Apologies for any cross-posting:
A new issue of Human Relations is available online: January 2015; Vol. 68, No. 1 - we hope you enjoy reading these articles.
The entire issue can be accessed online at: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1?etoc .
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January issue articles
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Conducting global team-based ethnography: Methodological challenges and practical methods
Paula Jarzabkowski, Rebecca Bednarek, and Laure Cabantous
Human Relations January 2015; 68(1): 3–33. DOI: 10.1177/0018726714535449
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1/3?etoc
Abstract
Ethnography has often been seen as the province of the lone researcher; however, increasingly management scholars are examining global phenomena, necessitating a shift to global team-based ethnography. This shift presents some fundamental methodological challenges, as well as practical issues of method, that have not been examined in the literature on organizational research methods. That is the focus of this article. We first outline the methodological implications of a shift from single researcher to team ethnography, and from single case site to the multiple sites that constitute global ethnography. Then we present a detailed explanation of a global team-based ethnography that we conducted over three years. Our study of the global reinsurance industry involved a team of five ethnographers conducting fieldwork in 25 organizations across 15 countries. We outline three central challenges we encountered: team division of labour, team sharing and constructing a global ethnographic object. The article concludes by suggesting that global team-based ethnography provides important insights into global phenomena, such as regulation, finance and climate change among others, that are of interest to management scholars.
The present of things past: Ethnography and career studies
John Van Maanen
Human Relations January 2015; 68(1): 35–53. DOI: 10.1177/0018726714552287
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1/35?etoc
Abstract
This article first provides something of an informal narrative of my own academic career and suggests just what is idiosyncratic to that narrative and what seems to me to be rather general. This is followed by a swift look at ethnography as a social practice and some of its defining features highlighting the relatively recent burgeoning of ethnographic studies in organizational research. The following sections examine what I think are exemplary ethnographic career studies and just how these ethnographic studies have changed over time. The next section notes what seems to have not changed much over the years. I conclude by revisiting some of my introductory remarks on academic careers and the always provisional character of ethnographic studies. My normative argument is that while ethnographic work has contributed a great deal to our understanding of both occupational and organizational careers – then and now – such studies are too often overlooked by current variable and measurement-driven career researchers.
Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography
Sarah Gilmore and Kate Kenny
Human Relations January 2015; 68(1): 5–78. DOI: 10.1177/0018726714531998
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1/55?etoc
Abstract
While organizational ethnographers have embraced the concept of self-reflexivity, problems remain. In this article we argue that the prevalent assumption that self-reflexivity is the sole responsibility of the individual researcher limits its scope for understanding organizations. To address this, we propose an innovative method of collective reflection that is inspired by ideas from cultural and feminist anthropology. The value of this method is illustrated through an analysis of two ethnographic case studies, involving a 'pair interview' method. This collective approach surfaced self-reflexive accounts, in which aspects of the research encounter that still tend to be downplayed within organizational ethnographies, including emotion, intersubjectivity and the operation of power dynamics, were allowed to emerge. The approach also facilitated a second contribution through the conceptualization of organizational ethnography as a unique endeavour that represents a collision between one 'world of work': the university, with a second: the researched organization. We find that this 'collision' exacerbates the emotionality of ethnographic research, highlighting the refusal of 'researched' organizations to be domesticated by the specific norms of academia. Our article concludes by drawing out implications for the practice of self-reflexivity within organizational ethnography.
The politics of identity in organizational ethnographic research: Ethnicity and tropicalist intrusions
Rafael Alcadipani, Robert Westwood, and Alexandre Rosa
Human Relations January 2015; 68(1): 79–106. DOI: 10.1177/0018726714541161
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1/79?etoc
Abstract
The article addresses aspects of the politics of identity that became manifest in the researcher–researched relationships in the context of an organizational ethnographic field study at a UK-based printing business. As the fieldwork commenced, it quickly became apparent that the researcher's Brazilian nationality and Latin American ethnic identity were being performed and responded to in certain specific and problematic ways. This study analyzes the dynamics of identity work and identity politics in ethnographic and other qualitative research. However, the specific contribution of this article is that it examines the questions that arise when the typical structures and patterns of research practice – which are themselves embedded in a spatialized politics of knowledge – are reversed. Historically, research in the social sciences (including management and organization studies) has been conducted by researchers from the center in relation to others in the non-center. Furthermore, in so doing, epistemologies, theories and methods developed in and for the center are deployed to examine and explain phenomena in those other places. This article addresses the question of what happens when the researcher is from the non-center and is conducting research on those from the center. This inversion is increasingly common and has significant implications not only for research practice and the
Towards a progressive understanding of performativity in critical management studies
Christopher Wickert and Stephan M Schaefer
Human Relations January 2015; 68(1): 107–130. DOI: 10.1177/0018726713519279
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1/107?etoc
Abstract
A central debate in critical management studies (CMS) revolves around the concern that critical research has rather little influence on what managers do in practice. We argue that this is partly because CMS research often focuses on criticizing antagonistically, rather than engaging with managers. In light of this, we seek to re-interpret the anti-performative stance of CMS by focusing on how researchers understand, conceptualize and make use of the performative effects of language. Drawing on the works of JL Austin and Judith Butler, we put forward the concept of progressive performativity, which requires critical researchers to stimulate the performative effects of language in order to induce incremental, rather than radical, changes in managerial behaviour. The research framework we propose comprises two interrelated processes: (i) the strategy of micro-engagement, which allows critical researchers to identify and 'ally' with internal activists among managers, and to support their role as internal agents of change; and (ii) 'reflexive conscientization' − that is, a dialogic process between researchers and researched that aims to gradually raise the critical consciousness of actors in order to provide spaces in which new practices can be 'talked into existence' through the performative effects of language.
Perceptions of employee voice and representation in the post-acquisition period: Comparative and longitudinal evidence from an international acquisition
Tony Edwards and Martin R Edwards
Human Relations January 2015; 68(1): 131–156. DOI: 10.1177/0018726714525649
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1/131?etoc
Abstract
Despite the disappointing performance of international mergers and acquisitions and the widespread recognition that their success depends at least partly on how employees are managed during and after an acquisition, very few studies draw on employee accounts of how they are affected by ongoing restructuring and how much influence employees themselves have over this process. The omission is especially important because of the likely role that national institutions play in conditioning the way employees are affected by organizational change in the post-acquisition period. This article investigates employees' perceptions of whether they experience voice and representation opportunities following an acquisition through analysis of a unique longitudinal and cross-national dataset that demonstrates national differences in this respect. Moreover, there are also national differences in how these perceptions change over time. We highlight the utility of drawing on employee accounts in longitudinal and comparative perspective, suggesting that this represents a fruitful way of breathing fresh life into the debate about convergence and divergence in HRM and employment relations.
Bait and switch or double-edged sword? The (sometimes) failed promises of calling
Brenda L Berkelaar and Patrice M Buzzanell
Human Relations January 2015; 68(1): 157–178. DOI: 10.1177/0018726714526265
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/1/157?etoc
Abstract
How people talk about their work and careers matters. Desiring meaningful work, people increasingly describe work and careers as a calling. Such callings may be secular or sacred. Popular ways of talking about calling often create problematic, rather than positive, career and life outcomes. In this article, we examine five common, historically influenced assumptions underlying contemporary talk about secular and sacred callings: necessity; agency and control; inequality; temporal continuity; and neoliberal economics. We showcase some of the likely downsides of calling as these underlying assumptions interact with people's everyday lives. We suggest possible solutions for rehabilitating calling to help people find some of the career and quality-of-life benefits that calling promises. In sum, this essay contributes to a more nuanced understanding of calling and agency in contemporary careers while also offering a framework and direction for developing research and practice on calling.
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December free-access article
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This article will be free to access until 31 December 2014:
Organizing to counter terrorism: Sensemaking amidst dynamic complexity
Ian Colville, Annie Pye and Mike Carter
Human Relations 2013; 66 (9): 1201–1223. DOI: 10.1177/0018726712468912
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/66/9/1201.full.pdf+html
Abstract
Organizations increasingly find themselves contending with circumstances that are
suffused with dynamic complexity. So how do they make sense of and contend with
this? Using a sensemaking approach, our empirical case analysis of the shooting of Mr
Jean Charles de Menezes shows how sensemaking is tested under such conditions.
Through elaborating the relationship between the concepts of frames and cues, we find
that the introduction of a new organizational routine to anticipate action in changing
circumstances leads to discrepant sensemaking. This reveals how novel routines do
not necessarily replace extant ones but, instead, overlay each other and give rise to
novel, dissonant identities which in turn can lead to an increase rather than a reduction
in equivocality. This has important implications for sensemaking and organizing amidst
unprecedented circumstances.
All best wishes of the season to you and for a happy, healthy and successful 2015!
Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org
Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org
OnlineFirst forthcoming articles: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
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