{"title":"Value inquiry and constructing the good in organizations.","authors":"Gry Espedal, Arne Carlsen","doi":"10.1177/01708406241253161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241253161","url":null,"abstract":"Research has taken important steps towards establishing values work in organizations as a performative phenomenon situated in practice. Yet, researchers have said little about the critical and creative nature of such work, including how it may build its agentic powers more so from what is ethically absent than from what is established. We approach this void by drawing from Dewey’s Pragmatism in a comparative analysis of how three value-laden issues tied to companionate love are handled in a faith-based hospital. We develop the notion of value inquiry, which we understand as a discovery-oriented and transformative constructing of the good that takes its originating creative desires from troublesome situations. Our findings suggest that ethically fruitful value inquiry involves opening such situations in a way that critically examines previous practice, enlists people in co-defining needs and engages them in sustained experimental action. By theorizing value inquiry, we relocate ethical agency as a responsive relational capacity emerging with coactive power in evolving situations. Such emergence highlights the relational processes of work on values in organizations. When inquiring together, people move beyond attending to the use of prescriptive value conceptions and into a creative mode of actively searching for and co-constructing the good.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140811071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
James Scott Vandeventer, Javier Lloveras, Gary Warnaby
{"title":"Seeking Organizational Geographies: A multidimensional spatial analysis of everyday organizing","authors":"James Scott Vandeventer, Javier Lloveras, Gary Warnaby","doi":"10.1177/01708406241248983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241248983","url":null,"abstract":"In the context of debates about organizational space, this paper undertakes a multidimensional spatial analysis of everyday organizing. Drawing on an extensive ethnographic study of a housing estate, we use Jessop, Brenner, and Jones’ (2008) territory, place, scale, network framework to reveal processes of everyday spatial production that occur through territorial, place-based, scalar, and networked organizing. Foregrounding the interplay of these dimensions, we identify four resulting tensions at work in everyday organizing: conflict and resistance, boundaries and (un)boundedness, stasis and movement, and alterity and diversity. We propose that centering attention on these dynamics manifest what might be termed ‘organizational geographies.’ Thus, we contribute an empirical demonstration of the ways in which organizing as a sociospatial process occurs during everyday life in a more ‘informal’ site, thereby extending the contextual repertoire of organization studies. We also contribute a methodological approach for organization scholars to analyze everyday spatial production as a multidimensional process, pointing to the potential for greater cross-disciplinary fertilization with human geography in future organization research.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"232 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140629708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Media Review: Aesthetic organizing at the Gutenberg Museum. A history of Renaissance books.","authors":"Philip Gylfe","doi":"10.1177/01708406241248971","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241248971","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140591241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marcelo Francisco de la Cruz Jara, Jelena Spanjol, Theresa Doppstadt
{"title":"Strategic social value orientation and sustainability performance: A commensuration perspective","authors":"Marcelo Francisco de la Cruz Jara, Jelena Spanjol, Theresa Doppstadt","doi":"10.1177/01708406241242900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241242900","url":null,"abstract":"Firms increasingly express the strategic importance of creating social value in addition to financial and market value in their communications to investors. Yet, it is unclear what a strategic orientation towards social value creation entails and whether it differentiates firms in terms of their sustainability performance. This article provides a conceptualization of strategic social value orientation (SSVO) consisting of three behavioral components (leading the business with purpose, support of stakeholders, focus on consequences) and one shared belief (mutuality). Utilizing a novel linguistic, content-analytic measure of strategic social value orientation, we analyze annual letters to shareholders and sustainability ratings across 1580 firm-year observations, indicating that firms with a stronger strategic social value orientation show greater sustainability performance. The article explores commensurability of strategic attention towards social value creation, suggesting that future research prioritize more fine-grained assessments of social value, sustainability strategies and performance. Our study makes two main contributions. First, we advance theory at the intersection of sustainability and strategic orientation literatures by introducing a new concept of a firm’s strategic orientation toward social value creation (i.e. SSVO). Second, we develop and validate an empirical measure at the firm level for analyzing a firm’s strategic social value orientation making an important contribution to the commensuration of sustainability. Our findings offer guidance to scholars and implications for practitioners.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"363 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140203155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Genevieve Shanahan, Stephane Jaumier, Thibault Daudigeos, Alban Ouahab
{"title":"Why reinvent the wheel? Materializing multiplicity to resist reification in alternative organizations","authors":"Genevieve Shanahan, Stephane Jaumier, Thibault Daudigeos, Alban Ouahab","doi":"10.1177/01708406241244522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241244522","url":null,"abstract":"Often we unconsciously take for granted that there is not really an alternative to how we currently organize society – we tend to reify existing social order, misperceiving the way things are now as the way things must be. Such reification constrains our agency by discouraging the thought that we could do better. Alternative organizations undermine this reification by manifesting the real possibility of organizing differently. Such dereification is valuable in itself insofar as it lifts constraints on agency, facilitating intentional choice regarding the social systems we (re)produce. A case study of this dereification is offered by the Réseau Alimentaire Local (RAL), a network of French ‘solidarity groceries’ unified by the pursuit of more just and sustainable alternatives to the dominant model. Groups within the RAL develop their own software to manage these novel alternatives. We were struck, however, by some groups’ efforts to reify their own solutions, disparaging other approaches as mere attempts to ‘reinvent the wheel.’ The case thus raised a tricky question: can alternative organizations dereify existing social order without at the same time reifying their proposal, thereby reimposing constraints on agency? Our exploration through the RAL case grounds two contributions. First, conceptualizing reification in terms of materializing abstract ideas, we demonstrate how any given organizational configuration contributes to the materialization of multiple ideas simultaneously. We identify two forms of such multiplicity: vertical multiplicity, where nested relational networks materialize coherent ideas that differ only in their degree of specificity; and horizontal multiplicity, where intersecting relational networks materialize divergent ideas of the same degree of specificity. We argue that failure to recognize this multiplicity accounts for a great deal of materiality’s reifying capacity, while its recognition can facilitate new ways of approaching the dereification challenge. Our second contribution is therefore a strategy for resisting reification: materializing multiplicity.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140168340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Media Review: Strategy and its demons","authors":"Ghislain Deslandes","doi":"10.1177/01708406241242887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241242887","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"343 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140168156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: A Special Forum on the Australian Black Summer Bushfires","authors":"Hokyu Hwang, Erica Coslor, Hamid Foroughi","doi":"10.1177/01708406241228378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241228378","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140036670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Media Review: On speaking about (refugee) lives that do not matter equally","authors":"Marianna Fotaki","doi":"10.1177/01708406241238377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241238377","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140036666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Politics in Organization Studies: Multi-disciplinary traditions and interstitial positions","authors":"Damian O’Doherty, Christian De Cock","doi":"10.1177/01708406241238378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241238378","url":null,"abstract":"This Perspectives article delves into the archives of Organization Studies covering the period 1986-2010 to advance and develop our thinking of politics and political thinking in organization studies. In our Benjamin-inflected reading (Benjamin, 2002), we look for the revolutionary energies that reside in what may at first appear as perhaps ‘outmoded’ articles in an intellectual environment where the obsolescence of ideas and concepts seems to increase at pace. The purpose of the excavation of our six chosen texts is to build a constellation of what we call ‘interstitial positions’ that reside within and outside the analytical contours of these texts. In this way we bring these texts into a critical condition in the hope that their constellation can act as a real force in the present and help illuminate our contemporary situation. We might then renew our sense of possibility and choice about the organizational worlds we inhabit and to open future avenues for thinking politics informed by the distinctive disciplinary traditions of organization studies.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140036733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Maintaining the meritocracy myth: a critical discourse analytic study of leaders’ talk about merit and gender in academia","authors":"Jean Clarke, Cheryl Hurst, Jennifer Tomlinson","doi":"10.1177/01708406241236610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241236610","url":null,"abstract":"The belief in meritocracy – that advancement is based solely on individual capabilities and hard work – remains ingrained in organizations despite evidence it is a flawed concept that perpetuates gender and other social inequalities. Critical streams of research have highlighted the ideological character of meritocracy discourse, its entrenched nature and acceptance as ‘common-sense’. Less is known about how this ‘meritocracy myth’ is maintained, that is, how this hegemonic discourse retains its potency in day-to-day talk in organizations. We argue that leaders, given their active discursive roles and opportunities to establish and control discourses, play an important but underexamined role in the reproduction and legitimization of this seemingly progressive yet ultimately destructive discourse. We conduct a critical discourse analysis (CDA) drawing on qualitative interviews with leaders in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK focusing on their talk about women’s recruitment and progression in academic roles. We identify three discursive interventions through which leaders routinely maintain and reinforce and on occasion challenge the existing system of meritocracy: invisibilizing gender inequality through gender-neutrality; denying constraints through individualization; and problematising meritocracy to uphold or challenge the status quo. We argue that by uncovering the means through which meritocracy discourse retains its resilience, our paper offers the opportunity to scrutinize and challenge these discursive underpinnings that uphold the ‘meritocracy myth’. We suggest it is possible to re-imagine what might be considered ‘merit worthy’ in universities recognising and centring structural gender and other social inequalities to create more equal institutions.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139946378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}