M@n@gement

‘We’re All Sinners Here’: A Microhistorical Exploration of the Deviance-Identification Nexus

2024-03-15T01:47:23-07:00

Extant research shows that deviance as a departure from established norms is influential to innovation and change. However, challenging the embedded assumptions and practices renders deviance subject to heavy stigmatization, compelling the identification of deviance to ensure that deviance can be balanced or controlled for the good of the organization. Yet, this focus often ignores the dynamics between the deviants and their audiences, which also impacts the spread of deviance, since deviance is best understood through actions as well as responses. Because deviance is likely to provoke deep introspection, identification with deviance is an essential, yet underexplored aspect of its spread. This article takes a micro-historical approach to analyze Dogme95, a highly controversial filmmaking movement, where identification with deviance influenced its spread. It elucidates symbolic disruption, straddling identification, and limiting the duration as three stages through which deviance can spread in and around organizations through identification. The article thus contributes to the extant literature by reconciling some theoretical contradictions regarding the spread of deviance despite its negative connotations and provides a novel perspective on the deviance-identification nexus.

The Construction of A Strategic Issue: Issue Selling as A Narrative Process

2024-03-15T01:47:27-07:00

For the past 30 years, the issue-selling movement has uncovered the vast repertoire of actions by which ‘sellers’ persuade a decision-maker that an issue is strategic. While these works have a rational and teleological conception of this phenomenon, implying that the strategic scope of the issue is given ex ante, other research in strategy shows that such scope is a social and discursive construction based on interactions between various actors. This article proposes a model of issue selling as an emergent narrative process. Based on a qualitative survey of 42 middle managers, using semistructured interviews, we show this process starts with a phase of incremental elaboration, in which the seller informally shares narrative fragments with a network of actors, followed by a phase of interpretation, in which the seller formally presents his or her narrative to a decision-maker, coherently articulating previously collected narrative fragments. We also show that the passage between these two phases is allowed by what we call the ‘strategic construction’ of the narrative. These results help to show that issue selling is a less solitary and rational process than previous work suggests.

Tension between Digital Distance and Physical Presence in Hybrid Teaching: Evidence from Two Natural Experiments During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a French Business School

2024-03-15T03:14:22-07:00

The advent of digitization has promised learning paradigms based on digital communication and virtual reality at the expense of physical presence. During the COVID-19 health emergency, the tension between digital distance and physical presence evolved from competing alternatives to a more nuanced coexistence. Several organizations resorted to hybrid arrangements; hybrid teaching is a notable example. In this paper, we draw from the theory of planned behavior to theorize the effect of physical presence on learning outcomes in the context of hybrid teaching. We differentiate between individual and team learning outcomes. We predict that physical presence induces competition and has a negative effect on individual learning outcomes. For team learning outcomes, we predict that physical presence induces cooperation and has a positive impact. We exploit two natural experiments in a French business school during the fall semester of 2020. The school’s administration allocated students to subgroups randomly for fairness reasons. This context offered a natural within-subjects experiment, where every student was randomly assigned to either in-person or online lectures. Students had up to 4.9% lower likelihood of correctly answering exam questions for lectures they followed in person rather than online. However, in group-work assignments, teams with one more student following in person tended to see a 3.6% increase in their team evaluation. Digital distance, therefore, constitutes a barrier to learning in a hybrid setting only when tasks are evaluated on a team basis.

Socio-Professional Trajectories of Refugees in France: An Identity Work Perspective

2024-03-15T01:47:25-07:00

This qualitative study investigates refugees’ socio-professional trajectories in France. Our findings suggest that refugees follow different socio-professional paths shaped by identity work and acculturation mechanisms as they go about integrating in the French context. We identify three socio-professional trajectories: ‘adjusting’, ‘enhancing’, and ‘detaching’. This study contributes, firstly, to research on refugees’ socio-professional adjustment and vocational adaptation, and secondly, to the literature on identity work. It does so by offering novel insights into the processes of repairing, reorienting, and reconstructing cultural and professional identities in the context of refugees’ relocation to host countries, in this case, France.

Understanding Creative Entrepreneurs’ Work Practices: The Varying Conversation between Artistic and Economic Rationales

2024-03-15T01:47:30-07:00

Research on creative organizations often questions how artistic practices can be squared within the rational decision-making of economic thinking. This paper examines how the relational language, or conversation, between artistic and economic rationales unfolds for creative entrepreneurs. Through ethnographic work with a designer-entrepreneur, this paper presents a fine-grained analysis of the conversation the designer cultivates between artistic and economic rationales through work practices. We contribute to the literature about artistic and economic rationales at work, and more specifically to the concept of conversation. First, we show that high levels of conversing make way for low levels of conversing and vice versa. In the studio, the designer’s engagement with either rationale varies as the creative process progresses. Second, on a more global dynamic, we demonstrate the conversation is continuous. It relies on its variations, which ensure the balance between rationales in the long run. We also contribute to the field of creative entrepreneurship research. We identify here one type of creative entrepreneur, with what we call a ‘small is beautiful’ attitude. Far from the mythical figure of the entrepreneur, this unconventional entrepreneur aims for sustainable use of creative resources rather than growth at all costs.

When to Talk and When to Keep It to yourself? Strategies for Legitimating Managerial Intuitions in An Organisational Context

2024-03-15T09:27:16-07:00

The purpose of this study is to explore the strategies deployed by managers in organisations to legitimate their intuitions. Managerial practice is a continual process of emergence and integration of problems and projects, and by which managers navigate a complex world. To do so, they rely partly on their intuitions, whose effectiveness has largely been demonstrated in the literature. However, the rational model is still considered the optimal cognition and decision-making process in organisations. The persistence of the myth of rationality compels managers to deploy strategies to legitimate their intuitions. But these strategies are poorly understood. The aim of this study therefore was to describe them. For this purpose, we collected 191 accounts of episodes where managers legitimated their intuitions. Our analysis of these accounts revealed seven intuition legitimation strategies. Some of these strategies had not previously been identified in the institutional literature (personalisation, transparency, exploration and compound strategy). For others which had already been partly described (rationalisation, manipulation and relational strategy), we show that managers deploy new modes. These results contribute to the knowledge of legitimation strategies from a conceptual point of view. They also shed some light on the mistrust of intuition that still prevails in organisations, despite its importance.

How Much Stupidity Do Organisations Need? A Psychodynamic Perspective on Functional Stupidity

2024-03-15T03:16:11-07:00

How much stupidity do organisations need to function effectively? The paradox coined by management researchers Spicer and Alvesson may seem baffling. According to these authors, organisations require a certain amount of uncritical obedience to function properly. The idea of ‘functional stupidity’ put forward by the authors to account for this phenomenon is no less ambiguous. In addition to overlooking the ethical implications of such a notion, it fails to provide a coherent explanation of its causes in organisations. Our proposal is based on the psychodynamics of work, founded by Christophe Dejours. We focus primarily on the subjective experience of work, which involves the worker’s body, and the way in which a whole theory of moral sense at work emerges from this experience. Adopting the form of an essay, we will support our argument with illustrative vignettes: stupidity will be interpreted here as the exact opposite of what the psychodynamics of work considers to be subjective intelligence at work, that is, ordinary sublimation. In so doing, we propose to extend the scope of the notion of organisational stupidity by adding a phenomenological, clinical and ethical dimension. We conclude by suggesting future avenues for research, through a ‘re-eroticisation’ of work.