Re-reading masculine organization: Phallic, testicular and seminal metaphors

This article examines the metaphorical resources provided by specific parts of the male body for thinking masculinity in social and organizational contexts. The genital metaphor of the male phallus is the most familiar, being associated with a form of hegemonic masculinity identified with power and control. However, other parts of the male genitalia can and do act as root metaphors for alternative forms of masculinity. Where the phallic metaphor focuses attention on power and control, the testicular and seminal metaphors highlight aspects of masculinity that are more relational and creative and bring it closer to the feminine. Whilst in social and organizational practice these coexist, in organizational analysis the emphasis has implicitly and explicitly been on the phallic. We generate a framework of the characteristics of each metaphor identifying positive, negative and excessive/inverted modalities that they can take, especially within organizational and institutional settings. We argue that applying a richer metaphorical frame to the study of gendered organizations will facilitate the acknowledgement of neglected potentials in masculinity for co-creating initiatives for organizational change

Reframing history: : Commemorating one of the world's biggest industrial disasters

The Oaks Colliery disaster killed at least 360 miners in December 1866 – just two weeks before Christmas – and was the world’s biggest industrial disaster of the 19th century, but it remained virtually unknown for 150 years. Even the names of all those who died were not documented until the local community tried to set the record straight and remember the victims of the tragedy. This resulted in (among other things) a documentary called Black Snow which won the Best Research Film of the Year award at The AHRC Research in Film Awards 2018. The director of Black Snow, Stephen Linstead and colleagues from different agencies who collaborated on the memorial project, explain why the men and women who have died in the course of their work, including those from accidents and disasters, should be commemorated on a special day

The Rhythm of the Saints : Barricades, boundaries, and arts-based interventions in communities with a history of violence

This pamphlet is an updating of a previously published book chapter (2016) based on data up to 2014. The period from 2014-2020 includes the 2019 50th anniversary of the first peace wall and incorporates new information produced in connection with this. The pamphlet is intended to accompany an associated exhibition of 150 images incluidng a multimedia surround sound installation that had to be postponed because of Covid-19 restrictions

Empirical Challenges in Organizational Aesthetics Research: Towards a Sensual Methodology

Despite growing scholarly interest in aesthetic dimensions of organizational life, there is a lack of literature expressly engaging with the methodological mechanics of 'doing aesthetics research'. This article addresses that gap. It begins with an overview of the conceptual idiosyncrasies of 'aesthetics' as a facet of human existence and maps out the challenges these pose for empirical research methodology. A review of methodological approaches adopted to date in empirical studies of organizational aesthetics is then presented. The remainder of the article draws on the author's experiences and suggests methods and techniques to address both conceptual and practical challenges encountered during the execution of an organizational aesthetics research project. The article calls for a firmer focus on the aesthetic experiences of organizational members in addition to those of researchers and concludes with some suggestions as to the future of such 'sensual methodologies' </jats:p

Beyond words: Aesthetic knowledge and knowing in design

Aesthetic knowledge comes from practitioners understanding the look, feel, smell, taste and sound of things. It is vital to work in many organizational contexts. In this paper, we explore aesthetic knowledge and knowing in organizations through detailed observation of design work in the architectural practice Edward Cullinan Architects. Through our research, we explore aesthetic knowledge in the context of architectural work, we unpack what it is, how it is generated, and how it is applied in design projects, shared between practitioners and developed at the level of the organization. Our analysis suggests that aesthetic knowledge plays an important part in organizational practice, not only as the symbolic context for work, but as an integral part of the work that people do. It suggests that aesthetic reflexivity, which involves an opening up and questioning of what is known, is experienced as part of practice as well as a `time out' from practice

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR