Contingent support: exploring ontological politics/extending management

This paper is located within the critical management tradition of management education/development. The paper seeks to introduce the neglected area of Actor Network Theory and Mol’s anti-foundationalist ontological politics and demonstrates their potential to developing alternative critical pedagogy and management practice. Following a discussion of problem-based learning, the paper goes on to introduce the emergent pedagogic practice termed contingent support. Through a series of vignettes drawn from fieldwork collected from a second year undergraduate decision making module, the paper discusses carefully how the practice termed contingent support is informed by Actor Network Theory and ontological politics in particular. The paper goes onto reveal the significance of contingent support sensibilities of materiality, situatedness and performance and shows how they can give a new vigour to educators interested in developing more responsible management. Finally, the paper considers contingent support’s transformational potential and sets an agenda for future researc

STS in management education: connecting theory and practice

This paper explores the value of science and technology studies (STS) to management education. The work draws on an ethnographic study of second year management undergraduates studying decision making. The nature and delivery of the decision making module is outlined and the value of STS is demonstrated in terms of both teaching method and module content. Three particular STS contributions are identified and described: the social construction of technological systems; actor network theory; and ontological politics. Affordances and sensibilities are identified for each contribution and a discussion is developed that illustrates how these versions of STS are put to use in management education. It is concluded that STS has a pivotal role to play in critical management (education) and in the process offers opportunities for new forms of managin

Story spaces: a methodological contribution

This paper draws attention to methodological opportunities evident in diverse approaches to story. Empirical work from Organisational Behaviour is placed alongside empirical work in Science Technology Studies and a case made for diversity and detail in deploying story in studies of work, technology and employment

Making space: co-producing critical accounts of new technology, work and employment [editorial]

Editorial first paragraph: Why this special issue? As New Technology, Work and Employment (NTWE) celebrates its silver jubilee, this special issue aims to honour the longstanding imperatives of the journal by providing an opportunity to Make Space for critical accounts of NTWE. It is our intention that this space may be offered to approaches that have their roots in other traditions or adopt slightly different sensibilities to those that are typically found in NTWE. However, before we introduce our attempt at making such space, we want to recognise the importance and value of the work of NTWE. In the first instance, credit must go to the late Brian Towers, the founder and chairman of the Editorial Committee of the journal. Brian was also an academic with the foresight and energy to recognise that themes laid down in Gill's 1985 seminal study of Work, Unemployment and the New Technology should form the basis of a coherent academic research programme with an associated journal. As Baldry (2011) has recently observed in his NTWE Editorial Chronicling the IT Revolution, in the mid-1980s, the demand for a coherent body of academic research was a direct response to emerging discourses of the time, many of which appeared rhetorically rich, optimistic and long on hope whilst light on analysis. Indeed, to have a journal that was dedicated to critical studies of the implications and impact of new technologies on work experiences and employment was both radical and necessary given a period typified by talk of new revolutions (Bell, 1974; Stonier, 1982) and the future of work (Jones, 1982; Handy, 1984). With a distinctive empirical focus, NTWE demonstrated that the introduction and implementations of new technologies in workplaces were (and remain) contested terrains. Indeed, the empirical character of NTWE remains a major contribution in organisational studies and as Baldry also noted, developments in NTWE have taken quite specific trajectories in terms of sectors considered, occupational identities scrutinised and ‘new’ managerial practices introduced to reconfigure control of work. The political sensibility for critiquing managerial rationality remains strong