Viviane Sergi

Leadership in the Plural

This paper reviews the literature on forms of leadership that in one way or other imply plurality: that is, the combined influence of multiple leaders in specific organizational situations. We identify four streams of scholarship on plural leadership, each focusing on somewhat different phenomena and adopting different epistemological and methodological assumptions. Specifically, these streams focus on sharing leadership in teams, on pooling leadership at the top of organizations, on spreading leadership across boundaries over time, and on producing leadership through interaction. The streams of research vary according to their representations of plural leadership as structured or emergent and as mutual or coalitional. We note tensions between perspectives that advocate pluralizing leadership in settings of concentrated authority and those concerned with channeling the forms of plurality naturally found in diffuse power settings such as professional organizations or inter-organizational partnerships. It i...

Thrilled by the discourse, suffering through the experience: Emotions in project-based work

In this article, we study emotional processes associated with the project management discourse. Employing a constructionist approach where emotions are experienced within an ordering discursive context, the study identifies four distinct emotional processes associated with the invocation of the project management discourse in daily work practices. From a study of theatre and opera house employees, we suggest that the project management discourse tends to normalize feelings of rigidity and weariness in project-based work, while emphasizing projects as extraordinary settings creating thrill and excitement. Moreover, we argue that this discourse is invoked in ways that lead individuals to internalize emotional states related to chaos and anxiety, while ascribing feelings of certainty and confidence to external organizational norms and procedures. The study highlights how employees construct project-based work as a promise of exciting adventures experienced under conditions of rational control, but also how the negative and suppressed aspects of project-based work are constructed as inevitable and to be endured. Through these emotional processes, the project management discourse is sustained and reinforced.

Summoning the spirits: Organizational texts and the (dis)ordering properties of communication

This article addresses the question: why does disorder tend to simultaneously accompany efforts to create order when organizing? Adopting a communication-centered perspective, we specifically examine the role of texts in the mutual constitution of order and disorder. Drawing on empirical material from three qualitative case studies on project organizing, we show that attempts of ordering through language use and texts (i.e. by closing and fixing meaning) tend to induce disordering (i.e. by opening the possibility of multiple meanings), at the same time. As we contend, these (dis)ordering dynamics play a key role in the communicative constitution of organization, keeping them in motion by calling forth continuous processes of meaning (re-)negotiation.

Bounded becoming: insights from understanding projects in situation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to suggest a situated conception of projects, in order develop finer understanding of how these endeavors emerge and unfold over time. The author proposes that these understandings should be rooted in a process ontology, conceive action as situated and focus on actual practices as they are performed by all project actors. Taken together, these dimensions can renew how one views and approaches projects and their management.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is illustrated with examples taken out of a study of a software development project, conducted in the ethnographic tradition.Findings – The examples expose how a specific practice, planning, was accomplished differently depending on the moment and was affected by different circumstances and constraints. The paper also discusses how preferring a processual worldview is especially befitting projects. As endeavors instigated to create or to make something happen, projects are perpetually changing and in movement;...

Making mundane work visible on social media: a CCO investigation of working out loud on Twitter

ABSTRACT This article examines an emergent communicative practice called working out loud (WOL), defined as a process of narrating work during the course of its realisation, by studying instances of WOL on Twitter. Anchored in a relational ontology, our inquiry aims to investigate what these tweets, defined as sociomaterial agents, accomplish. Our results show that as a practice, WOL adopts a variety of forms. We link the actions achieved by the tweets to their inherent characteristics, hence documenting their agency. We show that WOL tweets are performative in that they make visible things that otherwise tend to remain hidden, private, or difficult to reveal in an explicit way. More precisely, through our CCO inquiry, we suggest that given the characteristics associated with these tweets and, more broadly, with that which Twitter enables or constrains, WOL tweets have the potential to actively participate in the constitution of work and professional identity of workers engaging in working out loud.