Thaddeus Müller

Strong emotions at work

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the emotional experiences from qualitative research can enrich organization and management studies.Design/methodology/approach – The papers approach includes a review of the literature in sociology, anthropology, psychology, and feminist studies, in which scholars have argued convincingly for the explicit need to acknowledge and utilize the emotions of researchers as they study social and organizational phenomenon. Also, past research is emotionally re‐written as reflexive examples.Findings – The use of emotions as qualitative researchers can enrich the understanding of organizational and social life by offering new questions, concepts, and theories. At the level of methodology, this leads one to develop and reflect upon an emotional and cognitive orientation of the field.Originality/value – The majority of narratives in organization studies remain sanitized, emotion‐less texts. While a discussion of researcher‐emotion can remain a back‐stage acti...

Welcome to the neighbourhood: social contacts between Iraqis and natives in Arnhem, The Netherlands

Social mixing is viewed as an instrument for social justice because it is used to integrate different categories of inhabitants and improves social conditions in poor urban neighbourhoods. Social mixing as an instrument for integration assumes that some connections between natives and immigrants will be established. This article explores the dynamics of interethnic contact between Iraqis and native residents in a Dutch neighbourhood. It shows how cultural differences between the Iraqis and the Dutch influence the establishment of interethnic contacts. This study presents a more complex view of interethnic contact than is usually portrayed in the current debate on integration. It demonstrates that social mixing requires measures that enable and facilitate interethnic contact.

‘We Do Not Hang Around. It is Forbidden.’ Immigration and the Criminalisation of Youth Hanging Around in the Netherlands

The focus in this article is the ‘criminalisation’ of youth hanging around with the emergence of bans on hanging around. A critical social constructivist approach is used in this study, which draws predominantly on qualitative primary data collected between the late 1980s and 2010s. The article compares indigenous with immigrant youth, which coincides with, respectively, youth in rural communities and youth in urban communities. This study shows that there is discrimination of immigrant youth, which is shaped by several intertwining social phenomena, such as the ‘geography of policing’ – more police in urban areas – familiarity, sharing biographical information (in smaller communities), and the character of the interaction, normalising versus stigmatising. In further research on this topic we have to study (the reaction to) the transgressions of immigrant youth, and compare it with (the reaction to) the transgressions of indigenous youth, which is a blind spot in Dutch criminology.

‘“Ik was echt zorgvuldig”’ : De carrière van een wetenschappelijke fraudeur

In this article I focus on the academic environment in which social psychologist Diederik Stapel worked and developed his career as a con academic. He published over 50 articles with fabricated data in top tier journals. This article is based on interviews with Stapel himself and document analysis. Especially, I pay attention to his socialization as an academic in his years at the University of Amsterdam, where he did his PhD (1986-2000). In my description of how social psychology developed in the nineties in Amsterdam it becomes clear that there was a strong emphasis on competition and publishing articles in top tier journals. Stapel conformed to this culture of competition and published almost as much as the two leading full professors of his department during the period 1995-2000. In the early nineties Stapel discovered that the use of questionable research procedures (QRPs) was common in social psychology. He realized that without using these procedures it was hardly possible to get good results and publish frequently in top tier journals. Though Stapel resented this partly and was disenchanted by this experience, he did integrate QRPs in his daily academic practice. He actually raised the issue of QRPs in a lecture in Oxford when he received the Jos Jaspars Early Career Award of the EAESP, but there was hardly any substantive response to his presentation. The academic culture in which Stapel developed his career can be described as ‘indifferent tolerant’. Though Stapel does refer to the circumstances which influenced his academic fraud, he does state that he himself is responsible for his massive scientific misconduct

The social construction of the stigma of an inner-city neighborhood. Conflicting perspectives of professionals and residents on social problems and gentrification

She says that twenty years ago she came to live here. She had just been divorced and needed a place to live. The people who lived here were nice and helpful, she remembers. They volunteered to help move in her belongings. Now everyone is gone, except one neighbor, who has lived here since the fifties.

The Bankruptcy of the Dutch Cannabis Policy: Time for a Restart

For many years, the Dutch cannabis policy was considered unique in the world and used as an example of how the issue of cannabis could be approached differently. The Netherlands liked to see itself as a role model, but, ironically, at a time when the Netherlands is overcome by doubts about the sustainability of the coffeeshop model, the country of Uruguay and several states in the USA, such as Colorado and Washington, have legalised the recreational use of cannabis. What are the problems with the Dutch policy? What lessons can be learned from the Dutch experience with tolerating the use of cannabis? In this contribution, the developments with regard to the Dutch cannabis policy will be described and critically assessed in relation to the initial aims and assumptions of this policy. Second, the authors focus on the developments regarding cannabis cultivation, coffeeshops and organized crime over the past 40 years.

Saved by Rock ‘n’ Roll: Lou Reed, His Fans, and the Becoming of the (Marginal) Self

My focus in this paper is on the meaning that rock music has for fans of Lou Reed. I use the comments following his death as my primary data. These data were posted on the New York Times website in the comments section following the report “Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ‘n’ Roll.” From these data I develop what I call “the marginal self” in reference to how rock music helps self-identified marginalized persons to deal with their social exclusion and alienation. Drawing on Kotarba’s (2012) analytic categories of the self, I will show how these data give insight into a wide range of existential meanings related to the music of Lou Reed. For many who wrote these comments their reading of Lou Reed has been an essential transformative part of their life in similar ways to baby boomers as outlined in Kotarba’s (2012) Baby Boomers Rock ‘n’ Roll Fans: The Music Never Ends. I first show how Kotarba’s (2012) core concepts of the musical self provide insight into how fans of Lou Reed develop a sense of self through Reed’s music. I then turn to a discussion of the marginalized self as a development of Kotarba’s (2012) categories of “authenticity work” and “becoming of the self.” Suggestions for future research are noted.

Moral Entrepreneurship Revisited: Police Officers Monitoring Cannabis Retailers in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

In this paper on police officers who monitor coffee shops in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, I relate their work to Becker’s moral entrepreneur (1963). Becker describes two categories of moral entrepreneurs: rule creators, such as the crusading reformer, and rule enforcers, for example the police. According to Becker, the rule enforcer is less naive and more pragmatic than the rule creator. The main question of this paper is: in what respect can the work of the police officers be described as moral entrepreneurship? To answer this question I conducted in-depth interviews with six police officers on the meaning they attach to their duties of monitoring coffee shops. The research shows that police officers take a pragmatic approach, which also contains layers of morality that influence their rule enforcing. For instance, the way they define the character and intentions of the coffee shop managers is decisive in how they act towards them. Another difference is observed in relation to the two interests of the rule enforcer described by Becker. The police officers interviewed did not have to justify their existence and they did not have to gain respect by coercion. This is explained by (a) the routine character of the monitoring, which has created a predictable situation and a modus operandi known to all parties and (b) the criminalization of cannabis in recent years. The effect of this process is that the position of police officers in relation to cannabis sellers is not questioned.

“If He Dies, I’ll Kill You.” Violence, Paramedics and Impression-Management

In this chapter we describe how paramedics deal with verbal and physical violence to expand on the available knowledge on this subject and relate it to their work-specific context. Our research consists of interviews in two large Dutch cities. We adopt a dramaturgical framework to discuss our findings. Paramedics initially ignore verbal abuse because they value the well-being of the patient above their own emotional needs. Furthermore, they utilize dramaturgical strategies – which entail emphasizing specific hallmarks of their work, such as compassion and professionalism – so that bystanders feel that the patient is in good hands. Not all of the paramedics interviewed proved capable of applying these strategies, resulting in more frequent exposure to physical violence for those paramedics. We conclude that managing emotions through impression-management, particularly ones own emotions and the emotions of bystanders, is crucial. Our recommendation is to further investigate the knowledge and skills present amongst paramedics in a larger qualitative follow-up study, and to repeat the study among other public professionals so that they may reap the benefits and (more) physical violence can be prevented in the future. Few studies exist that allow paramedics to describe their own experiences with violence on the job. In this chapter we let the paramedics do the talking.