NOMP Research Seminars Spring 2022

The chapter explores managers experiences of managing large working groups in complex organizations in times of austerity. De data presented in the chapter show that managers in women dominated operations have substantially larger areas if responsibility compared to other industries both in the EU and in Sweden. The chapter investigates the consequences of this way of organizing on the managers work environment, room for maneuvering and heath.

From the 1980s, when the issue of artifacts (or of technology or of materiality) and of how social sciences could take them into account started to be systematically addressed, up to the recent development of the sociomaterial approach, the methodological question of how to actually account for their role or for their agency or for their contribution to the unfolding of action has been left basically unanswered.

For instance, reflecting on what it means to be a sociomaterial researcher, Lotta Hultin (2019, 91) has recently wrote "[w]hile studies assuming [the sociomaterial] approach have made significant theoretical advancements, showing how we can conceptualize the social and the material as ontologically entangled, and organizational phenomena as enactments in material-discursive practices, the development of research methods grounded in a relational ontology has failed to keep up with these advancements". In my paper, I intend to show that in between the 1980s and early 1990s a method to account for artifacts' role or agency or, better, for their contribution to the unfolding of action has been developed, but somehow it has also been very soon overlooked, disregarded, misunderstood, forgotten. Such method is "de-scription" (also known as the script approach) developed by Madeleine Akrich (1992; and Latour 1992) and Bruno Latour (1992; 2000; Johnson ), within an Actor-Network Theory framework. As Akrich (1992, 206) wrote, such method had been devised in order to answer the following question: "how can we describe the specific role [artifacts] play within [the heterogeneous] networks they [participate in building]? Despite some limits of such methodological proposal, especially if seen from our present position, the paper intend to show that "de-scription", was a sound method for sociomateriality that should/could have been further developed. Moreover the paper intends to show some lines along which this method can be further developed. In doing so the paper will address the following points:

• sociomateriality and methodology
• what is the method of de-scription
• why and how de-scription as a method has been overlooked, disregarded, misunderstood, forgotten
• how method is intended in Actor-Network Theory, especially, through de-scription
• how de-scription can be recovered today and used within research approaches to practices.

Alvise Mattozzi is Senior Assistant Professor in Science and Technology Studies at the Depertment of Environmental Engineering (DIATI) of the Politecnico di Torino (Italy) since AY 2021-22. Before, he has worked for 10 years at the Department of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, where he has taught Social Studies of Design in the Master in Eco-Social Design, which he has contributed to found. His research lies at the crossroad of Science and Technology Studies and Design Studies and focuses on ways to describe the social role of artifacts within an Actor-Network Theory framework. He has also carried out researches on design practices and on the relation between ActorNetwork Theory and semiotics.

Given the increasing importance of migrations around the world, and the challenges that migrants face in entering the labor market, the process of socialization of migrants into organizations deserves more attention from management scholars. Indeed, societal discourses promoting equality and diversity often appear to be in contradiction with the unequal power relations migrants experience on entering the workforce. Drawing on a dialectic perspective and a qualitative meta-synthesis methodology, Omanović and Langley in their article published in Journal of Management Inquiry (Nov., 2021) show how the practices engaged in by organizations to socialize migrant employees are deeply embedded in and influenced by macro-social contexts that may place migrants at a disadvantage, giving rise to emerging tensions. Omanović and Langley examine a range of contingencies that can mitigate the inequalities that migrants experience, and they reveal a variety of dynamic dialectical pathways surrounding migrant socialization practices through which these practices may be reproduced or transformed depending on the mutual relationships between situated conditions, emerging tensions and human praxes.

Vedran Omanovic is at present Senior Lecturer at the Department of Business Administration, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has over 20 years of experience teaching at the Master and Batchelor of science levels and researching diversity issues. He specializes, in particular in critical diversity studies and has studied the social production of diversity discourses in Sweden and elsewhere. In his recent research Omanović focuses on practices of organizing workplace integration, socialization and mentoring of newcomers, as well as polarization on the labor market. Vedran Omanović is also interested in understanding the ideas of different organizational phenomena through the lenses of alternative theoretical and methodological approaches. His recent publications are published in Journal of Management Inquiry (with Ann Langley), Palgrave Macmillan (2020 with Gregg Bucken-Knapp and Andrea Spehar, 2020); Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management (2019); and in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal (2016) /with David Knights/. Vedran Omanović can be contacted at: vedran.omanovic@handels.gu.se

In this review paper I examine the ancient wisdom on how to make good leadership decisions that Antigone offers. Creon, Antigone's ruler, preconizes the traditionally masculine leadership conduct, with hubristic tyrannical tendencies, that deliver tragic consequences. Antigone schools Creon and its audience, firstly, by identifying the behaviors and circumstances that favor bad and untimely leadership decisions. Then Antigone presents the wisdom of phronesis as the way forward for good and timely leadership decisions. Phronesis is a pragmatic, measured rationality that comprises prudence, and a sensibility to the context, openness to dialogue, and to the other. Phronesis also calls for an open and flexible relation to error, to changing one's mind. The focus is not merely on the leader but on the relations, their differences and opportunities, and what everyone involved in the specific circumstances of the decision can offer when listening and learning from each other. Phronesis becomes part of a modus operandi that prefigures collaborative leadership. Collaborative leadership is predicated on the collective and individual flourishing central to the dawn of democratic rule and the dilemmas Antigone examines. This review essay shows how today we still need Antigone in deepening our democracy and making better leadership decisions.

Alessia Contu (she/her) is Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA where she served as Chair of the Management Department between 2014 and 2021. Alessia has previously worked in the UK, at Warwick Business School (2006-13); Lancaster University Management School (2001-2006), and at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology - UMIST (1998-2001) where she also gained her PhD. She was also awarded a Master in Management and Organizational Learning - Lancaster University Management School in 1998. Alessia trained in Italy as a psychologist in the mid-90s where she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Psychology. She currently serves as Associate Editor of Human Relations and Organization and sits on the Editorial Board of Organization Studies. Alessia is interested in psychoanalysis, political philosophy, ethics and critical theories, their significance for understanding and explaining contemporary organisational, managerial, and working practices. Alessia has published in various journals such as Human Relations, Organization Science, Organization, Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, and Ephemera. Her research has focused on organisational politics and specifically organizational resistance and control in MNCs, SMEs and NGOs; the role of hegemonic management discourses such as the ‘learning’ discourse, or the ‘partnership’ discourse in reproducing unequal work relations and stable identities in late capitalism; and that of innovation, knowledge creation and sharing in communities of practice. Alessia has also intervened in a variety of debates addressing phenomena like whistleblowing, leadership, and conflict. In the past 8 years Alessia has been studying, promoting, and embracing the intellectual activism delineated by Black feminist scholars as a form of engaged praxis for social justice to transform the work of business school scholars/educators and their impact – see www.engagedscholars.org. Alessia’s empirical research is currently focusing on Justice, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (JEDI) in management education; and democratic and alternative organisational forms including the relevance and challenges of workers buy outs, and employees owned businesses.

E-mail: Alessia.Contu@umb.edu

Twitter: @AlessiaContu3

During the seminar Caroline will present a SLR (systematic literature review) she has performed during the winter and spring. The topic is digital nomads and during the seminar she will present both how the SLR was conducted, the steps included in the methodology, and the results of the study as they are then. Digital nomads have over the past decade risen as a form of organizing both ones work and life around the possibility of traveling (sometime perpetually). There has been some research done on digital nomads, so far mostly focused on tourism and travelling. This SLR will focus on what kind of research has been published so far, how this research can be categorized and how this research could be moved forward through new concepts or theoretical lenses.

Caroline is a senior lecturer in Organization and Management with a specialization in Project Management at MDU since 2020. She is currently working on research on new ways of working with a focus on experiences and understandings of the workplace, including a study on digital nomads and their experience of what a workplace is. Caroline is currently a visiting scholar with Carroll School of Management at Boston College where she is to focus parts of her research on organizational identity and what role the workplace plays in the scaping of organizational identity.

In the 21st century, an increasing number of women have become engaged in creative writing. In Sweden, women are in majority in creative writing classes and as authors of published novels. This study explores women’s constructs of themselves as credible professional identities as authors, and their constructions of such work-related identities as both desirable and accessible. The empirical material derives from 21 interviews and 32 written responses from members of one of Sweden’s largest Facebook groups for professional and aspiring authors. Through a discursive psychology approach, the interpretative repertoires of writing as freedom, gaining a voice and becoming valuable are concluded in the metaphor of Kintzugi; the art of mending what is broken with gold. In the light of writing as work, difficult lived experiences become valuable, transforms private voices to public voices and constructs the road to freedom from stressful and constrained living conditions.

Key words: creative writing, gendering work, discourse analysis.

Eva Lindell (PhD) is senior lecturer at the department of Organization and Management at Mälardalen University School of Business, Society and Engineering (EST). She is interested in digitalization in relation to changes in working life and labor market relations. Her empirical material derives from various public and private organizations as well as freelance and creative workers. She takes an interest in different forms of qualitative methods with a special focus on discursive psychology frameworks.

Building on the concept of Critical Feminist Reflexivity, this work argues for incorporating and enacting feminist care ethics in the research process as a methodological attempt. CFR is a methodology and practice of reflexivity grounded in feminist epistemological and ethical commitments (Linabary et al., 2020) questioning the neutrality of the researcher’s position. A CFR process recognises the researchers’ self-identity, power embeddedness in the research context, the value of embodied and affective experience in research (Womersley et al., 2011), as well as “the messiness and complexities of the research process” (Dosekun, 2015; English and Irving, 2008 in Linabary et al., 2020: 3) all as necessary attributes and departing point for reflexivity. We argue that research approach applying CFR and incorporating feminist care ethics opens an otheroriented caring space allowing for research insights (upon organizational phenomena) to address ethical responsibility and sensitivity in a relational manner in dynamic relations in organizations. It facilitates knowledge generating process through enabling connectedness between the researcher and the research participants, and the ‘reach’ between collaborative team members in a research project.

Dr Janet Johansson is a Senior Lecture from the Department of Management and Engineering at Linköping University. Her current research focus lies in Business Ethics, Gender Equality and Critical Diversity Management Studies. She uses alternative ethical theories (feminist care ethics) to critically analyse normative practices that causes inequality, unjust and marginalization of some individuals in organizations. Her recent publications (2020-2021) with the above focuses are:

Johansson, J., Asztalos Morell , I., & Lindell, E. (2020, June 13). Gendering the digitalized metal industry.

Gender, Work and Oraganization, Advanced online publication External link.

Cozza, M., Gherardi, S., Johansson, J., Mondon‐Navazo, M., Murgia, A., & Trogal, K. (2020). Covid19 as a breakdown in the texture of social practices.

Gender, Work and Organization, 28(S1), 190-208 External link.

Johansson J, Edwards M. Exploring caring leadership through a feminist ethic of care: The case of a sporty CEO.

Leadership. 2021;17(3):318-335 External link.

Johansson, J.Z., Lindström Sol, S. Artistic Freedom or the Hamper of Equality? Exploring Ethical Dilemmas in the Use of Artistic Freedom in a Cultural Organization in Sweden.

J Bus Ethics (2021) External link.

In this seminar we will present two papers that both adopt a discursive approach to the digitalization of the Swedish steel industry. Older NOPM-group members may recognize the story since we, several years ago presented a very early version of a paper. Since then, the paper became two and one paper is now published (“Digital transformation and power relations: Interpretative repertoires of digitalization in the Swedish steel industry”, Scandinavian Journal of Management). The other one is (at the time of writing this abstract, i.e. Nov 2021) in a review-process. We will present bot papers, and are interested in having a discussion about the implications of them for practice and future research. We however also invite you to a discussion about how paper ideas emerge in research collaborations, about collaborating on individually collected material and about joint writing.

Anette Hallin is Chair in Organization and Management at Åbo Akademi University (Finland) and professor at Mälardalen University (Sweden). Her research is about how change (in organizations, in management, in work) happens through the co-production of technology/materiality and organizing/the social. She has performed empirical work in various empirical contexts, eg cities and wastemanagement, projects and temporary organization, and digitalization-automation, with different forms of qualitative methods.

Anette Hallin External link.

Eva Lindell (PhD) is senior lecturer at the department of Organization and Management at Mälardalen University School of Business, Society and Engineering (EST). She is interested in digitalization in relation to changes in working life and labor market relations. Her empirical material derives from various public and private organizations as well as freelance and creative workers. She takes an interest in different forms of qualitative methods with a special focus on discursive psychology frameworks.

Eva Lindell External link.

Bosse Jonsson, PhD, Associate Professor in Health Care Education at Mälardalen University. His research is about work integrated learning, the concept of health, employee participation and challenges for professions due to ongoing changes in work life. His analytical approaches mainly stem from discourse analysis, critical theory and action theory.

Anna Uhlin is a PhD candidate at the department of Organization and Management at Mälardalen University School of Business, Society and Engineering (EST). Her research interest lies in the processes and practices of organizing work in a digitalized work life, with her thesis being a qualitative study about the performance and the performativity of virtual and hybrid work meetings.

Anna Uhlin External link.