Managing carnival: translating the translation into monologue in a bureaucratic institutional framework

In this study two strands of theoretical reflection will contribute to the framework for the analysis of empirical narrative-based material. Research is focused on exploring the reality-framing aspects of the work of translators in a highly centralized, bureaucratic international institution through: approaching their workplace activity via theoretical insights regarding the nature of translation (1); exploring the experiential framework of their professional [and to some extent private] life (2); and analyzing the materiality of the workplace itself to gain insight into the networked processes (3). These research paths will be informed by Derridian and Benjaminian insights into the philosophy of translation; existent literature on emotional labour, sanitization and carnival; and sociomaterial analysis, respectively. The above framework will enable to critically explore the qualitative data gathered for this study and offer a reconceptualization of translation as a heterogonous notion encompassing multiple practices underpinned by potentially incommensurable set of assumptions including the nature of communication and social interaction

Experiencing awkwardness: the functional liminality of artefacts and spaces

The purpose of the paper is to explore experience economy events from an interpetivist perspective. The empirical part of the study is narrative-based and founded on the selfreflective anthropologic inquiry method. This study sets out to propose that the awkwardnes and setback experienced by the client, customer or visitor, may generate his/her agency to try to disambiguate the situational liminality and establish a more clear-cut construction of the experiential framework. However, if attempted the disambiguation demands significant emotional and, sometimes, physical labour, typically not undertaken willingly, and usually resulting in the subject's avoidance of exposure to similar experiences in future. Beyond the scope of many recent approaches this paper re-focuses the critical edge of inquiry away from agency-reducing aspects of experience economy, towards reflecting on their enforced, if not deliberate, agency-inducing consequences

A story-in-the-making: an intertextual exploration of a multivoiced narrative

The following study will explore the stories which are not told – that is, it will scrutinize the process of intertextual emergence of an ultimately open story: one which has neither discernible authorship nor agenda and which remains in-the-making rather than strives to achieve closure. The paper will discuss the process in which multifaceted and multidirectional organizational stories are created, in which plots and characters exchange and ‘ending’ is defied. This lack of closure is perceived here as a breeding ground for networked meanings, which, if allowed to remain interdependent and plural, eschew the danger of a new organizational story becoming universal carrier of inflexibly established contents. Since the unifying semantic organizational frameworks (e.g. ‘success story’) may be construed as impostors attempting to ascribe both authorship and agency to a non- agentical and non-authored ‘untold story’, this study proposes one way in which multi- directedness and plurality of the story may be preserved

Ontos and episteme of organizational spirituality, or what are the rules of the game they are playing?

In the following paper, which draws on the analysis of theoretical sources and uses material from empirical study [1], organizational spirituality is approached as a discourse with its own rules which condition the possibility and ground the existence of knowledge (episteme). The main aim of the article is an attempt to elucidate discursive formations, show mechanisms, uncover assumptions and thus develop a better understanding of OS. Our journey starts with a brief effort to build a guiding definition of spirituality based on the inductive analysis of different discursive approaches in order to speculate on what OS is - or rather to approximate what its ontos is taken to be - within the discourse. Thereafter, suggestions regarding conditions of emergence of OS are put forward with a view to abate the consideration of assumptions grounded in this discourse. Finally, a stance towards allegedly paradigmatic role of OS is taken

Spiritual episteme: sensemaking in the framework of organizational spirituality

In the following paper, which draws on the analysis of theoretical sources and uses material from empirical study, organizational spirituality is approached as a discourse with its own rules which condition the possibility and ground the existence of knowledge (episteme). The main aim of the article is an attempt to elucidate discursive formations, show mechanisms, uncover assumptions and thus develop a better understanding of OS. Our journey starts with a brief effort to build a guiding definition of spirituality based on the inductive analysis of different discursive approaches in order to approximate what its ontos is taken to be within the discourse. Thereafter, suggestions regarding conditions of emergence of OS are put forward with a view to abate the consideration of assumptions grounded in this discourse

Crisis (re)constructed: Ridley Scott's Alien saga as a study of organizational collapse

Fictional narratives have been the focus of organizational research since at least the early 1990s, studied as an insight into the cultural milieu, as a reflection of organizational experiences, as a source of inspiration for members of organization, and as a representation of the sensemaking processes (Czarniawska-Joerges and Guillet de Monthoux, 1994; Hassard and Holliday, 1998). Our text builds upon all these traditions, analysing two films, related but separated by over thirty years, and their construal of a fatal organizational crisis. While all cinematography of a given period may be generally perceived as a reflection of sorts of its fears, hopes and values, the horror and science fiction genres seem to be particularly sensitive to “registers of the psychic and of the sociopolitical” (Freccero, 1999, p. 111). The films we have chosen for our analysis, Alien and Prometheus, generally classified as science fiction horror, can thus be expected to provide a singularly insightful portrayal of the anxieties (in our case, organizational ones) that they depict. The film Alien, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, debuted to critical and commercial acclaim in 1979. Through a seemingly banal and clichéd science fiction narrative, the film explored issues of gender (Creed, 1990), body (Constable, 1999), and technology (Bukatman, 1993) in ways that proved ripe for critical academic reflection over the next three decades. What received somewhat less attention was that the movie was at its core an organizational fiction—its narrative told of a small organizational division (the seven-person crew of a commercial cargo starship) dealing with a crisis situation. It was also organizational issues that provided the main complication in dealing with the alien intruder: secret instructions left by the absent and unidentified (but hierarchically powerful) managers who, driven by corporate greed, jeopardized the safety (indeed, the very survival) of the crew for a chance of greater profit. Alien was followed by numerous sequels helmed by a variety of directors until, in 2012, Ridley Scott returned to the setting of Alien in a new film, Prometheus, starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender. This movie shares many similarities with its predecessor, notably in its most basic setup of a small spaceship crew experiencing life-threatening contact with an unknown, but hostile, lifeform, and again ask questions about basic organizational issues in the process. Yet the current context in which the film was created is markedly different, with the world transformed by events ranging from the fall of communism, through advancing globalization and privatization of the public sphere to the current financial crisis; more generally, the transition into what Zygmunt Bauman (2000) termed the liquid modernity has reshaped the organizational world (Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, forthcoming). Not surprisingly, (re)construction of the crisis and the factors contributing to institutional collapse in the newer film appear quite different than thirty years ago: the portrayed organization is torn apart by a number of conflicting (though, again, often secret) goals and agendas pursued by various crew members, and by blinkered focus on one’s own objectives to the detriment of common aims (including group survival). In this paper, we compare these two stories of organizational collapse and the milieus in which their originated (including both the academic and popular reflection on organizations as well as contemporaneous science fiction and horror films touching on similar themes), not only to provide a better understanding of the changing fears and anxieties organizations hold for their participants, but also to question the changing social construction of work organization: as a venue of shared activity, of collective sensemaking, and as a social platform for accomplishing shared as well as individual goals

Mity i archetypy w badaniach nad organizacją [The role of myths and archetypes in organizational research]

This paper explores the role of myths and archetypes in organizational research. The notion of myth is introduced and theories regarding the origins of mythology are discussed. Subsequently, the myth’s typical features and its role in shaping social reality are considered, which facilitates the understanding of the role of mythology in modern organization. The particular role of archetype in organizational myth is also emphasized. The following analysis of the examples of organizational mythologies is combined with methodological insights regarding the ways in which myths and archetypes can be studied in different organizational contexts. The study not only aims to contribute to improving the comprehension of key assumptions, theories and concepts involved in studying organizational mythologies, but also intends to enhance the reader’s ability to apply this method of organizational analysis

Untold stories in organizations

The field of organizational storytelling research is productive, vibrant and diverse. Over three decades we have come to understand how organizations are not only full of stories but also how stories are actively making, sustaining and changing organizations. This edited collection contributes to this body of work by paying specific attention to stories that are neglected, edited out, unintentionally omitted or deliberately left silent. Despite the fact that such stories are not voiced they have a role to play in organizational analysis. The chapters in this volume variously explore how certain realities become excluded or silenced. The stories that remain below the audible range in organizations offer researchers an access to study political practices which marginalise certain organisational realities whilst promoting others. This volume offers a further contribution by paying heed to silence and the processes of silencing. These silences influence the choice of issues on organisational agendas, the choice of audience(s) to which these discourses are addressed and the ways of addressing them. In exploring these relatively understudied terrains, Untold Stories in Organizations comprises an important contribution to the organizational storytelling space, opening paths for new trajectories in storytelling research

The foolishness of wisdom: exploring a post-structural framework for wisdom in organization

The review of multiple attempts to develop an understanding of wisdom suggests that its interpretations are numerous, divergent and typically structuralist. Many popular essentialist accounts imply interpreting wisdom in terms of other notions, such as knowledge or intelligence, however this path of reasoning leads to the incommensurability between discourses in which wisdom is discussed and invites suspicions regarding the promulgated relevance of wisdom for organization studies. Author’s empirical qualitative research on Organizational Spirituality aids application of March’s ‘technology of foolishness’ to the critical examination of rationalistically oriented theories of wisdom and helps to demonstrate the unworkability of pervading essentialist concepts. The tensions inherent in conceptual frameworks from which allegedly opposite notions of ‘wisdom’ and ‘foolishness’ originate, are investigated via social constructionist approach for the potential benefit of organization studies. As a result, a more inclusive, poststructuralist framework for organizational research on wisdom is proposed

I don't even know who I am anymore and frankly, neither do you: the role of the media in the collapse and reconfiguration of identities

Rich literature on organizational and individual identities construction assumes that identities are relatively stable and longstanding in time (e.g. Albert & Whetten, 1991). However, such assumptions presume a certain degree of stability in organizational settings while allocating power to the role of organizational identities in the formation of individual ones. In this paper, we focus on the problems of collapsing identities and aim at exploring how people respond to large-scale crises and organizational failures. By conducting qualitative research across middle managers in a troubled sector and within a troubled economy, we explore individuals’ responses to the collapse of organizational and personal work identities and by using concepts from Lacan, Bourdieu and Ricoeur we conceptualize the problem of identities’ reconfiguration, also bringing forward the role of mediated communication. Our analysis highlights three important issues. First, the importance of a ‘mirroring’ process as managers constantly attempt to retrieve particles of a new identity from pre-existing identities (family, sports, friend) and in the process of doing so they seek for validation and confirmation. Our analysis suggests that in the crisis and identity collapsing period, pre-existing hidden identities that have been silenced enter the arena of identity formation. Moreover, they are employed to construct new ones, such as the immigrant or ‘insider’. Second, we bring forward the dominant role of mechanisms of information mediation and their critical role in building ideological frameworks, framing the crisis, legitimizing certain identities and producing a projection of fragments of ‘other’ possible identities. We propose that Individuals engage with the mass media in an attempt to place a mirror between a chaotic present and the uncertain future – the process which we approach as ‘the construction of projected image’. Third, we explore a narrative and self-biographical approach to this identity reconfiguration process as individuals subscribe to a narrative of the self ‘in medias res’. They talk about the past and they design the future, thus building their association with different groups, organizations and the society. Our discussion moves around the notion of ‘failing identities’ and we draw on Lacan’s ideas of lack, Bourdieu’s argument on biographical illusions and Ricoeur’s understanding of identities as temporary narrative constructions. This paper argues that identity collapses stand both as a conceptual and practical problem to be analysed but also as an opportunity to explore the identity formation processes in organizations