Organization Studies current issue

Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres

Nyberg, D. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:34:06 PST

Organizational practice theorists have convincingly argued that the social and material, subjects and objects, are inextricable and co-emerge as the outcomes of practices or networks. My article engages with the debate in this field by explaining how, within these assumptions, discrete categories or actors are brought into being. The ethnographic field-work from call centres initially shows how customer service operatives and computers are entangled and inseparable in carrying out the practice of customer service calls. The findings then show how meaningful boundaries around actors are established through temporal delineations, or cuts, within practices. My study thus exposes the multiplicity of how employees make sense of surrounding technology. This contributes to organization studies by explaining the dynamics and fluidity that underlie the categories and actors which are taken for granted in contemporary workplaces. This also contributes to our appreciation of a labour process beyond dualisms.

Towards an Understanding of Cognitive Coordination: Theoretical Developments and Empirical Illustrations

Foss, N., Lorenzen, M. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:34:06 PST

The cognitive dimension of institutions has been comparatively neglected in social science research. In particular, economists have concentrated on how institutions provide incentives. However, institutions also influence behaviours by influencing beliefs and expectations that help agents to overcome coordination problems. We explore various aspects of how institutions may align agents’ beliefs, concentrating on the role of analogies in interactive decision making, and how analogies grow from experience. We illustrate our reasoning by an empirical example.

Making Sense Through Face: Identity and Social Interaction in a Consultancy Task Force

Patriotta, G., Spedale, S. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:34:06 PST

In this article we investigate the dynamic connection between individual and social processes of sensemaking in the context of group-based interaction. Drawing on Goffman’s theory of face-to-face behaviour, we develop two main arguments. First, the grounding of identity underlying group-based interaction typically involves repeated face games during which participants attempt to influence the patterns of interaction while maintaining a coherent image of self. Second, face games generate an ‘interaction order’ that has structuring properties and is therefore central to the social construction of sense within a group setting. We illustrate our contribution through an empirical study of face games and sensemaking within a consultancy task force. The study shows that the co-presence of participants during group-based interaction is in itself an occasion for sensemaking as it enacts language-based controversies that require composition through shared construction of meaning. In addition, our findings highlight that early impressions generate sticky patterns of interaction that constrain further exchanges and affect the development and outcomes of group sensemaking. A main implication is that positive outcomes of sensemaking are contingent upon the ability of the participants collectively to generate interaction orders that are conducive to working consensus. In this regard, sensegiving mechanisms such as leadership can constructively orient interaction amongs professionals by providing a common set of expectations about behaviours.

Institutional Translation through Spectatorship: Collective Consumption and Editing of Symbolic Organizational Texts by Firms and their Audiences

Lamertz, K., Heugens, P. P. M. A. R. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:34:06 PST

We develop and corroborate the latent aspect of institutional theory that institutional spectators observe and reproduce inter-organizational symbolism. Prior research has explored whether institutional norms produce symbolic similarity across organizations, but assessments of whether such symbolic imagery is in fact monitored by institutional audiences are rare. Nonetheless, this process of institutional spectatorship represents an important foundation of various strands of institutional theorizing. Also, a better understanding of the ceremonial interactions between organizations and their spectators would help the field of institutional theory reconnect itself to its phenomenological origins. To advance our grasp of institutional spectatorship, we report a study of the Canadian beer brewing industry that shows how the symbolic self-presentations of breweries are reproduced by a central spectator: the news media. The results suggest that institutional spectatorship is an important dramaturgical process that influences the structuration and stratification of organizational fields.

Angelic Organization: Hierarchy and the Tyranny of Heaven

Parker, M. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:34:06 PST

This paper suggests that one of the first influential legitimations of hierarchy comes from the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, about 1500 years ago. Despite the fact that he was ordering angels, he suggests both ontological and political reasons for accepting that organization must equal hierarchy. This is an assumption that is rarely contested even today, and the idea of hierarchy is central to theories of organization, and justifications of managerialism. However, angels have been mutable creatures, and I employ some of their various incarnations in order to open up this 5th century common sense. I conclude by suggesting that angelic obedience should be treated with suspicion, and that other sorts of angels, particularly the fallen ones, might lead us away from the tyranny of hierarchy.

Organization Studies

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:34:06 PST