Jens Rennstam

Object-Control: A Study of Technologically Dense Knowledge Work

Drawing on the literature on active objects and combining it with an ethnographic study of engineering work, this paper offers an alternative and complementary understanding of the problem of control in knowledge-intensive work. This problem largely concerns the question of how creative processes of knowing are enabled on behalf of the organization. The dominant response to this question revolves around the idea that when work becomes complex, managers attempt to control the norms and identifications of employees, rather than their behaviours. Through the concept of object-control, the idea is introduced that organizational objects participate on behalf of the organization in processes of knowledge control by interpellating organizational members; that is, organizational members are invited to interact with the objects and to creatively develop knowledge in order to solve organizational problems. The study covers ground that the established notions of normative control and identity regulation have neglected, and suggests new ways of advancing the scholarship of organizational control by taking the active participation of organizational objects into account.

Knowing work: Cultivating a practice-based epistemology of knowledge in organization studies

While knowledge theorists give attention to knowing in practice, two common habits in the empirical literature, which we call knowledge inherency and skepticism, serve to re-center certain practitioners. The sites in which we study knowing thereby remain limited, hindering a fuller practice turn. We argue that this enduring tendency is problematic because it inhibits our understanding of ‘communicative knowledge’ – a form of knowing central to the contemporary economy. Yet communicative knowledge is persistently relegated to secondary status through a logic that is simultaneously gendered and classed. We thus suggest a more thorough shift toward the study of ‘knowledge in work’ (Thompson et al., 2001), wherein such a priori associations are suspended, and all practitioners de-centered, in the interest of understanding specific forms, systems, and relations of knowledge entailed in situated practices of knowing. The second half of the article develops specific empirical strategies for doing so. The strategies are meant to enable grounded analysis of knowing practices in various lines of work to interrogate how these may be different to practices with which we are more familiar, as well as inquiry into similarities between these familiar practices and new ones in order to destabilize the link between knowledge and certain practitioners.

The destructive side of branding: A heuristic model for analyzing the value of branding practice:

Scholarship on branding has made important contributions in terms of the value-creating function of branding. However, previous literature has overemphasized the creation of value for organizations at the expense of an understanding of the destructive side of branding for organizations and society. Drawing on the work of Boltanski and Thevénot, we theorize value as different in separate ‘worlds of worth’ and offer a competing approach, arguing that the organizational practice of branding simultaneously and inevitably involves value-destructive aspects. In addition, to enable analysis of these value-destructive aspects, we argue that new understandings of what branding is are needed, and therefore, we introduce two new metaphors: branding as discursive closure and branding as hypocrisy. Based on these conceptual developments, the article offers a heuristic model for analyzing how, and what types of, value may be destroyed in organizational branding practice. We thereby contribute with a critical understanding of organizational branding that acknowledges the conflictual relationship between value regimes and enables a balanced analysis of the social consequences of branding.

The limits of inclusion – stories from the margins of the Swedish police

This chapter explores gay and lesbian police officers’ stories of marginalization and the limits of inclusive diversity policies in the Swedish police. The analysis aims to go beyond the level of policy and formal training and consider mechanisms of exclusion and marginalization on the level of personal stories based on lived experience. Drawing on an interview study of gay and lesbian police officers in Sweden, this chapter argues that the limits of inclusion can be found in the stories told by these members. While the formal policy of the Swedish police does not set up any obstacles for inclusion of gays and lesbians, the stories told by the officers provide insight into other mechanisms of exclusion and marginalization. This analysis of the stories—which are divided into “old” stories from the 1980 and 1990s and “new” stories from the 2000s—indicates that explicit silencing and exclusion characterized the old stories, while the new stories were characterized by stigmatization, marginalization and an increase in voice.

The rise and fall of a management education programme: The tension between academic and vocational education in business schools

All rights reserved. With business schools becoming increasingly market-driven, questionable trends have emerged, such as the conflation of academic and corporate management, and the notion that academics and students are market players, who respond rationally to market signals. Using individual studies from leading scholars in a variety of disciplines and countries, this book identifies the global pressures behind these trends. It focuses on the debates surrounded the commercialization of business schools, and the rise of different methods of measuring their success. In their unique approach, the authors and editors discuss the impact of the confrontation between the timeless values embodied by Minerva, the Roman goddess of Wisdom, and the hard realities of competition and corporatization in modern society. This book will be compelling reading for students and academics in critical management studies, organizational studies, public management and higher education, as well as for stakeholders in academia and educational policy.Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the question – why do professionals surrender their autonomy? This paper looks at the case of academics, in particular business school academics. It traces how this group of professionals have progressively surrendered their autonomy and complied with the demands of managerialism. Design/methodology/approach – This largely theoretical paper looks to develop an understanding of (over)compliance with the bureaucratization of research using the four faces of power – coercive, agenda setting, ideological and discursive. Findings – The discussion of this paper argues that the surrendering of autonomy has been reinforced through coercive forms of power like rewards and punishment and bureaucratization; manipulation and mainstreaming through pushing a particular version of research to the top of the agenda; domination through shaping norms and values; and subjectification through creating new identities. Originality/value – The paper explores how academics deal with tensions and paradoxes such as compliance and resistance, as well as love of work and loathing of it. To deal with these paradoxes, academics often treat their work as a game and see themselves as players. While this process enables academics to reconcile themselves with their loss of autonomy, it has troubling collective outcomes: the production of increasing uninteresting and irrelevant research.This chapter focuses on the relatively neglected domain of branding and the academic labour process, in particular in business schools. It is increasingly accepted that brands are not only marketing tools, they also potentially instruct and direct organizational members. In other words, branding is a means by which managers or leaders can exert control in the labour process through targeting employee subjectivities. Employer branding entails the alignment of employees, typically in service occupations, with how they profile themselves outwards to customers. Successful image management and branding tends to interact with identity. Karreman and Rylander argues that branding activities can more fruitfully be seen as the management of meaning rather than as benign marketing tools. Professional labour in academia is both simultaneously consuming the brand and producing it. Accordingly, much of the performance of academic labour can be understood as branding work, that is, doing things to market the business school or university brand to an external audience.This chapter explores critically the educational situation of today and the more destructive aspects of competition, where substance gives way to various moves faking quality. It highlights three themes in particular: educational fundamentalism, positional games and manipulation of the image. Higher education is increasingly a matter of various people – primarily students but also university employees – engaged in positional games. Higher education and the associated payoff are often regarded as indicating an increase in the human capital or ability of the person concerned. Educational attainment has changed at a faster rate than the job structure, as a result of increasing over-education in jobs with low educational requirements. A successful education system involves more than simply ensuring that an increasing number of students become somewhat cleverer. With educational fundamentalism quantitative concerns take the upper hand over qualitative concerns and quality suffers. What an academic degree stands for becomes highly uncertain.