Bernadette Loacker

sometimes shapes work which announces that it is ‘critical’, as it rediscovers concepts such as identity, narrative and discourse like the absent minded goldfish.) It seems that ‘new stuff’ is generally more useful than ‘old stuff’ at the present moment in time. Probably the most important contribution this book could make is its unstated assumption that all worthwhile work on organizations (and perhaps on anything else) is informed by a long view, both in terms of the maturation of ideas but also a certain distance from impact. The classics have been there for a while, and the elitist ivy now grows around them. But precisely because of the cultural capital that attaches to the word, and the very existence of this Oxford University Press book, it is difficult to argue that they aren’t classics without sounding boorish, or even to suggest that we should dispose of them in the skip behind the library. Best of all, it might be embarrassing for some B-School employees with high salaries and opinions of themselves to have to admit that they need to do some more reading and thinking. This big sober book stands as a rebuke to speed, to the assumption that we are the cleverest people ever, and to the idea that an academic study of organizing should be replaced by a profitable science for managers.

Furthering an integrative ethics-as-practice framework, this paper explores the professional practices, self-understanding and ethics of lawyers working in the Germanic legal context. Existing studies of the legal profession often argue that changing conditions in law have led to a ‘constrained morality’ and an ‘erosion of ethos’ among lawyers. While the current study acknowledges shifts in lawyers’ ethos, it challenges the claim of an erosion or ‘lack’ of morality. The narratives of the interviewed practitioners rather suggest that socio-discursively constituted professional practices, identity and ethics are complex and contingent. Focusing on the ‘moral rules in use’ and how lawyers negotiate ethical matters ‘from within’ evokes ongoing ambiguities and struggles inscribed in ethical (self-)positions, pointing, as such, to the limits of assessing lawyers’ conduct as ‘ethical’ or ‘unethical’. The study thereby extends both normative and practice-based business and professional ethi...

A newcomer entering the professional context of academia as a doctoral student or an early career researcher may not necessarily realise that navigating power imbalances and inequalities based on our sociologically ascribed categories – such as gender, sexuality and age – is going to be a key task. At least for two of us, reflecting back on the first few years of our academic socialisation, a strong memory emerges of a certain naivety about what it would take to start feeling that we belong in this environment, and in particular about how gender-related issues manifest in different aspects of the profession. For the other, there was a sense of resigned acceptance that there were inequalities but a lack of strategy to tackle them. This naivety is understandable in a profession that pursues knowledge and is predominantly marked by a focus on scholarly ideas and pedagogy, as well as having a reputation for collegiality and an interest in the social good. Why one should feel disempowere...

Critical Management Studies (CMS) has developed a global presence over the last two decades. Yet the literature is dominated by writings from the UK and Scandinavia in particular, and the tendency is to treat this literature as constituting CMS. However, the meaning, practice, constraints and context of CMS vary considerably between different countries, cultures and language communities.This volume surveys the various countries and regions where CMS has acquired some following and seeks to explore the different ways in which CMS is understood and the different contexts within which it operates, as well as its possible future development. Critical Management Studies: Global Voices, Local Accents brings together the leading academics in each region by focussing on those countries where CMS has a more or less extensive presence, the volume seeks to bring to light various issues. One is just to gain some understanding of the development of CMS within those countries. How extensive is it? How well-established? The second main theme will be an explanation of the institutional and political context of CMS in each country, to what extent does the nature of universities enable CMS? In what ways do national politics intersect with CMS? More profoundly, each contribution will elucidate what CMS means within that country – what are the key issues and debates? Finally, the way that CMS in each country relates and responds to the emergent CMSAimed at scholars and researchers in the field of both CMS and Organizational Studies, this new research volume will prove essential reading.

Inspired by Foucault’s (1967/1986) notion of ‘heterotopia’, this note reflects on ephemera as a ‘site of otherness’ that challenges modes of thinking and organizing, predominating within the field of organization studies. It thereby illustrates how members of the editorial collective seek to integrate the idea of an affirmative ‘critique from within’ in their various activities and practices. The note suggests that, at ephemera, critical, challenging thought cannot be separated from the practices of its production. Thinking differently is for ephemera and its members irreducibly entangled with organizing and producing differently.

The broad themes of work and consumption have received substantial attention in ephemera (e.g. Beverungen et al., 2013; Bradshaw et al., 2013; Chertkovskaya et al., 2013). Following concomitant debates, this special issue aims to bring together these two realms. While work, understood as the process of production, and consumption, understood as the consummation of objects of production, have always been related to each other (Baudrillard, 1998/1970), the intensity of their interconnectedness and the plethora of its forms have lately captured particular attention among organisation studies scholars and social scientists more generally (e.g. Dale, 2012; Gabriel et al., 2015; Pettinger, 2016).

In recent years a familiar mantra has been recited through media channels, government reports and related sources, namely that of austerity. By now, the images of protest movements of various stripes have been well-documented, which has given the Left a renewed notion of opposition and resistance to a seemingly unperturbed neoliberal encroachment on almost all areas of life (e.g. Bonefeld, 2012, this issue; also Hamann, 2009; Read, 2009).

This paper is grounded in a thematic reading of Robert Musil's (1933/1997) novel The Man Without Qualities. Combining literary, social, and economic theory, the discipline-spanning novel engages with some of the central questions and conflicts of our age, such as the search for order and coherence, seeking to overcome the fragmentation of life. Specifically, we suggest that Musil refers to the advent of entrepreneurship and the ‘enterprising spirit’ as an example evocative of these pursuits, as well as their concomitant ambiguities and frictions. Our analysis therefore engages with the role of Austrian economic theory in consolidating entrepreneur/ship as an ideal socio-economic model and order. By discussing the complexities inscribed in seemingly unifying orders such as entrepreneurship, the paper contributes in particular to critical and process entrepreneurship studies in MOS. It responds to calls for further literary, inter-disciplinary, and historical analyses in entrepren...

This paper is interested in investigating the complex nexus of sites of organizing and absurdity emerging from the persistent undermining and intermingling of common orders, logics and conventions. In its analysis the paper refers to an example from popular culture – the detective series Twin Peaks – which presents a ‘city of absurdity’. The series is discussed utilising Foucault’s (1970) concept of heterotopia which allows us to convey the ‘other side’ of ‘normal’ order and rational reason, immanent in sites of organizing. Fundamentally, the sites in Twin Peaks evoke an understanding of organization as a dynamic assemblage in which heterogeneous orders, conventions and practices interrelate and collide. Analysed through a ‘heterotopic lens’ the TV series Twin Peaks contributes to the exploration of absurdity as a form of humour, and more generally to a sensitive and vivid knowing and experiencing of organization, organizational ‘otherness’ and absurdity.

Today, work and consumption are notably blurred. Consumption matters are found to make inroads into the realm of work, while consumption gains traction in the domain of production. This special issue of ephemera gets to the heart of this phenomenon. Covering a range of themes – genetic testing, self-quantification, migration, popular media and modern workplaces – the contributions to this issue call attention to the ethico-politics of productive and consumptive aspects of contemporary life. Specifically, the contributions address practices that, under capitalism, fall prey to self-perpetuating accumulation, as well as reproduction and sedimentation of social divisions, which shape who we are, what we do and how we relate.

This paper describes some studies on the transport mechanisms (dryfall, wetfall, aerosols) of some air pollutants (trace metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and chlorinated hydrocarbons) related to their deposition on epiphytic moss. Further, the different transport mechanisms of these pollutants are compared between urban, suburban, industrial, agricultural and forested sites together with their temporal and seasonal variations. Multivariate statistical modeling is applied in order to establish relationships 1) between traditionally measured air pollutants (e.g. SO4) and those rarely observed (e.g. PAH, trace metals), 2) between air pollutants of different transport characteristics and their deposition on epiphytic moss in forests. Finally, regionally different temporal behaviour of air pollution will be explained as dominated by immission or, on the other hand, by air flow.

This article explores how the occupation of branding and the work it encompasses are discursively constituted and ‘made up’. It starts with the premise that branding is a cultural intermediary occupation about whose norms and practices we cannot assume certainty, stability or homogeneity. The study illustrates how branding is comprised of multiple social and occupational discourses, namely, ‘creativity’, ‘discovery’, ‘business’ and ‘morality’. Rather than stand alone, these discourses dynamically interweave and intersect. Consequently, branding emerges as an occupation with distinct liminal conditions, being simultaneously about art, science, business and social relational work. Instead of moving towards stability, our findings suggest that branding is an intermediary occupation that sustains rather than discontinues liminality and that enduring liminality lends itself to the non-distinctiveness of the occupation. For branders, occupying a liminal occupational position implies vario...

Within the globalised ‘network society’ (Castells, 2001), demands for mobility and movement have become predominant aspects of contemporary social life (Bauman, 2007; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Cresswell, 2006; Urry, 2007). Exerting an influence upon different social spheres, these demands have transformed the traditional relations of the realms of government and economy, the public and private, and work and life (Cohen et al., 2015; Donzelot and Gordon, 2008). In particular, present-day governmental programmes refer to and evoke discourses around free and unconstrained movements, forms of work and careers (Baerenholdt, 2013). These discourses promote the mobilisation and activation of working subjects and their human capital (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013; Costas, 2013; Foucault, 2008) as well as, more generally, the mobilisation of production, consumption, and communication in all sorts of social networks (Corbett, 2013; Elliott and Urry, 2010; Land and Taylor, 2010).

As addressed in previous issues of ephemera, in contemporary political economy, the conjunction of openness and closure, visibility and invisibility, and transparency and secrecy of information is precarious (e.g. Bachmann et al., 2017; Curtis and Weir, 2016). Information and ‘truth’ have been turned into objects of contention, and it is increasingly contested what is considered sound information and truth, who has access to which type of information, and who is in the position to shape and control information and promote truth(s) (Munro, 2017). The struggles and complexities of negotiating information, truth and the ‘politics of truth’ (Foucault, 2007) are also accompanied by the fact that, in a society in which mass communication and media gain in importance, organisations have become ‘leaky containers’ (Lyon, 2002). This is evidenced in an exemplary way by the NSA affair and Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance, the WikiLeaks-disclosures, commonly associated with the...

This article provides insights into mobility in the context of geographical, economic, professional, temporal and imaginary movements of academics and theatrical artists. It explores how these dimensions of mobility intersect in the narratives of academics and theatrical artists, thereby producing a position ‘in between’ choice and necessity, and privilege and disadvantage with regard to movement. The analysis shows how both academics and theatrical artists engage in mobility to secure, maintain or improve their professional and economic position. On this basis, we suggest that they are part of an emerging category of professionals: the ‘mobile middle’, for whom mobility is a crucial part and principle of life. We argue that the phenomenon of the ‘mobile middle’ and mobility in general have wide-ranging implications for our understanding of contemporary careers, work and life organisation.

In contemporary discourse it is almost commonplace to describe societies and work relations as highly individualized. In this article we develop a conceptual framework that enables us to discuss processes and practices of individualization as political technologies. Following a line of thinking influenced by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, we first illustrate three different regimes of work. The main focus is on elaborating and illustrating characteristics of the post-disciplinary regime of work which allows us to systematize fundamental shifts in the way of organizing and managing work. We then analyze contemporary strategies for producing the "appropriate individual" as "technologies of modulation" that focus on the production of the autonomous, flexible and adaptable subject. We suggest that these strategies are highly ambivalent and must not be seen in a deterministic way. They are necessarily an interplay of technologies that determine the conduct of ind...

The "model of jazz", when valued as the right strategic frame of orientation assuring innovative thinking, poses a well known problem inherent in organizational performing processes that shall be addressed in the paper at hand: how to coordinate the interplay between creativity and control respectively, how to ascertain the "right" balance between encouragement of creative acting and effective management thereof?

In relating to the politico-economic concept of ‘creative industries’, the paper explores in what way the art field and its actors are discursively repositioned within ‘flexible cultural capitalism’. Through empirical material from the independent Austrian theatre scene, the paper, moreover, illustrates how the ‘culturpreneurial’ transformation of the field affects the specific artistic practices, forms of organizing and conduct. In this regard, it will be shown that the artists’ modes of conduct are, at least to some extent, precarious: due to their ascetic and disciplined self-concept, artists seem to contribute, in parts, to their own marginalization as well as to the strengthening of certain ‘neoliberal orders’ and ‘culturpreneurial subject ideals’ of flexible capitalism – even though they are actually keen to resist current governmental technologies like the promotion of competition and market-determined assessment.

In contemporary discourse it is almost commonplace to describe societies and work relations as highly individualized. In this article we develop a conceptual framework that enables us to discuss processes and practices of individualization as political ...