Alexia Panayiotou

‘Macho’ managers and organizational heroes: competing masculinities in popular films

This article works with the visual narrative of several popular films to critically analyse how masculinity is constructed in the cinematic workplace, focusing on the representations of managers and the interplay between the practice of management and the practice of gender. Using a performative-practice approach, the article focuses on the ‘saying and doing’ of gender in the films chosen and shows that organizations in film are a testing ground for competing forms of masculinity; in fact, one type—the ‘organizational hero’—may offer a type of resistance to prevailing cultural paradigms, so that Hollywood films present both a propagation of dominant patriarchal discourses and a space for challenging these discourses.

Viewing the Language of Space: Organizational Spaces, Power, and Resistance in Popular Films

Working within the tradition that sees space as narrative, in this paper we argue that the way space is constructed in popular films frames certain meanings about corporations that reflect the way that power relations are produced and reproduced in organizational contexts. We see power in Foucaultian terms and analyze the relationship of space and power in regard to three interrelated dimensions: the power enacted by the individuals in space, the symbolic power enacted by organizations through the use of space, and the power that space carries in and of itself so that space structures (or restructures) relationships. At the same time, we discuss how resistance is enabled in organizations both despite and due to space. Although physical space is often seen as a source of organizational power, both physically and symbolically, its relationship to resistance is much less well understood. We focus then on how the constitution of a “resistant subject” becomes central to the narrative about organizational space and how the subject’s acts highlight the notion that power and resistance are not analytical opposites but rather semiological co-constructions, accessed through the physical and mental space provided by film.

Spacing gender, gendering space: A radical “strong plot” in film:

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion on organizational space and gender by focusing on a powerful tool for management learning—popular culture and, in particular, Hollywood films. Taking a performative practice approach to the study of both gender and space and working with films featuring women in the central organizational role, this study explores the protagonists’ spatial practices as these are used to subvert, intentionally or unintentionally, organizational patriarchal structures. In this context, the study traces both how space is gendered through particular situated social practices and how gender is spaced, or how gender performativity is materialized in and through organizational space. Findings show that although on surface organizational spaces marginalize women, certain spatial practices can hybridize the workspace and transform the “margin” into a “space of radical openness.” This new space can also aid in subverting the traditional “strong plot” of the career woman, thus transforming both what we know and how we know in organizations.

Visuality as Greenwashing: The Case of BP and Deepwater Horizon:

We use a visual semiotic approach to explore how BP utilized the power of the visual after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. Through the careful construction and use of images on its corporate website, BP narrated a visual story that helped the company construct a “logic of representation” when its “logic of practice” became problematic and heavily scrutinized. We argue that the BP case has wider applicability in understanding how companies deploy the visual to create a reality that averts the limelight from risky practices, aid their post-disaster image restoration efforts, or even enhance greenwashing practices when decoupling is exposed. The study adds to a growing literature that raises the importance of visual literacy for both management practitioners and researchers of organizations. It also adds to the literature on greenwashing by showcasing the role of visual imagery in shaping green communication.

Generating tensions: A multilevel, process analysis of organizational change

Working within a Bakhtinian perspective of relational dialectical tensions, this study seeks to elaborate on current organizational change theories through a rich set of qualitative data collected on an Internet start-up that revolutionized the music industry. Following the company for 12 years, we focused on the tensions arising during the company’s development and on the responses to these tensions. Our results indicate that with a process model, tensions and decisions develop in a reflexive relationship, which shows that change happens, not in spite of unintended consequences, but because of the unintended consequences of the decisions enacted. We show that change is not always the result of deliberate intentions, conscious choices, and purposeful actions of individuals, but rather as an ongoing process that evolves through countervailing dynamics at multiple organizational levels. Tensions and responses to them are pivotal to this process of changing and should be analyzed as directional markers for future oppositional struggles. Consistent with the Bakhtinian position, we find that change occurs within the interplay of tensions as actors live out struggles and decisions in the midst of organizing.

Constructing labour: an exploration of emotional responses to work in two cultural settings

This paper explores the responses of participants in a study designed to invoke emotions about the importance of work vis-a-vis other priorities in life. It asks: What happens when people are presented with similar work situations in different cultural contexts? Do people evaluate and respond with different emotions to these scenarios? To address these questions, bilingual/bicultural informants were asked to respond to an emotion-eliciting scenario about time spent at work. The results indicate that bilinguals show different emotional responses based on the language and culture in which and to which they are responding and suggest that work may be a culturally constructed phenomenon.

Website stories in times of distress

Highlighting the uniqueness of websites as a specific form of interactive and visual communication tool, we explore how corporate websites aid storytelling in times of distress. Using the corporate website of BP as our empirical context, we analyze the visual story that unfolded before and after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster though a visual semiotic method, and argue that the changes in the story potentially mitigated the impact of the environmental catastrophe after the spill. We propose that our website analysis of a case of serious corporate misdoing, where a company’s stated and actual environmental practices were in dissonance, provides an insight to the construction of the ‘liquid organization,’ as well as to what Bauman calls ‘liquid power’ or ‘the art of escape from all forms of social responsibility.’ As such, we believe that mobilizing website study in management practice and education can provide a better understanding of ‘corporate hypocrisy’ in a liquid, modern world, as well as enable stakeholders’ responsibility and power to hold organizations accountable for their misdoings.

Paradoxes of Change

We build on the organizational paradoxes literature by elaborating on theory through a rich set of qualitative data collected on an internet start-up that revolutionized the music industry. Following the company for twelve years, we focus on how change happens “on the ground,” its generative mechanisms and outcomes. Specifically, we locate the tensions arising during the company’s development and the decisions made to address these tensions. Contrary to our expectation that we would confirm a stability-change paradox presented in previous literature, we find that our focal organization was characterized by a series of nested paradoxes: first, in analyzing change on three levels, individual, organizational and industry, we were able to illuminate the dynamic interplay of “changing while being changed” or what we call a changed-changing paradox. As the three levels interacted with and against each other, we also find that the decision bringing “resolution” to a tension is the same decision instigating a new...