Jana Costas

Bringing Secrecy into the Open: Towards a Theorization of the Social Processes of Organizational Secrecy

This paper brings into focus the concept of organizational secrecy, defined as the ongoing formal and informal social processes of intentional concealment of information from actors by actors in organizations. It is argued that existing literature on the topic is fragmented and predominantly focused on informational rather than social aspects of secrecy. The paper distinguishes between formal and informal secrecy and theorizes the social processes of these in terms of identity and control. It is proposed that organizational secrecy be added to the analytical repertoire of organization studies.

Problematizing Mobility: A Metaphor of Stickiness, Non-Places and the Kinetic Elite

A ‘mobilities turn’ has taken place in the social sciences, which is finding its way into organization studies. As research highlights how work and organization are mobile and spatially dispersed, metaphors of liquidity, flows, fluidity and nomads have become significant. This article seeks to contribute to the mobilities turn by introducing the Sartrean metaphor of stickiness. In contrast to the currently dominant movement metaphors, this metaphor brings into focus ambiguities and frictions and overcomes problematic connotations of nomadism and sedentarism. The paper draws on the metaphor of stickiness to reveal the kinetic elite’s – the group of highly mobile elite workers – experiences of ‘non-places’ (Augé, 1995), which are ephemeral, interchangeable and monotonous spaces of mobility. Qualitative data gathered at two management consultancy firms show how the stickiness of being on the move can give rise to experiences of ambiguity, disorientation and loss: the lures of glamour, escape and liberation from places can collide with non-places that involve fixed instability, feeling stuck and that stick to one even when returning to places. In so doing, the article develops how the metaphor of stickiness can constitute an important lens for understanding and conceptualizing mobilities.

Conscience as control - managing employees through CSR

Corporate social responsibility has become an important topic for both academics and practitioners. CSR typically stands for corporate responses to ethical, environmental and social issues. Whilst extant research has predominately focused on CSR in relation to external stakeholders and taking a macro-institutional and/or functionalist perspective, we provide a critical engagement with the interactions between CSR, employees and management control within organizations. Qualitative data gathered at two management consultancy firms demonstrate how CSR discourses and practices serve to construct an idealized image of a socially, ecologically and ethically responsible corporate self. In this way, CSR works as a form of aspirational control that ties employees’ aspirational identities and ethical conscience to the organization. The article discusses the implications of CSR concerning cynical distancing, ethical sealing and the space for politics and critique in corporations.

‘The Return of the Primal Father’ in Postmodernity? A Lacanian Analysis of Authentic Leadership:

A significant stream of research taking a psychoanalytic perspective has focused on leadership in organizations. Studies have investigated, from a Freudian perspective, leader–follower relations where the leader represents a domineering and authoritarian father figure. We contribute to this research by introducing Lacanian theory to explore the increasingly influential ‘authentic leadership’ approach. In contrast to traditional leadership, this approach advocates, in line with postmodern trends, a post-heroic, non-authoritarian and even self-effacing leader figure. In analysing academic and practitioner-oriented authentic leadership texts we ask, drawing on Lacanian insights, whether authentic leadership enables subjects to separate from the master discourse of traditional leadership through promoting something like the analyst discourse, or whether it entails the return of a phantasmagorical Freudian primal father figure, leading to heightened dependency. In so doing, we discuss the political significance of Lacanian theory in illuminating possibilities for more autonomous and emancipatory relations in organizations.

“We Are All Friends Here”: Reinforcing Paradoxes of Normative Control in a Culture of Friendship

This article explores normative control in a culture of friendship. In-depth qualitative data gathered at a management consultancy firm reveal how management seeks to foster informal, intimate, and apparently egalitarian relations with employees. This is conceptualized as a culture of friendship, indicative of broader trends toward individuality, choice, and antiauthoritarianism. Through a comparison with family culture, the paper develops how in a culture of friendship, despite the emphasis on freedom, openness, and spontaneity, normative control is accentuated and extended, involving certain paradoxes and reinforcing control circles.

The bored self in knowledge work

This article draws attention to reported experiences of boredom in knowledge work. Drawing on extensive qualitative data gathered at two management consultancy firms, we analyze these experiences as a particular interaction with identity regulation and work experiences. We conceptualize the reports of the bored self as a combination of unfilled aspirations and the sense of stagnation, leading to an arrested identity. Our contribution is to expand extant conceptualizations of employee interactions with identity regulation, in particular relating to identity work and identification. The findings provide a critical rendering of the glamourized image of knowledge work.

Charismatische Führung: Die Konstruktion von Charisma durch die deutsche Wirtschaftspresse am Beispiel von Ferdinand Piëch

ZusammenfassungIn diesem Beitrag wird Charisma nicht als Eigenschaft, sondern im Einklang mit der neueren Führungsforschung als soziale Attribution aufgefasst. Um die Attribution von charismatischer Führung im Wirtschaftsleben besser verstehen zu können, wird die Rolle von Medien, insbesondere der Wirtschaftspresse, untersucht. Gegenstand der Analyse sind die Medienberichterstattung über Ferdinand Piëch und die implizit verwendeten Kriterien, die zur Zuerkennung von Charisma führen. Mithilfe einer inhaltsanalytischen Langzeitanalyse wird die implizite Charismakonstruktion von F. Piëch und deren Veränderung im Zeitverlauf durch die deutsche Wirtschaftspresse ermittelt. Abschließend werden die theoretischen und praktischen Implikationen der Studie aufgezeigt.AbstractIn this article charisma is approached not as a trait but, in line with the recent leadership literature, as a social attribution. In order to enhance our understanding of the attribution of charismatic leadership in the business world, the role of media, specifically the business press, is investigated. The analysis focuses on the media coverage of Ferdinand Piëch and the implicitly used criteria leading to the charisma attribution. Drawing on a longitudinal content analysis, the paper studies the implicit construction of F. Piëch’s charisma by the German business press and its changes over time. The study’s theoretical and practical implications are highlighted.

Violence and Organization Studies

In this paper we argue that violence is curiously both absent and present within organization studies. By violence we mean actual or potential physical harm and, building on an insight from Norbert Elias, we suggest that such violence is both ‘totally familiar yet hardly perceived’ in organizations. We examine how in two major traditions of organization studies, one deriving from Weber and the other from Foucault, violence figures as, respectively, an ‘absent-presence’ and a ‘present-absence’. We then propose that a sensibility towards violence enables the recognition of ‘the blood and bruises’ of organizational life: something present close to home as well as faraway; here and now rather than long ago; and featuring in ‘normal’ organizations as well as in abnormal or exceptional circumstances.

Working time regimes: A panel discussion on continuing problems

This article records a panel discussion at the Organizational Working Time Regimes conference on 31 March 2017 at the University of Graz, Austria. The discussion was moderated by Sara Louise Muhr and the panelists were Jana Costas, Susanne Ekman, Laura Empson and Dan Kärreman. The discussion both departed from yet centred on the concept of time itself: how we understand time as academics, employees and managers, and how the notion of time guides and controls all of us in various ways. Through the different perspectives that the panelists have on time and work regimes, it became evident that time – and discussions of time – is complex and context-dependent and needs to be researched as such. The discussion passionately weaved in and out of key questions on work intensification, inequality regimes and resistance to working time regimes that are deeply entwined with dynamic dialectics such as personal/professional, past/future, individual/organizational, worker/leader, good/bad. The panel in this way takes the reader through difficult discussions about what is ‘extreme’, for whom is it extreme and what interventions (if any) can be made by academics. Doing so, the panelists sensitively drew attention to our own line of work, academia, and the work regimes controlling academics.

Secrecy and communication: towards a research agenda

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify possible lines of research relating to communication and secrecy. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a conceptual essay drawing on recent research on secrecy. Findings The findings suggest that secrecy entails the communication of rules about communication, and that secrecy can play a role in the communicative constitution of organizations. Originality/value The paper is innovative in configuring secrecy as a form of communication rather than being the opposite of communication, and in showing the linkages between what are normally two separate domains of research.