413 research outputs found

    Unpacking the client(s): constructions, positions and client–consultant dynamics

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    Research on management consultancy usually emphasizes the role and perspective of the consultants. Whilst important, consultants are only one element in a dynamic relationship involving both consultants and their clients. In much of the literature, the client is neglected, or is assumed to represent a distinct, immutable entity. In this paper, we argue that the client organisation is not uniform but is instead (like organisations generally) a more or less heterogeneous assemblage of actors, interests and inclinations involved in multiple and varied ways in consultancy projects. This paper draws upon three empirical cases and emphasizes three key aspects of clients in the context of consultancy projects: (a) client diversity, including, but not limited to diversity arising solely from (pre-)structured contact relations and interests; (b) processes of constructing ‘the client’ (including negotiation, conflict, and reconstruction) and the client identities which are thereby produced; and (c) the dynamics of client–consultant relations and how these influence the construction of multiple and perhaps contested client positions and identities

    Concepts of Organizational Culture and Presumed Links to Efficiency

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    Os Estudos em Administração se Perderam no Meio do Caminho? Ideias para Pesquisas mais Construtivas e Inovadoras

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    Apesar do grande crescimento no nĂșmero de artigos em administração publicados durante as Ășltimas trĂȘs dĂ©cadas, existe uma escassez de pesquisas de alto impacto em estudos sobre administração. NĂłs acreditamos que a principal razĂŁo por trĂĄs dessa escassez paradoxal Ă© o predomĂ­nio quase total de pesquisas de identificação de lacunas em estudos sobre administração. Esse predomĂ­nio Ă© ainda mais paradoxal quando Ă© bem sabido que pesquisas de identificação de lacunas raramente culminam em teorias influentes. Identificamos trĂȘs principais forças agindo por trĂĄs desse duplo paradoxo: condiçÔes institucionais, normas profissionais e as construçÔes de identidade dos pesquisadores. Discutimos o quanto algumas mudanças especĂ­ficas nessas forças podem reduzir a escassez de teorias influentes de estudos em administração. TambĂ©m apontamos para duas metodologias que podem encorajar e facilitar uma pesquisa mais construtiva e inovadora e revisĂ”es de normas e identidades acadĂȘmicas

    Pre-understanding : an interpretation-enhancer and horizon-expander in research

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    Pre-understanding – our presuppositions of reality – underlies all research. Many researchers probably also draw productively on their pre-understanding in their studies. However, very few rationales and methodological resources exist for how researchers can enrich their research by mobilising their pre-understanding more actively and systematically. We elaborate and propose a framework for how researchers more actively, systematically and visibly can bring forward their pre-understanding and use it as a positive input in research, alongside formal data and theory. In particular, we show how researchers, in dialogue with data and theory, can mobilize their pre-understanding as an interpretation-enhancer and horizon-expander throughout the research process, including stimulating imagination and idea generation, broadening the empirical base, and evaluating what empirical material and theoretical ideas are interesting and relevant to pursue

    Meanings of theory : clarifying theory through typification

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    Developing and evaluating scientific knowledge and its value requires a clear – or at least not too unclear – understanding of what ‘theory’ means. We argue that common definitions of theory are too restrictive, as they do not acknowledge the existence of multiple kinds of scientific knowledge, but largely recognize only one kind as ‘theory’, namely explanatory knowledge. We elaborate a typology that broadens and clarifies the meaning of ‘theory’. Consisting of five basic theory types – explaining, comprehending, ordering, enacting and provoking theories – the typology offers a framework that enables researchers to develop and assess knowledge in more varied ways and for a broader set of purposes than is typically recognized, as well as providing a more level playing field within the academic community

    The problematizing review : a counterpoint to Elsbach and Van Knippenberg’s argument for integrative reviews

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    In this paper we provide a counterpoint to conventional views on integrative reviews in knowledge development, as exemplified by Elsbach and Van Knippenberg (2020). First, we critique their proposed integrative review by identifying and problematizing several key assumptions underlying it, particularly their idea that the integrative review can simply build on existing studies and lead the way to knowledge. Second, based on this critique, we propose as an alternative the problematizing review, which is based on the following four core principles: the ideal of reflexivity, reading more broadly but selectively, not accumulating but problematizing, and the concept that ‘less is more’. In contrast to the integrative review, which regards reviews as a ‘building exercise’, the problematizing review regards reviews as an ‘opening up exercise’ that enables researchers to imagine how to rethink existing literature in ways that generate new and ‘better’ ways of thinking about specific phenomena

    Institutional leadership—the historical case study of a religious organisation

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    In this chapter, I discuss institutional leadership vis-à-vis the value of poverty. To do so, I analyse how poverty has been conceptualised within a Catholic religious organisation, the Jesuits. The chapter shows that, in the Jesuit case, poverty is not strictly defined. Instead, poverty results from the constant dialogue between the individual Jesuit and their leader. This means that the understanding of what constitutes poverty is neither explicit nor implicit. The chapter contributes to our understanding of institutional leadership as the promotion and protection of values, as per Selznick’s classical definition. However, we discuss a less known part of Selznick’s work in which the ambiguous character of values is highlighted. In this sense, and after the Jesuit case, we advance the possibility that the promotion and protection of institutional values by institutional leaders does not necessarily imply the definition of what a value is. As values are not defined beforehand but the result of a constant dialogue between the leader and their followers, institutional leadership can be revisited and freed from the heroic view that has long characterised it
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