Alf Rehn

New Sites/Sights: Exploring the White Spaces of Organization

Contemporary organization is increasingly understood as contingent and improvisational - and immersed in complex and shadowy realities where customary assumptions about the space and time of organization no longer hold. This Special Issue invites organization studies into an ambivalent space of sites/sights in organization, the double-play of this modest conceptual proposal necessary in order to open up the complex folding of the epistemological and the ontological in organization today. In this introduction we seek to establish and position a distinctive approach to what we claim to be ‘white spaces’ in organization. We show that any adequate treatment of these white spaces compels a significant breaching of the disciplinary norms of organization studies. Our argument derives from a consideration of a range of recently emerging concepts and analyses in the study of organization, all of which are suggestive of crisis and of emerging (anti-)forms of organization. This edition of Organization Studies publishes six papers and three originally commissioned book reviews that help advance this emerging problematic in organization, and which in their various ways extend our understanding of possible organizing futures.

Towards a theory of project failure

Projects fail. This fact, which is commonsensical and objectively true, has been viewed within the sphere of project studies as either a pathological state to be avoided or a logical problem of goal definition. We will, in this paper, propose a different take on this, one that utilises social theory and political philosophy in order to position project failure in a more general context, and to analyse it as potentially beneficial. By introducing some theoretical perspectives - such as Georges Batailles general economy, Thorstein Veblen on conspicuous action and the political theories of Carl Schmitt - we thus wish to develop the ways in which project failures can be conceptualised, in ways that do not simply condemn such. Rather, we show how failure can be analysed and discussed as productive, without slipping into the vulgar relativism of it all depends on perspective.

Challenging the myths of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship studies started out as a young field, one where a mix of economists, psychologists, geographers and the occasional anthropologist came together to study the wonder and weirdness that is entrepreneurship, in a wide range of fashions and with few a priori assumptions to hold it back. Today, some of this eclecticism lives on in the field, but at the same time we have seen that the field has matured and its popularity has led to the field becoming increasingly institutionalized – and thereby beset by an increasing number of assumptions, even myths. Consequently, this special issue queries some of the assumptions and potential myths that flourish in the field, inquiring critically into the constitution of entrepreneurship as a field of research – all in order to develop the same. Without occasions where a field can question even its most deeply held beliefs, we are at risk of becoming ideologically rather than analytically constituted, which is why we in this special issue wanted to create a space for the kind of critical yet creative play that e.g. Sarasvathy (2004) has encourages the field to engage with.

Branding Atrocity: Narrating Dark Sides and Managing Organizational Image:

Research on the dark side of organizations has usually focused on atrocities committed by organizations or specific persons within them. Less attention has been paid to how organizations can utilize atrocities they had no part in creating. In this article, the manner in which atrocities can be utilized, managed and narrated in corporate image-work is discussed through two empirical illustrations: The Body Shop’s campaign against trafficking, and a campaign by a social movement organization to curb violence towards women in Congo. The article argues that analyzing differences in how organizations choose and position external atrocities in their branding can benefit our understanding of both organizational image-work and the dark side of organization.

Is there a cannibal in organization studies? Notes on anthropophagy and organization (Recipe included)

This article draws out cannibals and cannibalism to elaborate issues of boundaries and consumption in theorizing organization. The logic(s) of cannibalism highlight some of organization’s inherent tensions, stimulating our understanding via the manifold movements of the cannibal. In a moment of reflection—the negotiation of who should and who should not be consumed—the cannibal appears, a figure at the precise point of passage between the organized and primordial chaos, chronologically hybrid, an affecting shadow in a melancholy economy.

Leadership and the 'right to respect' - on honour and shame in emotionally charged management settings

Honour, as a concept, is at times seen as implicit in leadership and the working of peer groups, but has rarely been explicitly discussed in management studies. This paper presents honour as a key category in socio-moral contexts, and discusses how it and related concepts, such as respect, shame and pride, affect leadership contexts. We argue, through a discussion on honour as it has been studied in, for example, sociology and anthropology, that studies thereof can be a promising avenue for developing the way in which complex leadership settings and exchanges are analysed.

Specters, ruins and chimeras: Management & Organizational History's encounter with Benjamin

The historical materialist leaves it to others to be drained by the whore called Once upon a time in historicisms bordello. He remains in control of his powers, man enough to blast open the continuum of history.

The Uncanny Organization Man: Superhero Myths and Contemporary Management Discourse

Mythology, as a concept, is commonly thought to refer to a system of stories of ancient gods or similar archaic religious phenomena, a template adhered to even in more modern mythologies, such as the powerful Cthulhu Mythos (Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagnl). However, we can in popular culture find elaborate mythological systems not strictly tied to religious structures, and more akin to the often less studied hero-myth tradition. One specific such, which we’ll argue has an influence on contemporary management discourse, is that of superhero comics. Starting from the first issue of Action Comics (June 1938), superhero comics have been at the forefront of analyzing the prevailing cultural unconscious, and no other form of cultural expression can measure up to comics in sheer popular culture referencing value. Even if we restrict ourselves to the two main Western mythologies — DC and Marvel — the collected storylines in these ‘universes’ (as comic book mythologies are nowadays commonly known) contain an almost limitless amount of potential for story-telling and iconic referencing, and one which is oft-used across cultural forms — including the form we know as management.

Chance interventions – on bricolage and the state as an entrepreneur in a declining industry

In this paper, we develop the notion of bricolage by paying attention to the role of chance in the same, rather than approaching it from the perspective of control and agency. We argue that the concept of chance can be used to downplay the common tendency to focus on individual agency in bricolage, proposing an alternative understanding of the latter as constellations of resources coming together in unexpected combinations. We situate our theoretical argument in the for bricolage understudied context of a declining industry, where we focus on the role of chance in how resources are combined and separated in state interventions, connecting to the literature on the ‘state as entrepreneur’. Three episodes from the Swedish state-owned shipping companies Zenit and Uddevalla Shipping during the shipping crisis of the 1970s and 1980s are used to illustrate how state intervention can be imbued with chance and serendipity.

On startups and doublethink – resistance and conformity in negotiating the meaning of entrepreneurship

Abstract Startup entrepreneurship is – in the literature, in the discourse of those engaging in it, and in cultural representations of the same – presented both as resistance against prevailing corporate logics and as a path towards becoming a corporate entity. Resistance, claimed or otherwise, is not just a reaction to a perceived outrage or a power imbalance, but is in itself a constitutive part of contemporary entrepreneurship, particularly as this is culturally constructed. We study this paradox, where a discourse of resistance becomes a productive part of entrepreneurial culture, by way of a case study of a successful startup. We analyze the manner in which people working in the startup utilize ‘doublethink’ to portray the organization both as resistance to an assumed, more corporate, ‘Other’ and also as a budding corporation unto itself. By doing so, we highlight how a discourse of resistance works as a value in entrepreneurship culture as well as a productive element of the same. In our case, resistance and corporate conformity come together in a way that defies easy classification; one where notions of resistance exist as easy-to-adopt identity positions and where doublethink becomes a productive way of dealing with corporate success.