestir les enjeux organisationnels

Le texte critique la dérive dans laquelle sont pris beaucoup d'entreprises et qui consiste pour leur gestion des ressources humaines à renvoyer le malaise de ses cadres à des facteurs exclusivement psychiques. Il passe en revue les parties prenantes qui ont à gagner d'une telle pathologisation compassionnelle. Il invite les entreprises à considérer les contextes plus sociaux et organisationnels dans lesquels elles placent leurs collaborateurs comme des choix décisifs et il rappelle quelques-unes des découverts majeures révélées par les sociologues des organisations."Rebellion des cadres" "Facteurs psychiques" "Anomie organisationnelle" "gestion des ressources humaines"

Resistance as a way of life: How a group of workers perpetuated insubordination to neoliberal management

This article sheds light on how a group of workers manage to create an enduring collective resistance, in an uncongenial context of neoliberal management pushing for compliant behaviours. Research on resistance has given scant attention to the concrete conditions through which collective resisting efforts can be sustained, despite adverse contexts. We highlight the process through which everyday collective resistance produces substantial effects and becomes viewed by management and workers as an integral part of an organization’s power relations. We particularly illuminate how practices that mutually constitute belongingness and insubordination continuously reinforce collective resistance to make it the very texture of workers’ lives. We therefore analyse everyday resistance as a way of life, through which workers aim to simultaneously contest managerial authority and protect their own social boundaries in a neoliberal context. Thereby, we offer a way to reconcile recognition and post-recognition politics in a dialogue envisaging the ‘efficacy’ of resistance in a new light

Bloody suffering and durability: How chefs forge embodied identities in elite kitchens

In this article, we elaborate on the significance of suffering in processes of embodied identity construction. Drawing on interviews with 62 chefs employed in elite kitchens around the world, we make two main contributions. First, we extend our understanding of suffering as a traumatic, alienating experience by theorizing it as a distinctive form of embodied identity work. We show how suffering can function as a mechanism through which people forge an understanding of who they are. Our second contribution extends the first by elaborating on what we call the aesthetics of suffering. We show how suffering can be perversely appreciable, distinguishing and endured in culturally significant, identity-implicative ways. Via this theorization, we progress our understanding of how identities are forged through (and read from) suffering bodies, and add an additional layer of interpretation to research in which matters of embodied identity and suffering are nascent but largely neglected

Durkheim in the neoliberal organization: taking resistance and solidarity seriously

Durkheim’s contributions to organization studies have so far been decidedly marginal, and largely concentrated on culture. In this paper, we draw upon his theory of anomie and solidarity to show how a Durkheimian view of contemporary organizations and work has special relevance today for debates about how workers, particularly middle managers, can reshuffle a capacity to resist neoliberal efforts to profoundly disrupt their working conditions, in particular their autonomy to define what is a job well done. We show how Durkheim’s insights can account for the unexpected rekindling of forms of social solidarity in highly competitive and individualistic organizational settings, through dissident efforts that convey a renewal of a certain work ethos severed by neoliberal managerial policies and practices. Recent studies on resistance confirm Durkheim’s view that forms of collective activity, resembling supposedly ‘old’ mechanisms of former days, continue to exist and develop in contemporary societies and organizations, in response to pressure to put people in situations of inter-individual competition that disrupts social relationships

Conceptualizing historical organization studies

© 2016 Academy of Management Review. The promise of a closer union between organizational and historical research has long been recognized. However, its potential remains unfulfilled: The authenticity of theory development expected by organization studies and the authenticity of historical veracity required by historical research place exceptional conceptual and empirical demands on researchers. We elaborate the idea of historical organization studies-organizational research that draws extensively on historical data, methods, and knowledge to promote historically informed theoretical narratives attentive to both disciplines. Building on prior research, we propose a typology of four differing conceptions of history in organizational research: History as evaluating, explicating, conceptualizing, and narrating. We identify five principles of historical organization studies-dual integrity, pluralistic understanding, representational truth, context sensitivity, and theoretical fluency-and illustrate our typology holistically from the perspective of institutional entrepreneurship. We explore practical avenues for a creative synthesis, drawing examples from social movement research and microhistory. Historically informed theoretical narratives whose validity derives from both historical veracity and conceptual rigor afford dual integrity that enhances scholarly legitimacy, enriching understanding of historical, contemporary, and future-directed social realities

Cultivating strategic foresight in practise: A relational perspective

Drawing on relationalism as a theoretical lens, we examine how normative organizing structures, rights and authority relationships influence the cultivation of strategic foresight among organizational members lower down the organizational hierarchy. We adopt a case-based approach involving three software firms, whose innovation teams served as our empirical research sites. Our study highlights the triadic influence of individual, organizational and contextual organizing practices on the cultivation of strategic foresight. We identify four relational assemblages of practices that enable (or impede) the enactment of strategic foresight in practice. These include strategic conversations, perspective taking and reflexivity-in-practice, over-emphasis on formal knowledge and technical rationality, and benevolent conspiracies. We add to research on strategic foresight by extending our understanding of the vital role that lower-level employees may play in the cultivation of organizational ‘foresightfulness’. We therefore urge management advisors to accord lower-level input recognizably respectful consideration, if not adoption

Réponse à Philippe Bernoux

Courpasson David. Réponse à Philippe Bernoux. In: Sociologie du travail, 40ᵉ année n°3, Juillet-septembre 1998. pp. 402-405

Régulation et gouvernement des organisations : Pour une sociologie de l'action managériale

International audienc

Eléments pour une sociologie de la relation commerciale : Les paradoxes de la modernisation dans la banque

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