J. Miguel Imas

From Harare to Rio de Janeiro: Kukiya-Favela organization of the excluded

This article, based on ethnographic research conducted with people in Brazil and Zimbabwe, reports organization/management experiences and narratives of poor and marginalized people of the south. South embodies the organizational struggle, survival skills and resilience of marginal and urban outcasts that inhabit inner cities, townships and slums. The article employs the notion of kukiya-favela organization, i.e. the organization of the excluded, to engage with them in order to: give voice to those who dwell at the margins of organization studies; make their narratives part of a subject that retains an elitist position; and re-address the Eurocentric management/organization discourse that imposes a legitimate justification for exploiting, excluding and labelling them as organization-less and urban outcasts of society. The article concludes that despite their marginality and exclusion they are able to construct local diverse meaningful (organizational) identities that can represent them with dignity in their struggle for justice and basic human rights. Finally, it reflects on the contribution this has for us, in organization studies, by opening new spaces for the study of organization[al] (lives) not from positions of ‘above’ or ‘against’ but ‘with’ (Gergen, 2003: 454).

Liminal Entrepreneuring: The Creative Practices of Nascent Necessity Entrepreneurs

This paper contributes to creative entrepreneurship studies through exploring ‘liminal entrepreneuring’, i.e., the organization-creation entrepreneurial practices and narratives of individuals living in precarious conditions. Drawing on a processual approach to entrepreneurship and Turner’s liminality concept, we study the transition from un(der)employment to entrepreneurship of 50 nascent necessity entrepreneurs (NNEs) in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. The paper asks how these agents develop creative entrepreneuring practices in their efforts to overcome their condition of ‘necessity’. The analysis shows how, in their everyday liminal entrepreneuring, NNEs disassemble their identities and social positions, experiment with new relationships and alternative visions of themselves, and (re)connect with entrepreneuring ideas and practices in a new way, using imagination and organization-creation practices to reconstruct both self and context in the process. The results question and expand the notion of entrepreneuring in times of socio-economic stress.

Postcard from South America: experiencing organisation at the end of the world

Purpose – The paper aims to present a very personal view of some of the socio‐economic problems and challenges faced by workers, managers and organisations in South America. It also aims to stimulate further dialogue, research and exchange of ideas with South American academics that are exploring alternative ways of representing organisation (studies) on the Continent.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a personal narrative account of the authors experience of doing research in South America and the conversations he had with different individuals about working, managing and organising in this part of the globe.Findings – The authors experience here shows more than ever the need to enhance our understanding of what others around the world are experiencing in order to inform better our theories and to appreciate the consequences of our business practices. Especially, it gives an idea of the effects economic globalisation is having in the region and how it is affecting local communities.Research lim...

Creativity: Transformation of Adversity

In this chapter, we explore creativity as the transformation of adversity, by communities that live at the margins of our society. Creative survival tactics of the marginalized invite us to re-think ideas on creativity and expand our understanding beyond the confines of psychology, art, and organization. Our focus is on understanding how, in contexts of ongoing adversity, marginalized communities fluidly produce and reproduce their distinctive ways of surviving by using adversity as a form of creative capital. We explain how people engage in creative survival tactics, and that these practices may become so widespread they form an alternative economy based on creative survival. We bring this notion of creativity to life by highlighting insights from field research in Zimbabwe. The chapter shows how marginalized people build creative agency and sustain their livelihoods in the face of ongoing hardship, at the same time contributing to the economic productivity of society.

'Bleeding' the creation of alternative organisation through a liberating ideology of transformative humanism

Explores the organisational resistance strategies of disenfranchised individuals in African and Latin America and Europe

Pedestrian utterances on space/less green awareness: visualizing the process

ABSTRACT A workshop in Chicago investigates the intersection of teaching artistry, critical management studies, and green awareness.