Multimodal Imaginaries and the “Big Worm”: Materialities, Artefacts and Analogies in São Paulo’s Urban Renovation

Recent interest in the multimodal accomplishment of organization has focused on the material and symbolic aspects of materiality. We argue that current literature invokes diverse “multimodal imaginaries”, that is, ways of conceiving the relation between the material and the conceptual, and that the different imaginaries support a plurality of perspectives on materiality. Using the empirical case of a large urban renewal project in São Paulo, Brazil, we illustrate three different multimodal imaginaries – the concrete, the semiotic, and the mimetic – and indicate how each imaginary determines the way in which the site in question is discursively constructed. After outlining the different approaches, we discuss their theoretical implications, advantages, and constraints, setting an agenda for future studies of materiality in organizational and institutional contexts

The function of fear in institutional maintenance: Feeling frightened as an essential ingredient in haute cuisine

Fear is a common and powerful emotion that can regulate behaviour. Yet institutional scholars have paid limited attention to the function of fear in processes of institutional reproduction and stability. Drawing on an empirical study of elite chefs within the institution of haute cuisine, this article finds that the multifaceted emotion of fear characterised their experiences and served to sustain their institution. Chefs’ individual feelings of fear prompted conformity and a cognitive constriction, which narrowed their focus on to the precise reproduction of traditional practices whilst also limiting challenges to the norms underpinning the institution. Through fear work, chefs used threats and violence to connect individual experiences of fear to the violation of institutionalized rules, sustaining the conditions in which fear-driven maintenance work thrived. The study also suggests that fear is a normative element of haute cuisine in its own right, where the very experience and eliciting of fear preserved an essential institutional ingredient. In this way, emotions such as fear do not just accompany processes of institutionalization but can be intimately involved in the maintenance of institutions

From Interactions to Institutions: Microprocesses of Framing and Mechanisms for the Structuring of Institutional Fields

Despite the centrality of meaning to institutionalization, little attention has been paid to how meanings evolve and amplify to become institutionalized cultural conventions. We develop an interactional framing perspective to explain the microprocesses and mechanisms by which this occurs. We identify three amplification processes and three ways frames stack up or laminate that become the building blocks for diffusion and institutionalization of meanings within organizations and fields. Although we focus on “bottom-up” dynamics, we argue that framing occurs in a politicized social context and is inherently bidirectional, in line with structuration, because microlevel interactions instantiate macrostructures. We consider how our approach complements other theories of meaning making, its utility for informing related theoretical streams, and its implications for organizing at the meso and macro levels

Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis: Results of the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program and review of the literature

BACKGROUND: Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis (SSPE) is so rare in developed countries with measles immunization programs that national active surveillance is now needed to capture sufficient number of cases for meaningful analysis of data. Through the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program (CPSP), the SSPE study was able to document a national incidence and determine the epidemiology of affected Canadian children. METHODS: Between 1997 and 2000, the CPSP surveyed monthly 1978 to 2294 Canadian pediatricians and sub-specialists for SSPE cases. The response rate varied from 82–86% over those years. RESULTS: Altogether, four SSPE cases were reported to the CPSP: one case before, two during and one after the study period. The incidence of SSPE in Canadian children was 0.06/million children/year. Of the four cases, diagnosed between ages four and 17 years, three children had measles infection in infancy. All children showed a progressive course of dementia, loss of motor skills and epilepsy. Two children were treated with isoprinosine and intraventricular interferon but died in less than three years from disease onset. One child did not have any treatment and died after seven years of illness. One child received intraventricular ribavirin and remains alive, but markedly impaired, nine years following diagnosis. CONCLUSION: The CPSP has demonstrated that Canadian paediatricians and paediatric neurologists may encounter cases of SSPE. This report highlights the clinical course of affected Canadian children and provides a review of the disease and its management

Breast cancer risk among women with psychiatric admission with affective or neurotic disorders: a nationwide cohort study in Denmark

There is a considerable interest in the possible relationship between psychosocial factors and the onset of breast cancer. This cohort study was based upon two nationwide and population-based central registers: The Danish Psychiatric Central Register, which contains all cases of psychiatric admissions, and The Danish Cancer Registry, which contains all cases of cancer. The register-linkage was accomplished by using a personal identification number. The study population comprised all women admitted to psychiatric departments or psychiatric hospitals in Denmark between 1969 and 1993 with an affective or a neurotic disorder. Overall, 66 648 women comprising 199 910 admissions and 775 522 person-years were included. The incidence of breast cancer in the cohort was compared with the national breast cancer incidence rates adjusted for age and calendar time. In all, 1270 women with affective or neurotic disorders developed breast cancer subsequent to the first admission as compared with the 1242 women expected, standardized incidence ratio (SIR) = 1.02 (95% confidence interval 0.97–1.08). None of the hypothetical risk factors: type of diagnosis, age or calendar period at cohort entry, age at breast cancer, alcohol abuse, alcohol/drug abuse without further specification, total number of admissions, total length of admissions, or time from first admission showed a statistically significant effect on the relative risk of breast cancer. We found no support for the hypothesis that women admitted to a psychiatric department with an affective or a neurotic disorder subsequently have an increased risk of breast cancer. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Swimming in a Sea of Shame: Incorporating Emotions into Explanations of Institutional Reproduction and Change

We theorize the role in institutional processes of what we call the shame nexus, a set of shame-related constructs: felt shame, systemic shame, sense of shame, and episodic shaming. As a discrete emotion, felt shame signals to a person that a social bond is at risk and catalyzes a fundamental motivation to preserve valued bonds. We conceptualize systemic shame as a form of disciplinary power, animated by persons’ sense of shame, a mechanism of ongoing intersubjective surveillance and self-regulation. We theorize how the duo of the sense of shame and systemic shame drives the self-regulation that underpins persons’ conformity to institutional prescriptions and institutional reproduction. We conceptualize episodic shaming as a form of juridical power used by institutional guardians to elicit renewed conformity and reassert institutional prescriptions. We also explain how episodic shaming may have unintended effects, including institutional disruption and recreation, when it triggers sensemaking among targets and observers that can lead to the reassessment of the appropriateness of institutional prescriptions or the value of social bonds. We link the shame nexus to three broad categories of institutional work

Machina ex Deus? From Distributed to Orchestrated Agency

In this chapter, the author draws on a historical case study of the Australian wine industry to explore variations in collective agency. The inductively derived process model illustrates the emergence of a new profession of scientific win- emaking, which unfolds in three phases. Each phase is characterized by a dis- tinct form of agency: distributed agency during the earliest phase, coordinated agency during later phases, and orchestrated agency during consolidation. In addition to exploring the temporal shifts in agency, the study includes a detailed analysis of the early stages of distributed agency, examining how col- lective agency is achieved in the absence of shared intentions

From practice to field:a multi-level model of practice-driven institutional change

This article develops a model of practice-driven institutional change - or change that originates in the everyday work of individuals but results in a shift in field-level logic. In demonstrating how improvisations at work can generate institutional change, we attend to the earliest moments of change, which extant research has neglected; and we contrast existing accounts that focus on active entrepreneurship and the contested nature of change. We outline the specific mechanisms by which change emerges from everyday work, becomes justified, and diffuses within an organization and field, as well as precipitating and enabling dynamics that trigger and condition these mechanisms. © Academy of Management Journal

The Dynamics of Managerial Ideology: Analyzing the Cuban Case

After the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, management researchers devoted considerable energy to investigate ways to smooth transition to market economies. But one country of the former Soviet bloc, Cuba resisted transition and reaffirmed loyalty to communism. Little is known about management in Cuba on the managerial impacts of the combination of two major environmental forces: the American embargo and the Soviet Union collapse, both of which have challenged the sustainability of the communist regime. This study intends to approach one particular aspect of management in Cuba: the relationship between national ideology and management practice. To analyze these topics, direct qualitative data from focus groups with Cuban managers and management professors was obtained and complemented with documentary analysis. Results suggest that the dynamics of managerial ideology can be understood as the interplay of several processes operating at distinct levels: institutional, professional, organizational and individual. The study provides a nested, multi-level understanding of management and organization as parts of a wider institutional context, which is both a source of constraint and a non-tangible resource to be used by ideological bricoleurs. The interplay between the acceptance of ideology and its use as a practical resource is a potential source of change. As such, the same professional class (managers) may be both a source of continuity and a trigger of change - a finding that is line with institutional theory’s claim that it is necessary to understand both institutionalization and de-institutionalization for understanding organizational change and continuity.N/