Imagining the Land of Compassion

Western society has increasingly turned to different kinds of spirituality in dealing with an accelerated tempo and demands in everyday post-modern life. Yoga, meditation, mindfulness and other forms of modalities, often connected to ancient eastern thinking, are taught and implemented in management and leadership practises (Cederström & Spicer, 2015). Although organizational theorizing has previously excluded issues of spirituality, an increasing interest in this discourse has awakened (cf. Fry, Latham, Clinebell & Krahnke, 2016). For instance, an important sub-field of organizational theory where non-rational views of organizations actually already have evolved is the field of leadership, that commonly addresses non-rationalistic ideals in organizations such as emotions, visions and transformative change (cf. Bass, 1990). In line with a growing interest in alternative ways of organising our lives as both consumers and producers (as taking part of building our societies through business or non-profit operations) to take care of each other and the world, compassion is a concept to be explored. This is particularly the case when it comes to creating places of leisure and relaxation. The challenge is to create and implement compassionate and sustainable leisure places of community that allows people to catch their breath. These environments need to be conscious, supportive and compassionate to function as intended: to be like a shelter in a contemporary society that stresses other goals and priorities (as efficiency, rationality, environmentally unsustainable economic growth and so on). In this paper we present a case study, an attempt by lifestyle and leisure entrepreneurs to build a leisure community in Northern Cyprus, through the invocation of entrepreneurial and organizational leadership strategies of compassion, care, mindfulness and consciousness. We approach this case study through the following research questions: How can we understand compassionate organising? How is compassionate leadership practised? The aim is to explore compassionate leadership and, through a combination of sociological theories of space and insights in quantum theory, offer an empowering understanding of compassionate organisational spaces. In order to understand compassionate organisational spaces we need to turn to socio-spatial theoretical outlines of the nature and constitution of environments (Massey, 2005). Our understanding of that builds on an inherently relational notion of space. Here, physical distance is not the sole or primary factor or variable. Rather, space is unfolded by social relations (of caring and compassion) that transgress physical distances and institutional barriers (Deleuze, 1993; Doel, 1999; Shields, 2013). This approach harmonizes (and is here combined) with the world-view expressed in quantum theory (non-locality and entanglement: that cause and effect works regardless of how far apart they are and that reality is created by consciousness) (Abrahamsson, 2012; Pernecky, 2016). To distill the reasoning somewhat: compassion and consciousness are in themselves unfolded spatialities that can be nurtured into sustainable environments (as things can be observed into existence due to the mind-interdependence of quantum reality)

Den rumlige vending som ontologisk vending

For at least twenty years the spatial turn as a concept has been circulating in theHumanities and the Social Sciences, with the result that the meaning of the concept has been more and more known and perhaps even taken for granted in some cases. But as a metaphorical concept, it has its limitations, by necessity. In this article, it is argued that the spatial turn can also be conceptualized as an ontological turn, by a shift of aspect. This argumentation is made through an example, the discussion of one quite recent turn within a specific academic discipline, management and organization theory

The Daily Egyptian, October 27, 1983

Emotional labour has for decades been addressed and investigated in tourism studies andtourism management. Originally coined by Arlie Hochschild in the late 1970s it has increasinglybeen elaborated upon in relation to tourism service work. This take on the originally sociologicalconcept has predominatly been managerial in tourism management studies, and contextualized asa clear-cut social interaction between employees and customers, with an employer in thebackground. Faithful to its mission to produce knowledge of value for the management of thetourist company (be it a hotel or some similar typical actor in the tourism industry) emotionallabour has thus been imagined, grasped and understood in specific more or less instrumental andfunctionalistic ways. Emotional labour is something that has to be formalized in a certain way inorder to be addressable and handable from a managerial rationality.However, with the rise of the sharing economy in tourism, with beacons like uber andAirbnb in the center, the employee becomes his or her own employer, and at the same time isregulated by an assemblage of digital technologies. The established view on emotional labour assituated within a triangle of employee, customer and employer does not apply in the same way.As a consequence, emotional labour as a societal phenomenon needs to be rethought, outside thecomfort zone of conventional managerialism. To some degree this has been done in tourismstudies, but this research is still in its cradle. In particular, there is a lack of reasoning of more(sociological) contextual and systematic, as well as critical but also nuanced, takes on emotionallabour in the tourism sharing economy. This paper offers such a contextual, systematic, criticalbut also nuanced (thus avoiding conventional neoliberalism-bashing) take on the phenomenon,with the highlighting the emotional labour of being an Airbnb host as a case

ICS and COPD: Time to clear the air

Paul A Ford, Richard EK Russell, Peter J BarnesAirway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, UKThe debate about what constitutes the correct treatment for COPD has recently intensified. This discussion has grumbled on ever since the first multicenter trials using inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) such as the European Respiratory Society study on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (EUROSCOP) and Inhaled Steroids in Obstructive Lung Disease (ISOLDE) were published in the late 1990’s and the results of trials such as TORCH (TOwards a Revolution in COPD Health) using combination products has only added to the confusion