7 research outputs found
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(Un)Resolving digital technology paradoxes through the rhetoric of balance
The organizational benefits of digital technologies are increasingly contrasted with negative societal consequences. Such tensions are contradictory, persistent and interrelated, suggesting paradoxes. Yet, we lack insight into how such apparent paradoxes are constructed and to what effect. This empirical paper draws upon interviews with thirty-nine responsibility managers to unpack how paradoxes are discursively (re)constructed and resolved as a rhetoric of âbalanceâ
that ensures identification with organizational, familial and societal interests. We also reveal how such âfalse balanceâ sustains and legitimizes organizational activity by displacing responsibilities onto distant âothersâ through temporal (futurizing), spatial (externalizing) and level (magnifying / individualizing) rhetorical devices. In revealing the process of paradox construction and resolution as âbalanceâ in the context of digitalization and its unanticipated
outcomes, we join conversations into new organizational responsibilities in the digital economy, with implications for theory and practice
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Heart, Mind and Body: #NoMorePage3 and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy
Emotional energy is key to disruptive institutional work, but we still know little about what it is, and importantly, how it is refuelled. This empirical paper presents an in-depth case study of âNo More Page 3â (#NMP3), an Internet-based feminist organization which fought for the removal of sexualized images of women from a UK newspaper. Facing online misogyny, actors engage in âemotional energy replenishmentâ to sustain this disruptive institutional work amid emotional highs and lows. We introduce âaffective embodimentâ â the corporeal and emotional experiences of the institution â as providing emotional energy in relation to disruptive institutional work. Affective embodiment is surfaced through alignment or misalignment with othersâ embodied experiences, and this mediates how actors replenish emotional energy. Alignment with othersâ embodied experiences, often connected to online abuse, means emotional energy is replenished through âaffective solidarityâ (movement towards the collective). Misalignment, surfaced through tensions within the movement, means actors seek replenishment through âsensory retreatâ (movement away from the collective). This study contributes to theorization on institutional work and emotional energy by recentring the importance of the body alongside emotions, as well as offering important lessons for online organizing
âAlternative Hedonismâ:Exploring the Role of Pleasure in Moral Markets
Fair tradeâ, âethicalâ and âsustainableâ consumption emerged in response to rising concerns about the destructive effects of hedonic models of consumption that are typical of late capitalist societies. Advocates of these âmarkets for virtueâ sought to supplant the insatiable hedonic impulse with a morally restrained, self-disciplining disposition to consumption. With moral markets currently losing their appeal, we respond to the tendency to view hedonism as an inhibitor of moral market behaviour, and view it instead as a potential enabler. Drawing upon the concept of âalternative hedonismâ (Soper, 2007, 2008, 2016, 2017), we illustrate how consumers experience both morality and pleasure concurrently; show how they attempt to reconcile these aspects of the experience; and elucidate the implications of so doing. Using the moral market for ethical tourism as an exemplar of âalternative hedonismâ, we identify three âself-managing strategiesâ â moderating, abiding and levelling â that re-structure the moral order of consumption in meaningful ways and with profound outcomes. In the context of anxieties about personal, social and ecological consequences of consumption, we show empirically how self managing strategies reify a less contradictory framing of consumption by tapping into alternative cultural discourses on morality. We discuss the consequences of these strategies, highlighting how they may legitimize and sustain consumption via moral markets despite the reproduction of social inequality and ecological threats