Management and its public: imagining management practices

This paper suggests that there is value in a conversation between science technology studies and management philosophy. In particular, the paper illustrates how a cocktail of two powerful forces in STS, actor network theory and public understanding of science, can serve to foreground aspects of management hitherto hidden. Actor network theorists persuasively demonstrate that contemporary experience involves human and non-human agents in material and heterogeneous practices. This position leads to a claim that we must increasingly learn to live in tension, as aspects of social life present themselves as full of open ended options that are come to rest either no-where or elsewhere. This paper examines such actor net work concerns through a discussion of agency and raises questions regarding relationships between managerial agency, epistemology of management and public understanding of management. In this context, publics are considered as a legitimate and powerful location through which notions of science and management are coproduced. A case is made for the value of fiction in actor net work studies of organisational behaviour by reference to literature of public understanding of science (PUS). PUS is rendered comparatively relevant here by reference to contextual parallels between science and management such as contemporary challenges to the singular naturalistic narrative, changing social status of disciplinary knowledge and contemporary governance and responsibility debates that impact on day to day practices. In making this comparison it is suggested that whilst it is not uncommon to find a mix of character traits in representations of the contingent and vulnerable human-scientist there is little space for either the vulnerable or heroic manager in popular culture. To close this discussion and offer a point of departure for further discussion this study playfully examines a particular popular fiction Eric (Faust) [Terry Pratchett 1990]. Using material from this fiction, management is reframed in terms of resonance, public understanding of business management and coproduction processes. Finally, this study stops and turns to its readers to continue imaging management and its public

Fabricating methods: untold connections in story net work

This paper responds to current interest in the ‘untold’ in organizational storytelling research. In particular the research presented here contributes to studies that consider storytelling in relational terms. In this context, untold is constructed as both a provocation and a pointer to multiplicity: innumerable relationships of story. To develop and illustrate the argument of the paper, the discussion adopts interference as a deliberate methodological device. To illustrate the significance of composition and fabrication in storytelling the study consider fragments from an extensive period of multi-site ethnographic fieldwork with a professional, established and award winning author involved in literary, television drama and other story projects. The developing field of relational storytelling studies is discussed and attention drawn to key research foci: specifically current concerns for intertextuality, heteroglossia, materiality and flux. A fieldwork vignette is used to examine and extend a relational sense of ‘untold stories’. Further vignettes and a selective focus on science and technology studies relational ethnographies extends this discussion by focusing on performance, fabrication and fiction. The paper concludes that a fabrication sensibility that notices and attends to story on the move necessitates a shift in both methodological and representational strategy. In terms of method the paper demonstrates the potential value of extended, multi locational and deep field ethnography. In terms of representation, if stories are innumerable than we require a number of monograph ethnographies that can reveal and attend to varieties of limitless material, mobile and heterogeneous stories. In other words, if stories are lived, we require methods that attend to social life as lived if we are to surface and reframe hitherto untold, unseen and unheard agency at work in organizations

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

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

Technological uncertainties and popular culture

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis is an inquiry into possibilities and problems of a sociology of translation. Beginning with a recognition that actor network theory represents a sociological account of social life premised upon on recognition of multiple ontologies, interruptions and translations, the thesis proceeds to examine problems of interpretation and representation inherent in these accounts. Tensions between sociological interpretation and social life as lived are examined by comparing representation of nonhuman agency in both an actor-network and a science fiction study of doors. The power identified in each approach varies from point making to lying. A case is made for considering fictional storytelling as sociology and hence, the sociological value of lying. It is by close examination of a fictional story that this study aims to contribute to a sociology of translation. The greater part of the thesis comprises an ethnographic study of a televised children's story. Methodological issues in ethnography are addressed and a case is made for a complicit and multi-site ethnography of story. The ethnography is represented in two particular forms. Firstly, and unusually, story is treated as a Storyworld available for ethnographic study. An actor network ethnography of this Storyworld reveals sociologically useful similarities and differences between fictional Storyworld and contemporary, social life. Secondly, story is taken as a product, a broadcast television series of six programmes. An ethnography of story production is undertaken that focuses attention on production performances, hidden storytellers and politics of authorship. Story is revealed as an unfinished project. A prominent aspect of this thesis is a recognition that fictional storytelling both liberates and constrains story possibilities. This thesis concludes that, in addressing critically important tensions in sociological representation, fictional stories should be included in sociological literature as studies in their own right

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

Method and story fragments: working through untold method

This chapter examines relationships between theory and method in untold storytelling research. The essay draws on David Boje’s organisational storytelling work and historical insights from Science Technology Studies are used to consider issues of method raised in Boje’s work. TamaraLand provides a point of departure and the chapter considers the consequences of a TamaraLand metaphor for research practice. Continuing with Boje’s work the study examines both an emerging ‘quantum’ approach and implications of this approach for methods. Finally, the chapter interjects four fragments from STS to further examine challenges in researching untold stories as unfinished and boundless work

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

Afterword: untold story futures

This chapter examines new developments in organizational storytelling studies and comments on future directions for storytelling research

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