OLKC2017

Symposium: Power, Politics and Emotions in Organizational Knowing and Learning

Power, Politics and Emotions in Organizational Knowing and Learning: Identifying problems and mobilizing possibilities

 Convenors:

 <a href="http://www.bi.edu/about-bi/employees/department-of-leadership-and-organizational-behaviour/filstad-cathrine/" target="_blank">Cathrine Filstad</a>, BI Norwegian Business School/University of Tromsø, Norway

 <a href="https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=9-q1r14AAAAJ&hl=no" target="_blank">Bjørn Erik Mørk</a>, University of Oslo, Norway/IKON, Warwick Business School, UK

 <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/management/aboutus/people/academic/kevinorr/" target="_blank">Kevin Orr</a>, School of Management, University of St. Andrews, Scotland

 <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=W8iah68AAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">Russ Vince</a>, School of Management, University of Bath, UK/ University of St. Andrews, Scotland

  

 If you would like to <a href="http://eventos.uva.es/event_detail/4239/upload/olkc2017.html">submit</a> a paper for possible inclusion in this Symposium, then please indicate that it is for the Symposium when submitting your abstract to the OLKC 2017 online system.

  

 Call for papers

 Power relations inform emerging and embedded structures and set the boundaries of thought, action and feeling in organizations. Emotions combine to both challenge and to reinforce those relations, structures and boundaries. What are the implications of such dynamics for knowing and learning?

 In this Symposium we will explore diverse perspectives and approaches that contribute to our understanding of the connections between power, emotion, knowing and learning. Our aim is to offer support for ongoing, high quality research and scholarship within this area. Following on from the successful Symposium at OLKC St. Andrews, we are again offering a Symposium design that will help to shape key theoretical and empirical papers for future publication in top journals, including pre-conference review of submitted papers.

 There is great diversity in the underpinning assumptions, focal points and approaches adopted by scholars in this area. For example, studies have drawn upon works of Foucault and Latour to explain relational aspects of power (Costas and Grey, 2014; Heizmann, 2011). Reed (2012) has examined power relations and elites by drawing on realist/ materialist ontology and neo-Weberian frameworks. Beck (2008) has discussed global power games and ‘counterpower’ between global businesses, nation states and social movements. Beyes and Steyaert (2013: 1458) have called for work that is ‘attuned to and seeks to enact the affective forces that haunt and unsettle organizational life’.

 Interest in the ‘white spaces’ of organizational life (O’Doherty, De Cock, Rehn and Ashcraft, 2013), in emotion and symbolic power (Vince and Mazen 2014) and in ‘ghosts’ of past relations (Orr 2014) offer different ways of exploring how power is implicated in aspects of organising, leading and learning. Similarly, the concepts of sense-making and sense-giving have been applied to capture the degree to which managers and employees use power resources in attempts to influence others (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014; Filstad, 2014). Thomas and Davies (2005) and Sonenshein and Dhalokia (2010) have engaged with dynamics of power and politics related to management of change. Gordon, Clegg and Kornberger (2009) have looked at how forms of power shape ethical practices. Recent work has also sought to understand more about the connections between emotion and power. For example, Voronov and Vince (2012) have shown how collective emotions are bound up with the reproduction of social structure and with systems of domination so that the constructed world that surrounds and is within us seems natural, obvious and not in need of change.

 Practice-based studies of learning, innovating and change have become influential across several disciplines (Gherardi, 2006). Whereas some parts of practice-based studies bring power and interests to the fore, other lenses downplay the role of power. As Nicolini (2007: 917) puts it, ‘there is no change in practice without empowerment and disempowerment’. An influential strand of practice-based studies has looked at communities of practice. While Lave and Wenger (1991) had a more explicit focus on power and interests (see for instance Contu and Willmott, 2003) this focus has become downplayed. Swan et al. (2002), Mørk et al (2010), Roberts (2006) and others have therefore suggested exploring how power and politics are an important part of practice within and across such communities.

 In order to help our community of scholars and scholarly practitioners to understand the diversity and complexity within this field, we positively encourage submissions from different positions and perspectives on power, politics and emotions to be part of the Symposium. We welcome theoretical, empirical and methodological papers on the role of power, politics and emotions in organising, leading and learning. Respective topics include, but are not limited to:
<ul>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Ways of theorising power, politics and emotions, in particular those challenging basic assumptions and approaches in our current understanding of organising, leading and learning</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Methods for studying power, politics and emotions in organizations</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Ways of re-presenting findings about power and interests in organisations</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Relationships between organizing and power</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Relationships between leading and power. The role of top management and middle managers as change agents</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Power in processes of sense-making and sense-giving</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 The study of emotions beyond individual feelings, including social emotions, emotion contagion, unconscious emotions – as well as their implications for knowing and learning.</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Power and emotional issues in organizational learning, integrating past, present and future perspectives.</li>
 <li style="text-align: justify;">
 Practice-based studies of power and politics, including studies within and across communities of practice and the practices of communities.</li>
</ul>

 References 

 Beyes, T. and Steyaert, C. (2013). Strangely Familiar: The Uncanny and Unsiting Organizational Analysis. Organization Studies. vol. 34, 10: pp. 1445 1465.

 Contu, A. and Willmott, H. (2003). Re-Embedding Situatedness: The importance of Power Relations in Learning Theory.  Organization Science. 14 (3), 283-296.

 Costas, J. and Grey, C. (2014). The Temporality of Power and the Power of Temporality : Imaginary Future Selves in Professional Service Firms. Organization Studies. Vol. 35, No. 6, 2014, p. 909-937

 Filstad, C. (2014). The politics of sensemaking and sensegiving at work.  Journal of Workplace Learning. vol. 26 no. 1, pp. 3-21.

 Gherardi, S. (2006). Organizational Knowledge. Blackwell Publishing.

 Gordon, R., Clegg, S. and Kornberger, M. (2009). Embedded Ethics: Discourse and Power in the New South Wales Police Service. Organization Studies. vol. 30, 1: pp. 73-99.

 Heizmann, H. (2011). Knowledge sharing in a dispersed network of HR practice: Zooming in on power/knowledge struggles. Management Learning. vol. 42 no. 4, pp.379-393

 Lave, J. And Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York: Cambridge University Press

 Maitlis, S. and Christianson, M. (2014). Sensemaking in organizations: Taking stock and moving forward. Academy of Management Annals. vol. 8 no. 1, pp. 57-125.

 Mørk, B.E., Hoholm, T., Ellingsen, G., Edwin, B. and Aanestad, M. (2010). Challenging experience: on power relations within and across communities of practice in medical innovation. Management Learning. vol. 41 No. 5, pp. 575–592.

 Nicolini, D. (2007). Stretching out and Expanding Work Practice in Time and Space: The Case of Telemedicine. Human Relations. vol. 60(6): 889–920.

 O’Docherty, D., De Cock, C., Rehn, A. And Ashcraft, K. L. (2013). New Sites/ Sights: Exploring the white spaces of organizations. Organization Studies vol. 34, 10: pp. 1427-1444.

 Orr, K. (2014). Local Government Chief Executives’ Everyday Hauntings: Towards a Theory of Organizational Ghosts. Organization Studies. vol. 35, 7: pp. 1041-1061

 Reed, M.,I. (2012). Masters of the Universe: Power and Elites in Organization Studies. Organization Studies. vol. 33, 2: pp. 203-221.

 Roberts, J. (2006). Limits to Communities of Practice. Journal of Management Studies. vol. 43(3): 623–39.

 Sonenshein, S. and Dhalokia, U. (2012). Explaining employee engagement with strategic change implementation: A meaning-making approach. Organization Science. vol. 23 no. 1, pp. 1-23.

 Swan, J., Scarbrough, H. and Robertson, M. (2002). The construction of ‘communities of practice’ in the management of innovation. Management Learning. Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 477–496.

 Thomas, R. and Davies, A. (2005). Theorizing the micro-politics of resistance: new public management and managerial identities in the UK public services. Organization Studies. Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 683–706.

 Vince, R. and Mazen, A. (2014). Violent Innocence: A Contradiction at the Heart of Leadership. Organization Studies. vol. 35, 2: pp. 189-207.

 Voronov, M. and Vince, R. (2012). Integrating Emotions into the Analysis of Institutional Work. Academy of Management Review 37/1: 58 – 81.

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OLKC2017

Symposium: Power, Politics and Emotions in Organizational Knowing and Learning