Sarah Gilmore

Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography

While organizational ethnographers have embraced the concept of self-reflexivity, problems remain. In this article we argue that the prevalent assumption that self-reflexivity is the sole responsibility of the individual researcher limits its scope for understanding organizations. To address this, we propose an innovative method of collective reflection that is inspired by ideas from cultural and feminist anthropology. The value of this method is illustrated through an analysis of two ethnographic case studies, involving a ‘pair interview’ method. This collective approach surfaced self-reflexive accounts, in which aspects of the research encounter that still tend to be downplayed within organizational ethnographies, including emotion, intersubjectivity and the operation of power dynamics, were allowed to emerge. The approach also facilitated a second contribution through the conceptualization of organizational ethnography as a unique endeavour that represents a collision between one ‘world of work’: the university, with a second: the researched organization. We find that this ‘collision’ exacerbates the emotionality of ethnographic research, highlighting the refusal of ‘researched’ organizations to be domesticated by the specific norms of academia. Our article concludes by drawing out implications for the practice of self-reflexivity within organizational ethnography.

Finding form: elite sports and the business of change

Purpose – To explain how an organization has been able to use seismic changes in its wider external environment to transform its performance without the need for radical internal restructuring or coercive forms of leadership.Design/methodology/approach – This paper utilises a three year case study from elite sport, an under‐represented sector in the management literature but one that offers a fascinating view of change.Findings – Whilst the change management literature typically emphasises dramatic and rapid coercive restructuring accompanying open‐ended environment change, this study found that known routines and historical ways of working existed alongside innovation, risk‐taking and learning; the paradoxical foundation upon which performance flourished.Research limitations/implications – Although the dangers of single cases are noted, difficulties regarding access and comparability with other similar organizations prevented a similar degree of focus on multiple cases. Future research either within elit...

Institutional theory and change: the deinstitutionalisation of sports science at Club X

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate how sports science was institutionalised and rapidly deinstitutionalised within a Premier League football club. Institutional theory has been critiqued for its lack of responsiveness to change, but recent developments within institutional theory such as the focus on deinstitutionalisation as an explanation of change, the role of institutional entrepreneurs and the increasing interest in institutional work facilitate exploration of change within institutions. Design/methodology/approach – The authors deploy a longitudinal case study which ran from 2003-2011. Data was collected via observations, semi-structured interviews and through extensive literature reviews. Findings – Via this longitudinal case study, the authors illustrate that the antecedents of deinstitution can lie in the ways by which an institution is established. In doing so, they highlight the paradoxical role potentially played by institutional entrepreneurs in that they can (unwittingly) operate as ag...

Learning, experienced emotions, relationships and innovation in HRD

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the introduction of a new experience‐based learning process in the learning and teaching of human resource development (HRD) within a professionally accredited curriculum in a UK University.Design/methodology/approach – An action enquiry approach is taken, and qualitative data gathered over a full academic year from tutors and students are analysed to examine how those involved made sense of and learned about HRD.Findings – Influences on the experience of an innovative HRD pedagogy are identified as: assessment processes and expectations; relationships and behaviours within the learning and teaching process; the experienced emotions of those involved; and the extent to which students feel clarity about what is expected.Research limitations/implications – The qualitative nature of the data and the focus on one particular UK institutional taught module limits the generalisability; in particular, the experience of full‐time students or those involved in courses that focus...

The importance of asset maximisation in football: towards the long-term gestation and maintenance of sustained high performance

Based upon an extended case study of Bolton Wanderers Football Club, this article argues that asset management strategies need to be accompanied by human resource management (HRM) practices capable of identifying, attracting, developing and retaining strategically valuable staff (as well as skilled players) with the requisite knowledge and abilities to enact asset maximization plans. The article concludes with a range of recommendations for consideration by the strategic apex of the football department, focusing on the role of HRM in creating and maintaining these approaches to securing sustained performance.

When the Show must Go On: Investigating Repeated Organizational Change in Elite Sport

ABSTRACT This study responded to recent calls for the investigation of employees’ responses to repeated organizational change events. Data were gathered via 20 semi-structured interviews with 10 employees from 2 organizations competing in English footballs Barclays Premier League. The results indicated that employees responded to recurring organizational change in positive and negative emotional, behavioural, and attitudinal ways. The main positive response themes related to: resilience, learning, performance, challenge appraisals, and autonomy. The main negative response themes related to: trust, cynicism, organizational development, motivation, turnover, engagement, and commitment. The findings illustrate the value of exploring and monitoring employee responses to both single and repeated organizational change. Specifically, the data indicate increasingly deteriorating employee attitudes across change events, but also highlight the important role of cognitive appraisal for responses to each change event. The results are discussed in regard to implications for organizational change research and practice in dynamic contexts such as elite sport.

Becoming the leader: Leadership as material presence

This paper seeks to understand leaders as material presences. Leadership theory has traditionally explored leaders as sites of disembodied traits, characteristics and abilities. Our qualitative, mixed method study suggests that managers charged with the tasks of leadership operate within a very different understanding. Their endogenous or lay theory understands leadership as physical, corporeal and visible, and as something made manifest through leaders’ material presence. This theory-in-practice holds that leadership qualities are signified by the leader’s physical appearance: the good leader must look the part. Actors consequently work on their own appearance to present an image of themselves as leader. They thus offer a fundamental challenge to dominant exogenous, or academic, theories of leadership. To understand the unspoken assumptions that underpin the lay theory of leadership as material presence, we interrogate it using the new materialist theory of Karen Barad and the object relations theory of Christopher Bollas. This illuminates the lay theory’s complexities and sophisticated insights. In academic terms it offers a theory of how sentient and non-sentient actors intra-act and performatively constitute leadership through complex entanglements that enact and circulate organizational and leadership norms. The paper’s contribution is thus a theory of leadership micro-dynamics in which the leader is materialized through practices of working on a corporeal self for presentation to both self and others.

Culture change in a professional sports team: shaping environmental contexts and regulating power: a commentary

My commentary is situated within my own field of expertise which lies within management and organization studies. This location leads me to be somewhat critical of Cruickshank et al.’s article because the authors took the decision to elide these literatures which I argue are foundational to a really nuanced, developed understanding of the phenomena explored in this study. My comments are restricted to three key areas: i) the issue of professional sports organizations being businesses and the implications of this for culture; ii) the exclusion of theory from management and organization studies literatures; and iii) a critique of methods.

Emotional labor and professional practice in sports medicine and science

The aim of this study was to explore how sport medicine and science practitioners manage their emotions through emotional labor when engaging in professional practice in elite sport. To address the research aim a semistructured interview design was adopted. Specifically, eighteen professional sport medicine and science staff provided interviews. The sample comprised sport and exercise psychologists (n=6), strength and conditioning coaches (n=5), physiotherapists (n=5), one sports doctor and one generic sport scientist. Following a process of thematic analysis, the results were organized into the following overarching themes: (a) factors influencing emotional labor enactment, (b) emotional labor enactment, and (c) professional and personal outcomes. The findings provide a novel contribution to understanding the professional demands faced by practitioners and are discussed in relation to the development of professional competencies and the welfare and performance of sport medics and scientists.

The emotional turn in higher education:a psychoanalytic contribution

ABSTRACT This article contributes to contemporary debates about the significance of emotions within Higher Education. Using a psychoanalytic lens we analyse the ways in which experiences of anxiety and tension are essential for learning. The anxiety associated with learning can stimulate meaningful and reflexive outcomes but ‘learning inaction’ [Vince, R. 2014. ‘What Do HRD Scholars and Practitioners Need to Know About Power, Emotion, and HRD?’ Human Resource Development Quarterly 25: 409–420] is also possible. In adopting a psychoanalytical lens we assert the agency of both learners and teachers in scholarly relationships and we draw attention to the emotions of educators as well as students. This has important implications for teacher education and academic formation activities.