Robyn Thomas
Cardiff University, Business School, Faculty Member
- Self and Identity, Identity politics, Critical Discourse Studies, Power-Resistance Relations, Organizational Change, Managing Change, and 14 moreChange Implementation, Multicultural, Change Resistance, Readiness for Change, Coping With Change, Communication, Involvement, Middle Management, Case Study, Change Factors, Intercultural Management, Change agents, Michel Foucault, and Agingedit
The last 15 years have witnessed renewed interest in resistance in and around organizations. In this essay, we offer a conceptual framework to thematize this burgeoning conceptual and empirical terrain. We critically explore scholarship... more
The last 15 years have witnessed renewed interest in resistance in and around organizations. In this essay, we offer a conceptual framework to thematize this burgeoning conceptual and empirical terrain. We critically explore scholarship that examines resistance in terms of its manifestations and political intent or impact. We offer four fields of possibility for resistance scholarship: individual infrapolitics, collective infrapolitics, insubordination, and insurrection (the “four I’s” of resistance). We conclude by considering the relationship between resistance theory and praxis, and pose four questions, or provocations, for stimulating future resistance research and practice.
Research Interests:
The last 15 years have witnessed renewed interest in resistance in and around organizations. In this essay, we offer a conceptual framework to thematise this burgeoning conceptual and empirical terrain. We critically explore scholarship... more
The last 15 years have witnessed renewed interest in resistance in and around organizations. In this essay, we offer a conceptual framework to thematise this burgeoning conceptual and empirical terrain. We critically explore scholarship that examines resistance in terms of its manifestations and political intent or impact. We offer four fields of possibility for resistance scholarship: individual infrapolitics, collective infrapolitics, insubordination, and insurrection (the “Four I’s” of Resistance). We conclude by considering the relationship between resistance theory and praxis, and pose four questions, or provocations, for stimulating future resistance research and practice.
Research Interests:
We adopt a Foucauldian approach to discourse to show how power relations shape the constitution of strategy. By exploring two particular discourses associated with the strategy of a global telecommunications company, our study shows how... more
We adopt a Foucauldian approach to discourse to show how power relations shape the constitution of strategy. By exploring two particular discourses associated with the strategy of a global telecommunications company, our study shows how the power effects of discourses are “intensified” through particular discursive and material practices, leading to the production of objects and subjects that are clearly aligned with the strategy. In this way, our study contributes to understanding the mechanisms whereby discourse bears down on strategy through intensification practices, different forms of resistance, and the way in which strategy objects and subjects reproduce (or undermine) discourse.
Age, as an embodied identity and as an organizing principle, has received scant attention in organization studies. There is a lack of critical appreciation of how age plays out in organizational settings, the material and discursive... more
Age, as an embodied identity and as an organizing principle, has received scant attention in organization studies. There is a lack of critical appreciation of how age plays out in organizational settings, the material and discursive dynamics of age practices, how age discourses impact on the body, and how age and ageing intersects with other identity categories. This is curious since age works as a master signifier in contemporary society and is something that affects us all. In this introductory essay, we show how the papers in this special issue redress this lacuna by enhancing and challenging what we know about age and organizations. We also set out an agenda for stimulating research conversations to bring an age-sensitive lens to organizational analysis. We structure our analysis around two focal points: age as an embodied identity, and the symbolic meanings of age within organizing practices. In doing so, we aim to provide a catalyst not only about research on age in organizations but also about the aged nature of organizing.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this article, we reflect on our experiences of collaborative working in a cross-cultural research team. We reflexively interrogate the construction of the univocal “we” that is expressed in our dissemination of the research findings.... more
In this article, we reflect on our experiences of collaborative working in a cross-cultural research team. We reflexively interrogate the construction of the univocal “we” that is expressed in our dissemination of the research findings. We show how cross-cultural collaborative research brings into sharp relief underlying complex culturally and theoretically determined patterns of thinking within the research team that may