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This paper brings to light stories of Heather Höpfl. Its purpose is to show how Heather was and is present for us. We also illustrate Professor Dr Heather Höpfl’s contribution to organization theory, specifically her discourse of the maternal organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music is by and large an underexplored social resource in the organization theory framework. There is small but intriguing literature on the uses of music in organizations, stretching back to the days of the engineering revolution, and a body of texts examining the innovation of musical instruments, but music remains primarily a marginal phenomenon in organization theory. Drawing on a variety of literatures, this paper suggests that music plays a key role in creating possibilities for agency. Studies of the use of music in manufacturing settings and in retailing provide empirical evidence of how music is not detached from broader social interests and concerns but rather is a constitutive element in the social fabric. The paper concludes that music and the scholarly field of musicology are two domains to be further explored in organization theory and management studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using critical aesthetics, this paper shows the essential ideological and control linkages between ethics and aesthetics in organizations. Using Kateb's concept of aesthetic cravings, the paper explores the role of emotional and psychological attachments in organizational reality construction and their implications for organizational change and organizational control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Deleuze and Guattari's notions of the smooth and the striated as a basis for rethinking the events of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans in September 2005. It is argued here that popular narratives of Katrina, and perspectives on disaster from the field of organization studies, have tended to be conditioned by a long-standing and restrictive dualism between 'man' (organization) and 'nature' (disorganization), and an associated, anthropocentric moral framework. By contrast, Deleuze and Guattari are seen to offer a set of concepts relating to spatial and material patterns of organization which allow us to move beyond such a conceptual dualism towards other ways of thinking the events of Katrina. Furthermore, they are also understood to have provided the basis for some radical reflections on the role of the State in the reproduction of a particular material and conceptual logic of disaster management and planning. According to an application of their concepts of the smooth and the striated, Katrina is described here, not according to notions of natural disorder, but as a Deleuzo-Guattarian 'war machine', operating according to an alien mode of organization to that of the State. It is this encounter, between two irreducibly different modes of organization, which is seen to account for both its extreme 'catastrophic' effects, and for some of the unusual organizational phenomena occurring in its aftermath. In contrast to some recent papers in the field of organization studies that have tended to treat Deleuze and Guattari's work in abstract and theoretical terms, this paper proposes to make a distinctive contribution to this Deleuzo-Guattarian 'turn' by situating, or putting to work, their thought in the context of Katrina as an empirical event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of corporate social responsibility today is widely acknowledged to have become a pragmatic one. That is to say that considerations over how corporate social responsibility should be have become prioritised over discussions concerning whether it should be. In this paper I evaluate whether this recently attained pragmatic disposition gives cause for enthusiasm. This evaluation begins by outlining the manner in which the notion of corporate moral personhood, read here largely through the conceptual framework of corporate conscience, has been opposed, in principle, to Milton Friedman's contractually derived critique of corporate social responsibility. Having identified the nature of the opposition offered by advocates of the conscientious framework to Friedman's contractual framework the paper then demonstrates, via Nietzsche, the manner in which these supposed opponents can actually be understood as fundamentally interconnected. The paper then turns, penultimately, towards a discussion of the manner in which the pragmatic opposition to Friedman is primarily based upon the popularisation of the belief that he is wrong to define the social responsibilities of business in the way that he does. The paper is brought to a close through an evaluation of moral pragmatism, as it has been recently conceived, within this particular context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper notes an increasing concern with organisational violence, but also that much of the work considers violence to be a problem requiring functionally effective solutions. We argue for a more radical view of violence, which sees it as inherent to all manner of organising processes, including writing, editing and publishing. The paper considers violence in the establishment and maintenance of order, as constituted in acts of organising, inherent to Self-Other relationships, in the politics and dynamics of difference, and in issues of identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers relations between violence and organization as seen through the lens moulded by Rene Girard. This is because more than any other writer of his generation Girard postulates the primacy of violence in his sociological theorising. In this paper we first outline Girard's theory. Next we discuss this in relation to Freudian theories of organization. We then draw out some of the implications of his theory for the understanding of topics within Organization Theory, such as bureaucracy and sexual harassment. Finally we suggest a research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, organization theory's attempts to understand architecture firms have focused by and large on debates about increasing managerialization and economization of the profession. This paper suggests an alternative approach by conceptualizing architecture as practice that does not adhere only to a narrow economic logic of value creation but also focuses on the production of aesthetic value. We will introduce the concept of style to understand how architecture practice routinely breaks routines and follows the rule of rule breaking. We will analyze architecture practice as a form of organized heresy - a hegemonic engine for the production of difference. In order to illustrate our points we will draw on qualitative empirical fieldwork with an architecture firm (synonym Earth Architects). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with Herman Melville's short story Bartleby the Scrivener, as well as contemporary discussions thereof, so as to consider a peculiar concept of excess suggested to us by its main character. Our discussion focuses upon three of the most prominent contemporary Bartlebys: 'The Politicized Bartleby' of Slavoj Zizek, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri; 'The Originary Bartleby' of Gilles Deleuze; and 'The Whatever Bartleby' of Giorgio Agamben. On the basis of these interpretations we derive a concept of excess as the residual surplus of any categorical interpretation, the yet to be accounted for, the not yet explained, the un-interpretable, the indeterminate, the always yet to arrive, precisely that which cannot be captured, held onto nor put in place. This particular discussion of Bartleby is connected to a more general discussion of a management and organization studies that has become increasingly reliant upon literary texts. On this topic, we pass a not altogether optimistic commentary, itself informed by the excessive demand of adequately interpreting Bartleby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary western organizations appear to be caught in neophily, i.e., a cult of newness and novelty. As traditional means of organizational transformation - and profit maximization in particular - have broadly proven insufficient or to have completely failed, contemporary capitalism has turned the Old into an antiquated object of hatred. As the Old, and thus the past, is split off, the New - because it is new - is guaranteed to be better. Organizational structures and processes that previously served as more or less reliable containers for both labour and capital are now regarded as old wineskins that have served their purpose and belong on the 'scrapheap of history'. This paper emanates from the working hypothesis that betrayal and cynicism, in the context of organizational transformation, cannot sufficiently be understood from a perspective limited to individual psychopathology but has to take the organization as a whole into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to challenge the status of the organizational, this paper proposes a 'nonorganizational' turn towards embodiment and desire. Introducing and critically discussing Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) notion of the 'body without organs' (BwO), it argues that this may improve organization theory's opportunities to think about the forces of embodied desire that disrupt, undermine and escape organization, upset the homogeneity of organizational life, and overpower organizations to such an extent that they cease to be organizations. Rather than adding more 'organization' to 'organizational life', this may be a way to put more 'life' into it. And rather than deeming organization more powerful, this may be a way to recognize its limitations and fragility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A screaming comes across the sky. Others glare with a vacant intensity. Solaris studies at the very same time that the world appears to be becoming one vast recording studio. Our cameras are in the process of dissolution and decay. This paper hurtles headlong into the Green Burning Car that is the crash of organization studies today. On the cusp of a promised new mode of study in organizational analysis we write on speed, attracting found objects, jump cuts, weird juxtapositions, and chance encounters in a 'pataphysical' dérive . As an exercise in sympathetic magic, or orgiastic ritual, we are able to exorcise here a number of ghosts in organization theory. Speed limits provide an occasion for shame: shame for its bombast and juvenility, its masculinity and narcissism; the end(s) of organization studies intrudes as event, a sacrifice for dreams of what might come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows a double intention. First, it tries to show that a piece of art is a relevant starting point for a reflection on a serious topic in organisation theory. The description and interpretation of Katharina Fritsch's sculpture Tischgesellschaft 1 is seen as a comment on developments inside organisations. Secondly, reasons and sources for the intrinsic violence of organisations are explored. What the sculpture suggests is that violence is inherent in the very process of organising and that people are compelled into a conforming and ordered set of behaviours by the machinations of organising. This can be interpreted as an aspect of violence. The violence in question here is not wilful, physical violence, it is the subtle violence inherent to the imposition of ordering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fans are a group that are stigmatized and discredited, at least to some degree, by their "deviant" and common form of symbolic consumption. At stake in the process of stigmatization is the very identity of the individual fan, and their symbolic and emotional well-being. This paper reports on an empirical study of one particular group of fans-- Star Trek fans (or "Trekkies")--and explores the complex identity issues articulated by them as they "manage" their problematic public identity. Drawing upon interviews conducted with 18 Trekkies, the article describes how this stigmatic identity is organized within a disciplinary matrix that operates at a micro level through two key processes: humour and self-surveillance. In particular, we highlight their struggle with the dilemmas of exposing their private "fandom" in a public context, and the highly ambivalent manner in which they seek to escape stigmatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses autobiographical stories to explore various aspects of institutional violence. The stories are taken from a range of institutional settings including schools, academia and commercial enterprises. Each story is used in a dynamic interplay with extant theories and explanations of violence in a mutually explorative and informing manner. Each tale intersects with a different set of issues relating to organisations and violence. The stories and the analysis cohere around the central notion that there exist economies of violence in which violence is exchanged, transacted and within which it circulates. Such economies are constituted and legitimated by discourses, the economy shifts and alters as the surrounding discourses change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, drawing on Henri Bergson's writing knowledge is seen as a virtual asset, i.e. , a resource that transgresses the distinction between past, present and future. Knowledge is never solely related to the actual present, but is continuously related to and associated with previous experiences and anticipated futures. By conceptualizing knowledge as a virtual asset, the notion of knowledge is freed from its commonplace metaphor of being a stock of skills and know-how that the organization can make use of. In this perspective, knowledge can never be fully conceived of as a stock, but must always be related to practices and activities. As a consequence, knowledge management theory needs to redirect its attention towards practices, rather than theorizing in terms of the taxonomies of knowledge employed by organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the representation of organizations in the television cartoon series South Park. In particular the South Park episode 'Gnomes' is reviewed — this episode contains a direct parody of the role and conduct of organizations in society as its story revolves around a 'fictitious' coffee chain, Harbucks', attempt at a hostile takeover of a small town coffee shop. Drawing on the episode's roman a clef (or perhaps cartoon a clef) depiction of the global coffee retailing organization Starbucks, it is argued that this popular culture representation offers opportunities to critique and debate organizational behaviour in a way not available to modes of representation common to Organization Studies. Following Bakhtin's model of the carnival, South Park is read as exemplary of a subversive culture of folk humour that mocks, satirises and undermines official institutions — a culture rich in understandings of contemporary organizations and their relationship with society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of a panel discussion of the merits and demerits of the regulation or legalization of the sex industry. The contributors are an academic researcher, a policy adisor, an agency network co-ordinator and a sex-worker representative. The debate covers sex work and the law; attitudes of courts, police and public; the conditions and exploitation of sex workers; the distinction between voluntary and non-voluntary sex work. The sex industry, it is argued, is a challenging arena for exploration by management and organization theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]