Suchergebnisse

It has become common practice for management students to participate in some sort of self-assessment or multisource feedback assessment (MSF; also called 360-degree assessment or multirater assessment) during their management degree program. These assessments provide students invaluable feedback about themselves and assist students in their personal and professional development. This article draws on a conceptualization of the self as multifaceted to examine the benefits and limitations of self-assessment and MSF. Specifically, although an aid to students' learning, self-assessment tools predominantly treat the self as an individual self, thereby ignoring the relational and collective aspects of the self. Moreover, self-assessments that people make tend to be inflated, unreliable, and biased. MSF improves on self-assessment by including others' assessment of the self; however, it also possesses three limitations in its current treatment: MSF (a) conceptualizes the self as an individual self, (b) ignores the importance of context, and (c) relies primarily on a self-other rating agreement. These limitations are explored, and remedies are offered to better account for the multifaceted nature of the self.

Formal institutions such as business chambers have been assumed to be a key indicator of the health of state-business relations (SBR). Yet in Africa these organizations have seldom risen to the level of access and influence enjoyed by some of their counterparts elsewhere in the developing world. A number of recent studies of SBR in Africa continue to overstate the importance of business associations (BAs). Yet despite the widespread marginality of BAs in Africa, the receptiveness of African states to leading firms and business interests has increased markedly. While this poses certain risks of increased corruption, collusion and monopoly, the institutional and political environment for doing business has also improved, thereby fostering new opportunities for further business-related growth and business sector development among bona fide firms. Drawing on evidence from Zambia and elsewhere, this paper finds that the benefits provided to individual firms who enjoy state access can, paradoxically, contribute to an improved environment for other private sector actors whose interests are directly represented only in moribund formal associations. Even without strong BAs, when aided by the state, individual firms, and/or international actors, Africa's improved business environment has a salutary impact on growth.

Misogyny is a significant but unspoken presence in organization studies, in terms of people's experiences of work and as a theorized concept. In this essay we argue that our community should dare to name misogyny for its unique insight into the enduring patriarchal power relations that condition so many organizations and so much of our organization theory. We develop this argument in two ways: first, we suggest that misogyny provides a unique descriptive linguistic label for experiences of gendered hatred, violence and social policing; and second, a philosophical understanding of misogyny enables analysis and understanding of, as well as challenges to, the physical or symbolic violence that many experience in and around organizations as sites for the reproduction of patriarchy. Drawing on recent developments in feminist analytic philosophy, we follow the movement away from understanding misogyny-as-individual-emotion to misogyny-as-affective-practice. This allows us to frame two related concepts, organized and organizational misogyny, demonstrating the potential that misogyny brings to understanding individual experiences, collective affect and influential social forces. Despite the discomfort produced by hate-based concepts such as misogyny, we conclude that their exclusion from organization studies has two effects: the continuing reproduction of violent hostility, and acceptance of a partial account of multiple forms of oppression and inequality. Our research agenda, founded on this need for naming such experiences, the significance of affect and aggregated oppressions, demonstrates the potential contribution of misogyny to addressing these issues and finding some hope for change.

Think tanks became key political and economic actors during the twentieth century, creating and occupying an intellectual and political position between academic institutions, the state, civil society, and public debate on organization and management. Think tanks are especially active in setting frames for what constitutes politically and socially acceptable ways of thinking about economic activity and the rights or obligations of corporations. Their operation and influence has been acknowledged and analysed in political science and policy analysis, but in organization and management studies they are almost entirely ignored. In this paper, we review the existing literature on think tanks to develop an ethical–political framework based on a Gramsci's account of state–civil society relations, referring to historical case materials relating to a significant Brazilian think tank, the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES). We show how the IPES was successful in bringing then-controversial neoliberal perspectives on management and organization into mainstream political debate, where they could be discussed and ultimately accepted as morally and intellectually legitimate. We note the importance of management education and business schools with respect to think tanks in the development of a hegemonic pro-capitalist interpretation of corporate responsibility, and suggest this is worth more investigation. We conclude by outlining how think tanks are central to civil society acceptance of pro-corporate ideologies, how they might be researched regarding the ethical implications of the work they do, and how our approach provides a foundation for this.

Feminism, historically and today, provides challenges and opportunities to men. In this essay, we present a dialogue that highlights different positions on men's activism and thought in relation to feminism. We argue that it is essential for men to engage with feminism as activists and in theory, although this may present risks subjectively, professionally and interpersonally. To illustrate our argument, we provide examples of engagement and distance from our working lives in different socio-cultural contexts. We explore questions of vulnerability and uncertainty in learning from feminism, and discuss how our privileges as (White, middle-aged, permanently employed) men condition our ambivalent experiences. The essay is oriented towards encouraging ourselves/men to articulate what feminism in action means, through research, teaching and professional identity work. We consider throughout the conditions of possibility for men in acting up with feminism in critical organization and management studies, in the hope that practical action can create better conditions of work for all of us.

This article explores the role of vernacular mourning in framing the death of Apple co-founder and former chief executive Steve Jobs. Using the concept of heterotopia to explore the spatio-temporal power relations of contemporary organizational memorialization, we show how the construction of temporary shrines and visual imagery rendered spaces and objects temporarily sacred and maintained Jobs as an ongoing presence in the lives of consumer-believers. Our analysis of these mourning practices identifies three themes: the construction of shrines as temporary organizational memorials in vernacular mourning; the distribution of photographs as memento mori; and the role of official corporate memorialization in disciplining mourners into letting go, severing their connection with Jobs so that the organization could continue without his physical presence. This highlights the importance of organizations in attempting to control mourning through official corporate memorialization and reveals the power relations entailed in determining who and what is mourned in organizational life, and how the dead are remembered.

This article reframes the notion of work/life balance through analysis of branding and the immaterial labour process in a 'new age capitalist' organization. The company does not manufacture material products; rather, value is produced through branding imported goods to promote 'alternative' ways of living. This is achieved through incorporation of leisure activities and lifestyles of key employees, effectively putting their 'lives' to 'work' in the creation of value for the company. For employees, therefore, much work actually takes place notionally outside or on the margins of their formally employed space and time. We argue that this qualitatively transforms the conceptions of, and relations between, work and life that underpin the concept of work/life balance. We conclude by exploring the tensions generated by organizational incorporation of employee autonomy in the pursuit of aspirational branding.

This article seeks to identify the theoretical foundations and practical features of spiritual management development (SMD) through social movements which have enabled the diffusion of religious practices into secular life and led to the development of a more spiritualized psychology. Although similarities can be seen with outdoor management development, SMD is distinctive because it encourages subjects to search for meaning in their everyday working life through engagement with an inner self. It thus encourages an internalized, implicit form of religiosity where the search for self-understanding and the search for meaning are closely aligned. Through a recontextualized, critical reading of the idealistic, Utopian visions portrayed by Maslow and Fromm and the spiritual, transpersonal psychologies of Jung and Assagioli, the intellectual foundations from which SMD practice has developed are traced. Analysis of the texts associated with SMD practice illustrates how these discourses are made meaningful to managers through the concepts of selfrealization, holism and personal and embodied experience which define events as implicitly religious. However, by defining managerial identity in terms of the inner self and placing responsibility for change on the individual, SMD is isolated from possible critique and transformed from a potentially enlightening into a potentially repressive project.