After Practice: A Personal Reflection

My text contains more questions than answers, and the answers are only speculative. My first question is: ‘Whose turn to practice took place in 2001?’ The text contains a short review of various meanings of the term in different disciplines. From there I move to the second question, which I find especially relevant for my discipline: management and organization studies. ‘Is ‘reflective practitioner’ an oxymoron?’ I set Niklas Luhmann against Donald Schön in my search for an answer. The third question is: ‘How can bridges between practitioners and theoreticians of management be (re)built?

Operational Risk, Translation, and Globalization

This paper compares a translation of a global (more specifically, European) regulation into two local contexts, setting this process in a broader context of the all-pervading risk management. The two countries are Sweden and Poland, both relatively untouched by the current financial crisis, and the regulation is Basel II Accord. In both countries, the translation is shaped by the past history, and the present circumstances. The results show that, in spite of local differences, there is a common belief in quantification of risks as the main remedy and therefore the main way of managing them. Abstract and vague formulations, combined with sophisticated calculation techniques, win over the complications of actual practices. The role of researchers in this process is also examined. A study illustrates also the advantages of translation theory versus diffusion theory of spreading of ideas

Does Planning Belong to the Politics of the Past?

According to many authors, so-called “central planning” had disappeared from European countries by 1989. However, this is by no means certain. Many former centrally planned economies still engage in central planning, in both the private and public sectors. Moreover, there is a striking similarity between so-called “strategic planning” in large private and public units and central planning in a small-sized economy. These similarities and differences are examined in this article using several examples, concluding with city planning. The analysis suggests that city politicians may find useful lessons in organization studies, revealing that while planning has a powerful comforting and tranquilizing function, plans, like tools, need to be abandoned when they are obsolete or cumbersome. Additionally, planners and managers may find it useful to admit that the differences between the private and public sectors are not as large as conventionally assumed and that their activities are always connected to politics

After Practice: A Personal Reflection

My text contains more questions than answers, and the answers are only speculative. My first question is: ‘Whose turn to practice took place in 2001?’ The text contains a short review of various meanings of the term in different disciplines. From there I move to the second question, which I find especially relevant for my discipline: management and organization studies. ‘Is ‘reflective practitioner’ an oxymoron?’ I set Niklas Luhmann against Donald Schön in my search for an answer. The third question is: ‘How can bridges between practitioners and theoreticians of management be (re)built?

Distrust: not only in secret service organizations

In this article, we discuss the issue of distrust in the most extreme example of distrustful organizations: secret service organizations. Distrust may be a basic organizing principle in such organizations, but how is it produced and maintained? Inspired by actor–network theory, we analyzed the devices, codes, rules, and procedures used in secret service organizations, and then asked whether these devices, codes, rules, and procedures differ from those used in ordinary organizations. Based on our analysis, we make two contributions. First, we draw researchers’ attention to distrust that is intentionally built and maintained rather than distrust that is accidental and indicative of faulty management. Second, we identify the material manifestations of distrust. We argue that in future studies of trust and distrust in organizations, it will be necessary to focus on the technologies, physical objects, and quasi-objects. These, together with discourses, guarantee the stability of connections among organizational actions

The Question of Technology, or How Organizations Inscribe the World

The paper relates technology studies to organization research and examines the technology-as-text metaphor. The study of organization is incomplete as long as tangible technology remains in its blind spot. Linguistic metaphors and analogues, while capturing and indeed amplifying much of received understandings of technology, succeed only partially in repairing the situation. The image of the palimpsest is used to highlight this critique and to visualize ways out. Thus, while the paper‚s main concern is to bring back technology to the study of organization, a specific approach to the study of technology is also argued for

Organization Theory Meets Anthropology: A Story of an Encounter

This text briefly depicts the history of an encounter between anthropology and organization theory in the Anglo-Saxon literature in the period 1990-2010 as seen by an organization scholar. In focus are some stable characteristics and some changes in this relationship, against the background of wider developments in societies and in social sciences. The article ends with suggestions concerning future possibilities of combining the insights of the two fields in a fruitful and interesting way

Od zrównoważonego rozwoju do wytrzymałości: zmiana nazewnictwa, czy zmiana w myśleniu?

During the past ten years or so, any application for a research grant had to contain the word “sustainability”. Recently, however, sustainability has given way to “resilience”. Why this change? It could be a change in research fashion, or the recently produced atmosphere of threat, especially in relation to cities.W ciągu ostatnich około dziesięciu lat wszystkie wnioski o granty badawcze musiały zawierać wyrażenie „zrównoważony rozwój”. W ostatnim jednak czasie „zrównoważony rozwój” ustąpił miejsca „wytrzymałości”. Skąd ta zmiana? Może być ona związana ze zmianą mody w badaniach naukowych lub powstałą ostatnio atmosferą zagrożenia, szczególnie w odniesieniu do miast

Rationality as an Organizational Product

RATIONALITY AS AN ORGANIZATIONALPRODUCTAdministrative Studies, vol 11(1992): 3, 152-162A perspective which conceptualizes organizingas a process of reality construction reveals a possibility of considering rationality not as an organizational attribute but as an organizationalproduct. The focus of organizational studiesshould then shift from examination of rationalityto interpretation of its production. It is arguedthat such a shift would be followed by a changein researchers' main roles: from simplifying andlegitimizing to problematizing and unmasking

Waste prevention action nets

Although waste prevention is considered the best possible waste management option in the European waste hierarchy model, it is unclear what constitutes waste prevention. To address this lack of clarity, this text presents an analysis of four Swedish case studies of waste prevention: a waste management company selling waste prevention services; the possibility offered to Swedish households to opt out of receiving unaddressed promotional material; a car-sharing program; and a re-use center. This analysis is informed by an action-net perspective that focuses on the way organizing emerges from connecting actions, often prior to networking between actors. In conclusion, we stress that waste prevention rests on the invention of new modes and patterns of interactions that both build and disrupt the existing institutional order and underscore the importance of physical artifacts and dedicated infrastructures for waste prevention initiatives