Organizational closedown and the process of deconstruction and creativity

This paper outlines an analysis of how the deconstruction of organizational, management control and performance management structures affects performances and how workers make sense of enhanced efforts and practices of creativity, in a situation when facing a certainty of job loss as of the closedown of the organization. In this paper, we have shown that the deconstruction of structures generate positive performance outcomes, and that such relation is being mediated by workers identity. We have also shown that identity work under a process of organizational closedown generate certain creativity. By doing so, this paper contributes to the literature on creativity and deconstruction by developing an emergent model where workers identity mediates formal structures in relation to performance. This paper contributes to the literature on closedowns by extending its analytical and theoretical domains, proving alternative, yet complementary and mediating explanations to the causes of drivers to enhanced performances during the process of closedown.     

创业者个体学习、组织学习如何交互影响企业创新行为？——基于整合视角的纵向单案例研究

社会经济的不断发展促使分工愈发精细,对个人与组织间的技术隔离也愈加明显,亟待创业者个体及组织开展跨层次的交互学习以构建组织创新优势。基于此,本文援引学习理论与意义构建视角,从"行动"与"解释"出发,采用纵向单案例研究方法,基于"个体-组织"整合性分析框架,探究了不同创业阶段内跨层次行动主体间的学习互动模型,揭示了其对企业创新的影响路径。研究发现:创业者个体学习与组织学习间的互动,表现为渐变初期个体利用式学习经"自上而下"团队互动主导形成组织单环式行动;而在调整转变期,个体学习与组织学习发生交互影响,包含个体探索式学习经"横向协同式"团队互动主导形成组织双环式行动,以及组织双环式行动转换为单环式之后,经由持续反思与质询,刺激形成创业者个体利用式学习;最后,在发展突变期,个体利用式学习经"制度化统筹式"团队交互合作促成组织单环式行动,同时个体探索式学习经"跨越层次自主式"团队交互激活组织双环式学习。此外,在不同创业阶段,3种互动逻辑与意义构建框架下的创新决定机制呈现出以个体创意激发与扩散、信息整合与匹配以及平衡矛盾与冲突3种不同的影响路径展开的态势。本研究为创业学习理论和创业实践过程贡献了新的启示。     

In search of popular management: Sensemaking,sensegiving and storytelling in the excellence project

Critical accounts of popular management have tended to caricature the authors of this literary genre and have, furthermore, made broad claims as to the nature and potential of the organizational storytelling which features in these texts. This paper re-examines such claims and proclivities. It argues that any attempt to explore the nature of popular management or to account for the organizing potential of its storytelling must be located within an account of storytelling practice. To this end, the paper offers a critical analysis of the excellence project that is situated within a review of Tom Peters’ storyworld. Acknowledging the extent to which popular management deploys organizational storytelling in its endeavours, we offer – uniquely – a longitudinal analysis of Tom Peters' storytelling practices. Noting a tension between organizational sensegiving and organizational sensemaking processes, we argue that the storyworld of the excellence project acts to obscure the frictions, stresses and dislocations associated with the pursuit of business excellence. Highlighting the persistence of local sensemaking processes within and between those forms of public speech fostered by popular management, however, we argue that the tales which constitute the excellence project are, when viewed in context, more diverse and yet less productive than previously imagined.     

管理研究者和实践者共同语言的构建

管理研究者与实践者之间存在着沟通鸿沟,这一障碍的存在既不利于管理研究的发展,又不利于管理实践的改善。基于此,从意义构建角度,提出了消除这种鸿沟的方法,即通过"差异辨识-制定规则-选择问题-形成协作"4个阶段的合作,以及构建管理研究的评价体系,减少管理研究和管理实践间的不对称性,促进两者间的有效沟通,从而实现面向实践的管理研究的良性发展。     

Organizational Change and Representations of Women in a North American Utility Company

Using a critical sensemaking approach, this article explores the process that leads to the formation of different types of masculinity over time. In particular it looks at organizational change programmes, the subsequent representation of organizational men and women in corporate documents and the consequences this has on the gendering of organizational culture. Annual reports from a North American electrical company, Nova Scotia Power, which underwent significant changes between 1972–2001, are used to show how the company's masculinist cultures were reflected in company policies and portrayed in the images and text in these documents. The focus of this article is on how strategic change programmes influenced different notions of masculinity over time, how these understandings were enacted through organizational policies, how this identity was (unconsciously) portrayed in images and text and what effects this had on the gendering of organizational culture.     

Improving Ethical Knowledge and Sensemaking from Cases through Elaborative Interrogation and Outcome Valence

The case-based approach to learning is popular among many applied fields. However, results of case-based education vary widely on case content and case presentation. This study examined two aspects of case-based education—outcome valence and case elaboration methods—in a two-day case-based Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) ethics education program. Results suggest that outcome information is an integral part of a quality case. Furthermore, valence consistent outcomes may have certain advantages over mixed valence outcome information. Finally, students enjoy and excel working with case material, and the use of elaborative interrogation techniques can significantly improve internally-focused ethical sensemaking strategies associated with personal biases, constraints, and emotions.     

Distributed sensemaking in network risk analysis

This article responds to the call advancing risk science as an independent research field, by introducing a conceptual model for risk analysis based on distributed sensemaking. Significant advances in recent decades have expanded the use of risk analysis to almost every organization globally. Continued improvements have been made to our understanding of risk, placing a wide range of contexts under organizational control. This article argues that four dimensions are central in how organizations make sense of uncertainty in their context and hence do risk analysis: the activities the organization engages in, their sensory systems, the role and competence of individuals, and the ability to coordinate information through organizational structures. The structure enables insight into the decision-making process and the dimensions contributing to how organizations perceive risks and uncertainty in a given context. Three examples from the Arctic context illustrate the network risk analysis model's practical application and how it will expose weaknesses in these organizations’ risk analysis and decision-making processes. Finally, the article discusses sensemaking in network risk analysis and how such an approach supports organizations’ ability to perceive, collect, process, and decide on changes in context.     

战略性管理创新纵向传递机制研究——基于意义建构和意义给赋视角

从组织内部跨层级意义建构和意义给赋视角,通过中国移动集中化管理案例的探索性研究,揭示战略性管理创新纵向传递机制。研究得出,战略性管理创新纵向传递始于高层通过意义建构进行创新构思,然后以引导性互动范式向中层传递,旨在统一理解、完善创新;中层再以限制性单向范式向基层传递,形成全员支持,最终实施创新。由此,构建战略性管理创新纵向传递模型,为组织跨层级自上而下传递战略性创新提供指导。     

Concertive resistance: how overlapping team identifications enable collective organizational resistance*

ABSTRACT

This study describes how overlapping sources of identification allow organizational members to resist managerial influence collectively in the absence of overt talk or leadership communication – labeled here concertive resistance. Concertive resistance is exercised by organizational members according to a set of core group-level values which challenge, invert, or disrupt top-down control. Concertive resistance extends Barker’s [1993. “Tightening the Iron Cage: Concertive Control in Self-managing Teams.” Administrative Science Quarterly 38 (3): 408–437] concept of concertive control by explaining how team-level resistance is also attributable to team-level control. Through an ethnography of an American university football team, this study reveals how multiple and overlapping sources of identification produced a team’s spontaneously and collective resistance, without the aid of overt resistance leadership. The essay contributes to the resistance literature by using Unobtrusive Control Theory to explain how group-level resistance is accomplished through control.     

Making Sense of Risk—A Sociological Perspective on the Management of Risk

This article describes how risk has been conceptualized in the business and organizational literature through four distinct transformations: from the techno‐scientific perspective to the cognitive, the social‐cultural, and, finally, to the constructionist perspective. Each domain conceptualizes risk in different ways, as organizations have found it difficult to understand and mitigate using the risk management tools available. Conceptualizing risk as sensemaking becomes relevant due to the complexity of information available to the risk manager, and, coupled with time constraints, this means that risk managers increasingly rely on making sense of possible threats rather than on the accuracy of the information received. This shift presents four contributions to the current literature. First, it suggests that the role of risk management is shifting from being technical in nature to being about risk sensemaking, where the manager engages with the social and physical environment with the aim of acquiring cues that could indicate how future events will unfold. Second, a sensemaking perspective implies a shift in the use of risk management systems from being “containers” of knowledge about past risk events to lending legitimacy to the plausibility of the success of future decisions. Third, the role of the risk manager in managing individual risks changes and becomes one of managing everything using the social networks and systems available as indicators of future risk events. Finally, the risk manager and the systems he or she relies upon are regarded as a source of risk in themselves as both act as gatekeepers for organizational risk decision making.