Mats Alvesson

Doing Critical Management Research

An Introduction to Critical Research Alternative Social Science Research Perspectives Critical Overview of Quantitative and Conventional Qualitative Methodology The Critical Tradition Critical Theory and Postmodernism New Rules for Research A Framework for Critical Research Developing Critical Sensitivity in Management Research On the Practice of Critical Management Research

Managing Managerial Identities: Organizational Fragmentation, Discourse and Identity Struggle

This is a case study of managerial identity work, based on an in-depth case of a senior manager and the organizational context in which she works. The article addresses the interplay between organizational discourses, role expectations, narrative self-identity and identity work. Identity is conceptualized in processual terms as identity work and struggle. The article illuminates fragmentation as well as integration in the interplay between organizational discourses and identity. It aims to contribute to a processual oriented identity theory and to the methodology of identity studies through showing the advantage of a multi-level intensive study.

Knowledge Work: Ambiguity, Image and Identity:

This article takes a sceptical view of the functionalist understanding of the nature and significance of ‘knowledge’ in so-called knowledge- intensive companies. The article emphasizes the slipperiness of the concept of knowledge, the ambiguity of knowledge, its role in what is constructed as knowledge work and the evaluation of work outcomes. Given this ambiguity, the management of rhetoric, image and social processes appears crucial in organizations of this kind. Difficulties in demonstrating competence and performance - as well as the significance of producing the right impression - make work identity difficult to secure. However, this is a key element in doing knowledge work. Successful rhetoric, image production and orchestration of social interactions call for the regulation of employee identities.

Understanding Gender and Organization

The Many Faces of Gender and Organization Different Perspectives on Gender Division of Labour and Sex Typing Masculinities, Femininities and Work Gender and Identity Gender, Organizational Culture and Sexuality Women in Management Women in Management II Four Positions Broadening the Agenda Reconstructing Gender and Organization Studies

Identity matters: Reflections on the construction of identity scholarship in organization studies

Key tensions underlying much of the identity literature; we foreground identity matters as encountered by individuals, understood as social; durability of identity; identity in its various conceptualizations offers creative ways to understand a range of organizational settings and phenomena while bridging the levels from micro to macro.

Social Indentity And The Problem of Loyalty In Knowledge-Intensive Companies

This paper treats the significance of organization-based social identity for loyalty versus exit reactions with special reference to knowledge-intensive companies. The centrality of network relations and close contact with clients in combination with the sometimes drastic consequences of knowledge workers defecting in many knowledge-intensive companies makes social identification and loyalty crucial themes for management. The paper discusses different kinds of and modes of accomplishing loyalty and also addresses post-exit management, how companies may deal with employees that have left the company.

Taking the Linguistic Turn in Organizational Research: Challenges, Responses, Consequences

This article takes the linguistic turn, or turns, in the social sciences as its point of departure and discusses the implications for methodology, empirical research, and field practices in social and organizational studies. Various responses can be identified: grounded fictionalism, giving up the hope of making substantive, empirical claims in terms of research texts capturing social phenomena; data-constructionism, where the ambiguous and constructed nature of empirical material gives space for a more relaxed, freer, and bolder way of interacting with empirical material; and discursivism, in which the researcher concentrates on the details of empirical material that lends itself to representations in the form of language, for example, conversations and texts. The article develops some ideas for a more reflective way of dealing with language issues in empirical social research. It argues for a more discourse-near but not discourse-exclusive approach to organizational research and refers to this as discursive pragmatism.

Odd Couple: Making Sense of the Curious Concept of Knowledge Management

The idea of knowledge management draws currently much attention, both among practitioners and scholars. Advocates of the term argue that knowledge management points to a new set of phenomena and practices for managers to learn and master. In particular knowledge management focuses on the creation and distribution of knowledge in organizations through technological novelties such as the internet, intranets, and e‐mail, although there are also streams concentrating on social relations and interactions. This paper examines several possible conceptualizations of the idea of knowledge management. It is argued that knowledge is an ambiguous, unspecific and dynamic phenomenon, intrinsically related to meaning, understanding and process, and therefore difficult to manage. There is thus a contradiction between knowledge and management. Drawing from a literature review and a case study, it is suggested that knowledge management is as likely, if not more so, to operate as a practice of managing people or information than as a practice attuned towards facilitating knowledge creation.

Constructing mystery: Empirical matters in theory development

We outline a research methodology developed around two basic elements: the active discovery and/or creation of mysteries and the subsequent solving of the mysteries. A key element is the reflexive opening up of established theory and vocabulary through a systematic search for deviations from what would be expected, given established wisdom, in empirical contexts. “Data” are seen as an inspiration for critical dialogues between theoretical frameworks and empirical work.

Cages in tandem: Management control, social identity, and identification in a knowledge-intensive firm

Developments in organization studies downplay the role of bureaucracy in favour of more flexible arrangements and forms of organizational control, including socio-ideological control. Corporate culture and regulated social identities are assumed to provide means for the integration and orchestration of work. Knowledge-intensive firms, which typically draw heavily upon socio-ideological modes of control, are often singled out as organizational forms that use social identity and the corporatization of the self as a mode for managerial control. In this article we explore and discuss social identity and identification in a large IT/management consultancy firm with a strong presence of socioideological or normative control, but also with strong bureaucratic features. Structural forms of control—formal HRM procedures and performance pressures are considered in relation to socio-ideological control. We identify organizational and individual consequences of identification in a context of social, structural, and cultural ‘closures’ and contradictions, including the tendency to create an ‘iron cage of subjectivity’.