SCOS Update, January
09/01, 2013 | CONFERENCES | SPECIAL ISSUES
Today we have 6 sensational items for you:
1) Working Conference ‘Authority, Organisation, Strategies and Politics of Relatedness’ March 14-20, 2013, IIM-Ahmedabad, India.
2) Call for papers: The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies. Stream: Beyond the either/or of social versus subjective causality: Ontogenesis and Individuation; Self & Neo-Capitalism
3) Call for papers: Special issue of Scripta Nova. Volume 17, issue 420, 2014. Nomadism and Organising
4) Call for Papers: ephemera Special Issue on: Critiquing corruption: A turn to theory
5) Call for papers: The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies. Stream: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies
6) Call for papers: Re-working Lacan at work - 2013 Paris Conference at the ESCP Europe Business School, Paris, France, 14-15 June 2013
1) Working Conference ‘Authority, Organisation, Strategies and Politics of Relatedness’ March 14-20, 2013, IIM-Ahmedabad, India.
2) Call for papers: The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies. Stream: Beyond the either/or of social versus subjective causality: Ontogenesis and Individuation; Self & Neo-Capitalism
3) Call for papers: Special issue of Scripta Nova. Volume 17, issue 420, 2014. Nomadism and Organising
4) Call for Papers: ephemera Special Issue on: Critiquing corruption: A turn to theory
5) Call for papers: The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies. Stream: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies
6) Call for papers: Re-working Lacan at work - 2013 Paris Conference at the ESCP Europe Business School, Paris, France, 14-15 June 2013
Item 1:
Working Conference ‘Authority, Organisation, Strategies and Politics of Relatedness’
March 14-20, 2013, IIM-Ahmedabad, India.
The early closing date for nominations is January 14, 2013.
Places are limited to 24, and we have a few places available at this time.
Please follow this link for further information: www.iimahd.ernet.in/AOSPOR
Item 2:
Call for papers: The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies – Extending the limits of neo-liberal capitalism
Stream: Beyond the either/or of social versus subjective causality: Ontogenesis and Individuation; Self & Neo-Capitalism
University of Manchester 10th – 12th July 2013
Conveners:
Prof Jean-Luc Moriceau (Institut Telecom/TEM/Organization studies, FR)
Prof Hugo Letiche (University of Leicester, UK )
Prof Arne DeBoever (CalArts, Valencia CA USA)
Neo-liberal capitalism creates self-centered, isolated, present-focused, hyper-active individuals; who are narcissistic, and lacking in cultural or historical perspective. Quasi-hysterical persons typify neo-con’s capitalism. Each social order produces the matching individual consciousness, and vice versa. Marcuse’s refusal to accept social-political or social-psychological causality --- that is, the one without the other --- was a crucial contribution. Today scholars like Jacques Rancière and Bernard Stiegler continue the critical study of the ontogenesis of society, personality and capitalism. More than Marcuse, Gilbert Simondon forms their theoretical inspiration. Humanist socialism (identified, for instance with Socialisme ou barbarie) has responded to the psychological violence inflicted by (neo-) capitalism on identity. Phenomenologists, such as Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur, already in the 1960’s examined the contextual prerequisites to the human subject’s awareness and action, and the society/person interchange. Phenomenologists and post-phenomenologists, such as Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Edgar Morin (all members of Socialisme ou barbarie), have placed the critique of capitalism in their study of the relationship(s) between political economy and self. Simondon was a student of Merleau-Ponty’s, who focused on the social ontogenesis of identity in contemporary society. He is an acknowledged and crucial source for Deleuze’s and Steigler’s critique of self and capitalism.
For organizational studies, Simondon is crucial in how he explains that organizing, planning and strategy are not the imposition of the past on the present; but are the opening of occurrence to the future --- i.e. they are ways of making capitalist becoming, possible. Simondon offers an antidote to narrow social constructivism. The organization is not just a series of (rhetorical) agreements, but it is a form of social emergence or occurrence. Through the central figure of the leader, the entrepreneur, or the manager the neoliberal assumption that the individual is both the cause of organization and the origin of ‘self’ has dominated mainstream organization studies. Though it is acknowledged that the individual may be influenced by social or cultural surroundings, s/he supposedly makes decisions, acts, talks and/or launches projects. S/he is rewarded for success and blamed for failure. By contrast, for Simondon, the individual is not the cause but the effect of constant, emergent individuation. S/he is always in the process of becoming individual through practices and encounters emerging from a pre-individual pool of possibilities, grounded in the social, cultural, historical, psychological and material milieu. Individuation is always psychological, collective, and technical; the individual, collective, and technological individuate in relationship to one another. Becoming is always beyond or below the ‘seize-ability’ of the individual. For Simondon, the individual is a never-ending bridging process --- bridging the subject to pre-individual sources, to collective subjects and to techniques; bridging generations, cultures, economies, etc.
Through Simondon’s lens, many organizational concepts that seem taken for granted become problematical. What is a ‘leader’, what is an ‘identity’, what meaning does a ‘contract’ or a ‘convention’ have? What is the purpose of education and what is the role of technique? Simondon brings us to new questions: ‘How do we understand, or aid, an individuation processes that is not neo-liberal?’, ‘What kind of values can motivate concerned multidimensional subjects?’, ‘What kind of social justice does critical thought implicate?’, ‘What is the role of affect and emotion in a just society?’, etcetera. And, ‘What does this all mean for organizational theorizing?’, ‘What kind of methods of design are desirable?’, ‘What bridge should be made to economic, political, ethical, cultural theories and concepts?’, etcetera?
This sub-theme therefore welcomes contributions offering insights into (and alternatives to) neo-capitalism and:
· Organizing as ontogenesis: principles of (critical) self-creation;
· Individuation: leaders, managers, entrepreneurs and opponents?
· Processes of existence not narrowly defined as rational self-interest;
· Organization overwhelmed by technology and/or technics;
· Affect and relatedness;
· Media: individuation and technology;
· The organizational study of networked trans-individuality;
· Critique of ‘holism’ – i.e. order as (quantum) movement across thresholds;
· Simondon and others (Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Stiegler, Rancière, Latour, etc.).
Bibliography
DeBoever, A (2012) Simondon: Being & Technology Edinburgh University Press.
Deleuze, G (2001) “Review Simondon’s L’individu et sa genèse physio-biologique Pli 12 pp 43-49.
Massumi, B (2009) “Technical mentality revisited: Massumi on Simondon” Parrhesia no 7 pp 36-45.
Simondon, G (1964) L’individu et sa genèse physio-biologique Paris: PUF.
--- (1989) L’individuation psychique et collective Paris:Aubier.
--- (2009) “Technical Mentality” Parrhesia no 7 pp 17-27.
Stiegler, B (2006) « Chute et élévation. L’apolitique de Simondon », Revue philosophique, n°3.
Styhre, A (2008) « Transduction and entrepreneurship » Scandinavian Journal of Management vol 24 pp 103-112.
Please send abstracts or any questions to
h.letiche@uvh.nl
Abstracts should be a maximum 1000 words, A4 paper, single spaced, 12 point font. Deadline 31st January 2013
Notification of paper acceptance: 22nd February 2013
Full papers will be expected by 1st May 2013
The Conveners:
Prof Jean-Luc Moriceau (Institut Telecom/TEM/Organization studies, Paris FR) is active in critical management studies in France, as well as in SCOS. He has been an EGOS co-convener and co-organizer of L’art du sens (around B. Stiegler) in Centre Pompidou, as well as other conferences in France. He has a book on qualitative research methods coming out in 2013 and L’Art du sens in 2013-14. He has published in Journal of Org. Change Management, Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, and Critical Perspectives on Accounting.
Prof Hugo Letiche (University of Leicester, UK; formerly UvH Utrecht, NL) has been SCOS conference co-convener and was several times EGOS co-convener, and has organized several conferences. Recently his book on social complexity theory (New York, Macmillan) came out and a book (co- author & -editor) on belief and organization (London, Palgrave) is due out this autumn. He has published recently in Sociological Review, Culture & Organization, Organization Studies, E:CO, Society Business Review.
Prof Arne de Boever (CalArts, Valencia Ca USA) co-wrote and edited the first English language book on Simondon, Being & Technology (Edinburgh University Press), which is now out. He is editor of Parrhesia. As North American, this is his first CMS.
Item 3:
Call for papers: Special issue of Scripta Nova on Nomadism and Organising
Volume 17, issue 420, 2014
Guest editors: Hugo Gaggiotti, University of the West of England (United Kingdom)
Monika Kostera, University of Warsaw (Poland)
Ricardo Bresler, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil)
Mainstream western epistemologies and methodologies on organising persist in attempts to delineate and fix reality. Within social science our questions (to 'research subjects', ourselves and colleagues) often invite static answers: where are you from?; are you male or female?; how old are you?; how long have you had this job?; where do you feel most at home?; what is my epistemology?; are you a positivist, constructivist, interpretativist, postmodernist, etc., etc.? Offering one possible line of flight from such fixity, Rosi Braidotti (1994) suggests acknowledging nomadism as an existential condition.
Ideas around nomad+global are becoming exchangeable representations of a vocabulary that in contemporary capitalism has to be universally understood, like nomad+millionaire (Palan, 2003). Nevertheless, our perception is that nomad and global are concepts that not necessarily and always are associated with organising. We still imagine organising very static, located and practicing in a place inscribed in a space (Gaggiotti 2006), necessarily creating a sense of a community, in what Czarniawska and others (Czarniawska, forthcoming; Latour, 2002) have referred to as a deeply rooted modernist belief in spatial homogenization. But seems that nomadism create a sense of a community too (Waller, 1998) or serves to populate the imagery of a global community, a practice that some authors have suggested embedded with a colonial and post-colonial corporate world (Noyes, 2004).
The nomadism we would like to discuss in this special issue is not exclusively concerned with nomadism in space. What intrigues us also is the kind of nomadism that could inspire stories, represents alternative explanations of the 'status quo', and which do not recreate an antagonism between settling and moving. The point of such an enquiry would be to explain the transition - the change during the change - the nomadism through space and time (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003).
During SCOS XXX conference (Barcelona, 2012), interest on nomadic practices of organising was discussed through a rich variety of discussions. We are inviting contributions for a special issue of Scripta Nova that explore the ways in which we organize through nomadism. The special issue intends to explore different relations between movement and organisational and work practices. In contemporary society where there is a shift towards the global and networked society, we want to discuss the implications this has on notions of working and organising, through ideas around social movement, hence the nomadic. We therefore want to contribute to this discussion by exploring ideas of, for example, the relation between travel and organizing (Roberson 2001), the nomadic and migration of images (Waller, 1998), the wisdom acquired through travelling (Nightingale, 2004) or the displacement through virtual communities (Driskell and Lyon, 2002).
Possible themes of nomadism as it intersects with organizing include, but are absolutely not limited to:
· How do concepts of organisations and work shift in displacement?
· Is the organisational actor becoming the digital image of a nomad? (Makimoto and Manners, 1997).
· Who we become when we move (emotion, wisdom)?
· How we imagine the nomadic leaders of the future?
· What might nomadic theories of organising and working be?
· How might we conceptualise the perpetually displaced nomad?
· How nomadism helps us understand changes of working and organising?
· How might we develop ideas around 'the static panic' (the panic to be attached to a place and not to be in permanent movement)?
We welcome papers from any disciplinary, paradigmatic or methodological perspective as long as they directly address the themes of movement, transition and transformation and its relationship to organization. Deadline to submit papers: 28.02.13. Publication date: December 2013/January 2014 (Submission of papers in English, to be published in Spanish or Portuguese. Translation from English to Spanish by Scripta Nova). Papers should be submitted as e-mail attachments in Word to hugo.gaggiotti@uwe.ac.uk.
Please ensure that you follow Scripta Nova house style (ISO 690), as outlined at http://www.fsport.uniba.sk/fileadmin/user_upload/editors/English/science/acta_facultatis/Bibliographic_references_and_citations_01.pdf
Papers should be between 8000 and 9000 words in length (without references and figures), in English and may be returned for shortening before consideration if the editors deem it appropriate. Please also be aware that any images used in your submission must be your own, or where they are not you must already have permission to reproduce them in an academic journal. You should make this explicit in the submitted manuscript. Please direct informal enquiries to Hugo Gaggiotti at hugo.gaggiotti@uwe.ac.uk
References
Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic Subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Czarniawska, B. (forthcoming). Nomadic work as life-story plot. Journal-of-Computer-Supported-Cooperative-Work.
Driskell, R.B., and Lyon, L. (2002). Are virtual communities true communities? Examining the environments and elements of community. City and Community, 1, pp. 373-390.
Gaggiotti, H. (2006). Un lugar en su sitio. Narrativas y organización cultural urbana en el espacio latinoamericano. Sevilla: Editorial JJ/Comunicación Social.
Latour, B. (2002). War of the Worlds. What about Peace? Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Low, S. M. and Lawrence-Zúñiga, D. 2003 (eds.). The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Makimoto, T. and Manners, D. (1997). Digital Nomad. Chichester: John Wiley Nightingale, A.W. (2004). Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Noyes, J. (2004). Nomadism, nomadology, postcolonialism: By way of introduction, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 6:2, 159-168 Palan, R. (2003) The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad Millionaires. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.
Roberson, S. (2001). Defining Travel: Diverse Visions. Oxford, Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press.
Waller, M. (1998) Corporate nomads with the skill to step into the breach. The Times, 13 October: 31.
Item 4:
Call for Papers for an ephemera Special Issue on: Critiquing corruption: A turn to theory
Issue Editors: Thomas Taro Lennerfors, Eric Breit and Lena Olaison
For this Special Issue of ephemera, we want to explore the possibilities of turning to theory, instead of practice, to critique corruption and anti-corruption. Corruption is often seen as a virus or a cancer that is eating away at the core of contemporary society (Wolfensohn, 1998). Correspondingly, international anti-corruption measures have risen to prominence over the last decade, exemplified by the UN Convention on Corruption and the UN Global Compact. In the 2000s, corporate scandals, such as Enron, Worldcom, and most recently the global banking crisis, have increasingly put corruption into the spotlight.
Despite this, there have been few calls for theoretical investigations into corruption – on the contrary, there seems to be an aversion to such explorations. While there are various types of corrupt practices (e.g. bribery, fraud, embezzlement, etc.) at different levels (e.g. petty, grand, systemic), few are willing to theorize corruption beyond the World Bank’s definition – ‘the misuse of public office for private gain’ (The World Bank Group) – or the one by Transparency International – ‘the misuse of entrusted power for private gain’ (Transparency International). The argument has even been made that it is unproductive to define and theorize corruption (Johnston, 1996); it seems to be taken for granted that ‘we know it when we see it’.
Such neglect of the complexity of both theories and practices of corruption, we suggest, is a mistake. Studies have shown, for example, that when portrayed in media, the meaning of corruption is far from agreed upon (Breit, 2010; Hansen 1998). Further, the intrinsic nature of corruption as ‘evil’ and anti-corruption as ‘good’ have been analysed. Such studies broaden the view of corruption, suggesting that corrupt exchanges can be functional in inefficient contexts and that corruption in some cases can be conceived as a fifth factor of production (Ledeneva, 1998; Kameir and Kursany, 1985). Anti-corruption, on the other hand, has been critiqued not only for its neoliberal spirit but also for its Western perspective positing corruption as an attribute of the Other of Western civilization (Brown and Cloke, 2011; Doig, 2011; Haller and Shore, 2005; Sík, 2002). While recognising the value of these studies, a common tendency in the aforementioned critiques is to turn to practice and to stress the need for understanding the complex context of corruption and anti-corruption.
To point towards a few potential avenues for theoretical engagement, one of the most prevalent understanding of corruption comes from classical agency theory. Here an ‘agent’, rather than acting in accordance with the will of a ‘principal’, acts in his/her own interest (see Jain, 1998) or in the interest of his/her organization (Pinto, Leana and Pil, 2008). As a response to such an understanding, structural perspectives put less emphasis on the agency of the individual and instead focus on the ‘barrel’ rather than the ‘rotten apples’ (Bakan, 2004). Furthering such development, process-based approaches have tried to break with the agency/structure theorising altogether (Ashforth and Anand, 2003; Fleming and Zyglidopoulos, 2009).
Other, perhaps less pursued, paths that could serve as inspiration for theoretical explorations are, for example, attempts to theorise corruption with insights from psychoanalysis. In such studies, corruption has been theorised as a symptom of the failure of the public/private split (Batsis, 2006; see also Lennerfors, 2008; 2010) or as a psychological disorder such as greed, arrogance or self-aggrandizement (Levine, 2005).
From a politico-philosophical perspective, Hardt and Negri (2000) theorise corruption in terms of the absence of ontology, conceived in terms of the revolutionary political subject. They draw on the largely forgotten ancient notion of corruption, where it always denotes corruption of and in relation to something. This stands in contrast to the contemporary view where it almost seems that corruption is not corruption of anything, but just exists. We might even see connections to Badiou’s critique of present ethics as fighting Evil without any positive conception of the Good (Badiou, 2001).
We invite papers that attempt to rethink corruption theoretically, and to connect the concept of corruption to theory more rigorously. The theoretical investigations highlighted in this call might be used for inspiration, but even more, we invite papers that propose novel and unconventional theoretical takes on corruption. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:
· Generation and ontology
· Virology and oncology
· Subject formation and corruption, corrupt and not corrupt subjectivities.
· Freud, Lacan, perversions
· Food and gluttony
· Gender and sexuality
· Mind and body
· Science and technology studies
· Cynicism and kynicism
· Corruption, tradition, and history
· Processual conceptualisation: Transcendence, immanence, rhizome
· World systems theory, globalization and corruption
· Corruption as boundary object; Actor-Network Theory and corruption
· Corruption and the environment; corruption as an epiphenomenon of natural resources.
· Thermodynamics: entropy, dissipative structures, and corruption
Deadline for submissions: 30 October 2013
All contributions should be submitted to one of the issue editors: Thomas Taro Lennerfors (thomas.lennerfors@angstrom.uu.se), Eric Breit (eric.breit@afi.no) or Lena Olaison (lo.lpf@cbs.dk). Please note that three categories of contributions are invited for the special issue: articles, notes, and reviews. All submissions should follow ephemera’s submissions guidelines (www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm). Articles will undergo a double blind review process. This call for papers is associated with the stream ‘Unmasking corruption: Critical perspectives on corruption and anti-corruption’ (http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1334581167609&subtheme_id=1319359704521) at the EGOS 2013 conference in Montreal (July 4-6, 2013, submission deadline for the stream is January 14 2013). The special issue is open for contributions also outside the conference participants.
References
Ashforth, B.E. and V. Anand (2003) ‘The normalization of corruption in organizations’, in R.M. Kramer and B. Staw (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, 25: 1-52.
Badiou, A. (2001) Ethics: An essay on the understanding of evil. New York: Verso.
Bakan, J. (2004) The corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power. New York: Free Press.
Bratsis, P. (2006) Everyday life and the state. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Breit, E. (2010) ‘On the (re)construction of corruption in the media: A critical discursive approach’, Journal of Business Ethics, 92(4): 619-635.
Brown, E. and J. Cloke (2011) ‘Critical perspectives on corruption: An overview’, Critical Perspectives on International Business, 7(2): 116-124.
Doig, A. (2011) ‘Numbers, words and KYC: Knowing your country and knowing your corruption’, Critical Perspectives on International Business, 7(2): 142-158.
Fleming, P. and S. Zyglidopoulos (2009) Chartering corporate corruption: Agency, structure and escalation. London: Edward Elgar.
Haller, D. and C. Shore (eds.) (2005) Corruption: Anthropological perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
Hansen, H.K. (1998) ‘Governmental mismanagement and symbolic violence. Discourses on corruption in the Yucatán of the 1990s’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 17(3): 367-386.
Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Jain, A. (1998a) ‘Models of corruption’, in A. Jain (ed.) Economics of corruption. Boston; London, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Johnston, M. (1996) ‘The search for definitions: The vitality of politics and the issues of corruption’, International Social Science Journal, 48(3): 321–336.
Kameir, E. and I. Kursany, I. (1985) Corruption as a “fifth” factor of production in the Sudan. The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Research Report no. 72. Uppsala, Sweden.
Ledeneva, A.V. (1998) Russia’s economy of favours: Blat, networking and informal exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lennerfors, T.T. (2008) The vicissitudes of corruption: Degeneration, transgression, jouissance. Stockholm: Arvinius (Ph.D. Thesis).
Lennerfors, T.T (2010) ‘The sublime object of corruption: Exploring the relevance of a psychoanalytical two-bodies doctrine for understanding corruption’, in S.L. Muhr, B.M. Sørensen and S. Vallentin (eds.) Ethics and organizational practice: Questioning the moral foundations of management. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Levine, D.P. (2005) ‘The corrupt organization’, Human Relations, 58(6): 723-740.
Pinto, J., C. R. Leana and F. K. Pil: 2008, ‘Corrupt organizations or organizations of corrupt individuals? Two types of organizational-level corruption’, Academy of Management Review, 33(3): 685–709.
Sík, E. (2002) ‘The bad, the worse and the worst: Guesstimating the level of corruption’, in S. Kotkin and A. Sajó (eds.) Political corruption in transition: A skeptic’s handbook. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Transparency International (2012) ‘What is corruption?’ [http://transparency.am/corruption.php].
Wolfensohn, J. (1998) ‘A back-to-basics anti-corruption strategy: Economic perspectives’, Electronic Journals of the United States Information Agency, 3(5): 17-19.
The World Bank Group (2012) ‘Helping countries combat corruption: The role of the World Bank’ [http://transparency.am/corruption.php].
Item 5:
Call for papers: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies – The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies
This stream aims to explore the self-evidences of entrepreneurship scholarship, including its (neo-capitalist) ideologies, dominant assumptions, grand narratives, preferred sites, objects and practices of inquiry. Even though entrepreneurship is a very diverse phenomenon that calls for divergence and multiplicity in its understandings, the majority of entrepreneurship research is still functionalist in nature (Jennings et al, 2005). As Calas, Smircich and Bourne (2009: 552) suggest, with “few exceptions, the extensive literature on entrepreneurship positions it as a positive economic activity”. The normative assumption that entrepreneurship is a ‘good thing’ prevails along with an acceptance that ‘the more entrepreneurs the merrier’ (cf. Weiskopf and Steyaert, 2009). Entrepreneurship as a field of study has generally been dominated by research and researchers interested in it as a purely market-based phenomenon: a ‘special’ trait or set of behaviours which drive venture creation. This focus on entrepreneurship as a ‘desirable’ economic activity, perceived unquestioningly as positive, obscures important questions: for instance, questions of identity, phenomenology, ideology and relations of power.
Drawing on and intensifying previous critical work on entrepreneurship by, for instance, Nodoushani & Nodoushani, 1999, Ogbor, 2000, Steyaert and Hjorth (2007); Hjorth and Steyaert (2009) and Down (2006; 2010), we propose this stream as a means to create space for what Calas et al. (2009) refer to as Critical Entrepreneurship Studies . Continuing our earlier (2011) CMS stream on Critical Entrepreneurship Studies and Special Issue in Organization (Tedmanson, Verduyn, Essers and Gartner, 2010), we invite papers that critically reflect on entrepreneurship’s authoritative voices, forces, discourses, assemblages or desires that make us believe that there is no other option than conceiving entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs as neo-liberal icons. Critical inquiries of entrepreneurship’s exclusionary linguistic conventions are also highly appreciated for they have proven effective in disclosing, for instance, the mystification of ‘the entrepreneur’ based on essentialist conceptualisations of archetypically ‘white’ attributes (Calas et al., ibid). Moreover, we are interested in papers dealing with how the rationality of the entrepreneur is used politically – both inside and outside of the economy (e.g. in the public sector, the voluntary sector or in popular culture) – to interpellate individuals as entrepreneurial subjects, who then “further the cause of post-industrial capital through their own volition” (Jones and Spicer, 2009: 27).
On the other hand, we also embrace papers that try to save entrepreneurship from its neo-liberal over-codification by probing the constitutive voices that constantly punctuate, transgress and challenge the received wisdom. Attempts to bring to light entrepreneurship’s inherent, if often suppressed, alterity via empirical work might follow the example of Ahl (2004), Rehn and Taalas (2004), Pio (2005), Essers and Benschop (2007; 2009), Essers (2008; 2009) and Ozkazanc-Pan (2009) who have sought to ‘voice’ other entrepreneurial subjectivities than those traditionally privileged in dominant stories of entrepreneurship. On the conceptual end, papers engaging critically with the canon of entrepreneurship studies might find inspiration in Rindova et al. (2009) who have convincingly suggested to move scholarship away from a focus on wealth creation as a dominant motive for starting a venture, and to start addressing entrepreneurship’s ‘dark sides’ as well as its emancipatory possibilities. Also, papers might consider geographical, discursive and social dimensions of entrepreneurship other than those typically studied by researchers (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). Methodologically, papers might look into entrepreneurship research’s performative and interventionist possibilities and thus demonstrate how research can be used as a vehicle for bringing into existence different entrepreneurial realities (Steyaert, 2011).
While the above offers possible entry points of how entrepreneurship might be approached from a critical vantage point, we rather openly seek through this stream to further the momentum for alternate analyses of entrepreneurship within the field of critical scholarship. Aiming to unleash myriad ways of enacting entrepreneurship differently, any surprises that move forward the critical agenda of entrepreneurship are welcome.
Stream convenors:
Dr. Caroline Essers (VU University Amsterdam and Radboud University Nijmegen), c.essers@fm.ru.nl
Dr. Pascal Dey (University of St. Gallen), pascal.dey@unisg.ch
Dr. Karen Verduyn (VU University Amsterdam), karen.verduijn@vu.nl
Deirdre Tedmanson (University of South Australia and Hawke Research Institute), deirdre.tedmanson@unisa.edu.au
Please send abstracts or any questions to c.essers@fm.ru.nl
Extended abstracts (maximum 1000 words, A4 paper, single spaced, 12 point font), including a clear research question and short but clear elaboration on the used methods (when authors have based their work on empirical research), should be submitted by 31st January 2013.
Notification of paper acceptance: 22nd February 2013
Full papers will be expected by 1st May 2013
Item 6:
Call for papers: Re-working Lacan at work - 2013 Paris Conference
Conference to be held at ESCP Europe Business School
Paris, France, 14-15 June 2013
**Abstract submission deadline extended until 15 January 2013**
Keynote speakers:
Geneviève Morel: Psychoanalyst, Paris, Lille Chair of CP-ALEPH (French Association for the Study of Psychoanalysis and its History), Lille Lecturer and Chair of Savoirs et Clinique (Association for Permanent Education in Psychoanalysis), Paris, Lille Analyst of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London
Dany Nobus: Professor, Chair of Psychology and Psychoanalysis Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategy, Development and External Relations Head of MA Programme in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Society, Brunel University, London
5 years after the 2008 Copenhagen Conference on Lacan at work and in addition to many recent publications on this topic, we intend to continue exploring the contribution of a Lacanian perspective to the study of work, management and organizations. This conference first aims to specify what makes the Lacanian approach both complementary to, and different from, other approaches used: 1) in the field of organizational psychodynamics (approaches inspired by other psychoanalytical schools: Freudian, Kleinian, etc.); 2) and in the field of critical studies (approaches based on other traditions in philosophy, politics, etc.), where the Lacanian perspective has taken a growing importance over the last years, mainly influenced or mediated by the writings of the philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The second aim of the conference consists of exploring how clinical and critical approaches of organizations, which both refer to Lacanian theory, can be brought into a dialogue. After all, both approaches have mainly developed separately and deserve to engage in a more systematic confrontation.
In this respect and in order to celebrate its 60th birthday, we would like to reconnect with some of the spirit of the famous Discourse of Rome (1953) that marked Lacan’s break with the analytic establishment and the formation of his own school of thought based on a radical revision of psychoanalysis both in questioning its main concepts and taking up issues shared with human and social sciences. One of the most important resources in this respect is Lacan’s theory of the subject. The definition of the unconscious as “the Other's discourse” and of subjectivity as “external” to the subject, in relation to the theory of discourse, helps to overcome some of the internalizing and individualizing tendencies psychoanalysis is commonly criticized for, and which have diminished its critical scope. Lacan's fight against ego-psychology, his rejection of psychologism and of any form of “human engineering”, as well as his ethical and scientific positioning are very useful for a critical approach to the central place given, in contemporary management, to work psychology, coaching, self improvement techniques or to the ideology of “becoming oneself”. If, as Lacan declared, the object of psychoanalysis is not so much human beings as such, but, rather what they lack, the psychoanalytic contribution to the study of organizations and of management might well pertain to a science of what organizations lack. This lack is not some sort of void that needs to be filled or evacuated, but a space where the subject experiences itself as desire, which has an impact on organizational functioning as a whole.
With this conference we aim at gaining a better understanding of how Lacanian concepts or categories – real/imaginary/symbolic, signifier, discourse, subject of the unconscious, subject supposed to know, jouissance, castration, objet-a, Desire, alienation (in line with the very specific use of this word by Lacan), fantasies, symptom/sinthome, etc – can be used to study work, management and organizations, both from a critical and/or a clinical perspective.
We invite theoretical, methodological, epistemological or empirical contributions on any area connected to one of these concepts and categories, in the light of the work of Lacan and of others in the Lacanian tradition. The conference will be a working conference, that is to say, a venue to work on ideas with one another. We welcome contributions from academics, practicing and trainee analysts, and from practitioners. We wish to promote a space for the critical examination of ideas.
Submissions
We invite submissions of abstracts of no more than 1,000 words (in English). Deadline for submissions has been extended to January 15, 2013. Full papers (in English or in French) will be required by 15 May 2013. Abstracts should be sent as a Word attachment (containing also the title of the contribution, surname, name, institution, mail address) to Gilles Arnaud (garnaud@escpeurope.eu) and Bénédicte Vidaillet (benedicte.vidaillet@univ-lille1.fr).
Registration
A conference fee will be charged:
- Academic or Executive: 190€
- Individual: 80€
- Student: 40€
The conference will be held in English and in French. Simultaneous translation in French or English will be provided.
For questions regarding the conference, please contact any member of the organizing committee.
Organizing Committee
Gilles Arnaud, ESCP Europe, France (garnaud@escpeurope.eu)
Carl Cederström, Cardiff University, UK (cederstromcf@Cardiff.ac.uk)
Laurent Chaine, Psychoanalyst, Paris, France (chaine.laurent@orange.fr)
Carine Chemin-Bouzir, Reims Management School, France (carine.chemin-bouzir@reims-ms.fr)
Casper Hoedemaekers, University of Essex, UK (choedem@essex.ac.uk)
Stijn Vanheule, Ghent University, Belgium (stijn.vanheule@UGent.be)
Bénédicte Vidaillet, University of Lille, France (benedicte.vidaillet@univ-lille1.fr)
Working Conference ‘Authority, Organisation, Strategies and Politics of Relatedness’
March 14-20, 2013, IIM-Ahmedabad, India.
The early closing date for nominations is January 14, 2013.
Places are limited to 24, and we have a few places available at this time.
Please follow this link for further information: www.iimahd.ernet.in/AOSPOR
Item 2:
Call for papers: The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies – Extending the limits of neo-liberal capitalism
Stream: Beyond the either/or of social versus subjective causality: Ontogenesis and Individuation; Self & Neo-Capitalism
University of Manchester 10th – 12th July 2013
Conveners:
Prof Jean-Luc Moriceau (Institut Telecom/TEM/Organization studies, FR)
Prof Hugo Letiche (University of Leicester, UK )
Prof Arne DeBoever (CalArts, Valencia CA USA)
Neo-liberal capitalism creates self-centered, isolated, present-focused, hyper-active individuals; who are narcissistic, and lacking in cultural or historical perspective. Quasi-hysterical persons typify neo-con’s capitalism. Each social order produces the matching individual consciousness, and vice versa. Marcuse’s refusal to accept social-political or social-psychological causality --- that is, the one without the other --- was a crucial contribution. Today scholars like Jacques Rancière and Bernard Stiegler continue the critical study of the ontogenesis of society, personality and capitalism. More than Marcuse, Gilbert Simondon forms their theoretical inspiration. Humanist socialism (identified, for instance with Socialisme ou barbarie) has responded to the psychological violence inflicted by (neo-) capitalism on identity. Phenomenologists, such as Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur, already in the 1960’s examined the contextual prerequisites to the human subject’s awareness and action, and the society/person interchange. Phenomenologists and post-phenomenologists, such as Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Edgar Morin (all members of Socialisme ou barbarie), have placed the critique of capitalism in their study of the relationship(s) between political economy and self. Simondon was a student of Merleau-Ponty’s, who focused on the social ontogenesis of identity in contemporary society. He is an acknowledged and crucial source for Deleuze’s and Steigler’s critique of self and capitalism.
For organizational studies, Simondon is crucial in how he explains that organizing, planning and strategy are not the imposition of the past on the present; but are the opening of occurrence to the future --- i.e. they are ways of making capitalist becoming, possible. Simondon offers an antidote to narrow social constructivism. The organization is not just a series of (rhetorical) agreements, but it is a form of social emergence or occurrence. Through the central figure of the leader, the entrepreneur, or the manager the neoliberal assumption that the individual is both the cause of organization and the origin of ‘self’ has dominated mainstream organization studies. Though it is acknowledged that the individual may be influenced by social or cultural surroundings, s/he supposedly makes decisions, acts, talks and/or launches projects. S/he is rewarded for success and blamed for failure. By contrast, for Simondon, the individual is not the cause but the effect of constant, emergent individuation. S/he is always in the process of becoming individual through practices and encounters emerging from a pre-individual pool of possibilities, grounded in the social, cultural, historical, psychological and material milieu. Individuation is always psychological, collective, and technical; the individual, collective, and technological individuate in relationship to one another. Becoming is always beyond or below the ‘seize-ability’ of the individual. For Simondon, the individual is a never-ending bridging process --- bridging the subject to pre-individual sources, to collective subjects and to techniques; bridging generations, cultures, economies, etc.
Through Simondon’s lens, many organizational concepts that seem taken for granted become problematical. What is a ‘leader’, what is an ‘identity’, what meaning does a ‘contract’ or a ‘convention’ have? What is the purpose of education and what is the role of technique? Simondon brings us to new questions: ‘How do we understand, or aid, an individuation processes that is not neo-liberal?’, ‘What kind of values can motivate concerned multidimensional subjects?’, ‘What kind of social justice does critical thought implicate?’, ‘What is the role of affect and emotion in a just society?’, etcetera. And, ‘What does this all mean for organizational theorizing?’, ‘What kind of methods of design are desirable?’, ‘What bridge should be made to economic, political, ethical, cultural theories and concepts?’, etcetera?
This sub-theme therefore welcomes contributions offering insights into (and alternatives to) neo-capitalism and:
· Organizing as ontogenesis: principles of (critical) self-creation;
· Individuation: leaders, managers, entrepreneurs and opponents?
· Processes of existence not narrowly defined as rational self-interest;
· Organization overwhelmed by technology and/or technics;
· Affect and relatedness;
· Media: individuation and technology;
· The organizational study of networked trans-individuality;
· Critique of ‘holism’ – i.e. order as (quantum) movement across thresholds;
· Simondon and others (Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Stiegler, Rancière, Latour, etc.).
Bibliography
DeBoever, A (2012) Simondon: Being & Technology Edinburgh University Press.
Deleuze, G (2001) “Review Simondon’s L’individu et sa genèse physio-biologique Pli 12 pp 43-49.
Massumi, B (2009) “Technical mentality revisited: Massumi on Simondon” Parrhesia no 7 pp 36-45.
Simondon, G (1964) L’individu et sa genèse physio-biologique Paris: PUF.
--- (1989) L’individuation psychique et collective Paris:Aubier.
--- (2009) “Technical Mentality” Parrhesia no 7 pp 17-27.
Stiegler, B (2006) « Chute et élévation. L’apolitique de Simondon », Revue philosophique, n°3.
Styhre, A (2008) « Transduction and entrepreneurship » Scandinavian Journal of Management vol 24 pp 103-112.
Please send abstracts or any questions to
h.letiche@uvh.nl
Abstracts should be a maximum 1000 words, A4 paper, single spaced, 12 point font. Deadline 31st January 2013
Notification of paper acceptance: 22nd February 2013
Full papers will be expected by 1st May 2013
The Conveners:
Prof Jean-Luc Moriceau (Institut Telecom/TEM/Organization studies, Paris FR) is active in critical management studies in France, as well as in SCOS. He has been an EGOS co-convener and co-organizer of L’art du sens (around B. Stiegler) in Centre Pompidou, as well as other conferences in France. He has a book on qualitative research methods coming out in 2013 and L’Art du sens in 2013-14. He has published in Journal of Org. Change Management, Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, and Critical Perspectives on Accounting.
Prof Hugo Letiche (University of Leicester, UK; formerly UvH Utrecht, NL) has been SCOS conference co-convener and was several times EGOS co-convener, and has organized several conferences. Recently his book on social complexity theory (New York, Macmillan) came out and a book (co- author & -editor) on belief and organization (London, Palgrave) is due out this autumn. He has published recently in Sociological Review, Culture & Organization, Organization Studies, E:CO, Society Business Review.
Prof Arne de Boever (CalArts, Valencia Ca USA) co-wrote and edited the first English language book on Simondon, Being & Technology (Edinburgh University Press), which is now out. He is editor of Parrhesia. As North American, this is his first CMS.
Item 3:
Call for papers: Special issue of Scripta Nova on Nomadism and Organising
Volume 17, issue 420, 2014
Guest editors: Hugo Gaggiotti, University of the West of England (United Kingdom)
Monika Kostera, University of Warsaw (Poland)
Ricardo Bresler, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil)
Mainstream western epistemologies and methodologies on organising persist in attempts to delineate and fix reality. Within social science our questions (to 'research subjects', ourselves and colleagues) often invite static answers: where are you from?; are you male or female?; how old are you?; how long have you had this job?; where do you feel most at home?; what is my epistemology?; are you a positivist, constructivist, interpretativist, postmodernist, etc., etc.? Offering one possible line of flight from such fixity, Rosi Braidotti (1994) suggests acknowledging nomadism as an existential condition.
Ideas around nomad+global are becoming exchangeable representations of a vocabulary that in contemporary capitalism has to be universally understood, like nomad+millionaire (Palan, 2003). Nevertheless, our perception is that nomad and global are concepts that not necessarily and always are associated with organising. We still imagine organising very static, located and practicing in a place inscribed in a space (Gaggiotti 2006), necessarily creating a sense of a community, in what Czarniawska and others (Czarniawska, forthcoming; Latour, 2002) have referred to as a deeply rooted modernist belief in spatial homogenization. But seems that nomadism create a sense of a community too (Waller, 1998) or serves to populate the imagery of a global community, a practice that some authors have suggested embedded with a colonial and post-colonial corporate world (Noyes, 2004).
The nomadism we would like to discuss in this special issue is not exclusively concerned with nomadism in space. What intrigues us also is the kind of nomadism that could inspire stories, represents alternative explanations of the 'status quo', and which do not recreate an antagonism between settling and moving. The point of such an enquiry would be to explain the transition - the change during the change - the nomadism through space and time (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003).
During SCOS XXX conference (Barcelona, 2012), interest on nomadic practices of organising was discussed through a rich variety of discussions. We are inviting contributions for a special issue of Scripta Nova that explore the ways in which we organize through nomadism. The special issue intends to explore different relations between movement and organisational and work practices. In contemporary society where there is a shift towards the global and networked society, we want to discuss the implications this has on notions of working and organising, through ideas around social movement, hence the nomadic. We therefore want to contribute to this discussion by exploring ideas of, for example, the relation between travel and organizing (Roberson 2001), the nomadic and migration of images (Waller, 1998), the wisdom acquired through travelling (Nightingale, 2004) or the displacement through virtual communities (Driskell and Lyon, 2002).
Possible themes of nomadism as it intersects with organizing include, but are absolutely not limited to:
· How do concepts of organisations and work shift in displacement?
· Is the organisational actor becoming the digital image of a nomad? (Makimoto and Manners, 1997).
· Who we become when we move (emotion, wisdom)?
· How we imagine the nomadic leaders of the future?
· What might nomadic theories of organising and working be?
· How might we conceptualise the perpetually displaced nomad?
· How nomadism helps us understand changes of working and organising?
· How might we develop ideas around 'the static panic' (the panic to be attached to a place and not to be in permanent movement)?
We welcome papers from any disciplinary, paradigmatic or methodological perspective as long as they directly address the themes of movement, transition and transformation and its relationship to organization. Deadline to submit papers: 28.02.13. Publication date: December 2013/January 2014 (Submission of papers in English, to be published in Spanish or Portuguese. Translation from English to Spanish by Scripta Nova). Papers should be submitted as e-mail attachments in Word to hugo.gaggiotti@uwe.ac.uk.
Please ensure that you follow Scripta Nova house style (ISO 690), as outlined at http://www.fsport.uniba.sk/fileadmin/user_upload/editors/English/science/acta_facultatis/Bibliographic_references_and_citations_01.pdf
Papers should be between 8000 and 9000 words in length (without references and figures), in English and may be returned for shortening before consideration if the editors deem it appropriate. Please also be aware that any images used in your submission must be your own, or where they are not you must already have permission to reproduce them in an academic journal. You should make this explicit in the submitted manuscript. Please direct informal enquiries to Hugo Gaggiotti at hugo.gaggiotti@uwe.ac.uk
References
Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic Subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Czarniawska, B. (forthcoming). Nomadic work as life-story plot. Journal-of-Computer-Supported-Cooperative-Work.
Driskell, R.B., and Lyon, L. (2002). Are virtual communities true communities? Examining the environments and elements of community. City and Community, 1, pp. 373-390.
Gaggiotti, H. (2006). Un lugar en su sitio. Narrativas y organización cultural urbana en el espacio latinoamericano. Sevilla: Editorial JJ/Comunicación Social.
Latour, B. (2002). War of the Worlds. What about Peace? Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Low, S. M. and Lawrence-Zúñiga, D. 2003 (eds.). The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Makimoto, T. and Manners, D. (1997). Digital Nomad. Chichester: John Wiley Nightingale, A.W. (2004). Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Noyes, J. (2004). Nomadism, nomadology, postcolonialism: By way of introduction, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 6:2, 159-168 Palan, R. (2003) The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad Millionaires. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.
Roberson, S. (2001). Defining Travel: Diverse Visions. Oxford, Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press.
Waller, M. (1998) Corporate nomads with the skill to step into the breach. The Times, 13 October: 31.
Item 4:
Call for Papers for an ephemera Special Issue on: Critiquing corruption: A turn to theory
Issue Editors: Thomas Taro Lennerfors, Eric Breit and Lena Olaison
For this Special Issue of ephemera, we want to explore the possibilities of turning to theory, instead of practice, to critique corruption and anti-corruption. Corruption is often seen as a virus or a cancer that is eating away at the core of contemporary society (Wolfensohn, 1998). Correspondingly, international anti-corruption measures have risen to prominence over the last decade, exemplified by the UN Convention on Corruption and the UN Global Compact. In the 2000s, corporate scandals, such as Enron, Worldcom, and most recently the global banking crisis, have increasingly put corruption into the spotlight.
Despite this, there have been few calls for theoretical investigations into corruption – on the contrary, there seems to be an aversion to such explorations. While there are various types of corrupt practices (e.g. bribery, fraud, embezzlement, etc.) at different levels (e.g. petty, grand, systemic), few are willing to theorize corruption beyond the World Bank’s definition – ‘the misuse of public office for private gain’ (The World Bank Group) – or the one by Transparency International – ‘the misuse of entrusted power for private gain’ (Transparency International). The argument has even been made that it is unproductive to define and theorize corruption (Johnston, 1996); it seems to be taken for granted that ‘we know it when we see it’.
Such neglect of the complexity of both theories and practices of corruption, we suggest, is a mistake. Studies have shown, for example, that when portrayed in media, the meaning of corruption is far from agreed upon (Breit, 2010; Hansen 1998). Further, the intrinsic nature of corruption as ‘evil’ and anti-corruption as ‘good’ have been analysed. Such studies broaden the view of corruption, suggesting that corrupt exchanges can be functional in inefficient contexts and that corruption in some cases can be conceived as a fifth factor of production (Ledeneva, 1998; Kameir and Kursany, 1985). Anti-corruption, on the other hand, has been critiqued not only for its neoliberal spirit but also for its Western perspective positing corruption as an attribute of the Other of Western civilization (Brown and Cloke, 2011; Doig, 2011; Haller and Shore, 2005; Sík, 2002). While recognising the value of these studies, a common tendency in the aforementioned critiques is to turn to practice and to stress the need for understanding the complex context of corruption and anti-corruption.
To point towards a few potential avenues for theoretical engagement, one of the most prevalent understanding of corruption comes from classical agency theory. Here an ‘agent’, rather than acting in accordance with the will of a ‘principal’, acts in his/her own interest (see Jain, 1998) or in the interest of his/her organization (Pinto, Leana and Pil, 2008). As a response to such an understanding, structural perspectives put less emphasis on the agency of the individual and instead focus on the ‘barrel’ rather than the ‘rotten apples’ (Bakan, 2004). Furthering such development, process-based approaches have tried to break with the agency/structure theorising altogether (Ashforth and Anand, 2003; Fleming and Zyglidopoulos, 2009).
Other, perhaps less pursued, paths that could serve as inspiration for theoretical explorations are, for example, attempts to theorise corruption with insights from psychoanalysis. In such studies, corruption has been theorised as a symptom of the failure of the public/private split (Batsis, 2006; see also Lennerfors, 2008; 2010) or as a psychological disorder such as greed, arrogance or self-aggrandizement (Levine, 2005).
From a politico-philosophical perspective, Hardt and Negri (2000) theorise corruption in terms of the absence of ontology, conceived in terms of the revolutionary political subject. They draw on the largely forgotten ancient notion of corruption, where it always denotes corruption of and in relation to something. This stands in contrast to the contemporary view where it almost seems that corruption is not corruption of anything, but just exists. We might even see connections to Badiou’s critique of present ethics as fighting Evil without any positive conception of the Good (Badiou, 2001).
We invite papers that attempt to rethink corruption theoretically, and to connect the concept of corruption to theory more rigorously. The theoretical investigations highlighted in this call might be used for inspiration, but even more, we invite papers that propose novel and unconventional theoretical takes on corruption. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:
· Generation and ontology
· Virology and oncology
· Subject formation and corruption, corrupt and not corrupt subjectivities.
· Freud, Lacan, perversions
· Food and gluttony
· Gender and sexuality
· Mind and body
· Science and technology studies
· Cynicism and kynicism
· Corruption, tradition, and history
· Processual conceptualisation: Transcendence, immanence, rhizome
· World systems theory, globalization and corruption
· Corruption as boundary object; Actor-Network Theory and corruption
· Corruption and the environment; corruption as an epiphenomenon of natural resources.
· Thermodynamics: entropy, dissipative structures, and corruption
Deadline for submissions: 30 October 2013
All contributions should be submitted to one of the issue editors: Thomas Taro Lennerfors (thomas.lennerfors@angstrom.uu.se), Eric Breit (eric.breit@afi.no) or Lena Olaison (lo.lpf@cbs.dk). Please note that three categories of contributions are invited for the special issue: articles, notes, and reviews. All submissions should follow ephemera’s submissions guidelines (www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm). Articles will undergo a double blind review process. This call for papers is associated with the stream ‘Unmasking corruption: Critical perspectives on corruption and anti-corruption’ (http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1334581167609&subtheme_id=1319359704521) at the EGOS 2013 conference in Montreal (July 4-6, 2013, submission deadline for the stream is January 14 2013). The special issue is open for contributions also outside the conference participants.
References
Ashforth, B.E. and V. Anand (2003) ‘The normalization of corruption in organizations’, in R.M. Kramer and B. Staw (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, 25: 1-52.
Badiou, A. (2001) Ethics: An essay on the understanding of evil. New York: Verso.
Bakan, J. (2004) The corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power. New York: Free Press.
Bratsis, P. (2006) Everyday life and the state. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Breit, E. (2010) ‘On the (re)construction of corruption in the media: A critical discursive approach’, Journal of Business Ethics, 92(4): 619-635.
Brown, E. and J. Cloke (2011) ‘Critical perspectives on corruption: An overview’, Critical Perspectives on International Business, 7(2): 116-124.
Doig, A. (2011) ‘Numbers, words and KYC: Knowing your country and knowing your corruption’, Critical Perspectives on International Business, 7(2): 142-158.
Fleming, P. and S. Zyglidopoulos (2009) Chartering corporate corruption: Agency, structure and escalation. London: Edward Elgar.
Haller, D. and C. Shore (eds.) (2005) Corruption: Anthropological perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
Hansen, H.K. (1998) ‘Governmental mismanagement and symbolic violence. Discourses on corruption in the Yucatán of the 1990s’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 17(3): 367-386.
Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Jain, A. (1998a) ‘Models of corruption’, in A. Jain (ed.) Economics of corruption. Boston; London, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Johnston, M. (1996) ‘The search for definitions: The vitality of politics and the issues of corruption’, International Social Science Journal, 48(3): 321–336.
Kameir, E. and I. Kursany, I. (1985) Corruption as a “fifth” factor of production in the Sudan. The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Research Report no. 72. Uppsala, Sweden.
Ledeneva, A.V. (1998) Russia’s economy of favours: Blat, networking and informal exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lennerfors, T.T. (2008) The vicissitudes of corruption: Degeneration, transgression, jouissance. Stockholm: Arvinius (Ph.D. Thesis).
Lennerfors, T.T (2010) ‘The sublime object of corruption: Exploring the relevance of a psychoanalytical two-bodies doctrine for understanding corruption’, in S.L. Muhr, B.M. Sørensen and S. Vallentin (eds.) Ethics and organizational practice: Questioning the moral foundations of management. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Levine, D.P. (2005) ‘The corrupt organization’, Human Relations, 58(6): 723-740.
Pinto, J., C. R. Leana and F. K. Pil: 2008, ‘Corrupt organizations or organizations of corrupt individuals? Two types of organizational-level corruption’, Academy of Management Review, 33(3): 685–709.
Sík, E. (2002) ‘The bad, the worse and the worst: Guesstimating the level of corruption’, in S. Kotkin and A. Sajó (eds.) Political corruption in transition: A skeptic’s handbook. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Transparency International (2012) ‘What is corruption?’ [http://transparency.am/corruption.php].
Wolfensohn, J. (1998) ‘A back-to-basics anti-corruption strategy: Economic perspectives’, Electronic Journals of the United States Information Agency, 3(5): 17-19.
The World Bank Group (2012) ‘Helping countries combat corruption: The role of the World Bank’ [http://transparency.am/corruption.php].
Item 5:
Call for papers: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies – The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies
This stream aims to explore the self-evidences of entrepreneurship scholarship, including its (neo-capitalist) ideologies, dominant assumptions, grand narratives, preferred sites, objects and practices of inquiry. Even though entrepreneurship is a very diverse phenomenon that calls for divergence and multiplicity in its understandings, the majority of entrepreneurship research is still functionalist in nature (Jennings et al, 2005). As Calas, Smircich and Bourne (2009: 552) suggest, with “few exceptions, the extensive literature on entrepreneurship positions it as a positive economic activity”. The normative assumption that entrepreneurship is a ‘good thing’ prevails along with an acceptance that ‘the more entrepreneurs the merrier’ (cf. Weiskopf and Steyaert, 2009). Entrepreneurship as a field of study has generally been dominated by research and researchers interested in it as a purely market-based phenomenon: a ‘special’ trait or set of behaviours which drive venture creation. This focus on entrepreneurship as a ‘desirable’ economic activity, perceived unquestioningly as positive, obscures important questions: for instance, questions of identity, phenomenology, ideology and relations of power.
Drawing on and intensifying previous critical work on entrepreneurship by, for instance, Nodoushani & Nodoushani, 1999, Ogbor, 2000, Steyaert and Hjorth (2007); Hjorth and Steyaert (2009) and Down (2006; 2010), we propose this stream as a means to create space for what Calas et al. (2009) refer to as Critical Entrepreneurship Studies . Continuing our earlier (2011) CMS stream on Critical Entrepreneurship Studies and Special Issue in Organization (Tedmanson, Verduyn, Essers and Gartner, 2010), we invite papers that critically reflect on entrepreneurship’s authoritative voices, forces, discourses, assemblages or desires that make us believe that there is no other option than conceiving entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs as neo-liberal icons. Critical inquiries of entrepreneurship’s exclusionary linguistic conventions are also highly appreciated for they have proven effective in disclosing, for instance, the mystification of ‘the entrepreneur’ based on essentialist conceptualisations of archetypically ‘white’ attributes (Calas et al., ibid). Moreover, we are interested in papers dealing with how the rationality of the entrepreneur is used politically – both inside and outside of the economy (e.g. in the public sector, the voluntary sector or in popular culture) – to interpellate individuals as entrepreneurial subjects, who then “further the cause of post-industrial capital through their own volition” (Jones and Spicer, 2009: 27).
On the other hand, we also embrace papers that try to save entrepreneurship from its neo-liberal over-codification by probing the constitutive voices that constantly punctuate, transgress and challenge the received wisdom. Attempts to bring to light entrepreneurship’s inherent, if often suppressed, alterity via empirical work might follow the example of Ahl (2004), Rehn and Taalas (2004), Pio (2005), Essers and Benschop (2007; 2009), Essers (2008; 2009) and Ozkazanc-Pan (2009) who have sought to ‘voice’ other entrepreneurial subjectivities than those traditionally privileged in dominant stories of entrepreneurship. On the conceptual end, papers engaging critically with the canon of entrepreneurship studies might find inspiration in Rindova et al. (2009) who have convincingly suggested to move scholarship away from a focus on wealth creation as a dominant motive for starting a venture, and to start addressing entrepreneurship’s ‘dark sides’ as well as its emancipatory possibilities. Also, papers might consider geographical, discursive and social dimensions of entrepreneurship other than those typically studied by researchers (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). Methodologically, papers might look into entrepreneurship research’s performative and interventionist possibilities and thus demonstrate how research can be used as a vehicle for bringing into existence different entrepreneurial realities (Steyaert, 2011).
While the above offers possible entry points of how entrepreneurship might be approached from a critical vantage point, we rather openly seek through this stream to further the momentum for alternate analyses of entrepreneurship within the field of critical scholarship. Aiming to unleash myriad ways of enacting entrepreneurship differently, any surprises that move forward the critical agenda of entrepreneurship are welcome.
Stream convenors:
Dr. Caroline Essers (VU University Amsterdam and Radboud University Nijmegen), c.essers@fm.ru.nl
Dr. Pascal Dey (University of St. Gallen), pascal.dey@unisg.ch
Dr. Karen Verduyn (VU University Amsterdam), karen.verduijn@vu.nl
Deirdre Tedmanson (University of South Australia and Hawke Research Institute), deirdre.tedmanson@unisa.edu.au
Please send abstracts or any questions to c.essers@fm.ru.nl
Extended abstracts (maximum 1000 words, A4 paper, single spaced, 12 point font), including a clear research question and short but clear elaboration on the used methods (when authors have based their work on empirical research), should be submitted by 31st January 2013.
Notification of paper acceptance: 22nd February 2013
Full papers will be expected by 1st May 2013
Item 6:
Call for papers: Re-working Lacan at work - 2013 Paris Conference
Conference to be held at ESCP Europe Business School
Paris, France, 14-15 June 2013
**Abstract submission deadline extended until 15 January 2013**
Keynote speakers:
Geneviève Morel: Psychoanalyst, Paris, Lille Chair of CP-ALEPH (French Association for the Study of Psychoanalysis and its History), Lille Lecturer and Chair of Savoirs et Clinique (Association for Permanent Education in Psychoanalysis), Paris, Lille Analyst of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London
Dany Nobus: Professor, Chair of Psychology and Psychoanalysis Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategy, Development and External Relations Head of MA Programme in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Society, Brunel University, London
5 years after the 2008 Copenhagen Conference on Lacan at work and in addition to many recent publications on this topic, we intend to continue exploring the contribution of a Lacanian perspective to the study of work, management and organizations. This conference first aims to specify what makes the Lacanian approach both complementary to, and different from, other approaches used: 1) in the field of organizational psychodynamics (approaches inspired by other psychoanalytical schools: Freudian, Kleinian, etc.); 2) and in the field of critical studies (approaches based on other traditions in philosophy, politics, etc.), where the Lacanian perspective has taken a growing importance over the last years, mainly influenced or mediated by the writings of the philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The second aim of the conference consists of exploring how clinical and critical approaches of organizations, which both refer to Lacanian theory, can be brought into a dialogue. After all, both approaches have mainly developed separately and deserve to engage in a more systematic confrontation.
In this respect and in order to celebrate its 60th birthday, we would like to reconnect with some of the spirit of the famous Discourse of Rome (1953) that marked Lacan’s break with the analytic establishment and the formation of his own school of thought based on a radical revision of psychoanalysis both in questioning its main concepts and taking up issues shared with human and social sciences. One of the most important resources in this respect is Lacan’s theory of the subject. The definition of the unconscious as “the Other's discourse” and of subjectivity as “external” to the subject, in relation to the theory of discourse, helps to overcome some of the internalizing and individualizing tendencies psychoanalysis is commonly criticized for, and which have diminished its critical scope. Lacan's fight against ego-psychology, his rejection of psychologism and of any form of “human engineering”, as well as his ethical and scientific positioning are very useful for a critical approach to the central place given, in contemporary management, to work psychology, coaching, self improvement techniques or to the ideology of “becoming oneself”. If, as Lacan declared, the object of psychoanalysis is not so much human beings as such, but, rather what they lack, the psychoanalytic contribution to the study of organizations and of management might well pertain to a science of what organizations lack. This lack is not some sort of void that needs to be filled or evacuated, but a space where the subject experiences itself as desire, which has an impact on organizational functioning as a whole.
With this conference we aim at gaining a better understanding of how Lacanian concepts or categories – real/imaginary/symbolic, signifier, discourse, subject of the unconscious, subject supposed to know, jouissance, castration, objet-a, Desire, alienation (in line with the very specific use of this word by Lacan), fantasies, symptom/sinthome, etc – can be used to study work, management and organizations, both from a critical and/or a clinical perspective.
We invite theoretical, methodological, epistemological or empirical contributions on any area connected to one of these concepts and categories, in the light of the work of Lacan and of others in the Lacanian tradition. The conference will be a working conference, that is to say, a venue to work on ideas with one another. We welcome contributions from academics, practicing and trainee analysts, and from practitioners. We wish to promote a space for the critical examination of ideas.
Submissions
We invite submissions of abstracts of no more than 1,000 words (in English). Deadline for submissions has been extended to January 15, 2013. Full papers (in English or in French) will be required by 15 May 2013. Abstracts should be sent as a Word attachment (containing also the title of the contribution, surname, name, institution, mail address) to Gilles Arnaud (garnaud@escpeurope.eu) and Bénédicte Vidaillet (benedicte.vidaillet@univ-lille1.fr).
Registration
A conference fee will be charged:
- Academic or Executive: 190€
- Individual: 80€
- Student: 40€
The conference will be held in English and in French. Simultaneous translation in French or English will be provided.
For questions regarding the conference, please contact any member of the organizing committee.
Organizing Committee
Gilles Arnaud, ESCP Europe, France (garnaud@escpeurope.eu)
Carl Cederström, Cardiff University, UK (cederstromcf@Cardiff.ac.uk)
Laurent Chaine, Psychoanalyst, Paris, France (chaine.laurent@orange.fr)
Carine Chemin-Bouzir, Reims Management School, France (carine.chemin-bouzir@reims-ms.fr)
Casper Hoedemaekers, University of Essex, UK (choedem@essex.ac.uk)
Stijn Vanheule, Ghent University, Belgium (stijn.vanheule@UGent.be)
Bénédicte Vidaillet, University of Lille, France (benedicte.vidaillet@univ-lille1.fr)