Ron Kerr

Leadership as an elite field: Scottish banking leaders and the crisis of 2007-2009

This paper addresses the question of the apparent auto-destructive behaviour of the leaders of the Scottish banks in the period 2005—2008. We apply Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital to a corpus of textual sources to identify how leaders of these organisations competed with each other for leadership capital. We therefore show, through analysis of a series of historically situated crises, how competition between senior banking leaders for positions of domination within the field of elite banking in Scotland, the UK and globally, eventually contributed to the destruction of the banks themselves as independent institutions. We believe that this Bourdieusian approach to leader—leader relations can offer some explanation of the apparently ‘irrational’ behaviours of the banking leaders in the economic crisis of 2005—2008.

From Symbolic Violence to Economic Violence: The Globalizing of the Scottish Banking Elite

The financial crisis has raised questions about the role of corporate elites in contemporary organizations. This article follows recent work on organizational elites that argues for critical sociological approaches to the study of such elites, using, for example, Bourdieu’s concept of field, and for studies of elites in contexts outside North America. Applying Bourdieusian concepts such as forms of violence, we look at the particular case of the Scottish banking elite, focusing on changing enactments of violence within that field, from symbolic violence to economic violence. We trace the movement of the Scottish banking elite from the national-traditional to the global and modernized and demonstrate how members of an elite field can operate in the field of power within their own organization and at the same time within a transorganizational field of peer competitors, thus illustrating how a specific national elite has been affected by neoliberal globalization and its crisis.

The Hysteresis Effect as Creative Adaptation of the Habitus: Dissent and Transition to the ‘Corporate’ in Post-Soviet Ukraine

How might Bourdieu’s concept of the hysteresis effect be operationalized in order to understand dissent from, and compliance with, domination in a specific period of social and organizational transition? We employ the Bourdieusian concepts, in particular ‘forms of capital’, ‘hysteresis effect’ and ‘habitus’ to examine the production and reproduction of domination within a British international organization (the ‘Corporation’) operating in transitional post-Soviet Ukraine. Our argument is that the communist-era dissident habitus was better adapted to the changed socio-economic circumstances of postcommunism and was able to creatively adapt to the Corporation through identifying homological processes of domination and adopting homological dissident strategies. The hysteresis effect might therefore provide an explanation of how workers make sense of their new environment based on their habitus, on their capacity to decipher homologies between the previous context and the new one, and on how the dominated that dissent reuse or adapt their strategies in and to this new context. This article makes contributions to the study of domination in organizational contexts at three levels. At the theoretical level, through organizational-based empirical work we build on and develop Bourdieu’s concept of the hysteresis effect by demonstrating the role of the hysteresis effect in the creative reproduction of dissent as a habitus. Our substantive contribution adds a new perspective to the literature on ‘transition’, providing a fine-grained study of how domination was produced within the Western organization in post-Soviet Ukraine.

The influence of co-location in higher education institutions on small firms’ perspectives of knowledge transfer

Knowledge transfer (KT) has been identified as an essential element of innovation that drives competitive advantage in increasingly knowledge-driven economies and in which small firms have an important part to play. A number of recent UK Government reports have sought to increase awareness of the importance of KT within higher education institutions (HEIs). In light of this, there is an urgent need for relevant empirical research that examines how KT policy is translated into practice, particularly in the area of small firms. This paper responds to this need by reporting on in-depth longitudinal case studies of small firms co-located in a high profile HEI ‘centre of excellence’ for research and development (R&D) and commercialization of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the Northwest of England. The paper seeks to explore what is it that the SMEs are getting out of this co-location and more specifically the research asks, how do the views of entrepreneurs change over time? Five main themes are identified, namely: (1) increased strategic focus; (2) awareness of core competences; (3) enhanced R&D activities; (4) importance of both technical and business support; (5) the need for a knowledge database to facilitate KT. The study concludes by highlighting the need for more structured yet flexible approaches to KT activities in order to meet the needs of entrepreneurs for different kinds of support at different times in the development of their businesses.

Discourse and leadership: using the paradigm of the permanent state of emergency

In this paper I use critical discourse theory to understand the strategies of the ‘princes’ of the contemporary world. Using Bourdieus concepts of ‘field’ and ‘homology’ and Agambens postulate of the ‘permanent state of emergency’ (which draws on Benjamin and Schmitt), I address data from the political field and from the corporate field to ask whether the discourse of the ‘leader’ as authentic decision-maker can be transferred across fields and whether the associated paradigm of ‘the permanent state of emergency’ may also be circulating between the political field and the corporate field – and if these processes are taking place, whether they are being technologised as a political and business strategy. The paper concludes that this may indeed be happening and that therefore a renewed focus on informed democracy, governance, and law rather than on the figure of the post-bureaucratic leader is needed in these critical times.

Reflexive Conversations: Constructing Hermeneutic Designs for Qualitative Management Research

Responding to calls to widen the range of qualitative approaches within management research, this paper addresses perceived difficulties in applying hermeneutic approaches to interview-based research and discusses how researchers can develop appropriate research designs. It reviews how tools from the hermeneutic tradition have been used, demonstrating how a sub-branch, critical hermeneutics, is particularly suited to the complexities of management research, offering a flexible means of exploring complex research relationships between ‘texts’, contexts and the researcher. The paper details the inception and implementation of a hermeneutic research project and demonstrates the application of a four-stage hermeneutic analytical framework for use with interview transcripts. In showing how interviews are co-created through a hermeneutic process between the research participants and the researcher, the paper suggests ways of acknowledging the implications of this relationship and thus of increasing researcher reflexivity within the research process. The benefits and limitations of implementing such hermeneutic research designs are then discussed.

Architecture, symbolic capital and elite mobilisations: The case of the Royal Bank of Scotland corporate campus

In this article, we apply the conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu, in particular forms of capital, social fields, field of power and modes of domination, to demonstrate how the study of a symbolically powerful building can provide insights into what are often opaque elite interactions. In order to do this, we focus on the corporate campus headquarters of a powerful financial institution, the Royal Bank of Scotland in the context of Scotland in the period 2000–2009. We pose the following questions: What is the relationship between corporate space and the field of power? What role does a corporate building play in circuits of capital conversion? What does this case tell us about the role of architecture in elite mobilisations? In addressing these questions, we contribute to critical organisation studies by identifying and theorising the role of corporate space in inter-elite dynamics and circuits of capital conversion. This approach, we argue, provides a methodological lever which could be applied to other symbolically important buildings in order to understand the nature and role of inter-field interactions in the conception and realisation of such buildings.

Modernism, Postmodernism, and corporate power: historicizing the architectural typology of the corporate campus

Abstract This paper explores the potential for a ‘marriage’ of history and critical organization studies through a conceptual synthesis of critical sociology and historiography and its application to a specific organizational phenomenon. It presents a case study of the architecture of the corporate campus headquarters, a type of business complex built in exurban, rural settings, focusing on a series of campuses built in the period 1945–2005. The main purpose of this research is to identify what the transition from architectural Modernism to Postmodernism tells us about the evolution of ideologies that animate corporations in relation to wider developments in capitalism. Our conceptual framework has temporal and spatial dimensions, drawing on architectural historiography and sociological concepts, thus allowing us to connect architecture and the social in relation to the production and projection of corporate power through a delimited historical period. We identify two main drivers behind the construction of the campuses: internally, to integrate the staff as a community, and externally, to project a desired corporate image. We also demonstrate how our conceptual synthesis sheds light on the rise and fall of individual corporations. We make the following contributions to management and organizational history: first, we demonstrate how studying organizations through the lens of corporate architecture helps us understand the connections between symbolic, social and physical space and forms of corporate power. Second, we show how a marriage of history and critical sociology can help us to understand how certain ideologically freighted architectural features endure – or return – within the changing configurations of capitalism and finally, methodologically, we demonstrate how historicizing architecture can shed light on the rise and fall of individual corporations within a given socio-historical context.

Women leaders in the political field in Scotland: A socio-historical approach to the emergence of leaders

Drawing on a contextualised case, we present a specific approach to leadership studies that brings together history, sociology and politics. We start with the following event. In August 2015, the election of Kezia Dugdale as leader of the Labour Party meant that, for the first time the leaders of the three main political parties in the Scottish Parliament were women. We approach the study of this significant leadership event, first, through a critique of aspects of leadership studies as a field. We next consider the potential for socio-historical approaches in understanding this event. Then, as a contextualised example of this alternative approach to studying leadership, we apply Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts – in particular the political field – in order to historicise the conditions of possibility of this event. Finally, we consider issues of power and gender in relation to how the leaders position themselves in relation to their parties and to each other within the political field. In so doing, we contribute to critical leadership studies by developing and demonstrating a socio-historical approach that can help us to identify processes of organisation and change in relation to the emergence of leaders.