Martin Parker

The development of tertiary interactions during the folding of a large protein

BACKGROUNDnWe have used protein engineering and relaxation kinetics to examine the order in which secondary structure elements assemble during folding. Aliphatic contacts in the core of a large domain within the monomeric protein phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) were disrupted in order to map the development of interactions between beta-strand and alpha-helix residues, both near and distant in the sequence.nnnRESULTSnMutations which break sequence-local alpha-beta contacts destabilize the first identifiable intermediate in folding, showing that these contacts develop early in the folding pathway. In contrast, the removal of sequence-distant alpha-beta interactions has little effect at this stage, but reduces the rate at which the intermediate converts to the native state. Thus, contacts between these remote segments of secondary structure start to form later on in the process, during the rate-limiting transition.nnnCONCLUSIONSnIn the case of this large protein domain, our results support the hypothesis that folding proceeds by a hierarchic pathway. Interactions form rapidly between sequence-local groups to produce microdomains before the establishment of the long-range contacts necessary to define the global fold, which proceeds through a highly hydrated transition state.

Becoming invisible: The ethics and politics of imperceptibility

This speculative essay examines ‘invisible’ social identities and the processes by which they are manifested and occasionally sought. Using various literary and academic sources, and loosely informed by an unlikely combination of Stoic philosophy and post-structuralist politics, we argue that invisibility is conventionally viewed as undesirable or ‘suffered’ by individuals or groups that are disadvantaged or marginalised within society. Whilst appreciating this possibility, we argue that social invisibility can also be the result of strategies carefully conceived and consciously pursued. We suggest that forms of social invisibility can be acquired by ethically informed personal action as well as by politically informed collective action. In this context, invisibility can be seen as a strategy of escaping from institutionalised and organisational judgements and which presents a challenge to common notions of voice and identity.

Employing James Bond

This article is concerned with the representation of one particular form of work within popular culture during a particular period, in order to understand just how much representations of work have altered over the past half century. I discuss the James Bond phenomenon and the ways in which it has been understood by cultural theorists. I then look at what the novels suggest about understandings of work and organizations in Britain in the 1950s before comparing that period to later Bonds. The latter operation necessarily involves thinking through the ways in which an understanding of historical context is crucial to thinking through the production and consumption of any text, whether about work and organizations, or any other topic. The article concludes with some thoughts on the impossibility of the Bond novels being written now, when the organization and its executives are assumed to be agents in generalized conspiracies.

Scaling Sustainability: Regulation and Resilience in Managerial Responses to Climate Change

This paper introduces the special issue of the British Journal of Management on Scaling Sustainability: Regulation and Resilience in Managerial Responses to Climate Change, providing an overview of the key issues in scaling sustainability, comprising an analysis of the five papers in the special issue. We discuss the complex relationship between micro, meso and macro scales, in the context of organizations, managers and consumers complicity in the creation and intensification of climate changing conditions. In networking multiple sites into a global scale, managers and organizations can lose sight of the situated, localised nature of the position from which they perform the global. We conclude that a key factor in the capacity and speed at which local actions can be scaled up is the connection of sustainability-related activities by intermediary organizations that can generate resonance between multiple sites through association or alliance, rather than imposing a single logic. Thus, more resilient approaches, which acknowledge the significance of the interconnection between scales, are required to effectively scale sustainability strategies upwards or downwards.

Tower Cranes and Organization Studies

This is a paper about different ways of revealing materials, and a theory of organization. It moves through a kaleidoscope of perspectives which reveal the tower crane as made through its relations with a series of different ways of seeing – engineering and mathematics, capitalist economics, and a workplace labour process. It employs a wide variety of sources, including some interviews that I have done with crane drivers. I then move into an account of the modernist fascination with technology, particularly Soviet constructivism. The latter provides the theoretical scaffolding which allows me to see the crane as a temporary stabilization of structure, and structure as an arrangement of planes and lines of force which allows certain moves just as it prevents others. This is a way of saying that an adequate understanding of ‘organization’ requires thinking multiples and relations. Nodding towards Deleuze and Guattari towards the end, I suggest that cranes are good to think with for these multiple purposes, but that any assemblage would do.

Is Small Always Beautiful? A Dialogue

For quite a few years the two authors have been engaging in dialogues about management issues. Using as a model Platos dialogues between Socrates and his various students, we have tried to clarify the nature of a concept by asking questions and thinking carefully about the answers. We disagree about many things, but agree that we respect each others opinions, and can clarify our own viewpoints by debating them respectfully with another. For this dialogue, we decided to focus on the question of the scale of business operations. One of us has a particular preference for small scale enterprise, and for the localisation of the economy, because he believes that the giganticism of corporations is behind many of the problems we face today. As you will see, the other protagonist disagrees, arguing instead that other issues than scale are at the root of why some businesses do bad things.