The organising principles of the society of Jesus - from the pastorate to governmentality

Foucault’s concepts of Pastoral power and “governmentality” have led to the development of the London school of “governmentalists” (McKinlay and Pezet 2010). However, extant literature on governmentality drawn from this school of thought has undertaken an analytics of power centred on the deployment of governmental forms of power at the State level, not taking into consideration another entity that emerged after modernity, the modern enterprise, and not going beyond the 19th century, thereby trapping “governmentality” studies inside their own modern discourse. Following Foucault’s established relation between Pastoral power and “governmentality”, this thesis analyses the form of organising deployed by an organisation that emerged in the 16th century, apparently being able to survive into modernity without adopting modern managerial business categories. This organisation is the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits. The first part of this thesis will analyse the relevance of the Society of Jesus for organisational studies and will show how modern business categories fail to explain its structural resilience. The second part of the thesis introduces Pastoral power as a possible explanation for the apparent structural resilience of the Society of Jesus. Following this line of reasoning, and after having established an analytics of power as a possible methodological framework, the Society of Jesus’ “organising practices” will be presented, leading to the conclusion that this entity, having emerged at the cornerstone of modernity, deployed practices that represent a significant shift when compared with previous Pastoral forms of organising. The fact that the Society of Jesus clearly intended to deploy practices for the conduction of geographicallydispersed individuals leads to the conclusion that it deployed a “protogovernmental” form of power, and that the rationality underpinning its practices, although not entirely modern, is clearly at the cornerstone of modernity and can therefore be enlightening to an understanding of how modern managerial categories might have emerged

Oral-aural accounting and the management of the Jesuit corpus

The roles of written and visual accounting techniques in establishing conditions of possibility in modern management decision making are well documented. In contrast, this paper looks beyond the “grammatocentric”, and analyzes a practice of oral accounting – the Account of Conscience – that began in the Society of Jesus in the sixteenth century, and has persisted largely unchanged to the present day. In this practice, we see historically relevant pastoral practices evolving into techniques of government that begin to resemble modern governmentality. The paper compels a more general consideration of oral–aural practices and their role in constructing relationships of authority and accountability

Mystery-driven institutionalism : the Jesuit spiritual exercises as a book of practices leading nowhere

This paper discusses how mystery was imprinted into the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises, supporting their diffusion across space and time. It shows that the book of the Spiritual Exercises is a practice in itself and fosters a practice or set of practices. The book is more than an object: it is an action, unleashed not by the specification of what actions it dictates but by the mystery the “book-as-practice” carries. The paper contributes to the literature on practice-driven institutionalism, namely by showing how mystery furthers our understanding of the mutual constitution of practices and institutions. The Spiritual Exercises have been practiced for more than four centuries, even though their meaning is not stable and they are never fully understood. Therefore, our paper asks: how do the Jesuits understand what they have to do if the book does not prescribe everything? The authors argue that it is indeed this mystery that distinguishes religious practices, explaining their endurance across time and space and, henceforth, their institutionalization. The authors show that the Spiritual Exercises are to be practiced and it is this practicing that allows them to diffuse and institutionalize a new understanding of how the individual relates to God. “God’s will” is searched through the practicing, without ever being determined by the practice. It is by practicing the book that the mystery of “God’s will” reveals itself. Moreover, “God’s will” is never known or knowable. Instead, it is embodied and felt while practicing the book of the Exercises. Emotions thus reconcile, through mystery, the book and the practicing of it. Our paper contributes to practice-driven institutionalism by showing how mystery can drive institutionalization processes

Turning to mystery in institutional theory : the Jesuit spiritual exercises

Previous researchers have argued that material objects reproduce institutional logics on the basis of their durability, immutability and mobility. In this paper we analyze material objects that secure logics not because they reveal meanings and significations, but because they allow individuals and groups to confront the mystery of institutional values. Drawing on extensive historical sources, we analyze a small material object, a book entitled The Spiritual Exercises, and investigate the institutionalization of a practice for discovering what cannot be rendered material, the ineffable mystery of God’s will. We argue that religious logics require objects that present, rather than resolve, the mystery of institutional values. We extend the literature on institutional logics by considering how mystery enables institutions and their logics to embrace difference, adapt and endure for centuries

Spectral analysis for identification of plant ecosystems in Brazilian Atlantic Forest / Análise espectral para identificação de ecossistemas vegetais na Mata Atlântica Brasileira

The creation of the Guadeloupe EPA aimed to protect natural ecosystems and promote sustainable development in atlantic forest fragments existing in Pernambuco, Brazil. However, even with the State Decree formalizing these objectives, the ecosystems of the Atlantic Forest Biome present at the site suffered serious data by anthropic actions. For the study of these ecosystems, spectral analysis was an excellent channel of connection between geotechnologies and phytogeography of the site, allowing to study the location and type of vegetation in the extension of the Conservation Unit. From this perspective, the present research aimed to differentiate the atlantic forest ecosystems through spectral analysis. The results of spectral analysis allowed to indicate that in the identification of the Dense Ombrófila Forest the best specific combination is Atmospheric Penetration (PA) in its Pixel (PI) α. Mangrove in turn can be better identified in Infrared Vegetation (IVV) - Ranging from 150 to 220 Ash Levels (NC) - in pi α and also in PI β and PI γ varying in values very close to 50NC. Regarding restinga it is estimated that it can be accurately identified in Agriculture (AG), especially in pi γ, and also in Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), in all its Pixels

Habitual leadership ethics : timelessness and virtuous leadership in the Jesuit Order

This paper is about the relationship between leadership, organisational morals, and temporality. We argue that engaging with questions of time and temporality may help us overcome the overly agentic view of organisational morals and leadership ethics that dominates extant literature. Our analysis of the role of time in organizational morals and leadership ethics starts from a virtue-based approach to leading large-scale moral endeavours. We ask: how can we account for organizational morality across generations and independently of the leader? To address this question, we studied the leadership model of the Jesuits, a Catholic Religious Order. Our case reveals that a virtue-based model of leadership does not necessarily imply that those who are selected to lead the organization are themselves virtuous, but that the processes underpinning the exercise of leadership are cyclical and repeated as truthfully as possible. Virtuous leadership, for the Jesuits, is therefore about the construction of an ideal type of leadership against which the processes which sustain it were designed. Our theoretical contribution is twofold. First, we propose an habitual understanding of moral forms of leadership, in which the procedural is constitutive of moral forms of organising; second, we explain how “timelessness”, understood as the quality of not changing as years go by, allowed the Jesuits to centre the processes which sustain their ethical model on the repetition, across space and time, of said processes, rather than on their outcome. We conclude that the search for virtue might be more relevant for large-scale moral endeavours than virtue itself

Formação continuada de professores: colaboração entre Rede de Ensino Municipal e Universidade

Continuing education of teachers: collaboration between Municipal Education Network and UniversityResumoObjetiva problematizar o processo de pesquisa-ação colaborativo-crítica entre gestores da Secretaria de Educação de uma rede municipal de ensino e um grupo de pesquisa da universidade, com vistas à construção da política municipal de Educação Especial na perspectiva da inclusão escolar, pela via da formação continuada com grupos de estudo-reflexão. Para tanto, busca-se discutir a pesquisa-ação e os pressupostos habermasianos do Agir Comunicativo. Os dados foram analisados com apoio dos teóricos Carr e Kemmis (1988), Barbier (2007) e Habermas (2012). Considera-se a importância da universidade como espaço público nesse movimento e como instituição parceira que tem muito para contribuir para a formação de professores e refletir sobre ela, que seja com/para o coletivo.Palavras-chave: Educação Especial. Formação Continuada de Professores. Pesquisa-ação colaborativo-crítica. AbstractIt aims to problematize the collaborative-critical action research process between managers of the Education Secretary of a municipal education network and a university research group, with a view to constructing the municipal policy of Special Education in the perspective of school inclusion through the formation continued with study-reflection groups. For this, it is sought to discuss as action research and Habermasian presuppositions of Communicative Action. The data were analyzed with the support of the theorists Carr and Kemmis (1988), Barbier (2007) and Habermas (2012). It is considered the importance of the university as a public space in this movement and as a partner institution that has much to contribute and think about the formation, that is with / for the collective.Keywords: Special Education. Continuing Teacher Education. Collaborative-critical researc

GPs are from Mars, Administrators are from Venus: The Role of Misaligned Occupational Dispositions in Inhibiting Mandated Role Change

Research on mandated occupational role change focuses on jurisdictional conflict to explain change failure. Our study of the English National Health Service highlights the role of occupational dispositions in shaping how mandated role change is implemented by members of multiple occupational groups. We find that tension stemming from misaligned dispositions may emerge as members of different occupations interact during their role change implementation efforts. Depending on dispositional responses to tension, change may fail as members of the different occupations avoid interactions. This suggests that effective role change can be elusive even in the initial absence of conflicting occupational interests